I doubt anybody who has worked in web or graphic design hasn't brushed up against Shutterstock at some point. They are kind of like a necessary evil. The most ubiquitous presence online in terms of sheer volume of stock photographs - they maintain a library of around 125 million royalty-free stock photos, vector graphics and illustrations. I even have a photographer friend who signed up with them a while ago to sell her pictures (although she was put off by the high fees and the fact that she had to send in a scan of her driving license to open an account with them: with identity theft as rife as it is, she just didn't understand why they needed it).

There's no question that Shutterstock is a big fish in this vast global industry. However, no dominant market position is unassailable when new, disruptive technology comes into play – and the current market suffers from economic inefficiency, a lack of transparent management and tracking mechanisms, and exorbitant licensing fees (often as much as 70%). Naturally, this is all detrimental to market growth and gives rise to a whole host of legal and management problems for all market participants.

Enter IPStock, an exciting new crypto project from Switzerland who are developing a cutting-edge blockchain ecosystem that could comprehensively revolutionise the digital content marketplace once and for all. Their ingenious solution implements visual digital content registry on the blockchain and license management through smart-contracts. In fact, it will be the first project in the market to give access to both exclusive AND royalty free content licenses.

Here are 5 reasons why these guys are looking very promising right now:

1. They have an existing product and profitable business – IPStock is already recognised as a leading solution in the stock images market, leveraging the power of advanced technologies such as big data analysis. In fact, their vector graphics portfolio is already widely considered to be second to none globally.

2. Blockchain technology is fundamental, not ornamental – Unlike many ICOs that are currently piggy-backing on cryptocurrency’s share price-boosting power as a buzzword, the blockchain represents an integral part of the IPStock vision. Distributed ledger technology will confer very real benefits in this instance, considerably reducing the need for revenue-draining middle men and increasing the profits of the content makers whilst driving down consumers’ expenses. It will democratise the market, in other words – freeing it from the protectionist influence of monopolising intermediaries, and opening it up to free market forces.

3. There is a strong team behind it – As mentioned before, IPStock’s team has a proven track record and have already created a world-leading business. They have a great deal of collective industry experience, and their shareholders include Switzerland’s preeminent innovation incubator, Fongit

4. They will protect authors’ rights – IPStock's transparent distributed ledger registry will safeguard authors’ rights and shield end users from the risk of litigation, whilst smart contracts will automatically verify the legal terms and conditions attached to every digital assets transaction (e.g. for exclusive, royalty-free and rights managed sales, copyright transfer etc.) This takes a BIG headache out of the equation.

5. The industry is big enough to support some very generous gains – When considering a new crypto project to back, I believe the most important question you’ve got to ask yourself, before you do the due diligence on the background of the team, before you start to consider the use case of the token, before you even read the whitepaper, is “how much is this industry actually worth?”. Does this project have room to grow and afford meaningful returns? As of this moment in time, the non-exclusive visual digital content licensing market size is $5 billion, and numerous forecasts have projected a net worth of $10 billion by 2022. I see absolutely no problem here!

Thus, whilst this isn’t investment advice and I’m certainly not telling you to go straight out and put all your money into their ICO without doing your own research – I do think IPStock has a lot going for it, and it should definitely be on your list of ‘Promising ICOs’ for Q1 2018.

And if they can ultimately reduce the amount of times I have to look at that ugly ‘Shutterstock’ logo whenever I do a google image search, so much the better!

Further reading:

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