LBRY (pronounced “Library”) is a decentralized digital content distribution protocol and a marketplace for the same. It supports a variety of content which includes but not limited to videos, songs, ebooks, etc. LBRY uses blockchain at its core, which enables content to only be controlled by its author/ publisher, not by any third party, effectively eliminating issues like censorship and copyright strikes. Since the code of the LBRY project is open-source, developers can create their own decentralized apps (dApps). Content creators can use these apps to upload their content on the LBRY network and monetize it by setting a fee. LBRY credits or simply LBC is the cryptocurrency created by the LBRY network to fuel its entire digital content market. The LBC coin is required by consumers to access the monetized content on LBRY network. The LBRY platform also allows LBC mining by giving block rewards. Jeremy Kauffman co-founded LBRY Inc. with the vision of a decentralized global content hub, controlled and owned by no one. Currently, Jeremy is the chief executive officer of LBRY Inc. Before working on the LBRY project, Jeremy founded TopScore, a million dollars event and activity registrations startup. There are three other co-founders who serves on different positions in LRBY Inc: Alex Grintsvayg (Chief Technical Officer), Josh Finer (Director of Operations and Analytics), and Jack Robison (Protocol Developer). LBRY provides its own official app, which can be used to store LBC. The LBRY app is available for multiple operating systems such as Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Android and iOS versions are still in development. Other than its official LBRY wallet, users can opt for the Coinomi mobile wallet, which is recommended by LBRY. LBC can only be obtained through exchange. Users can also take advantage of LBC mining and various rewards given in LBC coin by LBRY network to its users. Although the concept behind the LBRY network has a lot of potential for growth, it faces competition directly against the entertainment giants such as YouTube and Netflix, and some of these platforms have been around for more than a decade.
Zen is a decentralized financial platform, built from scratch with the goal of providing people with a secure, scalable and useful infrastructure for creating their own financial instruments, and trading them directly without intermediaries.The Zen blockchain is secured by multiple proof-of-work algorithms, with token-holder voting on the balance between them. Multi-hash mining creates robust incentives for miners to deliver efficient, reliable security.Zen smart contracts are written and secured by a subset of the F* functional programming language, allowing users to: A) Prove the amount of resources a contract will consume and provide the necessary fees for running the contract to miners, removing the need for a “gas” based system.B) Prove their contracts meet a given specification, meaning they can prove the contract will definitely do (or not do) something given a specific set of parameters.The Zen platform comes with a built-in solution for oracles, which provide contracts with useful real world data.Finally, Zen is integrated with the Bitcoin blockchain, allowing contracts to observe and respond to native bitcoin transactions