Beginner's guide to Odyssey, web3 alternative to Youtube

Odyssey, a video platform founded in July 2020 and released in December 2020, has been widely accepted as an alternative to the popular online platform youtube. According to sources, Odyssey has over 300,000 content creators worldwide creating a wide array of videos.

Because Odyssey is built on blockchain technology, its authors' channels can never be destroyed. A channel is created and then permanently recorded on a distributed ledger on the blockchain. Speaking in simpler terms, once we upload something on Odyssey it stays there forever and can never be removed.

CEO Jeremy Kauffman went a few steps forward during the launch of the platform to declare that it was created to bring back the freedom of the net he experienced while growing up by saying – it’s a platform where everybody could speak and everybody could have a voice. He believed Odyssey could be the successor of youtube and wanted to create a space where every voice is heard.

This seemingly brilliant idea of a  site was brought into reality by the very team that was behind Lbry (pronounced as ‘library’) blockchain protocol. Upon this protocol, the Odyssey website is built.

How to upload videos on Odyssey?

If you want to publish any video footage you want online and save it there without worrying about it being taken down, the Odyssey platform will keep your video content on the blockchain available for as long as you like. We already knew most of this and now we need to understand how are these videos uploaded.

As said earlier, Odyssey is created by the Lbry blockchain, thus to publish anything there one has to connect with the Lbry blockchain and publish there content there. Once a creator’s channel is on Odyssey effectively it is securely stored in a crypto wallet which can be downloaded later. Once uploaded, there is no video that doesn’t appear on the Lbry blockchain.

Odyssey for creators

Users can see any of the videos for free, in contrast to other video streaming services. Users must link their accounts to an Odyssey wallet, which may be viewed once logged in

If viewers like the video, they can give the maker a tip. The number of credits each video has brought in for the artist is shown. Creators also make money from ads displayed in between videos.

Limitations of Odyssey

Regardless of how radical, violent, or misleading the information is, deleting uploaded content is impossible when video content is kept on the blockchain because no single entity has control over it or the ability to change it. This creates pressure for creators who might be embarrassed by the content they uploaded earlier or for content that might create any negative impact or controversies. They have no method to remove these videos anymore.

The most fascinating aspect of the odyssey is that because it uses blockchain technology, both creators and users have more power over their content that they create and watch respectively. They can publish and communicate in much the same way as they would in a public area.