“EIA was the chance to develop our business and prove the viability of Paperchain”

It all started with Daniel Dewar’s intensive research into Blockchain and smart contracts. After time spent working in the Film & Television industry, Daniel decided to bring his personal business idea to life.

In 2016, he realized that there was not only a gap to fill but a problem to solve… And his new idea was the potential solution. That was the beginning of Paperchain, a revolutionary platform at the intersection of media, finance, and technology.

This is EIA’s Success Story of the Month!

Daniel Dewar @Digital Music Forum 2018 | 📷 facebook @Paperchain

Paperchain: Beginnings

Paperchain was built to find solutions for certain challenges that stagnated royalty payments and metadata management.

Back in 2016, there was a lot of buzz around digital music. In a world of digital availability, musical artists were working overtime. They needed to maintain ownership of their works, and these works needed proper attribution. That year, Spotify revenue grew more than 50%, and Tidal was on the rise. Streaming platforms were now a topic of public interest.

Meanwhile, Blockchain pointed out as the best solution to provide royalties payments. Unfortunately, data accuracy proved more than a hiccup.  The question was this: How do you maintain accurate song metadata between different platforms while guaranteeing standard payments to artists? The Paperchain prototype was designed to answer this question. By using smart contracts, it would become possible to validate song metadata between different digital entities.

“Its early mistake was a failure to completely understand the problem before developing a solution.”

In a nutshell, smart contracts are a form of digital contract. That is, they are converted to computer code. After that, they are stored and replicated on a system.The network that runs the relevant blockchain supervises the encrypted information.

Paperchain showed up on the scene and provided an early solution to the music industry’s critical issues. However, this was just the beginning!

When Paperchain was born, it was a far cry from the platform it would become a few years later. Its early mistake was a failure to completely understand the problem before developing a solution. The more Paperchain engaged organizations in the music industry, the clearer it was that its proposed solution was simply not a fit for the time.

Nevertheless, Paperchain’s ambition and innovative style attracted a series of music industry publications. When a certain Paperchain article hit the public sphere, it drew the attention of one Rahul Rumalla. (He’s now co-founder and CEO)

Ramulla got involved with Paperchain and quickly brought a change of focus. Now the idea was to pay attention to unpaid royalties sitting in “black box accounts” around the world. The new goal became figuring out how to identify the correct rights owners and connect them to their royalties.

Refining Paperchain at EIA

In 2017, Paperchain joined the European Innovation Academy (EIA). It wasn’t like one of the usual groups in the program though. By then, Paperchain was an established startup with a set hypothesis. Still, Paperchain had yet to nail down a viable business model. EIA represented a chance for this promising company to develop into a mature organization.

EIA’s 3-week program helped Paperchain to identify key talents, which served to build out the prototype. Over time, the project really came to life.

To this day, EIA’s original Paperchain team is still a valuable asset to the business’ growth. In fact, the EIA Network and Alumni have been able to introduce Paperchain to companies and investors around the globe. Since 2017, Paperchain has positioned itself firmly in the center of the market. EIA’s program is an integral part of this inspiring success story. Even though the Paperchain startup already existed, it was through EIA that the company was able to pivot into its new business model.

Currently, Paperchain stands out among the competition as an efficient, low-cost, and scalable finance platform. Within the digital media industry, it facilitates some of the fastest payments around.

The moral of the story? Even if you already have a startup, you too can join EIA, evolving and taking your business to the next level!