XRPLoyalties

Royalty Distribution Platform built on XRPL as part of Paris Blockchain Week 2023.

Problem

Royalty distribution costs artist millions because the current processes are inaccurate and obscure.

Solution

A blockchain-based royalty distribution and tracking platform for artists and royalty collection societies. Artists can also manage their communities through NFTs to engage their audience more.

Screenshots

Artist royalties distribution service built on XRPL using the MPEG-21 Media Contract Ontology (MCO) standard from the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) to define royalties distribution rules in a smart contract.

Architecture

We use Ripple's blockchain for:

• To settle cross-border payments from several Performing Rights Organizations
• Escrow accounts to hold the funds until the royalties are claimed by the right holders

We use Ripple's EVM sidechain for:

• To deploy MCO smart contract to store the IP Entities of each NFT. This smart contract translates the MPEG-21 Media Contract Ontology (MCO), a part of the standard ISO/IEC 21000, into a smart contract.
• To mint NFTs for each IP Entity
• The MCO Smart Contract's metadata for each NFT is generated using the MPEG-21 Media Contract Ontology (MCO), a part of the standard ISO/IEC 21000.

Metadata

The metadata is generated using the MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration Language (DIDL) standard using its XML schema definition. The metadata is stored in IPFS and used for minting the IP Entity of each NFT.

Royalties

The MPEG-21 Media Contract Ontology (MCO), a part of the standard ISO/IEC 21000, "is an ontology to represent contracts dealing with rights on multimedia assets and intellectual property protected content in general" from the work of Kudumakis, Panos, Thomas Wilmering, Mark B. Sandler, Víctor Rodríguez-Doncel, Laurent, Boch and Jaime Delgado. “MPEG Intellectual Property Rights Ontologies.” (2019) is used to define royalties distribution rules in the IPEntity smart contract.

Web App

To run the web app there are only three easy steps:

1. In your terminal navigate to the "XRPLoyalties" directory and execute:

    npm install

2. Then run:

    npm start
  
3. Enjoy using the App!

Note: Currently not all functionalities are developed. The app will be fully connected to the backend logic and completely working in future development cycles.

Process Flow

To run a demo of a royalties distribution process from a Property Rights Organization to the different rights holders, follow these steps:

1. Add the EVM sidechain configuration:
    brownie networks import ./src/network-config.yaml

2. To mint an NFT for an IP Entity of a Song and deploy the MPEG-21 Media Contract Ontology (MCO)'s smart contract, run:

    brownie run ./src/scripts/deploy.py main True --network ripple-evm-sidechain

3. To run a demo from the distribution of royalties from a Property Rights Organization to the different rights holders, which interacts with the deployed MCO Smart Contract in the EVM Sidechain and Escrow Accounts in the XRPL, run:

    brownie run ./src/scripts/demo.py --network ripple-evm-sidechain

References

• ISO/IEC 21000-23:2022 Information technology — Multimedia framework (MPEG-21) — Part 23: Smart Contracts for Media
• ISO/IEC 21000 Digital Item Declaration Language (DIDL)
• ISO/IEC 21000 Digital Item Declaration Language (DIDL)'s Schema
• Overview of the MPEG-21 Media Contract Ontology (MCO)
• Kudumakis, Panos, Thomas Wilmering, Mark B. Sandler, Víctor Rodríguez-Doncel, Laurent, Boch and Jaime Delgado. “MPEG Intellectual Property Rights Ontologies.” (2019).
• White Paper on MPEG-21 Contract Expression Language (CEL) and MPEG-21 Media Contract Ontology (MCO)