Spectiv, a virtual reality startup building a community-driven content platform for 360-degree and VR videos, announced a crowdsale of tokens to fund its launch slated to occur in 2018.

The crowdsale, set to begin on Dec. 8, will be used to fund the startup and set the stage to encourage the adoption and sharing of VR content using the platform.

“We believe that VR is the future of technology in a similar way to the internet and mobile,” said Dylan Senter, Spectiv chief executive officer and co-founder. “The capabilities that VR has in every industry, not just entertainment, makes it a universal tool for the future.”

Senter told SiliconANGLE that Spectiv’s competitive angle is that it will be designed to draw in the participation of content creators and consumers in a way that will encourage them to share their experiences. With the current VR industry still building itself up – with hardware, services and content sites still coming to the market – he believes this will be important for driving VR adoption.

Analysts of the current virtual reality market have commented that while the market is still building, a lack of content is slowing down growth. According to Allied Business Intelligence Research Inc., that market is expected to reach $60 billion worldwide by 2021.

“Currently, VR is developing in a way to allow mainstream adoption over the coming years,” Senter said. “So, our goal in approaching VR now is to create a dedicated VR platform which serves the VR community in a way that other platforms currently don’t.”

In order to differentiate its platform from rivals, power payments and encourage the curation and sharing of content, Spectiv’s platform will use two different tokens: “Specs,” which will work as an internal currency to pay for premium functions and tipping but won’t be externally tradable, and “Sigs,” an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency paid to curators for sharing content on social media.

Specs will act like any other premium currency on a website, much like buying tokens at an amusement park used to pay for rides and services. Users will purchase Specs with dollars (or other local currency) and then can use them in order to pay for premium content – such as pay-per-view 360-degree videos, live events and other services – and also tip content creators with microtransactions.

Sigs, also known as “Signal Tokens,” are what sets Spectiv apart from other community content ventures. Sigs are a blockchain-based currency, connected to the Ethereum blockchain, and will be used to encourage what is called an “attention market.” The more attention given to Spectiv — by sharing on social media, commenting on videos, curating videos, signing up for newsletters and driving viewership — the more Sigs move between participants.

Because Sigs are publicly tradable, they will accrue value outside of Spectiv’s platform. Users with cryptocurrency wallets will be able to trade Sigs on websites such as ShapeShift AG for other cryptocurrencies and potentially at other exchanges for money.

Sigs can also be exchanged for Specs on the platform itself in order to encourage users to curate content and share it on social media. Since users can earn Sigs by sharing on social media, reviewing videos and interacting on Spectiv, that activity can be used by viewers to watch pay content.

In order to raise money for the platform, Spectiv is also holding what is called a token crowdsale with Sigs. Crowdsales are common across platforms that use cryptocurrencies. That’s because cryptocurrency tokens such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have shown that they not only hold and gain value, but that they can be used to draw interest to startups through investment and participation. A crowdsale also builds a foundation of token users who can then involve themselves in the platform.

The crowdsale is set to run until Dec. 29. Signups for the crowdsale are available now on Spectiv’s website and will require participants to generate an Ethereum address, which means users will need a little knowledge of cryptocurrency wallets. The total number of Sigs sold in the crowdsale is capped at 90 million, which will be sold for a maximum of 45,000 Ethereum (a current market value of $15 million).

“We are ambassadors of both the VR and the crypto industries,” Senter told SiliconANGLE when asked why he chose a crowdsale to help fund Spectiv’s platform. “The fact is that these two industries go hand and hand with each other.”

Senter said that part of the decision to go with a cryptocurrency for one of the tokens is also so that payments and activities never need to open another application. “While users are using a virtual reality headset, crypto tokens are by the far the easiest way to facilitate transactions,” he said.

[Editor’s note, Oct. 18, 2017: At publication time Spectiv’s crowdsale was to run Aug. 14 to Sep. 8 — Spectiv later updated these dates to Dec. 8 to Dec. 29. – Dotson.]

Image: Spectiv