dotBlockchain Media selects Hyperledger Sawtooth for music content rights registry

Dot Blockchain Media (dotBC), announced today that it has selected the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Sawtooth as the platform for recording its content rights registry for the media industries. Hyperledger Sawtooth is an open-source blockchain framework originally contributed to the Linux Foundation by Intel.

dotBC’s announcement is a key advancement in the development of its blockchain initiative to bring clarity and transparency to the complex data, rights and payment issues in today’s music and media industries.

dotBC’s blockchain implementation is a foundation for music and media rights expression into the works themselves. dotBC maintains partnerships and connections in the music and wider media industries to enable seamless data exchanges between more than 63 million globally recorded works from independent and major label artists and the dotBC ecosystem.

Benji Rogers, CEO of Dot Blockchain Media said:

“Hyperledger Sawtooth will enable us to scale rapidly and customize transaction processors specifically for ingesting rights data. We look forward to delivering a strong and lasting solution, anchored on a sophisticated and secure blockchain foundation, for the music and media industries with Intel.”

dotBC uses the unique consensus mechanism in Hyperledger Sawtooth called Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) to enhance the security and privacy of its content rights registry. PoET uses a trusted execution environment, provided by Intel hardware-based security technologies, to ensure the safety and randomness of the leader election process. This approach replaces traditional proof of work mechanisms with trusted computing, resulting in a much more energy efficient approach to consensus achievement. In addition, dotBC is using Transaction Families, another unique feature of Hyperledger Sawtooth, to customize blockchain transactions based on the specific needs of the music and media industries.

Rick Echevarria, Vice President, Software, and Services Group and General Manager, Platforms Security Division at Intel said:

“Hyperledger Sawtooth, utilizing Intel security technologies, is able to provide enhanced privacy and security for blockchain transactions. dotBC’s blockchain initiative is an example of how blockchains can provide and meet the transparency and visibility requirements the music and media industry requires.”

Following the release of Phase one (a basic bundler app that launched earlier this year), dotBC plans to deploy phase two of the dotBC architecture in the next ninety days. Phase two will leverage Hyperledger Sawtooth to create an advanced approve-deny workflow and interface in conjunction with partners SOCAN/MediaNet, SongTrust, FUGA & CDBaby. The combined partners bring a catalog of more than 63 million recordings. With more than 150,000 new recordings added each month, dotBC will be working with the vast majority of the modern music library, ensuring comprehensive coverage of recorded works for the project.