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Executive Summary

What the platform delivers​

Protocol Media Labs operates a web3‑native news platform that aligns incentives between readers, journalists, and sources while preserving a familiar, frictionless experience. The system combines per‑story payments and subscriptions with transparent revenue sharing, editorially curated prediction markets, and privacy‑preserving sourcing and bounty workflows—making the economics of quality journalism sustainable without exposing users to undue blockchain complexity.

How it works at a glance​

Users interact through three client applications: a Reader App for discovery and consumption, a Creator/Journalist Dashboard for publishing and earnings, and an Investigator Console for bounty management and secure exchanges. Economic state resides on Sui in purpose‑built Move modules. Kiosk policies govern content minting, licensing, and perpetual royalties; entitlement objects represent time‑bound or perpetual access; bounty escrow manages deposits, payouts, and slashing; and a pseudonymous reputation object provides durable, non‑doxxing accountability.

Media is stored on Walrus and retrieved via HTTP aggregator endpoints, with a CDN as the primary distribution path and Walrus as a built‑in fallback. Identity blends traditional and crypto paradigms: users authenticate with wallets or via zkLogin single sign‑on, and sponsored transactions absorb gas to ensure a web2‑grade onboarding experience. Domain resolution is provided by standard DNS; there is no traditional web2 backend in the request path.

Publishing and access​

Journalists upload media to Walrus, author metadata, and publish by minting a content object under a Kiosk policy that encodes licensing and royalty rules. Readers purchase per‑article access or subscribe; each purchase creates or updates on‑chain entitlement objects. Clients verify entitlements locally and fetch the requested content, with sponsored transactions stepping in to provide gas‑less continuity.

Investigations and secure exchange​

Journalists open bounties specifying terms, deposits, and timeboxes; sources submit encrypted media off‑chain with content hashes anchored on‑chain. Resolution triggers payouts or slashing, and reputation adjusts accordingly to reward high‑quality contributions while deterring abuse. Throughout, end‑to‑end encryption protects sensitive materials, and the design keeps personally identifiable information off‑chain by default.

Reliability and user experience​

The system is reliable, observable, and performant. Page loads complete quickly on median networks, sponsored transactions settle fast enough to preserve conversational UX, and multi‑path delivery ensures that a Walrus aggregator link serves content even if the CDN is degraded. Operational visibility is provided by logging, metrics, and traces, with audit trails for moderation and bounty decisions. The platform is accessible and mobile‑first, and maintains a rigorous security posture without sacrificing ease of use.

Three users, three experiences​

Protocol Media Labs serves three distinct user types with tailored experiences:

  • Readers enjoy a Netflix-like experience for news—seamless authentication via zkLogin (Google/Apple), gasless micropayments through sponsored transactions, and instant content access with no crypto knowledge required. They browse, purchase, and consume content as easily as any web2 platform.

  • Journalists operate in a creator economy 3.0 environment—direct monetization through content NFTs, automatic royalty distribution via Kiosk v2, transparent revenue tracking, and bounty systems for investigative journalism. They maintain full ownership and control of their content while benefiting from perpetual royalties.

  • Sources receive WikiLeaks-level protection with modern usability—anonymous access through Tor, threshold encryption via Seal ensuring no single point of failure, plausible deniability features, and reputation building without identity exposure. Their safety is paramount, with multiple failsafes including dead man's switches.

AI oracles and verifiable resolution​

Editorial workflows and market resolution benefit from a dedicated oracle layer that combines confidential computing and zero‑knowledge proofs. Compute‑intensive or privacy‑sensitive tasks (for example, verifying web evidence, scoring model outputs, or producing resolution receipts) execute inside AWS Nitro Enclaves as part of a Nautilus‑style architecture, producing hardware attestation that the correct code ran on trusted hardware. When evidence originates from web endpoints, zkTLS techniques can produce succinct proofs of the TLS session, enabling verification without revealing sensitive payloads. For privacy‑preserving operations and access control, MystenLabs Seal provides threshold encryption where multiple key servers must cooperate to decrypt sensitive content, enabling controlled access to source submissions and editorial materials. The enclave's attested outputs are packaged as verifiable receipts and anchored on Sui, where on‑chain logic (for example, in the market or reputation modules) can consume them directly. This architecture yields oracle results that are both confidential and publicly verifiable, aligning with the platform's safety and integrity goals.