SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The team behind MadNetwork, a custom blockchain purpose-built for enterprise authentication infrastructure, today announced plans to absorb Po.et, the decentralized protocol for content ownership, discovery and monetization in media. Together, they aim to tackle the most important problem with the internet today -- identity validation -- and its uses in content and monetization. Along with its plans to merge resources with Po.et, MadNetwork also presented a new dual-token system which it plans to implement in the coming months.
Launched in 2018, MadNetwork envisioned a series of products and partnerships geared toward reshaping the media industry. The network rolled out developer tools through MadHive, and forged a partnership with AdLedger, a nonprofit consortium working to build open technical standards for media and advertising. Most recently, MadNetwork was tapped by Verizon to power Full Transparency, a corporate transparency initiative using blockchain verification for news releases.
Founded in 2017, Po.et is a subsidiary of BTC Inc, a publishing and marketing company for the blockchain industry. Po.et started its roadmap by developing an open-source software based on the Bitcoin blockchain for data attribution and content timestamps.
“MadNetwork is building the fundamental layer that almost all enterprise solutions need: the ability to validate the identity of anything in the digital world; whether its people, assets, organizations or devices,” said Adam Helfgott of MadNetwork. “Absorbing the Po.et team and resources will help us achieve our shared vision of a more transparent, fair, and accountable web that much more quickly.”
Building on MadNetwork’s Ethereum sidechain
Po.et had experienced significant scaling, storage, and transaction fee issues while trying to build on Ethereum. This has pushed the team to re-evaluate their options for moving away from Ethereum or an ERC-20 token.
These same challenges have spurred many other projects to migrate to other blockchains or to build custom layer-two solutions. MadNetwork’s Ethereum sidechain was built to enable the speed and transaction cost necessary for wide enterprise use cases to become viable.
“Early on, we realized that the vision for a ‘verifiable web’ couldn’t exist without a secure, decentralized way to store and deliver that data as well,” said David Bailey of Po.et. “We realized that building this was a huge undertaking, so we partnered with and invested in MadNetwork. Their mission to decentralize and democratize advertising and the monetization of content was adjacent and complementary to Po.et’s.”
“Folding Po.et’s focus on data stamping and integrity into Mad’s decentralized, verifiable data storage capabilities made perfect sense given our long-standing partnership,” said Adam Helfgott.
Merging forces to move the industry forward
The Po.et team plans to continue to update their roadmap with Mad, focusing on making the Mad data network a success, driving usage, and letting the POE token serve in that ecosystem. The POE and MAD tokens and the liquidity pool shares will play a staking and eventually governance role in the Mad ecosystem.
While the teams are still laying out the formal structure for this partnership moving forward, a POE<>MAD Balancer pool has been set up to provide liquidity for both projects. Po.et has committed to locking up its MAD and POE into these liquidity pools and staking them for the new MadNetwork. To participate, visit the Balancer pool.
About MadNetwork:
MadNetwork is a custom blockchain designed to authenticate and manage the identity of organizations, people, or assets in the digital world. With successful implementations in the advertising technology space, MadNetwok’s innovative technology can be leveraged by virtually every industry as the foundational infrastructure to automate transactions between trusted, authenticated counterparties. The project is backed by top tier investors such as Blockchange and Fenbushi Capital and has recently partnered with Verizon. For more information about MadNetwork, please visit madnetwork.com.
About Po.et
Po.et — Proof of Existence 2.0 is a Bitcoin blockchain protocol that establishes an open, universal and immutable ledger for managing the ownership, attribution and licensing of creative digital assets. Po.et builds a bridge between creators and publishers and enables the discovery of new content and verification, authenticity and authorization of generated content through a truly transparent and timestamped system of attribution. Po.et is based in Singapore and the United States, with offices in Nashville and New York. For more information about Po.et, please visit po.et.