Numbers Protocol
Numbers Protocol provides content verification and provenance of media and creative works generated by AI or human beings.
Website: https://www.numbersprotocol.io/
HQ: Taipai, T’ai-pei, Taiwan
Active Markets: Global
Problem Addressed
According to Numbers Protocol, 2.5 million unlicensed images are stolen each day, totaling $600 billion in damages. Historically, trust in digital media has been established through centralized platforms and organizations which calls into question considerations of censorship and biased content moderation. At the same time, a lack of data traceability with growing AI capabilities has resulted in serious challenges around misinformation and copyright infringement.
Project Description
Numbers Protocol is an open source, decentralized network storing verifiable digital creative works. Numbers seeks to provide content verification to companies leveraging AI and creativity tools serving affordable digital provenance and decentralized storage infrastructure. Product offerings include a digital media search engine, media provenance suite with monetization tools and immutable media storage, an API, and on-chain proofs of digital media files.
The Numbers Blockchain tracks the lifecycle of digital assets, with smart contract capabilities supporting media history, asset monetization, NFT minting and licensing, royalty distribution, and asset collection creation. Numbers’ NUM utility token is used in network to incentivize and reward archiving, NFT minting, and other network transactions, in addition to facilitating governance participation.
Business Data
Status: Active
Constituency Served: Enterprise, general public
Networks: EVM Compatible Chains
Known Investors: Outlier Ventures, Taiwan Startup Stadium, Outlier Ventures, Kevin Lin, Darwin Venture Management, LongHash Ventures, Protocol Labs, AppWorks, Steve Chen, DWeb3 Capital, National Development Fund of Taiwan Government, Binance, Gate Labs, Definitive Capital, Chris Wang, Race Capital, YouTube, Twitch
Additional References: N/a
Progress to date
Numbers Protocol has secured $6.3 million in funding. The project has been used to verifiably track media documentation of sensitive events and occurrences such as the 2024 Taiwan Presidential Election, war crimes in Ukraine, and the 2020 US presidential election. As part of a partnership with RollingStone in 2023, Numbers Protocol facilitated the first Web3 use case for photojournalism investigating war crimes, earning the project an Emmy nomination.
In 2023, Numbers Protocol won SXSW’s Metaverse & Web3 category pitch contest. Numbers launched their Capture product in June 2023, designed to protect and manage creative IP through NFT generation and cross chain compatibility.
Business Model
Numbers generates revenue through service and transaction fees.
Traction
The platform attracted 1.5 million downloads upon launch of their Capture creative IP product in 2023, with daily API requests exceeding 400 thousand. As of December 2023, Numbers had 86 million assets registered on the platform and over 6,000 wallet addresses created.