LBRY is the first digital marketplace to be controlled by the market's participants rather than a corporation or other 3rd-party. It is the most open, fair, and efficient marketplace for digital goods ever created, with an incentive design encouraging it to become the most complete.
At the highest level, LBRY does something extraordinarily simple. LBRY creates an association between a unique name and a piece of digital content, such as a movie, book, or game. This is similar to the domain name system that you are most likely using to access this very post.
However, LBRY does this not through a proprietary service or network, but as a protocol, or a method of doing things, much like HTTP, DNS and other specifications that make up the internet itself. Just as many different domains owned by many different companies all speak a shared language, so too can any person or company speak LBRY. No special access or permission is needed.
LBRY develops in three fundamental planes:
While creating a protocol that we ourselves cannot control sounds chaotic, it is actually about establishing trust. Every other publishing system requires trusting an intermediary that can unilaterally change the rules on you. What happens when you build your business on YouTube or Amazon and they change fees? Or Apple drops your content because the Premier of China thought your comedy went too far?
Only LBRY consists of a known, promised set of rules that no one can unilaterally change. LBRY provides this by doing something unique: leaving the users in control rather than demanding that control for itself.
The lbry platform is integrated with Odyssey, a popular decentralized video hosting application for posting and monetizing video content.
Let's look at a sample use of LBRY, Ernest releasing a film on LBRY that is later purchased and viewed by Hillary.