The potential of blockchain technology is being realized across multiple industries. The technology can, in particular, revolutionize the media sector where artists have for years faced the problem of lack of ability to prove and guard the ownership of their work, which further aggravates the problem of monetization in the industry.

Blockchain technology, with its ability to provide provenance, identity, and timestamping data, can greatly help the artists in getting due credits, CoinDesk reported.

Mine, a blockchain startup, has recently published a protocol proposal for Mediachain – a collaborative federated media metadata protocol that allows parties to make statements about creative works. The metadata statements are cryptographically signed by the contributor, timestamped in the Bitcoin blockchain, and stored in InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). The statements can then be looked up via perceptual search using an instance of the media itself.

Denis Nazarov, co-founders of Mine, said that the company is building the shared open data layer to enable the new generation of decentralized applications.

CoinDesk explains that Mediachain is initially targeting image data and attribution, using machine learning and blockchain technology to offer a service which will enable users to attach identifying information to files, as well as reverse query files to search for creators.

"With drag and drop and copy and paste, images are the easiest media type to share on the Internet. Images travel virally, but it’s hard for the creators and content owners to benefit. We really see Mediachain as a global rights database for images”, Nazarov told CoinDesk.

Co-founders Jesse Walden and Nazarov believe that in the long run, such a reliable metadata database could facilitate the creation of new platforms, such as a next-generation Spotify or Netflix, which would be able to easily access identifying information for creative works.

"The goal of Mediachain is to unbundle identity and distribution. We’re the identity layer on which distribution platforms can be built," Walden said.