In ten seconds: streaming subscriptions charge for time you never watch, and card networks can't settle an $0.08 charge for three minutes of viewing. Arbor sells prepaid viewing hours that only tick down during playback, then settles filmmakers on-chain, pro-rata by seconds watched. React + TypeScript, Solidity, Postgres. Built in 7 days by a 3-person team for the Encode Club UXMaxx Hackathon — live demo.
Problem
Subscriptions punish light viewers: you pay for a month whether you watch two films or twenty. The obvious alternative — pay per view — breaks on traditional payment rails, because processor fees exceed a micro-charge. And independent filmmakers, whose work the big platforms mostly ignore, get opaque, delayed, aggregated payouts with no visibility into what actually earned.
Solution
Think prepaid mobile data, but for cinema. Viewers buy flexible time packages (2.5h / 5h / 10h) and the meter runs only while the film plays. Pausing, browsing, and trailers are always free. When a session ends, every filmmaker whose work was watched is settled on-chain — instantly, transparently, pro-rata by seconds watched.
The blockchain is deliberately invisible. Sign in with Google; a Particle Universal Account is created silently; every transaction is gasless. No seed phrases, no "connect wallet", no crypto vocabulary anywhere in the interface. Crypto is the enabler, never the product.
Architecture
The core design decision is a hybrid ledger — on-chain is reserved for the money moments, everything in between lives in Postgres:
Sign in with Google → Universal Account created silently (Particle)
Buy a time package → gasless USDC purchase → ArborVault.sol (on-chain)
Watch films → seconds debited in a server-side ledger, only while playing
Pause / browse → free, always
Session ends → batch settlement: filmmakers paid on-chain, pro-rata
Gift time → viewing hours sent via a single-use claim link
Transactions are never streamed per second — that would be economically absurd on any
chain. Instead the Postgres ledger tracks balances, playback sessions, debit events,
gift claims, and settlements; ArborVault.sol handles package purchases in and batch
filmmaker settlements out. Filmmakers get a Studio view with live per-second earnings
and an on-chain settlement proof they can verify on a block explorer.
Decisions & tradeoffs
- Why a blockchain at all? A prepaid balance with programmable micro-debits and instant multi-party payouts is only economical with account abstraction. If a card network could settle $0.08 cheaply, Arbor wouldn't need a chain — the write-up says so out loud, which is the honest version of a Web3 pitch.
- Anti-anxiety metering. A countdown timer makes people anxious; a calm remaining-time gauge, plus the guarantee that pausing is always free, makes prepaid time feel safe rather than extractive.
- Licensed-safe catalog. All demo content is legally redistributable — Blender Foundation open movies and public-domain classics — so the demo can actually stream real films.
Status
Hackathon MVP, deployed on testnet with mock USDC. The live demo streams the real catalog with the full purchase → watch → settle loop. No production usage metrics — it was built in seven days and is presented as exactly that.
