Kodak has jumped on the blockchain bandwagon.
In a licensing partnership with Wenn Digital, Kodak announced Tuesday the launch of the KodakOne image rights management platform and KodakCoin, a new token that will serve as the service’s future currency.
The goal, Kodak says, is to create a an encrypted, digital ledger of rights ownership for photographers to register both new and old work that they can license within KodakOne. Combined with its KodakCoin token, the platform will make it “significantly cheaper and faster to register, move and sell digital images,” according to Kodakcoin.com.
Photographers have struggled to control their work and how it’s used, Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke said in a statement, but blockchain technology is the key to solving what he described as an “unsolvable” problem.
Wenn Digital CEO Jan Denecke echoed Clarke’s statement and said photographers want to be compensated fairly.
“Subject to the highest standards of compliance, KODAKCoin is all about paying photographers fairly and giving them an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new economy tailored for them, with secure asset rights management built right in,” Denecke said in a press release.
Kodak also unveiled its own bitcoin miner called “KashMiner” at CES 2018.
The initial coin offering (ICO) will open Jan. 31 and is open to accredited investors from Canada, the U.S., UK and other select countries. Kodak filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012, and after showing little life on the stock market since then, shares in Eastman Kodak soared after the announcement Tuesday, and as of now, are up by more than 50 per cent.