Ecosystem

BackedBy X Lit: Decentralized Tools to Empower Web3 Content Creators

Dax Herrera

12 Jul 2023 • 4 min read

BackedBy is a privacy-first, decentralized payment protocol made for creators.

Using the power of smart contracts and decentralized cryptography, BackedBy lets creators post exclusive content directly to their subscribers–without a platform. Our goal is to ensure that no outside entity, bank, or service can get between you and your supporters ever again.

At BackedBy, we want to empower the average content creator, providing them with the tools to build their own secure content distribution platforms. In order to accomplish this, we rely on Lit Protocol to cryptographically secure content on user-created platforms.

How it works:

A creator starts by setting up an account on BackedBy. They can connect this account to a wallet such as Coinbase or Metamask, but they also have the option to create an account with their email address. Their account is used to build a platform for their followers, who subscribe by signing a smart contract on the Polygon blockchain.
When the creator makes a post that’s only accessible to paying subscribers, the BackedBy browser app encrypts parts of the post and uploads a json file to an IPFS node stored on the Polygon blockchain.
When a paying subscriber wants to access the creator’s paywalled post, the BackedBy app sends a request to Lit, which checks the validity of the subscriber’s smart contract. If it’s valid, Lit provides the keys to the BackedBy app to decrypt the content stored on IPFS, which allows the subscriber to view it. This entire process is done in a black box environment, which ensures that no sensitive data from either party is exposed in the process.

It sounds complicated, but this entire process is lightning fast and costs fractions of a penny. You don’t actually have to know how any of this stuff works in order to set up a platform or subscribe to a creator on BackedBy.

Why do we use Lit Protocol?

Out of all the potential encryption methods we could have used for our paywalls, we landed on Lit. Here are three quick reasons why:

Decentralization

The biggest change for users switching from web2 to web3 is decentralization. This is a significant benefit for creators and subscribers who use BackedBy instead of similar web2 services like Patreon and Gumroad. Instead of relying on corporations with opaque content moderation policies, questionable security, and conflicting interests, every step of the BackedBy process is powered by decentralized technology like Polygon, IPFS, and Lit.

At BackedBy, we see Lit as a kindred spirit in the pursuit of decentralized technology. Compare this quote from their documentation:

“On a fundamental level, Lit is an attempt to decentralize public key cryptography. First introduced by three researchers at Stanford University in the 1970s, public key cryptography is the technology that underpins cryptocurrency and most of the security infrastructure on the Internet today.”

With this quote from our litepaper:

“We’ve outlined a protocol that is the first of its kind: a decentralized payment processor that enables content creators to distribute their IP to paying subscribers, with recurring payments and encryption to prevent unauthorized access, and gives the creator full and complete ownership of their IP and subscriber list through emails and wallet addresses.”

While BackedBy could have rolled out our own Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) system, it would be a central point of failure for our users. By leveraging Lit’s decentralized PKI instead, our users don’t need to fear some dummy accidentally did an `rm -Rf` on the key database or worry about a server compromise leaking keys.

This leads into…

Security

In addition to decentralization, web3 tech like Lit provides greater security for users. There have been several high-profile cyber attacks in recent years that were caused by malicious actors exploiting vulnerabilities in web2 platforms. Unfortunately, these attacks aren’t exclusive to web2— several web3 exchanges and projects that claimed to be secure have been successfully attacked as well.

BackedBy mitigates this by authenticating users by their wallet. Building off of this powerful base with Lit’s SDK, uploading and accessing tier based encrypted IPFS content is done in the user’s browser. With no passwords or keys, even if there is an attack, there’s nothing to be gained except perhaps some email addresses mapped to a wallet address. Which while this would be bad for the user, isn’t necessary for the use of the website or smart contracts and is entirely up to them whether to supply us with those details.

We trust Lit to function as a secure and stable component of our infrastructure because the way it handles encryption makes sense. Their core value of decentralization means that their keys aren’t held by a single custodian— there’s no single weak point that can be exploited by a bad actor.

Which in turn brings us to…

Community

Web3 is a fascinating technological movement that’s not particularly well understood outside of its diehard community. But the more ordinary people research the interesting applications of blockchain technology, the more excited they tend to get about web3 projects. This is the roadblock that web3 projects need to overcome— cutting through the noise and scams to help the average professional understand how this technology can benefit them.

We believe that the next step in increasing adoption in web3 is to build and promote alternatives to legacy platforms in content distribution, banking, storage, and encryption. Fortunately, there are many talented web3 designers that feel the same way, and have made great strides in building these alternatives. In order to foster a welcoming community for the average user, we see the necessity of partnering with Lit and other projects to build the ecosystem that only web3 can.

If you’re interested in helping us build this community, get started with BackedBy and own your content distribution platform today! If you’re looking to use the smart contracts, check out our github and documentation!

BackedBy Resources

🖥️ Website: https://backed.

🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/backedbyapp

Lit Resources

📄 Developer Documentation: https://developer.litprotocol.com/

👾 Discord: https://litgateway.com/discord

🧑‍💻 GitHub: https://github.com/LIT-Protocol

🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/LitProtocol

🖥 Website: https://litprotocol.com/