Blockbuster (or at least they tried)
Blockbuster died a slow death, and that’s a shame. Long after it was eclipsed by Redbox and Netflix for easy home video—and later the proliferation of streaming services—it’s become a kind of icon and relic of nostalgia. There’s even a documentary about the last Blockbuster, located in Bend, Oregon, ironically available to stream on Netflix.
Well, a few Web3 folks thought that it wasn’t enough to let such a name brand lie low. Earlier this year, the group BlockbusterDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, said it tried to buy the name for Blockbuster from its owner, Dish Network. What could it possibly do with that old IP? Turn it into a blockchain-based streaming network, of course. How would such a project work? How would it fund the rights to stream content through a platform that relies on consensus? We’ll likely never know. The group’s plan was to raise the necessary funds by selling NFTs, but it never managed to hit its $5 million goal, as Dish simply refused to sell. The DAO wrote in a blog post that it changed the name of its project to R3WIND, a kind of blockchain-based video/retail service. “Think Vimeo meets shopify,” the group said, referring to its new project.
