The problem OwnSound solves

OwnSound addresses several key issues in the music and audio content industry, leveraging blockchain and advanced cryptographic techniques:

Privacy in Playlist Management: Utilizing Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), OwnSound allows users to create and manage private playlists. This groundbreaking feature ensures that users' listening preferences and habits remain confidential, even from the platform itself, addressing growing concerns about data privacy in the digital age.

Accessibility through Rental Options: By implementing a rental system for audio content, OwnSound makes premium content like audiobooks and podcasts more accessible to users who may not be able to afford outright purchases. This democratizes access to knowledge and entertainment, breaking down financial barriers in content consumption.

Flexible Ownership Models: The contract allows for both full purchases and rentals of music NFTs, catering to different user preferences and financial capabilities.

Fair Compensation for Creators: The automated royalty system ensures that content creators receive fair and transparent compensation for both sales and rentals of their work, incentivizing the creation of high-quality content.

Creator Control: Artists and content creators have unprecedented control over their digital assets, including setting prices, royalty percentages, and deciding on rental and buyout options.

Secondary Market Benefits: Creators continue to benefit from secondary sales and rentals, addressing a long-standing issue in traditional content distribution models.

Scarcity and Exclusivity: The supply limit for each NFT creates rare, collectible digital assets, potentially increasing their value over time.

Transparent Provenance: The blockchain-based system provides a clear, immutable record of ownership and transaction history for each piece of content.

Challenges we ran into

During the development of OwnSound, we encountered several significant challenges, particularly in implementing privacy features and working with FHE:

FHE Limitations and IPFS CID Encryption:
One of our most significant hurdles was dealing with the limitations of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) when trying to encrypt IPFS CIDs. Initially, we attempted to directly encrypt the IPFS CIDs to maintain privacy, but we ran into issues due to the byte32 size limitation in smart contracts. This challenge required us to rethink our approach entirely.

Solution: After multiple iterations, we developed a novel solution. We converted the IPFS CID to an AES-128 hash and stored this hash along with an encrypted salt using INCO FHE. This approach allowed us to maintain the privacy of the content while working within the constraints of the blockchain and FHE systems.

Complex Royalty System:
Implementing a fair and efficient royalty distribution system that works for both purchases and rentals required careful consideration and multiple iterations.

Rental Logic:
Implementing a rental system for NFTs that doesn't conflict with ownership rights and ensures timely return of rented assets was a novel challenge that required creative solutions.

Metadata Handling:
Storing and retrieving NFT metadata efficiently while keeping gas costs low was a significant challenge, addressed by using Base64 encoding for on-chain storage.

Flexible Pricing:
Implementing a system that allows for both fixed pricing and potential future dynamic pricing models required careful contract design.

To overcome these challenges, we employed several strategies:

• Extensive research and experimentation with FHE libraries and encryption techniques.
• Developing a custom approach to content identification that balances privacy with practicality.