Luminary : Smart Contract Development
Summary
Luminary Rights Group is an independent music rights management firm representing more than 2,400 artists, composers and producers from North America and Europe. The company earned licensing fees from streaming platforms, sync licensing, live performance royalties and digital download royalties on behalf of the artists on its roster and then paid royalties to the owners based on complicated contractual splits, which were determined by artist, album, track and source of the royalty.
About Luminary Rights Group
Luminary Rights Group is an independent music rights management firm representing more than 2,400 artists, composers and producers from North America and Europe. The company earned licensing fees from streaming platforms, sync licensing, live performance royalties and digital download royalties on behalf of the artists on its roster and then paid royalties to the owners based on complicated contractual splits, which were determined by artist, album, track and source of the royalty.
All distribution was manual. Money was generated from dozens of platforms across various timeframes, was reconciled by eight administrators at different times, and paid to the rights holders via bank transfer weeks or months after the revenue was earned. There were regular inaccuracies on payments, transparency was low, and the administrative work involved in managing thousands of separate payment calculations was consuming resources that leadership felt should be spent on artist services.
Luminary Rights Group engaged Markeltree to transition from manual royalty distribution to an automated smart contract system on blockchain infrastructure.
- Smart Contract Architecture and Design
- Blockchain Infrastructure Selection and Configuration
- Smart Contract Development and Deployment
- API Integration for Automated Revenue Ingestion
- Multi-Party Payment Split Engineering
- Rights Holder Transparency Portal Development
The Challenges
Every project starts with real problems. Here are the core challenges we tackled for this engagement.
EtherVantage Finance was severely restricted by prohibitive gas fee overhead and critical security vulnerabilities exposed within their early protocol deployment attempts. Their static legacy architecture completely failed to process dynamic, cross-protocol liquidity modifications, resulting in frequent transaction slippage, math overflow risks, and a high rate of user drop-offs during core token allocations. Furthermore, without advanced low-level storage optimization or formal code validation, the protocol remained highly exposed to devastating flash-loan exploits and reentrancy attacks, making it impossible to satisfy stringent compliance rules or secure the trust of high-value institutional liquidity providers.
Core approach & deliverables
A breakdown of the core components built and delivered for this project.
Smart Contract Architecture Design
The challenge of royalty distribution at scale required a smart contract architecture capable of processing variable splits and paying thousands of simultaneous recipients across multiple revenue streams without human involvement. Markeltree built a smart contract system on a public blockchain infrastructure where every contractual royalty split was directly encoded into immutable on-chain logic. Payment splits were irrevocable after deployment, and changes could only be made through a formal amendment process requiring authorised signatures from both Luminary and the rights holder, creating a tamper-proof record of all agreements.
Automated Revenue Ingestion and Trigger Logic
Revenue from streaming and sync partners needed to flow directly into the smart contract system without manual intervention. Markeltree built an automated ingestion layer connected to standardised APIs from Luminary's licensing partners. Revenue data was converted to on-chain format and automatically passed to the smart contracts upon receipt. No administrative action was required to initiate a distribution calculation for each revenue event.
Multi-Party Payment Split Engine
Some of Luminary's arrangements involved several rights holders receiving varying percentages of different revenue types composers, producers, featured artists and publishing rights owners each receiving a specific share of different revenue streams. Markeltree designed a multi-party split engine within the smart contract structure that supported arbitrarily complex nested splits, paying all entitled parties in a single transaction rather than through sequential individual transfers.
Rights Holder Transparency Portal
Artist and rights holder visibility into earnings had been largely limited until payment arrived. Markeltree built a web-based transparency portal connected to the blockchain that enabled rights holders to view incoming payments in real time, understand the calculation logic behind each payment, and access an immutable history of all payments received. Rights holders could independently verify payment calculations, which significantly reduced inbound payment inquiries and disputes.
On-Chain Amendment and Dispute Resolution Framework
A clear protocol was needed to manage valid updates to smart contracts and handle unusual situations. Markeltree built an on-chain amendment framework that enabled contractual splits to be modified through a multi-signature process requiring authorisation from both Luminary administrators and the affected rights holder. Every amendment was documented on-chain with a complete audit trail, providing a legally defensible record of all changes to rights holder agreements.
Key Outcomes & Impact
Immutable on-chain smart contract logic encoding each artist's royalty splits across all revenue streams.
Automated revenue ingestion layer eliminating manual reconciliation and payment initiation.
Multi-party payment split engine distributing to all entitled rights holders in a single transaction.
Real-time rights holder transparency portal with on-chain earnings history and calculation visibility.
Multi-signature on-chain amendment framework providing a legally defensible record of all contract changes.
We were spending more time calculating what we owed the artists than serving them, and the artists we represent needed more visibility into what was happening to their money, when and how. Markeltree built a system where the contract does the work, and the artist can see exactly what is happening to their money.
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