> find a way to monetize it

If only there were a smart way to build a cryptocoin without the environmental mess of miners, but where you earn coinage from seeding videos. I feel like you'd want people to have a desktop client to let you seed in the background then award some sort of virtual currency that can be sold later. I hate to sound like a crypto-bro but I can't think of anything else more fitting for something already decentralized.

GNU Taler [0] perhaps. They are funded by EU grants, and have a funding program [1] going to stimulate the ecosystem.

> We are building an anonymous, taxable payment system using modern cryptography. Customers will use traditional money transfers to send money to a digital Exchange and in return receive (anonymized) digital cash. Customers can use this digital cash to anonymously pay Merchants. Merchants can redeem the digital cash for traditional money at the digital Exchange. As Merchants are not anonymous, they can be taxed, enabling income or sales taxes to be withheld by the state while providing anonymity for Customers.

[0] https://docs.taler.net/

[1] https://www.taler.net/en/ngi-taler.html

Here are some attempts:

LBRY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LBRY

BTT: https://www.kraken.com/learn/what-is-bittorrent-btt

LBRY did that, the US government killed it.

What value would this virtual currency have? Okay, someone seeded some videos and got a token - why should I go and pay them for that token?

I seed videos to my other computer all day and I'm a trillionaire.