The First Decentralized Live Video Broadcasting Network Built on the Blockchain is Live on Ethereum Mainnet
Livepeer, the only P2P, decentralized solution for developers building video applications, has announced its launch on the Ethereum network. The alpha version of Livepeer is functional for video broadcasting and transcoding ABR streams, and has a full sui
New York, NY(15 May 2018)
Livepeer, the only P2P, decentralized solution for developers building video applications, has announced its launch on the Ethereum network. The alpha version of Livepeer is functional for video broadcasting and transcoding ABR streams, and has a full suite of SDKs for building applications using Livepeer’s technology.
Live-streaming infrastructure needs more scalable and cost effective options to keep up with this demand, and peer-to-peer and decentralization enable powerful solutions that can can both increase scale and reduce cost. Open access and network effects leads to more rapid improvement and growth. Likewise, forks naturally determine the prevailing consensus, meaning the network is what the participants deem it to be. Anyone can contribute compute capacity, coupled with a market-based approach for transcoder selection, drives down costs. Work can be verified to be correct without placing trust in a centralized service. Lastly, without a single entity in control to choose and filter content, decentralized networking enables censorship resistance. The technology has always been possible before, except there have never been incentives in place to form a network required to support these use cases. Crypto token protocols and economic effects finally provide the right incentives.
Smart contracts built on top of the Ethereum network enable broadcasters to send a stream into the Livepeer network, while transcoders perform ABR conversion to reach all devices. Transcoders earn fees from broadcasters, paid in Ether, and generate Livepeer token for performing satisfactory work. Livepeer token is used to assign work to transcoders in proportion to their stake. Now that the network is live, anyone can stream a decentralized broadcast, perform work as a transcoder, or stake token towards a transcoder, earning a cut of Ether fees and generating token in the process.
The economic incentives are already shaping the network within Livepeer's Community. In Berlin, an individual is running transcoder nodes to engage the local creative and crypto communities, and another transcoder node is running to fund further development of the network.
The founding team, Eric Tang and Doug Petkanics, are serial entrepreneurs who have worked together in two prior startups, first Hyperpublic (acq Groupon) and most recently Wildcard. Livepeer is backed by prominent investors including Notation Capital, Box Group, Digital Currency Group, Pantera, and Distributed Global.
About Livepeer
Livepeer is building a peer-to-peer, decentralized video broadcasting network in a crypto token incentivized way. Anyone can send a broadcast to the livepeer network, and the network will transcode the stream into all bitrates and formats for all devices.