Exchange Livepeer (LPT)

Livepeer is the first video-streaming network built on Ethereum and used for transcoding live and on-demand videos; it is an open-source protocol available for the developers' contribution on GitHub. It differentiates itself from the traditional streamlined services like Youtube as it doesn’t host, store or distribute video. It’s more about building the technology that utilizes the excess computing power to share video content more efficiently in a decentralized manner from broadcasters to consumers. 

As video streaming is the main source of bandwidth use worldwide some experts suggest that it accounts for up to 80% of global internet usage. The biggest cost for video broadcasters is in the transcoding of video information, which is a process of converting and reformatting raw video to make sure it can e played across multiple devices and networks. Livepeer allows users to submit their work to the platform, which will reformat the content and redistribute it to users. 

Thanks to the open-source nature of the platform, anyone can participate in the management and improvement of the platform. As the quality of the video content constantly improves with the growing capability of digital cameras, the company aims to boost it, even more, letting users benefit from decentralized computing power and crypto-economic incentives. 

Livepeer aims to change the video transcoding industry by allowing users to access multiple distributed processors, so the app developers can create video content within secure, efficient, and affordable architecture. 

The project was launched in 2017 by Doug Petakanics and Eric Tang, both of whom have degrees in computer science. Before Livepeer, they developed the Hyperpublic together, then worked together on Wildcard and later on Livepeer. In 2019 the project received $8 million in round A funding to expand the network and its functions. Among the venture firms that took part in the funding are Livertus Capital, North Island Ventures, Coin Fund, and Digital Currency Group. According to the project team, the funds are used to increase the amount of content streamed on the network and to strengthen the relationship with other Web3 projects. 

There was another funding round in 2021 that brought to the project $20 million from the same investors and also new companies such as Coinbase Ventures. Those funds were used to integrate the Livepeer with Media network, a community-led, decentralized content delivery project. 

The platform utilizes a modified version of a delegated Proof-of-Stake mechanism. There is no minting and the validation of new blocks on the blockchain happens according to the number of tokens staked. At the same time, it benefits from the reach of the Ethereum ecosystem that also boosts the usability of the network. New tokens are minted in cycles called “Rounds”, with one “Round” equal to 5760 Ethereum blocks, which usually lasts around 18 hours. 

The users who post the content pay fees to the delegators and orchestrators, who receive rewards for confirming blocks on the network from the fees paid by the broadcasters. To become an orchestrator, users need to stake the LPT tokens. Interestingly, the fees are paid in ETH, while the rewards are distributed in LTP. 

The Livepeer protocol has become a leader in the industry and allows users to participate in numerous ways. It enables users to apply pay-as-you-go functions, audio-scaling social video services, uncensorable live journalism, and video-enabled dApps. It is transforming the live video stream process.

LPT is the native Livepeer protocol token with a total supply of 25,866,594 LPT tokens. At the time of publishing the circulating supply is 24,607,428 tokens. 12,35% of the total supply was split between founders and early members. 

The token is inflationary with an inflation rate adjusted automatically for token staking out of the total circulating supply. Inflation rates are adjusted around the target of 50% to secure the network and maintain liquidity at the same time. So if the participation in the round is less than 50%, the Livepeer protocol increases the inflation rate by 0.00005% and the opposite way around.  

Average LTP Fees 

The amount of fees depends on the use of the network. The fees are paid by the broadcasters for each minute of the video ingested and also for the transcoding. The portal offers 1000 minutes for free with $0.005 per minute of video. Additionally, the broadcasters have to pay for the video distribution over different social channels ($0.002 per minute distributed) and for optimizing the playback via CDN ($0.015 per 1GB streamed). 

To make it clear to the users, how much will it cost them to use the service, Livepeer offers a calculator, where broadcasters can input the number of hours they gonna upload and stream and see the estimated cost. 

Livepeer Wallets 

Livepeer is becoming more widespread around the community with more wallets being able to hold it. The token is supported by the majority of the common wallets, including MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase, Math Wallet, imToken, Ledger, Hyper Pay, Coinhub, Torus, etc.