What is Livepeer? How to buy and wallets

Grayscale, which previously launched the Bitcoin Fund, announced in March 2021 that it was creating a new fund with other digital currencies. Most of the cryptocurrencies that were selected for this newly established fund were from well-known currencies such as China Link and File Coin, and their choice was not surprising. But there was one new case that seemed to surprise even cryptocurrency enthusiasts: Livepeer.
Livepeer is a decentralized Ethereum-based service that aims to provide higher quality, lower-cost online video streaming services. To do this, coding tasks that require a lot of resources are distributed among users who lend their computer processing power to the network.

Participants in this network, such as orchestrators who encode videos and depositors who stock their LPT tokens to ensure liquidity, receive incentives, as is the standard method of most decentralized services.

Clearly, Grayscale has seen a potential in this idea, but what is it really about? In this article, we take a look at how Livepeer works, how users participate and how to purchase LPT tokens.

What is Livepeer?

Livepeer is a decentralized Ethereum-based service designed to minimize infrastructure costs for online video streaming applications.

Livepeer is not exactly a video platform that has direct consumer exposure; It is not even a decentralized alternative to Twitch or YouTube. Rather, it is a behind-the-scenes solution for software developers that distributes the task of encoding video or converting it from one format to another before it is broadcast among participating computers on the network.

The company claims that it can reduce resource costs by up to 50 times compared to traditional, centralized methods of changing video encoding.

How does Livepeer work?

Livepeer relies on its “organizers” to execute coding requests from software developers; That is, those who have added their computers to this network. These individuals provide their computing resources, namely CPU and GPU power, along with their bandwidth to the network for a fee paid in Cryptocurrency.

Livepeer, along with the term used to block many Blockchain platforms (such as Bitcoin), calls these users “video miners.”

Developers who use the Livepeer network to power their video programs must pay a fee for coding and distribution services with the Livepeer token (LPT symbol). In addition, Livepeer token holders can deposit their tokens to shareholders to “deposit”. In this way, they can earn less fees and rewards for participating in the network, without being directly involved in the coding process.

What is so special about Livepeer?

Playing video online is expensive for software developers. This is a hidden cost that consumers are not directly aware of, but may be imposed on them in the form of service fees, increased advertising, or the sale of their data.

Livepeer can provide new types of video software and business models by minimizing these costs by distributing computing needs. On the other side of the equation, individuals can share their computing power and earn rewards.

What can be done with Livepeer?

Livepeer is not a service that communicates directly with consumers. As a result, users who watch videos encoded by the Livepeer network [on video platforms] may not realize the role of Livepeer at all.

As mentioned, this platform reduces computing costs to implement optimal video performance on services, thereby providing software developers with a potentially cheaper alternative to centralized services. Network participants can also receive incentives in exchange for connecting their computers to the network or depositing their tokens to ensure liquidity.

The platform announced in late March 2021 that it was launching a joint mining pilot project with Filecoin. According to this plan, coin file miners will also be able to extract Livepeer video.

How to buy an LPT

If you are using Bainance to buy different cryptocurrencies, the bad news is that at the time of writing (April 2021) Bainance Exchange has not yet added this token to its list.

Several users in the comments section of the Fxcomfort website have said that they have succeeded in purchasing this currency from the Hotbit.io exchange.

Uniswap and Balancer are other examples of exchanges that support LTP.

Livepeer wallets

The Livepeer token is an Ethereum-based token. So you can save it on all Ethereum wallets.

The Trust Wallet is one of the best wallets to store Livepeer. You can easily add LTP tokens from within this software, which can be installed for free on both Android and iOS.

Don’t forget that Livepeer is an Ethereum-based token, so if you save this token in your personal wallet, you will also need some ether to transfer it so you can pay the network fee.

Again, be sure to back up your wallet so that you can recover your assets in the event of any software or device issues.

Livepeer Grayscale Box

Grayscale cryptocurrency funds are exchange-traded instruments designed to engage traditional investors with cryptocurrencies.

The price of each box roughly follows the value of the associated cryptocurrency, and Grayscale holds a significant amount of each coin or token in the box. By investing in a fund, investors do not actually own any cryptocurrency, but can potentially reap the benefits of its value growth.

By creating a Livepeer fund, Grayscale is actually betting on the future of LPT; By expecting its value to increase over time and investors to be willing to invest in it. The company has $ 8.5 million in LPT as of March 2021, but the success and growth of its Bitcoin fund could be a sign that the company could raise more or less money sooner or later.

The future of Livepeer

Livepeer ‘s success probably depends on its ability to expand scalability to meet demand. If its distributed network can provide the same quality of service as centralized options at a lower cost, it could become a more viable option as software and Web platforms grow.

The frustrating thing is that Grayscale investment cannot guarantee the success of this project and everything will be determined by time. So if you are planning to invest, consider the possibility of a severe loss.

Livepeer is still a relatively small network as of March 2021, with 47 encoders connected to it. Eric Tang, chief technology officer at Livepeer, tweeted in March that the service had encoded more than 1.6 million minutes of video in 30 days.

In the last 30 days, more than 1,600,000 minutes of original content has been created and broadcast on the Livepeer network. [Power] Builders can not be stopped along with decentralization!

Eric Tang, March 21, 2021

However, Livepeer is not the only service trying to use decentralization to address the high cost of online video streaming. Theta is the best service in this field, but it uses a different method. Theta uses users’ extra bandwidth to help provide online streaming services to other users and rewards users with Theta tokens in exchange for occupied bandwidth.

VideoCoin, which describes itself as “video airline”, is methodologically closer to Livepeer. This network distributes computational tasks among nodes connected to the network. There are also more general networks for decentralized computing power sharing that support video needs (such as rendering); Like Golem.

Livepeer plans to eventually become completely decentralized, but is currently run by the legal entity Livepeer Inc., which founded the network. The network’s 2017 roadmap, described in the FAQ section of Livepeer’s official website as “a bit old”, provides a detailed explanation of how the network will eventually increase its scalability and gradually eliminate its centralized elements.

With the growth and maturity of Web 3 markets, decentralized infrastructure services can become very valuable. Grayscale bets that Livepeer will be one of the services that will help transform the online video streaming market, and this vote of confidence could help the network find a more prominent position than other services and bring more developers into the space. .

An article on the Decrypt website was used to write this article. This article is a purely analytical / educational article and should not be construed as an investment proposal.

What is Livepeer? How to buy and wallets