Learn

FAQs

Find answers to the most common questions about Livepeer Network

I am new to Livepeer. Where is the best place to start?

The Livepeer 10-minute Primer serves as a great starting point.

Who is Livepeer Inc.?

Livepeer Inc. is the legal entity and core team shepherding the protocol and moving it along its path towards decentralization.

Does Livepeer have a roadmap?

Albeit slightly out of date, you can read about the philosophical phases of the Livepeer roadmap here.

Where can I find the Livepeer whitepaper?

There are two. You can find the original whitepaper here and the followup paper that outlines its scaling proposal called Streamflow here.

How was Livepeer token distributed? Was there an ICO?

No ICO. Livepeer token was originally distributed via a Merkle Mine, an algorithm that allows for large-scale, decentralized distribution of token during genesis state. Details regarding Livepeer's token distribution can be found here.

Where can I find the deployed Livepeer contract addresses?

The deployed contract addresses can be found in the Livepeer docs.

Terminology

Staking (Bonding)

The act of “locking” your Livepeer token within the Livepeer protocol smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain in exchange for the right to perform work on the network and earn inflationary token and gateway fees in return. Similar to a performance bond, tokens at stake provide security for developers using the network that work will be performed honestly, correctly and competitively.

Merkle Mine

A Merkle Mine is an algorithm that allows for the large-scale, decentralized distribution of token during the genesis state. It was first introduced by Livepeer and was the mechanism by which LPT was originally distributed.

Livepeer Protocol

The code that dictates all of the rules of using and interacting with Livepeer. Implemented as a set of smart contracts that run on the Ethereum blockchain.

Segment

A video segment (or chunk) is a fragment of video information that is a collection of video frames. Combined together, these segments make up a whole video.

Trascoding

The process of taking a raw video file and reformatting it so that no matter bandwidth you have - whether 2g or 5g - and no matter what device, you're ensured the most optimal viewing experience.

Rendition

The resulting compressed version of the video file after it's been transcoded.

Delegator

A Livepeer tokenholder that delegates its tokens with an orchestrator on the network in exchange for a cut of the orchestrator's rewards and fees.

Gateway

A Livepeer node sending video streams into the network for processing. Formerly referred to as Broadcaster.

Orchestrator

A smart, 24/7 connected, Livepeer aware actor (human + piece of software), that negotiates with gateways, and represents that they’re going to do the work correctly.

Transcoder

Dumb hardware that just knows how to encode video. (A GPU or CPU). Orchestrators pass video to transcoders and they encode and send it back.

Node

Livepeer client software. Currently there exists a single client implementation written in Go called go-livepeer which can be run in gateway mode, transcoder mode, or orchestrator mode.

Livepeer Token (LPT)

In the Livepeer protocol, Livepeer Token (LPT) is required to perform the work of transcoding and distributing video on the network. Its purpose is to coordinate, bootstrap, and incentivize participants to make sure the Livepeer network is as cheap, effective, secure, reliable and useful as possible.

I want to get a total hours of stored content.

Diagnose: You can fetch usage of storage in a given time frame using the API Workaround: https://livepeer.studio/data/usage/query?from=UNIX_TIMESTAMP_MILLISECONDS&to=UNIX_TIMESTAMP_MILLISECONDS

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Learn

10-minute primer

Whitepaper

FAQs

Ideas & Updates

How Open Job Marketplaces are Simplifying AI Compute for Developers

Questions? Connect with the Community

Questions?
Connect with the Community