Draft-Proposal: Funding of OpenSource Projects to Strengthen Livepeer

Open Source Funding SPE: A Proposal to Support the Livepeer Ecosystem

Prepared for: Livepeer Treasury.
Prepared by: Jason Stone (Orchestrator and Project Lead)
Date: 11 February 2025
Proposal Number: 0120-2025

Abstract

The Open Source Funding SPE (Special Purpose Entity) requests 5000 LPT from the Livepeer Treasury to establish a fund supporting critical open-source projects vital to the Livepeer Network. This initiative aims to solidify Livepeer’s position as a leading decentralized network by actively supporting the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) ethos and contributing to the developer community.

Introduction

Livepeer relies heavily on open-source software. These projects, maintained by dedicated developers, are essential for Livepeer’s video transcoding network and emerging AI capabilities. While freely available, maintaining these projects requires significant developer time and effort. Many contributors dedicate their personal time, sometimes facing financial and other challenges that can lead to project stagnation. While alternatives often exist, relying on core components with stalled development can introduce security vulnerabilities and compatibility issues. This SPE aims to create a sustainable ecosystem where key developers receive financial support, allowing them to dedicate more time to these crucial projects. Establishing an SPE provides a dedicated framework for selecting projects, allocating funds transparently, and handling the administrative complexities of supporting diverse projects with varying payment preferences and legal requirements. This focused approach ensures efficient and responsible management of Livepeer’s open-source contributions.

Mission

  1. Sustain FOSS: Provide consistent funding to maintain critical open-source dependencies.
  2. Enhance Reliability: Ensure the ongoing functionality and security of essential tools like FFmpeg, Codegen, and OpenCV.
  3. Strengthen the Ecosystem: Cultivate strong relationships with the open-source community and stimulate innovation within projects Livepeer relies upon.
  4. Maximize Transparency: Regularly report on funding allocations and project outcomes to ensure accountability.

Team

Project Lead (Paid by SPE):

  • Jason Stone (Orchestrator, Bounty Manager) multi-sig signer

Advisory Board (Not paid by SPE):

  • Rick: Lead for the AI SPE team, Orchestrator. multi-sig signer
  • Nneoma: Stable Labs, Gov Works. multi-sig signer
  • Rich: Livepeer Inc. Member
  • En: Community Manager

Key Projects and Their Importance to Livepeer

Project Role
FFmpeg The core of Livepeer’s media processing pipeline, essential for video encoding, decoding, and transcoding.
opencv Facilitates video analysis and processing, enabling advanced features like object detection and scene analysis.
kin-openapi Provides OpenAPI tooling that integrates with Codegen to streamline API design and validation.
pydantic Ensures data integrity within Livepeer’s Python-based tools through data validation and settings management.
imageio Handles various image formats for processing and analysis within the Livepeer ecosystem.
oapi-codegen** Generates client and server code from OpenAPI specifications, enhancing API integrations.
Python-Multipart & Uvicorn Essential components for handling file uploads and serving web applications within Livepeer.
ComfyUI-Depth-Anything-Tensort Contributes to AI-driven depth estimation and image processing within the Livepeer pipeline.
StreamV2V & StreamDiffusion Diffusion model and pipeline that achieves real-time streaming video-to-video (V2V) translation with user prompts used heavily in Livepeer realtime AI pipelines.
ComfyUI Maintained fork of ComfyUI utilized in the creation of ComfyStream for Livepeer.

** This project is currently being sponsored by AI SPE, this will be migrated to OSS Funding once the proposal is approved.

This list comprises a core set of dependencies. The SPE will evaluate and consider supporting additional projects as the Livepeer ecosystem evolves. In response to community feedback, we will prioritize media-specific projects, recognizing their potential for significant impact on Livepeer. Our evaluation process revealed that despite the widespread adoption of some of these projects, they are not adequately supported financially. Therefore, we are committing to provide funding to these essential initiatives.

Deliverables

  1. Transparent Payments: Funding will be provided on-chain in LPT or USDC whenever feasible, with wallet ownership clearly documented and publicly verifiable. For projects unable to receive direct cryptocurrency payments, alternative funding methods will be arranged. Based on community feedback, all funds will be stored in a multi-signature (multisig) wallet, requiring at least two out of three approvals from advisory members to ensure security and accountability.
  2. Monthly Reporting: Monthly reports will detail fund allocation, recipient projects, and verification of transfers. This regular cadence encourages project maintainers and provides ongoing transparency to the community.
  3. Annual Evaluation: After one year, a comprehensive report will assess the SPE’s impact, including alignment with Livepeer’s goals and its effect on Livepeer’s standing within the open-source community.

Benefits to Livepeer

  1. Operational Stability: Ensures critical dependencies remain secure, maintained, and up-to-date.
  2. Ecosystem Growth: Strengthens the open-source ecosystem, benefiting both Livepeer and the broader decentralized tech community.
  3. Community Leadership: Positions Livepeer as a supporter of open-source, enhancing its reputation.
  4. Transparency and Accountability: Provides clear and verifiable tracking of fund allocation.

Budget and Expenses

Project Funding (80%): Funding allocation will be based on project importance to Livepeer and the project’s existing financial resources. Projects with less established funding will be prioritized. See the “Key Projects” section for a list of initial target projects. Specific monthly allocations (€) will be determined based on project needs and will be detailed in monthly reports.

Administrative Expenses (5%):

  • Company registration (one-time expense)
  • Accounting costs
  • Management hours (5h/month): Budget reporting (2h), manual disbursements (1h), project coordination (2h).

Reserve for Future Projects (15%): This reserve will accommodate newly incorporated open-source projects and mitigate LPT/USD price fluctuations. Unused funds will be rolled over to the next funding cycle or returned to the Treasury.

Total Budget Request: 5000 LPT

Conclusion

This SPE offers a structured and transparent mechanism for supporting the open-source projects essential to Livepeer’s success. By investing in these projects, Livepeer ensures its own stability and contributes to the broader open-source ecosystem. This initiative aims to promote a positive image of Livepeer and the cryptocurrency space by focusing on tangible contributions to valuable projects. We urge Orchestrator approval to secure the future of Livepeer and the open-source software it depends on.

6 Likes

Thank you for putting up this proposal!

We are happy to see the design of this SPE as its original vision: a funding allocator. Are there any open source developers in the pipeline already? Or how do you expect to find and attract talent to work on these projects.

At the moment, the team structure consists of a Team Lead and four Advisory Board members. How will the decision-making work under this structure? Will there be any type of consensus or majority needed to approve certain funding?

Thanks!

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Regarding attracting and supporting developers:

This SPE is designed to support the existing developers of critical open-source projects vital to Livepeer’s infrastructure. Our initial focus is on providing funding to these dedicated individuals, incentivizing their continued active participation in maintaining and improving these projects. We believe this direct support is the most effective way to ensure the long-term health and stability of these crucial components. While we aren’t initially focused on recruiting new talent, we anticipate that funding these projects will create a more attractive environment for other open-source developers. Should a project become stagnant for reasons beyond financial constraints, we will evaluate redirecting funds to active forks or alternative solutions, thus encouraging community involvement and ensuring continued development.

Regarding the decision-making process:

The decision-making process within the SPE is designed for efficiency and transparency. The Team Lead (Jason Stone) will propose funding allocations for each project, taking into account the project’s importance to Livepeer, its current financial situation. The Advisory Board will then provide feedback and guidance on these proposals. Their expertise and diverse perspectives will ensure that funding decisions align with Livepeer’s overall goals and benefit the ecosystem as a whole. While the Advisory Board provides valuable input, the final decision on funding allocation rests with the Team Lead. This streamlined approach allows for agile responses to the evolving needs of the supported projects. To ensure complete transparency, detailed monthly reports will be published outlining all funding decisions and disbursements, providing the community with clear insight into the allocation process. This regular reporting will build trust and accountability within the Livepeer ecosystem.

Thank you for reviewing the proposal and hope this clears any uncertainties.

1 Like

Looks like a great initiative and experiment worth running. As far as choosing the projects to allocate to, I think it would be interesting to consider the projects criticalness and impact as it relates to Livepeer, versus everything else out there. Just as an example, the whole python ecosystem leverages setuptools, and many people are incentivized to develop on it, maintain it, or fund it. Devs continuing to innovate on it brings benefits to everyone, but nothing specific to Livepeer. Whereas for certain media specific projects, continued development and innovation can have a big impact on the Livepeer ecosystem.

I think success criteria over time would be related to observing some crossover between the open source ecosystems we’re supporting, and the Livepeer dev ecosystem itself.

2 Likes

Looks great to me, especially with the clarifications above! My only suggestion is an Advisory Board vote of each allocation. This vote can help inform community on your alignment with Inc. and the community. An alternative is a multisig with 5 signers and majority affirmative needed to send funds.

2 Likes

You raised a valid point about project selection for our open-source (OS) funding. Our initial approach aimed for broad reach by supporting a wide range of projects with limited funding. However, this might result in dispersed resources and limited individual impact.

We agree that focusing our funding on a smaller number of key projects could be more effective, allowing for deeper support and more significant outcomes. As this is a pilot program for OS funding, we’re committed to iterative improvement based on the results. Our goal is to foster a culture where contributing to open source within the Livepeer ecosystem is seen as not just a duty, but a valuable and rewarding endeavor.

The advisory board will carefully evaluate a wider range of projects evolving within the Livepeer developer ecosystem and refine the list of funded projects accordingly.

2 Likes

This is a great idea. Since advisory board are not financially benefiting from the SPE we were hesitant to ask to have more active role in managing the funding itself. If other board members agree we can certainly have a 5 member multisig with 3 signers to deploy the fund. This will certainly help alleviate any uncertainties regarding the single individual with control of the funds.

1 Like

This proposal meets all the vote readiness criteria outlined in the Livepeer Governance Hub:

  • It has been live in the forum for 7+ days.
  • It follows the standard SPE pre-proposal template
  • All feedback received during the discussion phase has been addressed.

It’s ready to proceed to a vote! :rocket:

2 Likes

This is a great initiative! I’d like to see a few open source projects in the real time video AI tech stack being included here.

To name a few:

  1. HiddenSwitch fork of ComfyUI (GitHub - hiddenswitch/ComfyUI: A powerful and modular stable diffusion GUI with a graph/nodes interface.). We built ComfyStream using their version of ComfyUI.
  2. DepthAnything Tensorrt Node author.
  3. StreamDiffusion authors.
  4. StreamV2V author.

Ryan can probably add a few more.

3 Likes

Eric, thanks for the excellent additions to the list. I have a quick question regarding supporting the work behind these projects. Should we consider sponsoring the authors of the research papers or the developers maintaining the corresponding GitHub repositories? The connection between the paper and the GitHub repo seems clear for StreamV2V (one of the authors appears to maintain it), but it’s less so for StreamDiffusion.

Some StreamDiffusion authors, like Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka (https://me.berkeley.edu/people/masayoshi-tomizuka/), are readily identifiable, while others are more difficult to track down. Since we’re utilizing code from these repositories, wouldn’t it be beneficial to sponsor these projects directly?

While we’ve discussed establishing a research grant in the future if this venture proves successful, directly funding research currently seems impractical. What are your thoughts on project sponsorship? We can discuss this further with the advisory group this week.

4 Likes

We have updated the proposal based on the great feedback from the community. This is a final version and will be posted in for onchain voting. Thank you everyone for your generous suggestions in making this initiative possible. We are very excited to be contributing to the Open Source Ecosystem.

3 Likes