Livepeer Community Update – February - March 2025
Introduction
The Livepeer community has been highly active in Q1, with several key proposals shaping the future of the network. The community has been driving important initiatives forward from SPE treasury allocations to potential protocol changes. Below is a summary of the latest governance activity, including newly passed, ongoing, and upcoming proposals.
Recent Progress
- Community Engagement: The January and February Treasury Talks gathered over 1,500 views, featuring over 10 SPE presentations and discussions on governance and funding priorities. Catch up on all Treasury Talks here.
- GovWorks SPE Approved: GovWorks is now officially an SPE, securing 9,000 LPT for governance support and treasury stewardship.
- SPE Dashboard: The GovHub features a visual summary of existing and upcoming SPEs, tracking their progress, updates, and milestones. There are now 13 SPEs active in Livepeer!
- Governance Process Documentation: To improve transparency and accessibility, a comprehensive post outlining the Livepeer governance process has been published on the forum.
Q1 Governance Activity
Passed On-Chain SPE Proposals
AI Video SPE – Stage 3
- Funds the next phase of AI-driven video processing, enabling real-time AI pipelines and expanding generative AI features. This strengthens Livepeer’s AI capabilities and creates new revenue streams for orchestrators.
- Budget: 35,000 LPT
- Status: Approved and in progress
Livepeer Agent SPE
- Establishes a dedicated team to integrate Livepeer’s AI-powered video into AI agent frameworks like Eliza. The goal is to drive adoption in the AI developer ecosystem.
- Budget: 6,440 LPT
- Status: Approved and in progress
Agent SPE: Inference Credits
- Provides 15,000 LPT worth of AI inference credits to subsidize AI compute for new developers, helping bootstrap demand for Livepeer’s AI services.
- Budget: 15,000 LPT
- Status: Approved and in progress
Open Source Funding SPE
- Allocates funding to maintain critical open-source tools that Livepeer depends on to ensure reliability and security across the ecosystem.
- Budget: 5,000 LPT
- Status: Approved and executed
Event Marketing SPE Proposal
- Aims to increase Livepeer’s presence at major Web3 events, funding sponsorships, livestream activations, and developer outreach.
- Budget: 12,000 LPT
- Status: Approved and executed
Harmonic SPE: Web3 Social Video
- Focuses on integrating Livepeer’s video streaming into decentralized Web3 social platforms like Farcaster and Base.
- Budget: 15,000 LPT
- Status: Approved and executed
AI Creator Adoption SPE
- Funds an artist and creator onboarding program to showcase Livepeer’s AI-powered video tools in live streaming.
- Budget: 5,700 LPT
- Status: Approved and executed
Defeated On-Chain Proposals
Degen SPE
- Proposed a marketing and community engagement initiative to boost Livepeer’s visibility on social media.
- Budget: 750 LPT
- Status: Defeated
Forum Proposals & Discussions
FrameWorks SPE (prev. Transcoding SPE)
- Proposes an SPE focused on improving Livepeer’s core transcoding infrastructure, including codec support, stability, and node operator tools, and hosting an end-to-end media pipeline.
- Budget: 15,000 LPT
- Status: In discussion
Streamm SPE
- Proposes an SPE to scale Streamm, the largest decentralized live streaming platform on Base and Farcaster, by expanding infrastructure, onboarding Web2 streamers by making Web3 live streaming seamless for mainstream creators, and enhancing AI-powered engagement.
- Budget: 10,000 LPT
- Status: In Discussion
LPT Inflation Adjustment
- Discusses adjusting inflation parameters to curb excess token issuance to ensure long-term economic sustainability for LPT holders.
- Budget: N/A (Protocol parameter change)
- Status: In discussion
Livepeer Treasury Cap Raise
- Proposes raising or removing the treasury cap to ensure continued funding for SPEs and prevent treasury funding from being halted.
- Budget: N/A (Protocol parameter change)
- Status: In discussion
Protocol Security SPE
- Would establish a security-focused SPE to oversee bug bounties, decentralize protocol emergency response, and maintain on-chain security.
- Budget: TBD
- Status: Early-stage discussion
Upcoming Events
April Treasury Talk on Monday, April 7th
Time: 7PM UTC
The next Treasury Talk will discuss SPE progress, governance updates, and new funding proposals.
Agenda:
- Updates from active SPEs, including AI SPE, Cloud SPE, and LLM SPE.
- SPE pre-proposals seeking feedback.
- Governance updates, including treasury operations and governance structure improvements.
Action Items
For prospective SPEs:
- Prepare a one-page overview or slide deck to present at the next Treasury Talk.
- Be ready to answer questions and refine your proposal with community feedback.
- Submit presentations to GovWorks at least one day before the Treasury Talk to ensure they’re included in the agenda.
For current SPEs:
- Post monthly reports in the governance forum before the next Treasury Talk.
- Use the SPE Dashboard in GovHub to track updates and align on reporting standards.
Looking Ahead
In Q1, 103,440 LPT has been allocated across multiple treasury proposals, funding AI, governance, marketing, and open-source initiatives. With 13 SPEs now active, the focus shifts to ensuring that treasury funds are deployed efficiently, governance remains transparent, and capital allocation aligns with long-term network growth.
Discussions around the Treasury Cap indicate the need for better stewardship of treasury funds, ensuring that LPT accrued from inflation is deployed at a sustainable rate before considering any cap increase. At the same time, as the number of SPE proposals grows, Livepeer’s governance processes must evolve to support more efficient capital allocation and decision-making.
Some Key Areas for Improvement
1. Treasury Allocation Inefficiencies
- Quarterly LPT spending remains significantly below treasury accrual from inflation, indicating inefficient capital deployment.
- SPEs request full funding upfront to avoid multiple governance proposals, potentially limiting accountability and adaptability.
- Overlapping SPEs within the same domain create fragmentation and misalignment of resources.
2. Transparency & Accountability Gaps
- Limited visibility into actual LPT spent from approved SPE allocations.
- Inconsistent milestone tracking and verification reduce accountability.
3. Governance Process Challenges
- Increasing proposal volume risks voter fatigue and declining participation.
- No structured mechanism to prioritize high-impact initiatives.
- Lack of an off-chain signal voting platform makes it difficult to align on non-treasury priorities.
- No clear short-to-mid-term reference framework to align DAO contributors on objectives and impact evaluation.
Planned Improvements
GovWorks is collaborating with Livepeer Inc. and existing and emerging SPEs to improve stakeholder alignment and streamline capital allocation. The following initiatives are being explored to address our current challenges:
Milestone Verification & Accountability
Integrate tools such as Karma’s Grantee Accountability Protocol (GAP), built on the Ethereum Attestation Service. This integration will enable all Livepeer Treasury fund recipients to self-report progress and milestones directly to the publicly accessible platform with oversight from GovWorks. The tool provides granularity in milestones reporting, an impact assessment based on funding goals, and deeper insights into fund utilization.
Treasury Utilization Strategy
Explore the implementation of minimum spending targets to align proposals with quarterly treasury allocation goals. Potential for overlapping SPEs under similar domains to consolidate and request larger funding tranches from the treasury to be allocated over longer time periods.
Governance Timelines & Predictability
Structure proposal reviews and voting cycles to reduce voter exhaustion and improve participation. Implementing predictable timelines will help stakeholders manage their involvement more effectively and mitigate the risk of voter apathy.
Signal Voting Activation
Deploying tools like Snapshot, a voting platform that allows DAOs and communities to conduct gasless and customizable voting to gauge community sentiment and build soft consensus for non-treasury proposals. Snapshot supports various voting mechanisms enabling the Livepeer community to experiment with various consensus-building strategies.
Prioritization and Roadmapping Initiative for SPE Milestones (PRISM)
Implement a structured community input process to establish a reference short-to-mid-term goal matrix that aligns stakeholders on priority areas for funding and development.
We want to hear from the community — what’s working, what’s not, and where we can improve. Take a few minutes to share your feedback in this survey and help shape how Livepeer funds and governs its future.
