Hello Livepeer community,
We’d like to present our proposal for the Livepeer Cloud SPE. The proposal details our plan to increase demand, adoption, and fees on the Livepeer network.
Thank you for reviewing the proposal. We look forward to your feedback and questions.
@MikeZupper - xodeapp.xyz
@speedybird - speedybird.eth
@papa_bear - solarfarm.papa-bear.eth
Table of Contents
Livepeer Cloud SPE
Our Misson
Livepeer Cloud’s core mission is to increase accessibility and adoption of the Livepeer network. We aim to achieve this by integrating the Livepeer Network seamlessly into users’ existing workflows and eliminate the need for them to “move” to Livepeer. Our strategy involves executing three key objectives:
- Implement Livepeer Cloud - a “free to use” Livepeer Broadcaster:
Allow users to experience the Livepeer Network in a “web2-like” manner, using a publicly accessible Broadcaster without the need for crypto wallets. - A Robust Integration of Livepeer with an open-source media server - Owncast:
Ensure a strong integration of Livepeer with Owncast, an open-source media server. - Demystify the Livepeer Broadcaster:
Provide clear documentation for deploying, configuring, and funding a Livepeer Broadcaster, making the process accessible to users with varying technical expertise.
These objectives provide a blueprint for enabling the Livepeer Network within any streaming media platform, thereby lowering barriers to entry for other communities.
Figure 1. - Illustrates the current state of the Livepeer Network with Catalyst/Studio Broadcaster and envisions a future with multiple coexisting broadcast sources.
Approach/ Strategy
Livepeer Integrations with Widely Adopted Media Servers
To increase accessibility of Livepeer, we will enhance open source media engines to send streams through the Livepeer network, starting with Owncast. We’ll contribute to the Owncast Project, enabling it to seamlessly leverage the Livepeer Cloud Public Broadcaster (or a self-hosted version of a Livepeer’s Broadcaster Node). Pending feedback and additional proposals, we will target other media servers like Oven Media Engine and Ant Media Server.
Introduce the “Public” Livepeer Cloud Broadcaster
To foster adoption, we will also deploy, manage, and fund a publicly available broadcaster called Livepeer Cloud. The public broadcaster will have a limited deposit and reserve funded by this proposal. This will allow traditional users to take Livepeer for a “test drive” without having to take on the complexities of learning how to manage wallets, keys, or Broadcaster funding. This can also then act as a stepping stone to more intimate usage over time whereupon the users can setup their own Broadcaster. We will be capturing and sharing key analytics from Livepeer Cloud Broadcaster (see #analytics below for more detail).
Clear and Easy documentation for a go-livepeer Broadcaster
To further amplify the effects of this proposal and provide a glide path for new users who want to leverage Livepeer beyond the Livepeer Cloud Broadcaster, we will document the operational path to setup and fund a self-hosted Broadcaster.
Analytics
Analytics play a critical role in the process of “test driving” the Livepeer Network. Consequently, we will capture key metrics to provide a comprehensive understanding of the platform’s performance. The metrics to be monitored include usage/minutes transcoded, the number of streams, tickets paid out, and the current status of broadcaster funding. This data will be made publicly available on the same domain as the Livepeer Cloud Broadcaster, ensuring transparency and accessibility for all stakeholders.
Expected Impact
Successful delivery of these capabilities will enable others to quickly bootstrap additional Broadcasters on the network with widely used toolchains. The addition of new Broadcasters from communities outside of the web3 ecosystem will enable diversity and growth in the Livepeer network. Initial adoption, measured through increased streams, will be encouraged within communities like Owncast and its Owncast Directory.
While usage is crucial to growth, the diversity of Broadcasters is a major factor as well. Reducing the barriers to enable this diversity, will strengthen the network by increasing the variety of available content, the community of users, and the sources of revenue for the protocol. As the network usage and strength increases, this will act as a fly-wheel to drive further adoption and remove perceived as well as real barriers to adoption.
Milestones
The milestones for this SPE are functional identical to the approach outlined above:
- Funding and provisioning of the Livepeer Cloud Broadcaster.
- Core development of an integration of Owncast with the Livepeer Cloud broadcaster.
- Simplified Documentation to setup and integration with the Livepeer Cloud Broadcaster.
- A web-based site producing metrics from the Livepeer Cloud Broadcaster hosted by this SPE
Roadmap
As potential follow ups to this effort, the team envisions the following roadmap with additional integrations and AI video compute playground.
Items above represent targets this SPE considers as exciting areas to pursue after the completion of the milestones in this proposal.
Transparency
To foster transparency, the core SPE team will be delivering all source code and documentation as a Github repository. The contents will be publicly available and licensed with a permissive scheme like the Apache license.
Additionally, the core team will all be compensated through this proposal. The teams members are:
Mike Zupper - Architect and Technical Lead
papabear - Community Lead, Testing, and Documentation
Speedy Bird - Technical Implementation and Documentation
The three members have all previously made open and consistent contributions to this community. They are experts in enterprise software systems from web applications and video processing to advanced analytics and AI applications. We are frequently present in the community events and forums.
Governance
The SPE team will distribute the funds among themselves after payment. The community’s input before and during the SPE will be collected via:
- A Livepeer forum post seeking feedback on the proposal prior to submission.
- Attendance at the following events to discuss the proposal, collect feedback, and reshape (if necessary) the proposal prior to funding: Weekly Water Cooler Chat & Treasury Chat
- After approval, the team will continue to attend the following events to present progress: Weekly Water Cooler Chat & Treasury Chat
If the team finds based on community feedback that additional milestones are desirable, the SPE will produce a revised roadmap and/or another proposal to fund such initiatives. In fact, the SPE team believes this proposal naturally lends itself to building out additional capabilities and in-roads to communities outside Livepeer. This will in turn drive the core mission of increase adoption and network strength.
Funding
Total funding - $44,500 USD
$8,500 USD - Public Broadcaster Setup, Installation, Ongoing Operations
$2,400 a year for Broadcaster deposit and reserve; remaining funds for compute and operational costs. If compute or stream costs exceed these numbers, the Broadcaster’s capacity will be constrained to ensure no overages.
$36,000 USD - Owncast Integration, Metrics Dashboard - Development, Documentation, Testing
- Public Broadcaster
- Deploy Public Broadcaster and document setup for use in Livepeer docs (Windows, Linux, Docker)
- Assess compute and costs including usage characteristics (ticket payouts)
- Develop and deploy monitoring stack with key metrics for broadcaster health and payouts
- Develop and Open Source Owncast Integration with Public Broadcaster
note: funding to be converted to LPT at time of proposal submission