This week was about continuing the march towards the Testnet Soft Launch in late August.
- @ericxtang wrote about the Engineering Milestones which include the testnet soft launch, the testnet public launch, and the mainnet launch beyond that.
- The goal of the testnet is to test and iterate on the candidate release for the Snowmelt Phase of the Livepeer network. I wrote about the Livepeer Network Phases and outlined how we’ll progress from the proof of concept that exists today to a fully decentralized video broadcast ecosystem in the future.
Protocol
For those following along with code, a lot of the action this week was in the protocol repo which specifies the Ethereum smart contracts that will run the Livepeer Protocol. This week the focus was on payments, and ensuring that appropriate deposits are put down, held securely, and either refunded or passed on to Transcoders after they successfully prove that they did the work. The yf/payment-prototype branch contains the latest.
It’s also worth noting that we’re considering a protocol evolution that moves beyond the round-based cycles for transcoders getting their fees released and towards more of a fluid sliding window timing system that allows transcoders to claim fees for whatever jobs they’ve completed at their discretion. Stand by for Whitepaper updates as we test and verify this.
Video and Community
Now that the testnet is nearly up, we’ll start to use it to broadcast more Livepeer related live video content. Some ideas include Whiteboard Wednesdays, Crypto Fireside Chat, and our Community Calls. If you have an idea for live video content that you think fits nicely into the alpha phase of Livepeer, then let us know and we can help schedule, promote, and support the process of trying it out on the Livepeer network.