Transcoder Campaign: Stake Capital 0xa6a9

[StakeCapital]

Transcoder Campaign: Stake Capital

We are proud to announce the Stake Capital Transcoder is live!

0xA6A9eB29e786B5233bD99C0bA28bE882fe954a0e

At Stake Capital, our mission is two-fold:

1. Educate & Help new users to participate in decentralised economies.
2. Contribute & Secure decentralised networks with no conflict of interest.

Educate New Users

Early adopters of Livepeer have a deep understanding of the Livepeer mechanics, but we believe it can intimidating for new users to bond tokens or choose the right transcoders for their strategy.

We are publishing tutorials to educate new users on these concepts and to guide them throughout this journey (e.g: Livepeer delegation tutorial). We also have a live support on Telegram to answer any questions.

Finally, we are partnering with mobile wallets like DexWallet to bring Livepeer bonding and reward tracking on mobile.

This is only the beginning, but we are excited to educate users on the potential of Livepeer!

Secure the Network

With great power comes great responsibility. Token holders who delegate to Stake Capital are trusting us to be reliable, and we won’t disappoint them.

From integrating hardware security module (HSM) support directly into our Tier 3+ servers, to deploying cloud based sentry nodes across the globe to ensure uptime and minimise latency, Stake Capital does not compromise on security or reliability.

We have partnered with BSO, an award-winning Ethernet network, Cloud and Hosting provider. BSO provides dedicated and secure connectivity to our HSM-enabled servers for maximum security. In addition, we are working with two leading cloud providers (Amazon Web Services & Google Cloud) to provide optimal reliability.

Contribute to the Network

Our fee structure is the following:

• 1% reward cut
• 50% fee share
• 150 GWEI

Our transcoder’s revenue will be used to finance:

1. Infrastructure
We want to have an extremely reliable infrastructure, so we can offer reliable transcoding services when the network has significant activity to ensure no Stake Capital delegators ever gets penalised.

2. Open Source Development
More importantly, we intend to use our revenue to finance and develop open source tools for the Livepeer Network. For example, our latest project, dTok, won at the ETHCapeTown hackathon yesterday.

Leopold Joy (leopoldjoy)

Current Livepeer economics require the broadcaster to pay for the cost of running a stream.
We created dTok, a pay-as-you-go dApp allowing viewers to pay to access a live stream by the minute. The dApp combines:

• Livepeer for transcoding,
• Burner Wallet for frictionless UX
• Raiden Network for lightning-fast payments
• DAI for stable payments
• Ethereum Naming System for stream discovery

We ran an initial proof-of-concept with Ricardo of TribalNeed to live stream his unique melodic electro music live from the ETH CapeTown hackathon. Via the platform, Ricardo received more than $1075 in DAI contributions. He shared his performance with the world via our platform for independent, censorship-resistant, live-streaming.

Julien Bouteloup (bneiluj)

You can read more about our experience and view a live demo of dTok here.

Closing Thoughts

We have been following Livepeer’s development for quite some time, before starting Stake Capital in fact. We want to have a sustained, positive impact on the network, and to do so, we need your support. Please delegate your Livepeer token to our transcoder, and if you have any questions, you can ask them here or on our Telegram.

Thank you!

[dob]

This is fantastic. Livepeer’s network was originally created so that people could build apps like dTok. Excited to support this node, and to get Streamflow released so that the network can scale as your userbase grows beyond single streams to many concurrent streams.

Let me know what we can do to help out as you’re developing.

[leopoldjoy]

Thank you Doug! We’re really excited to get a stable version of dTok live on Livepeer asap. We will be releasing more information soon.

You can see a full recap of our dTok hack at ETHCapeTown on the Medium here: https://twitter.com/StakeCapital/status/1123208880824233984

[StakeCapital]

Update on the Stake Capital Transcoder: All rewards claimed so far and no fault to report.

In the last round (Round 1337, #LEET), our Transcoder claimed and sent 127.97 LPT.

We also continue to work on our open source tipping/streaming dApp dTok - more updates to follow soon, stay tuned!

[bneiluj]

#DTok, today sprint planning:
i) Get @raiden_network nodes on SC infra: done✅
ii) Set @ensdomains : Done✅
iii)Fix port issues related to @LivepeerOrg : in progress⚗️
iv)Better UX /UI on #Burnerwallet: in progress
v) Economics: Stake Capital rewards claimed for round 1338 -> Transcoder sent 133.17 LPT for a total stake of 39362 LPT.
Live discussion: https://discord.gg/ckNAVtc
Live update: https://twitter.com/StakeCapital/status/1125314688693276672

[bneiluj]

Daily update:
Rewards claimed for round 1339:
Stake Capital Transcoder send 131.74 LPT to delegators for a total stake of 39077 LPT (keeping 1.32 LPT due to its 1.0% reward cut). https://etherscan.io/tx/0x025909c6382797340af6f2c9cc9702cf57eb538fa44baee314999f37b62a670b

[michaellawe27]

Excellent! Keep on claiming these rewards! Can’t wait to see more use cases like dTok!

[StakeCapital]

Reward Cut update proposal: Increase Reward Cut from 1% to 4% to finance dTok development.

Hi all,

As mentioned in our introduction post, one of our core mission is to use our revenue from the transcoder reward cut to finance the development of open source application for Livepeer.

We started working on dTok, a decentralised streaming/tipping platform for Livepeer, during the ETHCapeTown Hackathon - and the project won all possible prizes there.

This was only the beginning, and we want to scale our work on dTok as we feel it would be a valuable tool for the community which could bring significant transcoding activity to Livepeer.

For that reason, we are putting forward this proposal to increase our Reward Cut from 1% to 4%, and we will also apply for a Livepeer grant in parallel.

We fully believe that this kind of contributions will contribute to greater awareness and adoption of Livepeer, as people (more rapidly) realise the potential and benefits of working with this protocol!

We are very grateful to those who have bonded their LPT with us, and we have not taken this decision lightly. We are communicating this proposal on our different social platforms (here, on our Discord, and on our Telegram), and will take a final decision based on the feedback we receive.

If you support or if you are against this proposal please let us know as soon as possible.
We ideally would like to change the reward cut on 10 May, but we want to hear feedback from the community before changing anything.

If you want to support the development of open source applications on Livepeer, we would encourage you to bond some of your LPT with our transcoder.

P.S: On a 100 LPT stake and with the current inflation of ~0.34% per day, bonders would earn in one month:

• Gross (0% fee): 10.7 LPT per month
• Net at 1%: 10.6 LPT per month
• Net at 4% 10.27 LPT per month

[bneiluj]

Thank you very much for having DTok on the Livepeer community call yesterday. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions *

DTok materials:

DTok Livepeer Discord dev group: https://discord.gg/Z6MnaCy

Github: https://github.com/stake-capital/dTok

Context: https://medium.com/stakecapital/ethcapetown-hackathon-winners-168520fdefec

Devpost: https://devpost.com/software/dtok-amfc4e

DTok live Broadcaster Link: http://dtok.stake.capital/

Stake Capital Transcoder: 0xa6a9eb29e786b5233bd99c0ba28be882fe954a0e (https://explorer.livepeer.org/accounts/0xa6a9eb29e786b5233bd99c0ba28be882fe954a0e/transcoding)

[StakeCapital]

Following up on our Reward Cut update proposal, we have had positive feedback from the community, and we have decided to go forward with the proposal.

We will increase Stake Capital’s transcoder fee from 1% to 4% on Monday 13th May at 12:00 PM UTC.

Thank you all for your incredible support and we look forward to contributing further to this community!

[bneiluj]

Rewards claimed for round 1343: Stake Capital Transcoder sent 135.89 LPT to its delegators for a total stake of 40071 LPT (keeping 1.36 LPT due to its 1.0% reward cut).

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x90710709e87018a7d14eed3e58035c18a60d5e3558447e1e40e458a29b2c31b8

[bneiluj]

As previously discussed on this thread and agreed on the Stake Capital Livepeer Transcoder call we have just increased our reward cut from 1% to 4% to finance the development of DTok: https://github.com/stake-capital/dTok

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x944030483d1c28aabc405fca452297606f715941f9c858e679ec140b0819c55a

[bneiluj]

Rewards claimed for round 1347: We sent 138.58 LPT for a total stake of 40852 LPT.

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xaf2076bb96cfa67acc0fefa9053b3f04bab5d837372da8954c0ac204a8ce7c4e

[StakeCapital]

Hi all,

DTok, our open source dApp, was used to livestream on June 1st the Champion’s League Final - a very exciting moment for us!

We will share a recap shortly, and expect to hear more from DTok too.

Stake Capital (StakeCapital)

Thank you all for your continuous support!

Stake Capital

[vires-in-numeris]

This is awesome! Love the idea and I could see quite a demand for it.

However, I would be careful with streaming copyrighted material… Since this is not legal (correct me if I’m wrong…) and you’re probably using a centralized CDN, you might face some legal issues if this takes off.

Do you have any decentralized solution for the CDN part? A fully decentralized solution without the possibility to take legal action or shutting down the stream would be awesome.

[bneiluj]

Thank you very much @vires-in-numeris

I agree with you, that’s why we only made the streaming private.

We have been looking into a decentralized solution for the CDN part and we will discuss during dTok community call on June 17th, 4pm CEST. https://discord.gg/RCyfz3c

[bneiluj]

dTok Architecture Update:

I thought it would be great to go through the early stage story of dTok, its vision and talk about the future milestones:

dTok is an open, decentralized pay-as-you-go live-streaming platform. Livepeer provides decentralized video transcoding, micro-payments are processed via Layer 2 solutions (e.g. we will support Connext Network, Raiden, etc.), and the DTok browser-based wallet provides ease-of-use / rapid onboarding. Through dTok’s censorship-minimized system, content creators will easily reach the world and monetize their streams via micro-payments and tipping.

In April, the video live-streaming platform Tik Tok was shut down in India, preventing more than 500 million users from accessing the app. We were inspired at the EthCapeTown Hackathon in April to solve this problem with a censorship resistant live-streaming platform. In addition to issues of censorship, there is currently no way to monetize live-streamed content (via Livepeer) free of middleman fees. The dTok v0.1 won won all possible prizes @ETHCapeTown @ensdomains @NuCypher @MakerDAO @raiden_trust

Finally, and arguably most importantly, beyond basic remittance (e.g. buying a beer with Burner Wallet) there exists virtually no easily accessible use-cases of crypto or blockchain—whereby somebody with no technical blockchain knowledge (and no wallet) can easily hop into a crypto-powered system and start deriving some utility from it.

dTok mitigates censorship by obtaining transcoding via the Livepeer network. It also allows content creators (or “broadcasters”) to select how they would like to serve their streams—via either their own server, a custom CDN, or a CDN provided by dTok—enabling greater resistance to external tampering (e.g. a stream could be shared via multiple CDNs, etc.). Also, platform-level censorship resistance is achieved by making the entire dTok codebase and work-flow open-source—the dTok stack can be bootstrapped by anyone at any time.

Additionally, dTok solves the problem of rent-seeking tipping and micropayments platforms for viewing streams by integrating a variety of Layer 2 micro-payment systems (Connext, Raiden, etc.), enabling content creators to fully monetize their work.

Finally, dTok drives crypto adoption by implementing highly accessible onboarding via a simple, non-custodial, browser-based wallet (e.g. built with BurnerWallet or DaiCard). DTok users will be able to access preloaded wallets, meaning that a viewer can simply scan a QR code or click a link on their phone and jump right into a pre-funded Dai wallet and start viewing a Livepeer stream (the first couple minutes of viewing being free). This opens up accessibility of Livepeer to people with zero past experience of blockchain or crypto.

dTok’s architecture:

We have currently split the dTok sprint plannings into three major phases, as we seek to build a fully-featured decentralized pay-as-you-go service on top of Livepeer:

Phase 1: Stable Version, this phase consists of taking the messy, post-hackathon codebase to a stable and reliable dApp. This version of dTok will enable payment for viewing Livepeer transcoded-streams via a simple, non-custodial, browser-based wallet UI . Multiple streams will be supported via an Ethereum smart contract. This phase is outlined in the diagram above.

Phase 2: Light Broadcaster, Following phase 1 (as outlined in the diagram above), while the viewer experience is seamless, broadcasters must run the Livepeer CLI, record via OBS Studio, directly interact with the Stream smart contract, and manually accept viewer payments. This phases consists of building out an accessible light broadcaster user-flow, whereby broadcasters can easily broadcast streams, from, for example, a mobile phone. There will be an intuitive dashboard experience, with a dTok backend that handles interactions with the Livepeer CLI and broadcasting the video stream via a CDN, meaning that the light broadcasting client will only need to interact with Ethereum (via a similar in-browser wallet). The vision of this phase is that a user will be able to take out their phone or laptop and quickly bootstrap a stream onto dTok with virtually no setup required.

Phase 3: Streamflow Integration, Prior to this phase, stream viewer authentication is handled inside the front-end (the Livepeer Media Player frame is only displayed if the user has provided sufficient payment). This phase consists of implementing dTok backend authentication that is compatible with Streamflow. dTok viewers will be issued “stream keys” via the Livepeer API. We will then implement a gate around the HLS output, meaning that the Livepeer API node will check to make sure that each user is still paying before serving up each segment to that user (the stream key will be invalidated once the user has run out of payment credit). Additionally, phase 3 will also consist of opening up dTok to a variety of other Ethereum micro-payment Layer 2 solutions (e.g. Connext, POA, Raiden once they have a fully-featured light client available, etc.).

Stake Capital will assign three developers working part-time on dTok, totaling 8 hours a day. All three phases will take 10 weeks to complete (working 5 days a week), meaning a total of 400 hours.

[bneiluj]

We are working on a number of dTok partnerships and use cases such as pay-per-view, tipping, multi-cams, polls and prediction markets which will serve to both increase exposure for dTok / Livepeer and drive early adaption via a variety of relevant platform use cases.

1. Connext — By leveraging the Connext Network to handle dTok micro-payments and tips, we not only significantly reduce transaction fees and increase the speed of transactions, but we also gain access to traction from the burgeoning Connext community. Our close relationship with the Connext team enables rapid development and collaboration as we develop dTok using both the Connext network and their Dai Card implementation. (Also see: https://twitter.com/ConnextNetwork/status/1134961941238050816 and https://twitter.com/ConnextNetwork/status/1135603961044582400).

2. Burner Wallet — Prior to developing an updated version of dTok on Connext’s Dai Card (https://github.com/stake-capital/dTok-dai-card), we developed a Burner Wallet-based version of dTok (https://github.com/stake-capital/dTok-burner-wallet), which won the ETHCapeTown hackathon. As the second Burner Wallet module ever built (https://medium.com/stakecapital/ethcapetown-hackathon-winners-168520fdefec), we’ve gained significant exposure to the Burner Wallet community. We intend to continue development of the Burner Wallet version of dTok—as the Burner Wallet codebase because increasingly modular.

(with Vitalik watching dTok live performance . He voted for dTok at ethCapeTown )

3. Prizes — Winning every prize available at ETHCapeTown provided significant exposure across the Ethereum community (link again: https://medium.com/stakecapital/ethcapetown-hackathon-winners-168520fdefec). We received rewards from ETHGlobal (https://medium.com/ethcapetown/ethcapetown-roundup-the-buidl-spirit-3cb1d77eb2eb), Raiden (https://medium.com/raiden-network/raiden-pulse-5-news-from-march-and-april-56e781aea7c), ENS (https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/trickle-dtok-and-more-meet-the-ens-winners-at-ethcapetown-ebf160bd9e78), MakerDAO, and NuCypher (also see VentureBurn: https://ventureburn.com/2019/05/ethcapetown-blockchain-winning-applications/). We are actively applying for a number of grants from Raiden and others which will provide additional traction.
   

   

4. Ricardo — Ricardo of TribalNeed was the first performer to ever use dTok—broadcasting his live music performance on dTok during the ETHCapeTown hackathon. We are now working closely with him to enable him to stream his live performance across the world via dTok (See: https://twitter.com/bneiluj/status/1119937357044699136 and https://medium.com/stakecapital/ethcapetown-hackathon-winners-168520fdefec). His next performace, in Berlin in July, will be streamed via dTok’s pay-as-you-go platform.

5. Champion League Final — We ran an initial proof-of-concept of the alpha Dai Card-based version of the dTok system by streaming the Champions League Final on June 1. We provided pre-funded links enabling people to easily on-board by simply clicking a link to begin watching the stream—no existing wallet, plugin, or prior knowledge of crypto required. We received a very positive response from the community and will be streaming more sporting events going forward. (See: https://twitter.com/StakeCapital/status/1134916344628023296)

6. Joel livestream — We are working alongside Joel Kruger (https://twitter.com/JoelKruger, 28k followers) to move his daily crypto-focused show onto dTok. He will deliver a more engaging experience for his viewers via the dTok platform—enabling him to easily monetize his show as well as experiment with other crypto-based viewer interactions (e.g. interacting with L2 dApps such as voting or polling during a show).
   

   

7. ETHBerlinZwei, we are working alongside with Matteo to provide Livestream coverage of EthBerlinZwei this August and other coming Ethereum’s events. He was the livestream operator and manager of DappCon 2018, EthMagicians, Status and Devcon4. We have been looking into building different features such as landing page with multi-cams: one for stage, or connect EthBerlin2’s main website with livestream links for each stage. That depends on the availability of volunteers and which Organization’s will to partner for this B) cover only one Stage and put up a live poll/question for presenters C) Partner with the Music/Chillout room (last Devcon4 was brilliantly set-up) and livestream from there. These possibilities depend on whether or not EB2 has already a livestream partner (last Devcon4 was SlidesLive), but in any case, Matteo plans to be there volunteering FT and is happy to help out with dTok.
   

   

Our plan is to continue leveraging these partnerships and use cases to increase community traction around dTok, thereby driving significant early adoption to dTok.

[StakeCapital]

We have just decreased our Reward Cut from 4% to 1% from round 1431

[bneiluj]

Update on dTok (https://github.com/Livepeer-Community-Node/Grant-Program/issues/16#issuecomment-516063373):

New Phase I) Research, Design + 2 Uses-Cases (completed) - 1000 LPT:

This phase consists of taking the messy, post-hackathon codebase to a stable and reliable dApp. This version of dTok enables payment for viewing Livepeer transcoded-streams via a simple, non-custodial, browser-based wallet UI. Additionally, this phase includes two initial use cases (live electronic music at ETHCapeTown and a private Champions League final stream).

Deliverables:

• A broadcaster can be initiate a stream by manually setting the stream URL inside the codebase.
• A viewer can pay (by the minute) to continually view the stream.
• A viewer can top up there balance in dTok by depositing Dai into the browser-cache-based wallet.
• Two live events streamed via the interface (see above).
  Broadcaster documentation for initiating a stream (see: https://stake-capital.gitbook.io/stake-capital/)
• Repo using Connext v1 + ENS + DAI: https://github.com/stake-capital/dTok-dai-card
• Repo using Burner Wallet + ENS + DAI: https://github.com/stake-capital/dTok-burner-wallet
• Crypto-wallet-free accessible and intuitive onboarding (via burner functionality)

New Phase II) Build Live Multi-Streams Functionality + Additional Live Use-Case (in-progress) - 2000 LPT:

Multiple streams will be supported via an Ethereum smart contract. This phase is outlined in the diagram above. This phase includes comprehensive testing, iteration, and documentation on the multi-streams UX for both viewers and broadcasters. Upon completion of this phase (end of August objective), the full multi-streams functionality will be on exhibition as dTok is used to stream Berlin Blockchain Week with two operators.

Deliverables:

• A broadcaster will be able to initiate a stream by submitting their stream URL to the dTok multi-streams smart contract.
• Multiple broadcasters will be able to stream content (on one deployment of the dTok dApp) at the same time.
• A viewer will be able to switch between the different streams that are running concurrently.
• A multi-day event (see above) will be streamed via dTok at the end of August.
  -Extensive and detailed documentation will be available for both viewers and broadcaster to understand and correctly operate both sides of the dTok workflow.
• A suite of both back-end (for the multi-streams smart contract) and front-end (for the dTok dApp UI) tests.
• Technical architecture designed to enable third party dTok-streaming based application extensions (e.g. enabling prediction markets or live chat functionality on top of the underlying dTok Streaming platform).
• Upgrade payment channel architecture to facilitate third party application extension smart contract calls.