Transformation SPE Release Notes & Closing Retro

Updates
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Release notes are a way to share work being completed by the Transformation SPE and it’s various contributors. Dive in and explore what has been happening and please reach out or reply with any questions and we will happily expand further.

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October - Status Update

The Transformation SPE has been established and is already advancing towards the completion of key deliverables, including proposals around capital management, Devconnect builder activations, and further alignment around coordinating development activity.

November will be a major month for seeing a lot of this work become visible.

Capital Workstream

Deliverable

  • Establish Capital Markets Working Group by identifying contributors to three core projects

    • Inflation - Move forward on exploring inflation with Andrew from Shtuka.

    • Liquidity - Identified a liquidity partner to alleviate current UX issues on-chain, and a pre-proposal will be shared this week.

    • Active Capital Management - Capitalizing the Transformation SPE and exploring potential strategies with Caladan.

Builders Workstream

Deliverable

Development Workstream

Deliverable

  • Create a New Core Contributor Coordination Function & Hub

    • Mehrdad Sadeghi hired as Ecosystem PM to own coordination and accountability.

    • Coordination meeting structure defined and ready to launch.

    • Conducted community research on the coordination function.

    • Ecosystem-wide roadmap plan defined.

  • Make a Proposal for Protocol Development SPE

    • First proposal draft under review.

    • RFP ready for Protocol Engineering and Security Partner.

  • Make Critical Explorer Improvements (via RFP)

    • Explorer maintenance RFP completed successfully.

    • Code audit completed by RaidGuild, and execution roadmap signed off.

  • Steward Payments Clearinghouse Roadmap & Prototype With Local SDK

    • Project has been kicked off, and resources allocated.

    • Smaller go-livepeer changes being merged.

    • Draft pull request ready for the GetOrchestratorInfo endpoint needed for remote signer.

Up Next

  • Devconnect Builder Activation in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Register Here!

  • Finalizing the microgrants program with ten product ideas scoped.

  • Progressing towards possible liquidity and inflation proposals by late November.

  • Visual Ecosystem Opportunity Roadmap, a precursor to the contributor hub.

Budget

The Transformation SPE is currently being capitalized to cover incurred expenses. Due to the change in LPT price from the time of the proposal, we have made adjustments to stay within budget (deliverables are unaffected). We will provide a full accounting in the next update.

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November - Status update

The Transformation SPE is actively towards completion of key deliverables, including two proposals around capital management, two builder activations, and further alignment around coordinating development activity.

November was a major month, let’s dive into what happened.

Release Notes

Capital Workstream

Deliverable

Builders Workstream

Deliverable

  • Launch New Livepeer Builders Knowledge Hub

    • Website information architecture and documentation content are now confirmed. Follow docs progress here and checkout our work in progress

  • Builder Activation: Devconnect Buenos Aires

    • Multiple collaboration opportunities have been identified with partners such as Arweave, Story Protocol, Lambda Class and others, and are currently being explored.
    • A curated list of builders we met in Buenos Aires is now being retargeted by our Builders Lead to onboard new use cases to the network.
    • The AI x Open Media Forum break out sessions delivered strong outcomes and directions from the ecosystem peers. Highlights are available here:

  • Builder Activation: Encode London

Development Workstream

Deliverable

  • Create a New Core Contributor Coordination Function & Hub
    • Ecosystem wide PM is in the process of meeting with key contributors and gathering requirements from design partners to draft the opportunities. Check the work in progress for opportunities roadmap here
  • Make Critical Explorer Improvements (via RFP)
  • Steward Payments Clearinghouse Roadmap & Prototype With Local SDK
    • Initial work to simplify the payment processor is complete.
    • The team is now implementing the remaining go-livepeer changes, including remote signer endpoints on the orchestrator and the LivePaymentSender on the gateway.
    • Draft of the technical specification for the first local SDKs for the new signer is set to begin once remaining implementation is completed.

Up Next

  • Capital Management Proposal.
  • Finalize Visual Ecosystem Opportunity Roadmap and feature request platform.
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December - Status update

December focused on steady progress across capital, builder, and development workstreams.

Work continued on capital proposals, documentation improvements, roadmap coordination, and core infrastructure delivery, with several initiatives moving into position for next phases.

Release Notes

Capital Workstream

Deliverable

Capital Markets Working Group is progressing towards three proposals:

  • Treasury Reward Cut
  • Liquidity
    • Proposal to improve Dex liquidity was delayed to allow sequencing of Treasury Reward Cut proposal first. Continuing to clarify questions as needed.
  • Inflation
    • No releases in December

Builders Workstream

Deliverable

  • Improve builder onboarding
    • Docs have been significantly restructured to improve onboarding, clarity, and long-term maintainability, with more automation and cleaner separation between guides and reference docs. For more details check the latest update here
  • Builder activation
    • No releases in December

Development Workstream

Deliverable

Up Next

  • Capital markets proposals
  • Protocol SPE proposal
  • Explorer milestone three
  • Partnerships and microgrants
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January - Status update

January focused on governance progress, new ecosystem partnerships and MOUs, and core infrastructure delivery.

Let’s dive into the details.

Release Notes

Capital Workstream

Deliverable

Capital Markets Working Group has passed 1 of the core proposals, with others still in progress but delayed:

  • Treasury Reward Cut
    • LIP-101 Proposal for the Treasury reward cut was approved and the Treasury is accruing more LPT
  • Liquidity
    • Discussions on proposal to improve Dex liquidity were reopened after treasury rate cut question was answered. However, current price and total treasury value make a large proposal like this more uncertain. We have further delayed and will provide updates soon
  • Inflation
    • Inflation LIP PR was posted on Github and pre-proposal was opened for discussion

Builders Workstream

Deliverable

  • The Docs public demo is now live.
  • Began collaboration with XMTP to bring Livepeer into messaging and distribution layers for open and AI-native media. Check our announcement for more details.
  • Started work with Ar.io (Arweave) to connect Livepeer with permanent storage and provenance infrastructure for the open media stack. More details are available in our announcement.
  • Signed an MOU with minidev to support Livepeer adoption in vibe-coding and AI-first developer workflows across open social ecosystems.
  • Signed an MOU with Spritz Chat to power chat-native media experiences using Livepeer streaming.

Development Workstream

Deliverables

Up Next

  • Docs new version
  • Transformation SPE retrospective
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Reviewing the Transformation SPE and Learnings for the Ecosystem

The Transformation SPE was established to accelerate delivery of key workstreams, distribute work and funding to end users, and demonstrate a healthy SPE model. Over the course of the SPE we made meaningful progress on each of these, while falling short in other areas where we’d probably not done the necessary groundwork to understand our overall readiness. The SPE closes having delivered value within budget and with learnings that can further shape how SPEs and the Foundation can maximise their impact in future.

Key Learnings

Scope discipline is critical.

Splitting one SPE across Capital, Builders, and Development was too ambitious and brought challenges around attention and context-switching which have real costs that make life harder.

The real benefit of an SPE is it becoming a focal point for many aligned contributors to coordinate closely and deliver core functional impact in one specific area. The Protocol SPE is a great example of this tight scope and clear focus, as would be a future Network-as-a-Product Development SPE that can own that product achitecture and development end-to-end.

Focused effort compounds.

Building on the above, concentrated effort on a well-defined agenda produces real network-level change. Tangible outcomes came from the capital workstream, if still a bit slower and less comprehensive than we would have liked. This agenda was well known as needing support, but until the Transformation SPE it had no “owner”. By acting as a steward for this and engaging the right talent on different steps, we were able to move forward proposals that had sat somewhat idle in the previous period. By bringing focus to what matters SPEs can make solid progress.

RFPs are a great mechanism.

The RFP process proved itself — Explorer, Devconnect, Docs and to a lesser extent the Protocol SPE all moved through it effectively. It created a direct link between deliverables and milestone based payouts that could be effectively enforced to ensure accountability for outputs and results.

This is the right model for attracting new talent and allocating work across the ecosystem going forward, and should be a part of the process and systems of all SPEs where allocating work to new parties is critical.

The Foundation’s identity is clearer.

This SPE surfaced what the Foundation does best: attracting talent, running credibly neutral processes, providing shared infrastructure, and maintaining transparency and coordination across different participants. The Foundation should not be such a deep executor, and not spread its direct focus across such a breadth of domains. We will aim to catalyse new efforts where they are needed, support teams to onboard and coordinate with others, and then find the right balance between keeping them accountable and giving teams space to ship.

Product clarity and readiness must precede builder programs.

We put builder infrastructure and GTM effort in place before the network product was defined and the intended audiences were clear. That sequencing error made it difficult for much of the Builders work to land.

We need to invest in and define the way we complete Product discovery first, and then focus on how we learn with (and onboard) those key customers. Running things in parallel sounds attractive, but often led to stop-start cycles as one part tried to catch up with the other. The new Network as a Product working group is a move in the right direction and allows for increased parallel processing and a focal point for discovery and builder acquisition to help us test and become a learning engine that drive increased pace.

Coordinaton is key to reduce silos and harness the power of the collective

Coordination and transparency improved as a direct result of this SPE. Publishing release notes, having the Technical PM work with project teams and help make new connections, and delivering the MVP of the public Roadmap are all a pre-cursor to more contributions to the ecosystem in a scalable way. Coordination must come from somewhere, and the Foundation is a credible and neutral entity to help the community on this path. This will remain a key focus for us moving foward.

So what’s Next

The idea of the Transformation SPE was to make rapid progress on key items. While we were able to do that, it highlighted important improvements still to go as we continue on the journey. With the Transformation SPE now closed, we’ll spend more time on trying to bring improvements to the operating system that supports governance and allocation of items against the the Livepeer Roadmap so more teams can be contributing directly. We’ll use these learnings from our own experiences with the SPE model, and the governance processes, to discuss broader “soft governance” enhancements that we think can make things clearer for voters, keep teams accountable, and allow people to focus on executing great work through a set of shared norms that keep us aligned.

There’s so many ways to invest in and improve the SPE model, the role of RFPs, the Roadmap, community proposed features and enhancements, the Foundation’s role as a coordinator and facilitator, and implementing high performance standards for teams that get us where we want to be as fast as possible. Focus, Speed and Coordination are as important as they were 4 months ago, and we have even more learnings to help Livepeer transform for the exciting future of realtime AI and video.

Transformation SPE Retro and Final Report

Commitments Scorecard

Deliverable Status
CAPITAL
Create a Capital Management working group :white_check_mark: We engaged a number of different small groups to work on various workstreams for proposals below
Make a proposal to increase DEX liquidity for LPT pairs on Arbitrum. :white_check_mark: Proposal made but paused due to funding constraints (for now!)
Make a proposal to adjust inflation for long term health. :white_check_mark: Proposal made
Make a proposal to keep/adjust the treasury cap and start accumulating LPT back into the treasury. :white_check_mark: Proposal passed
Actively manage capital to fund ecosystem operations and reduce risk :white_check_mark: Partnership to supporting project funding began
BUILDERS
Creating a new ecosystem development team focused on onboarding & supporting new builders :warning: Partial - Nick’s joined as builder lead to work on partnerships, and Ally won the RFP for the documentation updates.
However, we learned from core partnerships that onboarding to gateways needs further work and we need to do this . before further buildout of any team
Launch a new knowledge hub on the website to easy onboarding and technical support :warning: Partial — The Docs RFP was run and updates are provided within the V2 section of the docs portal. The Website needs more clarity on the ecosystem narrative and we have funded some work around this within the Foundation to help move foward.
Launch several key integrations with leading adjacent projects (e.g. Base, Zora, Eliza) within the GTM bets (e.g. open social or agent frameworks) :warning: Partial — We started co-development with XMTP on chat & streaming, AR.IO (Arweave) with provenance and also with Zora, but have not moved as fast as we would have liked.
Seed the ecosystem with pre-packaged grant ideas and potential startups in video & real-time AI. :warning: Partial — We have mapped out 10 buildable grant ideas but want to do more “readiness” work before moving these forward and spending funds on it
Microgrants Program + Buildable Ideas
Activate and connect with an IRL builder community during a major activation at ETH Devconnect :white_check_mark: We allocated the RFP for an IRL activation at Devconnect. The event was completed and brought good learnings for future. We’d like to improve attendance in future but this did create high visibility around the evening event.

https://blog.livepeer.org/ai-x-open-media-forum-building-new-wave-creativity/

https://forum.livepeer.org/t/rfp-devconnect-assembly/3101/6?u=nickhollins | | Scope a funding mechanism to scale and accelerate promising projects with large ambitions. | :cross_mark: Not started. We need more clarity on the network product and possible roadmap items around this | | DEVELOPMENT | | | Create a new core contributor coordination function & hub. | :white_check_mark: We established the Ecosystem PM role and launched the ecosystem roadmap to help create focus on contributions and support coordination | | Make a proposal to seed and structure a Protocol Development SPE. | :white_check_mark: Proposal passed and the Protocol SPE team are already shipping protocol upgrades | | Make critical explorer improvements (via RFP). | :white_check_mark: Explorer RFP allocated work and milestones completed. Huge thanks to this team being so responsive and visible at Watercoolers | | Publish initial core video primitives alignment spec | :cross_mark: This did not move forward | | Steward payments clearinghouse roadmap & prototype with local SDK | :white_check_mark: Local SDK is done and payment clearinghouse MVP launched. Key building blocks for the NaaP |

What We Delivered

Meaningful progress on the capital agenda. The Treasury is back on, Inflation discussions are ongoing and have highlighted other improvements around “emissions”. Outside factors continue to drive discussions around network health but internally we are better structured coming out of this SPE as it relates to the Capital agenda than going in

A working RFP model. An established as a credible, community-facing process for allocating work. Time to align it with the Roadmap priorities and ramp it up

More decentralised core development. The Explorer team and Protocol SPE (along with Cloud separately) all now support core development of the network increasing our decentralisation and resilience. The Protocol Development SPE is now seeded and running independently. The Explorer RFP delivered its milestones and the team ingrained themselves in the community through regular attendance at watercoolers, being responsive, and whacking bugs as fast as they could. The Local SDK and the remote signer (payment clearinghouse) will be key elements of the network as a product work in future phases.

Improved Transparency and Coordination infrastructure. Retros and release notes, a public Roadmap, and a Foundation that is trying to support and coordinate alignment rather than exert control

Devconnect activation was completed — the builder day attendance was ok but we found high visibility through aligning with “creators” for an evening in our event space. Lot’s of good learnings for future IRL activations.

Where we fell short

Builders was an area where things didn’t go to plan as much. The core reason being that the network product and our coordination and alignment between different teams, products and gateways wasn’t defined enough to support a real builder program. Onboarding teams to gateways required foundational work that wasn’t yet done. The integrations with XMTP, Arweave, and Zora have only just started, and there are still many questions about where and how we can further support scaling of projects.

Video primitives spec Not started and value to be reassessed

Payment clearinghouse delivered the Local SDK but didn’t produce the end-to-end state change originally intended. This is now in iteration by the NAAP teams.

Budget

We delivered the Transformation SPE under budget. Below is a full reconciliation against the approved budget items.

The Foundation managed program costs against its own balance sheet throughout, ensuring the SPE could meet obligations quickly across both crypto and fiat which was critical for a program of this nature. We ultimately made the decision to absorb Marketing and activation costs as that function transitioned to the Foundation during the project.

One important note is that we chose not to convert the SPE’s token grant to stablecoins at program outset, choosing instead to only draw down our tokens to stables when we knew what was needed. Selling at the beginning would have created unnecessary selling pressure on LPT for tokens we never intended to spend — running counter to our role as ecosystem stewards. We believe that was the right call. The tradeoff is that the surplus LPT we are returning to the treasury now is less in dollar terms today than when secured, but on a token relative basis we have come in approximately 19% under budget based on LPT returning to the Treasury.

The net result: 8334 LPT is being returned to treasury, with no selling pressure having come from the SPE during the program. The roles funded through the SPE — Mehrdad and Nick — will continue under the Foundation’s own budget going forward.

Line items Budget Description Expenses accrued Actual Still Due Notes
Capital Workstream Lead $ - Cost covered by Foundation
Capital Working Group team members - 6 months $ 36,000 To pay for contributors Capital Proposal teams Absorbed by Livepeer Foundation
Builders Workstream Lead $ - Cost covered by Foundation
Builders Marketing Lead $ - Cost covered by Foundation
Builders Marketing Team, Livepeer Inc $ - Costs covered by Foundation
Builders Developer Relations $ 30,000 RFP Docs: Ally $18,500 $6,250
Builders Builders Lead $ 40,000 4-month contract (Sep → Jan) FTE: BD & Partnerships $40,000
Builders Event Agency + Activation $ 40,000 Based in Argentina for Devconnect RFP Activation: Refraction Absorbed by Livepeer Foundation
Builders Builder Grants Q4 $ 30,000 Separate grants for builder activations Encode Hackathon Absorbed by Livepeer Foundation
Development Workstream Lead $ - Covered by Foundation
Development Ecosystem Data Researcher $ - Covered by Foundation
Development Protocol Development SPE $ - To be scoped and funded via separate proposal
Development Contributor Function Lead $ 25,000 3-month contract FTE: Ecosystem PM $28,000
Development Explorer Maintainance & Improvements (RFP) $ 40,000 4-month contract for stabilization & modernization RFP Milestones: Raidguild $38,000
Development Payments Clearinghouse Lead $ - Itnernal FTE’s for design roadmap and execution
Development Software Engineers $ 60,000 2-month x 2FTE - build payments prototype + Local SDK Dev FTE - 1 month $9,100
Budget Stables $ 301,000 $ 133,600 $ 6,250
Budget LPT (Proposal) 44,500 36165
LPT to return to Treasury 8334
(19% under budget)

Onchain transactions

Acknowledgements

As it is with the SPE design, the SPE is not the end recipient of the funding because it is simply coordinating the contributions of many different people. All of the impact here was made by contributions from across the ecosystem including the Foundation and Livepeer Inc. A special thanks to everyone who contributed directly to the Transformation SPE — including Raidguild (especially EC Wireless), Ally, Andrew, Refraction, Nick, Mehrdad, Josh and John. Thanks for all the hard work and the learnings that will help us all as we move onto future phases of the SPE model.

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