ETHOnline Winners Include Livepeer Hacks for NFTs, Video Conferencing, and Live Chat

Livepeer divided $8000 in bounties among a trio of outstanding projects at the close of ETHOnline, the largest ETHGlobal event of 2021. To emphasize the importance of stimulating a robust pipeline of livestreaming hacks, the grants committee also invited four runners-up to apply for Livepeer Community Node Grants to fund their ongoing development efforts.

The creativity on display at the nearly month-long hackathon that ran from September 17th to October 15th was phenomenal.

Livepeer co-founder Eric Tang helped kick off proceedings with a workshop where he talked about the importance of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in helping creators take back control of their content from Big Tech platforms.

The community witnessed ample evidence of the growing interest in NFTs during the event that followed, with two of the three Livepeer winners and two of the four runners-up exploring new ways for creators to use them to generate new sources of revenue.

So which were the three projects that stood out the most for us at ETHOnline?

The judges’ top pick was Huddle 01, a decentralized video conferencing platform that leverages Livepeer’s scalability to support meetings of unlimited size — a feature in hot demand in the new world of hybrid working and education. The Huddle team has been on the Livepeer podium before: at ETHGlobal’s Web3 Weekend in June, where they tied for third spot.

ETHOnline second-place finisher DBeats, a decentralized community for creators, has also been a Livepeer winner in the past. It was one of five projects that shared in a bounty pool at HackFS just last month. We caught up with founder Rushikesh Kardile after ETHOnline, which marked a one-year anniversary for DBeats.

“Last year at ETHOnline was the first time I discussed this plan with my team,” he said.

Livepeer is an essential part of several existing and planned DBeats features, particularly to one the team worked on at this year’s ETHOnline: the ability for an artist or gamer to instantly mint an NFT token of all or part of a livestream, which they can then sell on to fans or earn royalties from in future.

With DBeats and Livepeer, creatives will also be able to stream content on up to five platforms at one time. The project now supports a total of 15, from Twitch to YouTube and Facebook, and plans to expand this over time.

Another key DBeats offering — virtual music venues where users can attend live concerts by their favorite artists — is just a few months off, and Livepeer will “definitely” be essential to that as well.

“Every piece of infrastructure we are using right now is decentralized. From hosting to user log-in and data management — everything we are using is decentralized. So it would be a hole in the ship if we used a centralized platform for streaming,” Rushikesh said.

He plans to take the project to two more hackathons, which he says are important both for creativity and for the massive exposure they offer to others in the Web3 world.

Rounding out the field was the streaming platform ColorPixels, which wants to help artists earn more for their creations by minting and selling NFT clips with embedded royalties. The ColorPixels team believes that creators will be able to offer the world “more and better content” if they can earn a decent sum for their efforts.

The runners-up, all of whom are invited by the grants committee to apply for a Livepeer development grant, were:

Ethrtainment Live — A decentralized hosting platform that will allow viewers to buy NFT passes to livestreamed events.

Lisky — A streaming protocol with a live chat function that hopes to be a decentralized alternative to dominant centralized players such as Twitch and YouTube.

Unstoppable Streams — A platform that will offer live streams, NFT clips and tickets, along with random prize giveaways to viewers.

VideoFlowOnline — A project aimed at allowing broadcasters of all types to stream video online for viewers who pay tokens or money for access.

ETHOnline was one of the highlights of an awesome year for Livepeer hacks. The whole community has a lot to look forward to with the brilliant ideas yet to come.

So get creating with Livepeer!