How To Get Livepeer Token During the Claim Period Starting July 26th
This post was authored by Livepeer Director of Operations, Raffi Sapire.
On April 30th, Livepeer launched to Ethereum’s main net, and the protocol specified that 63% of the total Livepeer Token would be generated by the community. The protocol made this 6.3 million token available to any account that had 0.1 ETH as of March 16th, which resulted in about 2.6 million Ethereum accounts being eligible for initial LPT. For 3 months, each of these accounts had the opportunity to claim their 2.4 LPT:
During the three month slow start period, only the account owner could claim their token, but starting July 26th, these tokens are available for anyone to claim on a first-come first-serve basis. You can claim them using the Livepeer Miner, or more technical users can write a script to claim more tokens.
Each time you claim tokens on behalf of an unclaimed account, the LPT is split between you, the caller, and the original account owner whom you mine token for, in proportion to how far into the claim period we are. Early on, the portion you get as the caller is very small, but it grows over time with each passing block in the 15 month (2.5M block) claim period. As an example, 500,000 blocks into the claim period, the caller would get 500,000 / 2,500,000 * 2.44 LPT, or 1/5th of the 2.44 LPT == 0.49 LPT for one single proof.
The original account owner would get the rest. The portion of LPT the caller receives grows proportionally with every block that passes between the start block on July 26th.
A tradeoff between time, scarcity, and inflation
Given the scarcity of LPT, they will be available on a first come first serve basis.The number of token you receive will depend on how much time has passed in the claim period and how many accounts you submit proofs in order to mine for. The cost to submit this set of proofs will depend on the gas price at the time. The more time that passes, the more time that you are not earning inflationary LPT by bonding your token.
Every time you click “Get Token” on the Livepeer Miner you claim LPT for 20 unclaimed accounts. The application submits a set of 20 proofs for 20 accounts, and claims a portion of the token from each of these accounts.
You can claim as many of the eligible unclaimed accounts as you want by mining LPT tokens multiple times or writing a script that claims more accounts.
How to Get Livepeer Token
There are two high level steps to participating in the Livepeer Network 1) Get token and 2) Bond Token. Using the Livepeer Miner you can get token in 3 Steps.
- Log in to Web 3 Wallet. You will need a Web3 wallet such as MetaMask with enough Ethereum to pay for the Gas cost of executing the smart contracts that generate LPT tokens. If you don’t have one you can follow these steps.
- Set Mining Parameters. Select your gas price. If your gas price is too low, the transaction might take longer or miners might not process your transaction.
- Earn LPT tokens. The Livepeer Mining smart contract will generate 2.4 LPT in each of the eligible Ethereum addresses. A portion of LPT generated will be allocated to you for claiming the address.
