October packed with firsts for Livepeer

October was a month of firsts for Livepeer. We made our first acquisition, commissioned our first NFT, and logged our first week above 3.6 million minutes. And that momentum carried us through to NFT.NYC last week, where we co-hosted COLLIDE, the first-ever concert with live NFT minting.

So we have a lot to share, including a few sneak peeks into what promises to be an equally news-packed November. Let’s dive right in:

MistServer acquisition: Mid-month, we unveiled Livepeer Inc.’s first-ever acquisition: MistServer, a media server created by video developers for video developers. The powerful combination of Livepeer’s infrastructure with Mist’s open video offering — which includes additional video ingest and origin protocols, video on demand (VOD) and streaming workflows, and low latency solutions — will offer broadcasters a clear alternative to high-cost cloud providers. The product and engineering organization of Amsterdam-based DDVTech B.V., developers of MistServer, will join Livepeer’s core team, growing it to 32. This expanded team will focus its energies on a unified product roadmap, including full network integration of MistServer’s features. With MistServer, we expect a rapid jump in demand-side adoption of the network, to the benefit of our orchestrators.

Confluence: Our proposed protocol upgrade, Confluence, moved closer to a final draft this month when the core team filed a pair of pre-proposals for community feedback. Confluence’s twin goals are to cut Ethereum gas fees for orchestrators and to sharply lower network usage costs for broadcasters. Confluence includes two big changes:

• A new staking contract with support for gas-efficient delegation share-based accounting and the ability to delegate to multiple node operators at once.
• A migration from protocol contracts on Ethereum (Layer 1) to protocol contracts on a lower-cost domain (Layer 2).

You can find the pre-proposal for the Confluence StakingManager here and the pre-proposal for a L1 <> L2 migration workflow here. If both win community support, a full LIP draft will follow. This will move through the rest of the process, culminating in a community vote. Learn more about Livepeer governance and the LIP process here.

ETHOnline winners: At the close of ETHOnline, ETHGlobal’s largest annual event, on October 15th, three inspired hacks walked away with a share of $8,000 in Livepeer-sponsored bounties. The winners included Huddle 01, a decentralized video conferencing platform, DBeats, a decentralized community for creators, and ColorPixels, a streaming platform that supports the minting and selling of NFT clips with embedded royalties. We were so impressed by the huge creativity of the entrants that we also invited four runners-up to apply for Community Node Grants to fund development efforts. NFTs loomed large in the Livepeer-inspired projects, with two of three winners and two of four runners-up focused on new ways for creators to use them to generate revenue.

Our first NFT: As part of the run-up to NFT.NYC (November 1st to 4th) Livepeer Grants commissioned @helloimpakt to create the community’s first-ever video NFT. The NFT, which went up for auction on November 1st, honors the node operators who power the world’s open video infrastructure. Proceeds will go to Livepeer’s top-performing video transcoders. You can check out the bidding results here.

Preparations for COLLIDE at NFT.NYC: Livepeer and Glass, the streaming platform that gives creators power over their content, joined forces to present COLLIDE, the first-ever concert with live NFT minting. COLLIDE took place in both the real and the digital world and audience-captured video NFTs were made available for purchase in real-time at OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace.

New transcoding milestone: In the seven days from October 3rd through October 9th, Livepeer blew past previous records by transcoding 3.63 million minutes of video. The network has consistently processed more than 2 million minutes per week since the start of September. This uptick in activity is a great sign for the health of the network, which has grown robustly since first surpassing 1 million minutes in May.

We’ll have lots more for you in the November roundup, including more on Confluence and an update on COLLIDE.

Stay tuned and get started with Livepeer!