The End of the Initial Livepeer Token Distribution

Livepeer’s mainnet launch and coinciding allocation of token prioritized open access and wide distribution to users who wished to participate. The distribution mechanism used we used to achieve this goal is called a Merklemine. This post contains an overview of the initial distribution as well as links for context for new community members. It is important to note that the merklemine was just the genesis state; we are in the early days of the network and the inflationary stake based protocol rewards participation. Those who participate in the network as token holders and transcoders earn inflationary token every day. While the initial distribution is complete, you can still get LPT and become a network participant today.

Mainnet Launch and Token Distribution

Livepeer launched to Ethereum mainnet on April 30th, 2018. Read about the launch here. To summarize, the genesis state specified the rules for generation of 10,000,000 initial LPT, of which 63% of token was allocated to the community.

• Slow Start. Beginning April 30th, 2018, any ETH private key wallet holder with at least 0.1 ETH on March 16, 2018 was able to generate a proof and 2.44 LPT. Approximately 2.59 million ETH account holders qualified to claim token. For the first 3 months after launch, only the specified account holder could claim their 2.44 LPT
• Claim Period. As of July 26th, 2018, the Livepeer protocol specified that the 2.44 LPT could be generated into 2.59M Ethereum accounts totaling a release of 6.3M LPT. These tokens were available for anyone to claim on a first-come first-serve basis. We built a DApp that enabled users to claim 20 accounts at a time using the Livepeer Miner, and many developers wrote a programming script to claim more tokens.

About the Merklemine

The Livepeer merklemine has concluded, but the following context may be helpful for those interested in the mechanism

• Introducing the Merklemine
• Technical: The Economics of Generating Livepeer Token
• Cryptoeconomics as a Case Study of Active Participation, Coinfund

Livepeer Token Distribution as Specified by Protocol

Core team and pre-sale participants will be vesting over time, such that no centralized parties ever control a majority of the distributed token used for staking within the Livepeer network. The token pool will be distributed as follows:

• Founders and early team: 12.35% — vesting over 36 months from network launch.
• Pre-sale purchasers: 19% — vesting over 18 months from network launch. Purchasers have facilitated 3 years of runway for Livepeer’s lean, engineering focused core team.
• Crowd: 63.437% — generated over 3–18 months using the MerkleMine algorithm.
• Grant: 0.213% — immediate issued to a couple early advisors and contributors who helped Livepeer get off the ground.
• Long term project endowment: 5% — to be used to ensure the longevity of the Livepeer project.

The estimated token generation over the next 36 months looks as follows:

For those looking to participate in the network, some good next steps are to:

• Learn how the network works at livepeer.org/token
• Join the discussion on Discord Chat, Reddit, or our forum.
• Read the accompanying post about Livepeer’s Path to Decentralization.