What Is Livepeer?

## What Is Livepeer (LPT)?

Launched in 2017, Livepeer is the first live video streaming network protocol that is fully decentralized. The platform aims to become a viable [blockchain](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/blockchain)-based, economically efficient alternative to centralized broadcasting solutions for all new and existing broadcaster companies. 

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of [Livepeer](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-livepeer).

As stated in the [official Livepeer whitepaper](https://github.com/livepeer/wiki/blob/master/WHITEPAPER.md#introduction-and-background), the live video streaming and broadcasting industry is growing at a rapid pace, and the company is looking to ride this wave and introduce decentralization to the environment. Livepeer aims to streamline the broadcasting process by allowing producers to submit their work on the platform, taking care of reformatting and distributing the content to users and streaming platforms. 


### Who Are the Founders of Livepeer?

Livepeer is an open-source protocol, which means that developers can freely contribute to the underlying code on GitHub. Livepeer Inc is the legal entity behind the Livepeer platform. Livepeer Inc was founded by [Doug Petkanics](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougpetkanics/) and [Eric Tang](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericxtang/).

Doug Petkanics graduated with a degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. Since then, he has been an integral part of several big names like Groupon and Wildcard. In 2006, he joined Accenture as an analyst, and in 2010 he co-founded Hyperpublic, which Groupon later acquired. In 2013, Petkanics co-founded Wildcard, a publishing platform, and web browser. Since 2016, he has been at the center of development for Livepeer.

Eric Tang graduated with a degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2008, he joined Next Jump as a software developer, and in 2010 he became a product manager for Clickable. In 2010, he teamed up with Doug Petkanics and co-founded Hyperpublic. Since then, the duo has worked together on Wildcard and later on Livepeer. 


#### What Makes Livepeer Unique?

Livepeer is a unique project because it aims to revolutionize the broadcasting industry by employing the powers of blockchain technology. The open-source platform allows users and developers to participate in the management and improvement of the platform freely. The growing capabilities of digital cameras for producing high-quality video content drive the development of the broadcasting industry, and Livepeer aims to further boost this process by allowing users to benefit from decentralized computing power and crypto-economic incentives for bootstrapping and participation.

Livepeer is becoming a leading industry platform, as it allows users to participate in numerous ways. The platform offers opportunities for pay-as-you-go content consumption, auto-scaling social video services, uncensorable live journalism, and video-enabled [DApps](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/how-to-access-dapps-on-your-mobile-phone). Livepeer is transforming the live video streaming process and is on the road to becoming an industry leader. 


#### Related Pages:

Read more about [Basic Attention Token](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/basic-attention-token/).

Find out more about [NEAR protocol](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/near-protocol/).

Learn more about [transactions](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/transaction-tx) on the blockchain.

Have a look at the [CoinMarketCap blog](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/blog).


#### How Many Livepeer (LPT) Coins Are There in Circulation?

Livepeer has a maximum supply of 22,906,951 LTP tokens and a total supply of 22,859,012 LTP tokens. The circulating supply is 21,164,655 LPT.

Of the total supply, founders and early team members split amongst themselves about 12.35%, which has a vesting period of 36 months from network launch. Another 19% of tokens were directed towards pre-sale purchases. The largest amount of tokens, 63.437%, was distributed towards crowd sales. Finally, 5% of the total token supply is reserved for maintaining the Livepeer network, ensuring the project’s future development. 


### How Is the Livepeer Network Secured?

As Livepeer is built on the [Ethereum](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/) blockchain, the platform utilizes a modified version of a delegated proof-of-stake ([DPoS](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/delegated-proof-of-stake-dpos)) consensus mechanism. In a DPoS mechanism, there is no mining at all. Instead, the validation of new blocks on the blockchain happens based on the number of coins staked. 

This is what differentiates Livepeer from consensus mechanisms as the one Bitcoin uses. While Bitcoin’s proof-of-work ([PoW](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/proof-of-work-pow)) mechanism requires a large amount of electrical and computing power, the DPoS systems are more ecologically conscious and easily scalable. Not only that, LIvepeer benefits from the extensive DApp universe already established by the Ethereum blockchain, which further boosts the usability of the network. 


### Where Can You Buy Livepeer (LPT)?

Livepeer (LPT) tokens are becoming an increasingly sought-after asset, which is why more exchanges are starting to offer trading pairs with the cryptocurrency. If you are looking to purchase LPT, your best bet is [Gate.io](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/gate-io/).

Other recommended exchanges include:



*   [Poloniex](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/poloniex/)
*   [OKEx](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okex/)
*   [Sushiswap](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/sushiswap/)

It is important to note that purchasing cryptocurrency bears risk, just like investing in any other asset. 

[Find more information here](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/) about buying cryptos.


Livepeer

Trust Wallet

MetaMask

Atomic wallet

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

UNUS SED LEO

Uniswap

Axelar

Synthetix

Ocean Protocol

Decentraland

dYdX (ethDYDX)

Curve DAO Token

Nexo

AIOZ Network

Tether Gold

ApeCoin

MELD

socrates

Medifakt

Sipher

Vector

Storj, pronounced as “storage,” is an open-source cloud storage platform. Basically, it uses a decentralized network of nodes to host user data. The platform also secures hosted data using advanced encryption.

In a white paper published in December,2014, Storj was first introduced to the world as a concept. It was to be a decentralized peer-to-peer encrypted cloud storage platform.

Two years later, an updated white paper was published. Here, a decentralized network  — connecting users who need cloud storage space with those who have hard drive space to sell — was described. The platform was launched in late 2018.

People with hard drive space and good internet connectivity can participate in the network. They become a unit in the network, called a node. Space providers are rewarded by Storj tokens.

Storj

Compound is a DeFi lending protocol that allows users to earn interest on their cryptocurrencies by depositing them into one of several pools supported by the platform.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Compound.

When a user deposits tokens to a Compound pool, they receive cTokens in return. These cTokens represent the individual’s stake in the pool and can be used to redeem the underlying cryptocurrency initially deposited into the pool at any time. For example, by depositing ETH into a pool, you will receive cETH in return. Over time, the exchange rate of these cTokens to the underlying asset increases, which means you can redeem them for more of the underlying asset than you initially put in — this is how the interest is distributed.

On the flip side, borrowers can take a secured loan from any Compound pool by depositing collateral. The maximum loan-to-value (LTV) ratio varies based on the collateral asset, but currently ranges from 50 to 75%. The interest rate paid varies by borrowed asset and borrowers can face automatic liquidation if their collateral falls below a specific maintenance threshold.

Since the launch of the Compound mainnet in September 2018, the platform has skyrocketed in popularity, and recently passed more than $800 million in total locked value.

Compound

UMA was founded in 2018 by Allison Lu and Hart Lambur, two ex Goldman Sachs traders, with the goal of making global markets universally fair, accessible, secure and decentralized.

The team drew inspiration from traditional finance derivatives to define an open-source protocol to allow anyone, anywhere, to design and build trustless financial contracts.

Basic Attention Token, or BAT, is the token that powers a new blockchain-based digital advertising platform designed to fairly reward users for their attention, while providing advertisers with a better return on their ad spend.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Basic Attention Token.

This experience is delivered through the Brave Browser, where users can watch privacy-preserving adverts and receive BAT rewards for doing so. On the other hand, advertisers can deliver targeted ads to maximize engagement and cut down losses due to ad fraud and abuse.

The Basic Attention Token itself is the unit of reward in this advertising ecosystem, and is exchanged between advertisers, publishers and users. Advertisers pay for their advertising campaigns in BAT tokens. Out of this budget, a small portion is distributed to advertisers, while 70% is distributed to users — whereas the intermediaries that typically drive up advertising costs are cut out of the equation to improve cost-efficiency.

Basic Attention Token launched in 2017 following one of the fastest sell-out initial coin offerings (ICOs) of all time, with the platform raising a total of $35 million in under a minute. Since then, it has rolled out its attention-based advertising experience to users in most countries through its Brave Rewards program.

As of November 2020, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada had the most active advertising campaigns.

Basic Attention Token

Audius is a decentralized music streaming protocol initially built on POA network, but now living on Solana. Audius was launched to remedy the inefficiencies of the music industry, which is plagued by intransparent music rights ownership and intermediaries standing between artists and their audience.

Audius aims to align the interests of artists, fans, and node operators through its platform powered by its native AUDIO token. Artists can upload music, stored and distributed by content and discovery nodes, that fans can listen to for free. Currently, Audius rewards content creators through rewards like featuring in the weekly trending lists. In the future, it plans to integrate stablecoins for artists to offer paid content, as well as artist tokens that give fans the ability to access exclusive content, potentially cooperating with platforms like Rally.

Audius

Synthetix is building a decentralized liquidity provisioning protocol that any protocol can tap into for various purposes. Its deep liquidity and low fees serve as a backend for many exciting protocols on both Optimism and Ethereum. Many user-facing protocols in the Synthetix ecosystem, such as Kwenta (Spot and Futures), Lyra (Options), Polynomial (Automated Options), and 1inch & Curve (Atomic Swaps), tap into Synthetix liquidity to power their protocols. Synthetix is built on Optimism and Ethereum mainnet. The Synthetix Network is collateralized by SNX, ETH, and LUSD, enabling the issuance of synthetic assets (Synths). Synths track and provide returns on the underlying asset without requiring one to directly hold the asset. This pooled collateral enables an array of on-chain, composable financial instruments backed by liquidity from Synthetix. Some of the most exciting upcoming releases from SNX are Perps V2, which hopes to enable low-fee on-chain futures trading through the usage of off-chain oracles, and Synthetix V3, which aims to rebuild the protocol to achieve its earliest goal, being a fully permissionless derivatives protocol. Learn more about Synthetix on their blog or by joining the SNX Discord.

The platform aims to broaden the cryptocurrency space by introducing non-blockchain assets, providing access to a more robust financial market.

Arweave is a decentralized storage network that seeks to offer a platform for the indefinite storage of data. Describing itself as "a collectively owned hard drive that never forgets," the network primarily hosts "the permaweb" — a permanent, decentralized web with a number of community-driven applications and platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Arweave.

The Arweave network uses a native cryptocurrency, AR, to pay "miners" to indefinitely store the network's information.

The project was first announced as Archain in August 2017, later rebranding to Arweave in February 2018 and officially launching in June 2018.

Arweave

LRC is the Ethereum-based cryptocurrency token of Loopring, an open protocol designed for the building of decentralized crypto exchanges.

In 2020, the average daily trading volume of the entire cryptocurrency market fluctuated in the approximate range of $50-$200 million. Most of that trading is conducted on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges — online platforms operated by private companies that store users’ funds and facilitate the matching of buy and sell orders.

Such platforms have a number of downsides common to all of them, so a new type of exchange — decentralized— has emerged to try to alleviate these disadvantages. However, fully decentralized exchanges are not without their own flaws.

Loopring’s purported goal is to combine centralized order matching with decentralized on-blockchain order settlement into a hybridized product that will take the best aspects of both centralized and decentralized exchanges.

LRC tokens became available to the public during an initial coin offering (ICO) in August 2017, while the Loopring protocol was first deployed on Ethereum mainnet in December 2019.

Loopring

Helium (HNT) is a decentralized blockchain-powered network for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Launched in July 2019, the Helium mainnet allows low-powered wireless devices to communicate with each other and send data across its network of nodes.

Nodes come in the form of so-called Hotspots, which are a combination of a wireless gateway and a blockchain mining device. Users who operate nodes thus mine and earn rewards in Helium’s native cryptocurrency token, HNT.

Helium’s goal is to prepare IoT communication for the future, identifying inadequacies in current infrastructure from its birth in 2013.

Helium

0x is an infrastructure protocol that allows users to easily trade ERC20 tokens and other assets on the many different blockchains (including Ethereum) without relying on centralized intermediaries. It is a protocol for decentralized exchange.

0x achieves this decentralized exchange functionality using a collection of open-source, publicly auditable smart contracts that work together to produce a flexible, low-friction trading protocol that developers can easily weave into their products.

The protocol is used by companies building web3 apps such as wallets, DEXes, portfolio trackes, and others. It is a used by hundreds of developers for their projects. The protocol has facilitates over $200B in trading volume since its inception. One can track its usage in its dedicated https://explorer.0x.org/.

The protocol is powered by an ERC20 governance token known as ZRX. ZRX holders can participate in protocol governance, having direct power over protocol changes and its community treasury.

0x Protocol

The Graph is an indexing protocol for querying data for networks like Ethereum and IPFS, powering many applications in both DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem. Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, that applications can query using GraphQL to retrieve blockchain data. There is a hosted service in production that makes it easy for developers to get started building on The Graph and the decentralized network will be launching later this year. The Graph currently supports indexing data from Ethereum, IPFS and POA, with more networks coming soon.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of The Graph.

To date, over3,000 subgraphs have been deployed by thousands of developers, for DApps like Uniswap, Synthetix, Aragon, AAVE, Gnosis, Balancer, Livepeer, DAOstack, Decentraland and many others. The Graph usage has been growing at over 50% MoM and hit over 7 billion queries during the month of September 2020.

The Graph has a global community, including over 200 Indexer Nodes in the testnet and more than 2,000 Curators in the Curator Program as of October 2020. To fund network development, The Graph raised funds from community members, strategic VCs and influential individuals in the blockchain community including Coinbase Ventures, DCG, Framework, ParaFi Capital, CoinFund, DTC, Multicoin, Reciprocal Ventures, SPC, Tally Capital and others. The Graph Foundation also successfully completed a public GRT Sale with participation from 99 countries (not including the U.S.). To date as of November 2020, The Graph has raised ~$25M.

The Graph

Balancer is an automated market maker (AMM) that was developed on the Ethereum blockchain and launched in March 2020. It was able to raise a $3M seed round by Placeholder and Accomplice. Balancer protocol functions as a self-balancing weighted portfolio, price sensor and liquidity provider. It allows users to earn profits through its recently introduced token ($BAL) by contributing to customizable liquidity pools.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Balancer(https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-balancer.

The protocol operates a few types of pools:

Private pools give the owner governance over the pool, and make the person the sole contributor of liquidity to the pool. Also, all the parameters are mutable by the owner.

Shared pools are for those who want to become liquidity providers (LPs). The LPs are rewarded with the Balancer Pool Tokens (BPTs).

Smart pools are similar to private pools but are controlled by a smart contract. They also reward using BPTs and allow anyone to contribute liquidity to the pool.

Balancer

Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform that is able to take real-world data and supply it to on-chain applications, while also connecting APIs to smart-contracts to facilitate the exchange of information between on-chain and off-chain data sources.

By supplying reputable, verifiable real-world data to blockchains, Band Protocol unlocks a range of new use cases for developers to explore — since they can now use any type of real-world data as part of their decentralized application (DApp) logic, including sports, weather, random numbers, price feed data and more.

Band Protocol initially launched as an ERC-20 project on the Ethereum blockchain in September 2019, but transitioned to the Cosmos network in June 2020 with the release of Band Protocol 2.0. The new protocol is built on BandChain using the Cosmos SDK. Oracle nodes on BandChain not only relay data but are also involved in block production/validation, giving them a dual role.

BAND is the native token of the Band Protocol ecosystem and is used as collateral by validators involved in fulfilling data requests, as well as the main medium of exchange on BandChain — being used to paying for private data.

Band Protocol

ZEN is the governance and utility token for Horizen, a zero-knowledge-enabled network of blockchains powered by the largest node infrastructure in the industry. Blockchain interoperability is enabled by the Zendoo protocol, which uses SNARK-verification and allows for complete flexibility in sidechain type, consensus, and speed. Cryptographic verification of networked chains offers massive scale, and the network currently supports up to 10,000 sidechains with a throughput limit of 10,000,000 TPS.

Zendoo makes Horizen a permissionless network of blockchains. Developers can deploy their blockchains within the ecosystem using a variety of SDKs. In 2023, the ecosystem team launched Horizen EON, a public proof-of-stake sidechain and an EVM-compatible smart contracting platform that allows developers to efficiently build and deploy dapps on the Horizen ecosystem, while benefiting from the Ethereum ecosystem. Since going live with Horizen EON, DeFi projects including SpookySwap, Ascent Exchange, and Yuzu have successfully integrated into the Horizen ecosystem. Get started on Horizen EON today!

Horizen's native cryptocurrency, ZEN, is a mineable PoW coin currently trading on major exchanges, including Coinbase and Binance. ZEN can be staked to participate in Horizen's nearly 50,000 full node network.

While ZEN was previously a privacy token, following ZenIP 42204 in June of 2023, the network removed its existing privacy features in favor of moving towards a vision of adaptability and responsible, scalable growth.

Horizen

Curve is a decentralized exchange for stablecoins that uses an automated market maker (AMM) to manage liquidity.

Launched in January 2020, Curve is now synonymous with the decentralized finance (DeFi) phenomenon, and has seen significant growth in the second half of 2020.

In August, Curve launched a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), with CRV as its in-house token. The DAO uses Ethereum-based creation tool Aragon to connect multiple smart contracts used for users’ deposited liquidity. Issues such as governance, however, differ from Aragon in their weighting and other respects.

Mask Network is a protocol that allows its users to send encrypted messages over Twitter and Facebook. It essentially acts as a bridge between the internet and a decentralized network running on top.

Mask Network was initially launched in July 2019, with its first use case of allowing Facebook and Twitter users to encrypt posts on the social media platforms. It then raised $2 million in a funding round in November 2020, co-led by HashKey and Hash Global, and a further $3 million funding round in February 2021 with participation from Digital Currency Group and Fundamental Labs.

Now, Mask Network offers the ability to fund Gitcoin grant campaigns directly from Twitter, as well as plans to offer peer-to-peer payments and decentralized storage functionality. It is a decentralized portal that also allows users to use DApps like crypto payments, decentralized finance, decentralized storage, e-commerce (digital goods/NFTs) and decentralized organizations (DAO) over the top of existing social networks without migrating, creating what is referred to as a decentralized Applet (DApplet) ecosystem.

Mask Network

Self-described as "Polkadot's wild cousin," Kusama is an experimental blockchain platform that is designed to provide a massively interoperable and scalable framework for developers.

Kusama is built on Substrate — a blockchain building kit developed by Parity Technologies. Kusama has almost the same codebase as Polkadot — one of the most successful interoperable blockchains.

By deploying on Kusama, fast-paced projects gain access to a highly scalable, interoperable sharded network, with features that are not yet available on Polkadot. To that end, Kusama describes itself as a “canary network.”

The platform is designed to provide a testbed for developers looking to innovate and deploy their own blockchain and can be used as a preparatory network before launching on Polkadot — though many projects opt to stick with Kusama for their final product.

Kusama benefits from a low barrier to entry for deploying parachains, low bond requirements for validators, and is most commonly used by early-stage startups and for experimentation.

Kusama

Flow

What Is Ankr (ANKR)?

Ankr is a decentralized blockchain infrastructure provider that operates an array of nodes globally distributed across over 50 Proof-of-Stake networks. This infrastructure helps drive the growth of the crypto economy while powering a full suite of multi-chain tools for Web3 users:

Ankr Build
Ankr provides comprehensive blockchain developer solutions, including traditional APIs, a decentralized multi-chain network of public RPC nodes used to access blockchain data and execute code, and tools like Ankr Scan to view on-chain information across blockchains.

Ankr Earn
Ankr Earn makes staking, liquid staking, and other yield-earning opportunities easy and accessible to any crypto investor. Ankr creates the most scalable and decentralized staking infrastructure solution that aims to solve the capital inefficiency of Proof-of-Stake networks and similar blockchain consensus mechanisms.

Ankr Learn
Through Ankr’s learning tools, tutorials, and docs, anyone can become a better user or developer of blockchain-based systems.

Ankr

Filecoin is a decentralized storage system that aims to “store humanity’s most important information.” The project raised $205 million in an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017, and initially planned a launch date for mid-2019. However, the launch date for the Filecoin mainnet was pushed back until block 148,888, which is expected in mid-October 2020.

The project was first described back in 2014 as an incentive layer for the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a peer-to-peer storage network where users pay for data storage and distribution services in $FIL. Filecoin is open protocol and backed by a blockchain that records commitments made by the network’s participants, with transactions made using FIL, the blockchain’s native currency. The blockchain is based on both proof-of-replication and proof-of-spacetime.

Filecoin is open-source and decentralized, which means that all governance is in the hands of the community. On the Filecoin platform, developers have the opportunity to create cloud file storage services like Dropbox or iCloud. Anyone can join Filecoin and start storing their data or earn money by providing space for someone else's funds. The creators of Filecoin opted for their blockchain technology to run the network and their token with their own consensus.

$FIL is the native currency of Filecoin that powers the entire network and all processes. Clients pay for transactions in FIL tokens. Miners place FIL as collateral, guaranteeing their services.

The developers claim that Filecoin solves the problem of inefficient file storage and retrieval. Customers can find the right solution with an efficient set of tools and its core development, IPFS.