Livepeer raises $20M for blockchain-based livestreaming

Livepeer Inc., a decentralized video streaming network built on the Ethereum blockchain, today announced it raised $20 million in funding led by Digital Currency Group.

The Series B funding round was joined by Coinbase Ventures, Coinfund, Northzone, Mike Dudas’ 6th Man Ventures and Animal Ventures.

Livepeer was founded in 2017 as a decentralized video streaming network built on Ethereum targeting the livestreaming market, which is dominated by giants such as Amazon Inc.’s Twitch and Google LLC’s YouTube.

Through the use of blockchain technology, Livepeer’s marketplace uses incentives to bring together people with extra computing power, in this case, graphics cards, with broadcasters who need videos transcoded. Users who provide graphics power get paid in a cryptocurrency token, which can be exchanged for real-world money.

According to Livepeer co-founder and Chief Executive Doug Petkanics, the network features more than 70,000 graphics processing units, which represents enough aggregated power to encode all the videos streaming through Twitch and YouTube combined.

“In creating an open market run by a decentralized network of active participants, Livepeer’s transcoding can be 10 times cheaper (or more) than centralized alternatives such as Amazon Web Services,” said Petkanics.

Video transcoding is the conversion of one video format to another — this is often done during the video streaming process to ensure the best viewing experience on the internet due to compression and bandwidth needs.

With the power of this network, Livepeer recently passed a significant milestone: a record 2.3 million minutes streamed in a single week, a six-fold increase from the start of 2021.

The decentralized nature of Livepeer’s on-demand platform provides a highly scalable streaming infrastructure at a cost-effective price for app developers to tap into. It’s a fast-growing market, which is not at the whims of big tech, and the company believes it can provide a different way to participate in content economies.

“Livepeer’s easy-to-use live streaming application user interface will transform how content will be distributed, saving video creators from needless inflated infrastructure costs while unlocking the power of a decentralized network of video tools,” said 6th Man Ventures partner Mike Dudas.

The company said that the funding will be used to expand the team and also work toward building out the Livepeer protocol. This means advancing the new use cases such as scene classification, object recognition, song-title detection and video fingerprinting.

Image: Livepeer