Livepeer

Livepeer was founded by Doug Petkanics and Eric Tang. Doug Petkanics has a computer science degree from the University of Pennsylvania and has been involved in several tech startups like Groupon and Wildcard. Eric Tang graduated with an electrical and computer engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University and has prior experience working at companies like Next Jump and Clickable. The two founders previously collaborated on projects like Hyperpublic and Wildcard before co-founding Livepeer.

Livepeer is unique in its approach to disrupting the live video streaming industry by leveraging blockchain technology. The open-source nature of the platform allows users and developers to freely participate in its management and improvement. Livepeer aims to boost the growing capabilities of digital cameras and high-quality video content production by providing decentralized computing power and crypto-economic incentives to bootstrap and maintain the network. The platform offers various use cases such as pay-as-you-go content consumption, auto-scaling social video services, uncensorable live journalism, and video-enabled decentralized applications.

Livepeer utilizes a modified version of the delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism to secure its network. In a DPoS system, the validation of new blocks on the blockchain is based on the number of coins staked, rather than the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) used by Bitcoin. This makes the Livepeer network more energy-efficient and scalable. Additionally, Livepeer benefits from the established DApp ecosystem of the Ethereum blockchain, on which it is built.