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Decentralized Video Protocol Livepeer Raises $20M to Take On Streaming Giants

Decentralized Video Protocol Livepeer Raises $20M to Take On Streaming Giants

Decentralized Video Protocol Livepeer Raises $20M to Take On Streaming Giants

Digital Currency Group, Coinbase Ventures and CoinFund were among those to join the latest funding round.

Digital Currency Group, Coinbase Ventures and CoinFund were among those to join the latest funding round.

Digital Currency Group, Coinbase Ventures and CoinFund were among those to join the latest funding round.

AccessTimeIconJul 29, 2021, 11:00 AM
Updated May 15, 2023, 1:45 PM

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Livepeer, a decentralized video transcoding platform built on Ethereum, has raised $20 million in a funding round led by Digital Currency Group (DCG).

DCG was joined in the Series B funding round by several other noteworthy investors in the crypto space including Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund and Northzone. (CoinDesk is an independent subsidiary of DCG.)

As the Web 3 ecosystem continues to grow, dapp developers are working on decentralized alternatives to everything from financial products to entertainment, including gaming and music-streaming. 

But many would-be decentralized streaming platforms and startups encounter trouble building with centralized infrastructure owned by tech giants like Amazon and Google, said Livepeer co-founder Doug Petkanics.

He said the marketplace allows for a symbiotic relationship between buyers and sellers that is incentivized by Livepeer’s native token, LPT, and is much cheaper than the services provided by mainstream alternatives.

Livepeer’s marketplace connects encoding providers – many of whom are crypto miners and data centers with otherwise unused capacity – to anyone who needs processing power for video services. Livepeer has an estimated 70,000 GPUs on its network.

“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 like Amazon Web Services,” CoinFund CEO Jake Brukhman said in a press statement.

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