Original title: "Exploring Blockchain Video Streaming Platforms》
Original Author: Agustinus Theodorus
Original compilation: ChinaDeFi
Original compilation: ChinaDeFi
Today, almost everyone is paying attention to video streaming, and the epidemic has accelerated the development of streaming platforms around the world. Popular video streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max have benefited from the industry's rapid growth. But there have been many failed attempts, including Quibi and CNN+.
At the end of the day, there are really two types of video streaming platforms: ad-based and subscription-based. An example of an advertising-based platform is YouTube, and a subscription-based example is Netflix. What is the silver lining of bridging the two platforms? The answer is centralization. As Netflix loses its market dominance, competition among subscription platforms has intensified, but advertising platforms remain under YouTube's monopoly.
Dissenters of the status quo often lament its closed algorithms that censor content. Without getting into some layers, the current ecosystem lacks transparency, thus giving rise to new types of platforms that are “censorship-resistant” and “decentralized.”
The question is how these new decentralized platforms can use technology as a guarantee for their ideals. The technical aspect is worth studying, and this article will cover that part.
What is decentralized video streaming?
Decentralized video streaming means that a single entity cannot control the content delivery of the streaming service. One must note the difference between decentralized and distributed video streaming to understand and differentiate the difference. Distributed video streaming means that the content delivery network is spread globally under the auspices of one entity, while decentralization removes control entirely. It creates a network where participants can agree on what the network will do, adding a layer of flexibility and empowering the community more.
Decentralized video streaming platforms are often community-owned. Blockchain enables ownership within the platform, which is the foundation of decentralization and provides the perfect base layer for applications. The blockchain layer is a thin layer that connects all the pieces through a decentralized ledger.
All off-chain transactions must submit a proof to the blockchain layer to verify that the transaction is legitimate. The blockchain becomes the single source of truth. Still, since blockchains cannot store complex data sources like videos or images, off-chain solutions like IPFS or simple peer-to-peer storage make the data available.
Peer-to-peer technology is a prerequisite for blockchain-based video streaming
While the blockchain becomes the base layer, a peer-to-peer protocol like IPFS or BitTorrent must be a prerequisite for full decentralization. This is because blockchains are inherently decentralized, and anyone can hold a copy of the entire blockchain if they decide to run their own nodes. But with filesystems, it's more difficult without using a peer-to-peer protocol.
Filesystems are usually centralized. Services such as Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3, and Azure Storage are valid proofs of centralized storage. But if you want to give users a completely decentralized experience, you cannot rely on this technology in a decentralized ecosystem.
Decentralized Video Streaming Technology Issues
Monetization and incentives remain prominent issues for decentralized video streaming platforms. Not because they can't make money, but compared to centralized platforms like YouTube, decentralized video streaming simply doesn't stand a chance. But this section will discuss technical issues rather than purely business model issues.
The first issues that come to mind are file storage and rights management, but space-related issues don't stop there. For example:
In a peer-to-peer network, users need to save video files and have a good internet connection for the peer-to-peer connection.
A decentralized ecosystem also requires the protection of copyrighted material created by original artists.
Checks and balances inhibit malicious users trying to disrupt the ecosystem.
Content-specific monetization schemes.
file storage problem
Peer-to-peer filesystems always suffer from file availability issues. Storage is expensive, and users won't host files on their systems without clear incentives, let alone maintain a healthy internet connection for other users to access.
Peer-to-peer file sharing may fail due to lack of providers, but it is not a failure to create a file sharing ecosystem. The user can only get the file if another peer is online and willing to provide the user with the file. Therefore, users need at least one other peer for file sharing. Of course, in such a peer-to-peer ecosystem, when all peers are disconnected, the creator can eventually turn to a relay node to provide missing files.
But this would refocus back on the original centralization issue, mainly because if a centralized power can serve the community as a whole, what incentive would the community have to be self-sustainable? In this case, many projects are Decentralized data sharing provides a solution. Projects such as Arweave, Filecoin, and BitTorrent offer different solutions to the same problem.
Arweave is a permanent decentralized data storage primarily used for web archiving. Arweave relies on a one-stop payment solution to ensure the availability of archives. Users pay upfront to archive their files on the network.
Filecoin is a protocol that allows users to rent out available hard drive space. As a peer-to-peer file system built on IPFS, it allows users with extra hard disk space to rent out their systems to mine Filecoin. At the same time, the use of Filecoin may sound like Google Drive's pay-as-you-go approach. It is one of the best alternatives to peer-to-peer filesystems.
Users can also use IPFS to store data. But ordinary IPFS still requires users to host their files, or if users want their files to remain available on the network, they need to pay for the service of hosting files. DTube is a decentralized video streaming application and a direct competitor to YouTube that leverages IPFS for file storage and uses the Steemit blockchain to incentivize its creators to create high-quality content.
BitTorrent is the most interesting of the four protocols because it is a peer-to-peer protocol that does not rely on those users hosting nodes, but uses concepts called seeders and downloaders. Seeders are users who have downloaded files and made them available to other users, essentially using their network bandwidth to upload files to the network. A downloader is a user who requests a file and downloads it to the file system. Swarm is a collection of seeders and downloaders in the BitTorrent ecosystem.
In BitTorrent, seeders are rewarded in BitTorrent coins for their contributions to the network. In contrast, downloaders will need to use BitTorrent coins to download files or increase download speeds.
While BitTorrent sounds like the most decentralized option, it relies on a centralized tracking server to log the torrent's IP and provide it to the requester of the file. As with other peer-to-peer file sharing protocols, there is no way to download files without a torrent program.
Theta, a blockchain infrastructure that provides decentralized video streaming, is the best known of the three aforementioned infrastructure projects. Theta uses a centralized peer-to-peer storage solution called Theta Edge Store. As part of its storage solutions, Theta's decentralized storage is compatible with centralized cloud infrastructure, including AWS S3 and Google Cloud Storage. The centralized cloud provides highly reliable storage, while the decentralized part plays a fault-tolerant role when the cost of using the centralized system is too high.
Theta will also have a peer-to-peer sharing network to assist in streaming. However, the peer-to-peer sharing network does not store the video, but only helps deliver the content.
Centralized solutions are no longer the practical way to do things, especially in Web 3.0.
content protection
The next major issue will be the copyright issue, if the user has resolved all issues with persistent storage. Users cannot make copyrighted material available for all to see. It violates the rights of creators of original material, which is one of the main problems behind p2p file sharing. The technology behind peer-to-peer file sharing is not illegal, but using it to share copyrighted material is still illegal.
Users cannot rely on the honesty or goodwill of strangers to protect users' copyrights. It would be nice to have a way to directly protect the user's files without preventing the user from making money from the files. Rights management applications usually encode and encrypt user content so that it cannot be directly accessed by anyone. But if you want to encode the content, a single transcoder can translate it.
There are many examples of content encryption in peer-to-peer file sharing solutions. Typically, those relying on pay-per-view architectures require file encoding to prevent content bleed from the network. Currently, there are four well-known platforms offering these services: LBRY, Livepeer, and Theta.
LBRY is a decentralized content sharing platform that aims to counter centralized content sharing services like YouTube and create a user-owned ecosystem. As a platform on which LBRY users build their own applications, Odysee is a good example. LBRY encodes content by breaking it into smaller chunks and encrypting it before storing it in the decentralized ecosystem. Each data block can be located in a different server, and LBRY needs to operate in reverse to watch the video. It will first collect all smaller chunks, decrypt them, and concatenate them into a single file.
Livepeer is a protocol that incentivizes decentralized live video streaming by providing economic incentives to store content and have users host it to transcoders who can translate the content. Compared to LBRY, Livepeer monetizes the content storage and transcoding process. Storage Monetization With IPFS/Filecoin, users have to pay storage providers to keep their data. However, the novelty of Livepeer's solution is their transcoding process (or decoding process in LBRY).
Livepeer implements a proof-of-stake mechanism for converting code. Each transcoder will have to stake a certain amount of Livepeer tokens to receive transcoding jobs from the Livepeer ecosystem. Therefore, instead of using cryptography, Livepeer relies on incentives to secure content. Transcoders will have full access to the entire Livepeer media library. Still, it’s important to note that each transcoder needs to maintain their reputation in order to make a profit.
Theta is the most developed of the three mentioned above, with multiple distributed and decentralized systems in its overall infrastructure. Theta has a metachain that will be the single source of truth. While all operations in the Theta ecosystem are off-chain, Theta utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to verify data submitted to the metachain.
Theta's content encryption platform relies heavily on Metachain. Users must purchase NFTs to authenticate, watch content, and view premium content. The encoding process is similar to Livepeer's solution. First, a single Theta Video API will serve as an abstraction layer for encoding and delivery infrastructure. There will be a key server in the encoding infrastructure, storing all existing decryption keys for each piece of content.
Consumers must purchase NFTs and verify their ownership with Metachain through the Theta Video API. If the verification is successful, Theta Video API will retrieve the decryption key. Once Theta Video API retrieves the decryption key, it connects to the delivery infrastructure to decrypt the content for the consumer.
Content encryption is a problem faced by both centralized and decentralized video streaming applications. Copyrighted material is valuable and requires encryption. The hardest problem to solve right now is decentralized content protection.
Create a Trustless Ecosystem
When using a peer-to-peer video streaming ecosystem, users have to trust other computers on the network to provide them with correct, untampered data. But how do users enforce this in a peer-to-peer ecosystem? Projects like BitTorrent, IPFS, and Arweave are relatively safe software. Users must carefully check what they download from these platforms, as most of the danger comes from the files themselves.
If a storage provider is negligent or provides a malicious protocol, its rewards are slashed. The key is to get the provider involved. Storage providers are encouraged to persist files and serve correct and reliable files to consumers.
The good news is that if we will be streaming video, the only file type accepted will be the video extension. While file reliability remains an issue, it could easily be considered a potential vulnerability risk if users received a different file extension. Most decentralized video streaming platforms do not give users direct access to files; users interact with them through their web applications. It gives the user an extra layer of security, knowing that the user is not performing videos on the user's device. The browser will copy the videos without saving them.
Blockchain-based video streaming platform transcodes video for each device. Therefore, each platform needs to have a secure way to transcode files for consumers. In a decentralized ecosystem, transcoding itself can become a problem, as the reliability of each transcoding cannot be guaranteed.
Livepeer's proof-of-stake transcoding mechanism is similar to proof-of-work, requiring users to invest a sufficient number of Livepeer tokens as collateral. This is done by locking up tokens, each transcoder has some tokens and loses their tokens if they misbehave. Attacking the entire ecosystem to get into it would be very expensive and require a lot of tokens.
Creating a trustless ecosystem requires incentivizing the most important players to perform tasks appropriately. Without punishment for bad behavior, the entire ecosystem could become unreliable or become a breeding ground for malware and bad behavior.
Streaming Monetization Solutions
Content creation is not cheap, and creators need to earn income by publishing content on the platform. Each platform has a different source of revenue; some use a subscription model, while others use pay-per-view and ad-based models. While not all business models are created equal, some revenue streams are better than others under certain conditions.
For example, if users expect the platform to be free to use, YouTube's ad-based model may be the best approach, and Chainflix is a good example. Chainflix is a decentralized video streaming infrastructure, arguably an all-in-one package for ad-based streaming.
Video streaming content is not cheap and takes a lot of effort to produce. Chainflix focuses on incentivizing users to create premium content while providing viewers with a free-to-use platform. Its business model is similar to YouTube in that they rely entirely on advertising to generate revenue for creators.
But the difference is that Chainflix adopts a decentralized architecture, relinquishes control over the content published on its platform, and leverages the PoV blockchain to monetize its ads. The benefit of the PoV mechanism is that the benefit of the PoV mechanism is that it protects the system from bots looking to monetize watching videos.
To control the flow of content, Chainflix leverages controllers to connect clients with decentralized backend storage using APIs. Chainflix also uses artificial intelligence to improve storage efficiency and create smarter decentralized storage solutions. Centered around efficiency, the Chainflix ecosystem utilizes the blockchain to monetize and store content. Unlike LBRY, LBRY adopts a pay-per-view model.
LBRY's business model is different; it has its own token, LBC. LBRY has two revenue streams, proof-of-work mining within its network and a pay-per-view model. The main source of income for content creators will be the pay-per-view model. Users can lock their own content and set a minimum price for viewing them. But it's not limited to pay-per-view. Consumers can also use LBC to tip users. Users do not need a third-party Patreon account to enable tipping.
Mining transactions can also be profitable. The mining cycle of LBC is more than 20 years. Every 100 blocks are mined, the block reward will increase, peak at 500 blocks, and then decline slowly. However, mining rewards are not limited to block generation, as miners will earn LBC from transaction validation fees. LBRY adopts a pay-per-release model to incentivize miners to verify each transaction. It also prevents creators from sending low-quality content to the blockchain. The only downside to this model is that users need funds (albeit small amounts) to post content on LBRY.
Ad-based and pay-per-view/subscription models are standard across the industry. A third brand new option is content rewards. Steemit is an incentivized public content platform based on the Steem blockchain. On Steem-based platforms, users are rewarded for every content they post. The better the content, the more rewards players get. Steem measures high-quality content by popularity, and mainly determines rewards through favorable comments and non-positive comments.
This is a fairly new concept and its main drawback is the need to create new Steem tokens out of thin air. Video streaming platform DTube uses Steemit, but it's unclear if the platform is still profitable. Creating an economy based on the content posted and the reputation of that content doesn't bode well, because people have no incentive to create high-quality content. The parameters behind defining high-quality content on Steemit make it easy to interfere with bots. There is even a study showing that 16% of cryptocurrency transactions on Steemit are bots.
Creating the proper incentives for content creators is very difficult to some extent, depending on the model the user's project is pursuing. Each has its drawbacks and can breed a different type of community around it. Free-to-use sites often employ an ad-based system, while paid-to-use sites inevitably rely on the quality of the content to gain views. The method of creating content to earn rewards is relatively new, but it remains to be seen whether it will stand the test of time.
In all blockchain video streaming projects, most of their infrastructure is basically the same. Each blockchain video streaming infrastructure typically includes:
smart contract
smart contract
file storage
Content Transcoder
API layer
While public infrastructure usually refers to these four, projects like Theta also have infrastructure that scales their base layers appropriately. But how do they interact?
Typically, the process is as follows:
First, users wishing to stream video will access content through the platform's application programming interface and API layer.
Then, when a user finds what they're looking for, they'll use a smart contract to buy access and pay with cryptocurrency.
After that, the platform can use two methods: use NFT for authentication, or provide content immediately without any authentication.
Finally, users retrieve content through the API layer, connect to content transcoders and access raw data in file storage. The content transcoder acts as a content gateway, decrypting content according to user needs.
While this all sounds simple and may make sense to many, creating a decentralized transcoder that connects to decentralized storage remains a massive challenge for most. First, how can content creators trust transcoders to be fair? Decentralized content transcoders won’t be run by companies with an incentive to protect video, they can be run by ordinary people.
Livepeer attempts to solve this problem by creating a POS-based transcoding ecosystem where anyone hosting a transcoding server must stake a sufficient amount of tokens to be allowed onto the network. If a malicious transcoder violates the rules of the ecosystem, their stake will be slashed and the rewards for staking will cease to exist.
Combining PoS with transcoding is a great way to incentivize good behaviour.
The next problem will be the API layer. Although the API layer is one of the simpler components of the project, it still requires centralization. Reliability is a factor for most projects, and if the API layer is decentralized, the question of where to store all the data arises.
Of course, we can say that we can query smart contracts ourselves. But what if the smart contracts are on a platform like Ethereum and charge high gas fees?
How about creating a new blockchain to run? Sure, it is possible, but users end up adding an extra layer after the API layer, adding complexity to the project itself. In any case, querying a NoSQL or relational database is much faster than querying a blockchain, and users can even create complex queries in the database that would be difficult or almost impossible to execute efficiently in the blockchain.
For video streaming, users need high reliability, but how can users be sure that a decentralized file system is up to the task? What if users often fail halfway?
We need to add an extra layer to the videos we serve ourselves; users can use CDN or external storage. But putting video on external storage outside of a decentralized file system somewhat defeats the purpose. Even Theta looks to cloud providers as the basic building blocks of its video streaming ecosystem.
Conceptually building a truly decentralized video streaming platform can be one of the most difficult feats of engineering to achieve. It is difficult to provide a viable streaming platform without the reliability of cloud services such as cloud storage, centralized APIs, and databases.
in conclusion
in conclusion
Theta
Livepeer
LBRY
Chainflix
In conclusion, blockchain is revolutionizing industries with cutting edge technology and solutions. This article explores four decentralized video streaming infrastructure projects:
Like other related storage blockchain projects such as IPFS, Arweave, Filecoin, and social blockchain projects, Steem also encourages content creation.
