Livepeer 🛠 Building the Killer Web3 Consumer App - Eric Tang

foreign [Applause] [Music] my name is Eric tang and I'm the co-founder and CTO at life PR before before I get started I'm just curious um you know show of hands how many people have heard about life here or or know kind of what it does okay about about half okay great so um let me do just like a really high um level introduction of life here and and tell you a little bit about what we're talking about here today right um so life here is a decentralized video streaming infrastructure project and we've been working on it for about five years it um it it allows any web3 developer to build a video streaming application so if you want to build a web 3 version of a YouTube or a twitch something like that you can use live PR uh and and it's it a life here itself is a decentralized network and at the same time it also integrates with other decentralized infrastructure that allows you to for example control the video streaming Behavior using the blockchain um in in the live pure Network so um but today uh you know The Talk The Talk is not only about live here the talk is really about building the killer web3 consumer app and um and you know personally I've been thinking about this problem for a long time um and so a little bit of background personally um before I got into to web3 I worked on a a company called wildcard uh wildcard was a kind of a social app um a Content application um it was it was one of the top apps in in the App Store back in 2015. and and and wild card was built on top of the open apis on Twitter on Twitter Facebook and all these other app um platforms that were also emerging at the time especially on mobile but over time these uh these platforms started to close up their uh their apis so um that really impacted live impacted wild card as a company and as a business right so um ever since then I've really I've really been thinking about how exactly can we actually build open applications on open infrastructure that helps us solve this Pro this like platform risk as developers right and that was one of the reasons that that really drew me into web3 is because you can now build on top of ethereum and the ethereum API is not going to change and no one is going to tell you not to build anything because you can anybody can build in this permissionless decentralized world and that's what's most exciting for me however we all know that you know we um we're still pretty early in the web 3 Journey about in terms of building consumer facing applications right and that are actually really scale like the next Tick Tock however um I have a I have a pretty strong personal conviction that that's going to happen very soon and when we have the web 3 Tick Tock it's going to be 10 times bigger than Tick Tock and it's going to happen 10 times faster than Tick Tock and you know the one of the one of the um one of the one of the biggest reasons is that there is now no centralized party that can be the kind of the gatekeeper for people to adopt these new applications so they'll just emerge very very quickly and grow very quickly as well so so today I want to lay out some thesis and um and kind of tactics on you know how can we actually start to approach building these types of decentralized and consumer facing application that actually have consumer scale and have have like uh consumer appeal right um and and and to to to talk about that let's let's first look at what's happening web in the web 2 consumer world and um and this is a graph that I often use it shows the growth of online advertising Revenue in the last 20 years and then what we've seen is that in a very short span of time um it's grown by 25x right this is quite astounding back in 20 back into 2000s when it was 8 billion today is 190 billion last year right and and you might think that oh like more revenue must be good but this actually this Revenue actually comes at a cost right and and the cost is that the online advertising model is working too well uh and and the problem is every um and because of that uh all of every platform every consumer app that we use is looking at this same model right every consumer app is trying to monetize using the same online advertising model and when that happens we start to get into this problem of the online advertising model actually driving these these consumer applications as business businesses and we start to get into this world of surveillance capitalism right where all of our data every single click on the net on online is being is being tracked and bundled up and sold to advertisers for our attention right and and every single consumer platform that we use it's optimizing and optimizing for keeping our attention for as long as possible in order to show more ads and grow and grow the business right and that's how this that and that's how this curve happens right the more attention we as consumer are kept on this platform the more Revenue these these um is there right so so the that becomes the that becomes the uh Challenge and also the opportunity for web3 right which is how do we break that model and and find alternative models to start to to approach at this problem from a different way and still make things very interesting and engaging for for consumers and people have have been trying this since the beginning of web3 right so um I I'm listing out some of some of the some of the old applications that are that have been around how many people have heard of steemit or have used steemit okay um what about ppiff anybody knows people what about pepo okay um so so steemit is is kind of the one one of the one of the early uh social apps in web3 uh that's very similar to a Reddit I would say uh ppiff was probably the very first web3 Twitter um or you can um yeah you would pay like 0.25 each to post uh posted tweet on on ethereum um and then um a Peppa was you know the very first experiment around um kind of like a web free Tick Tock right built for communities and and these applications all succeeded in different ways and failed in different ways steam is was actually one of the more successful examples um and and you know there were some problems with the incentive mechanism in in the steemit platform where it started to become more of like a echo chamber that that just pumped the statement token but nevertheless it actually over time had a lot of adoption so um so in order to in order for us to move past um this phase of web3 um this old phase of web3 consumer apps and moving to the new phase um I think what we need to start really looking at is how to stop building the web 3 version of the web 2 app right so like we're not talking about building you know web3 YouTube or web3 uh Twitter or whatever right like that's that's that's going to be that's going to be problematic because you know these existing social applications already have this really strong Network effect and this mode that they've built right so and and they've really optimized to make sure that their competitors are not going to be able to compete with them so so in order to start attacking that problem um we need to look at what are the unique values that web3 actually presents uh and and for me there's really four things that what that has been proven out that in web3 that that is unique and has already adoption right uh the first one is permissionless crowdfunding uh second one is decentralized financial instruments uh on chain uh being able to do exchanges third one is provable digital ownership and the fourth one is collective Global coordination right so um if we if we kind of change uh put these four um four value propositions into the their their acronyms um you know the first one is really icos right um permissionless crowdfunding we're able to kind of do Capital formation on the blockchain uh decentralized financial instruments is D5 I think we're all pretty familiar with that you can start to build lending protocols or exchanges and things like that provable ownership first uh gives us um this unique building block of nfts right so now they're they're still kind of you know jpegs but really if you look look underneath it's a it's a reference point to any digital link right and and um we're starting now we're starting to see all these different use cases that comes with nft but it also it's all rooted in the fact that you can provably show that you own this nft right uh and and the Dows we're starting to see um they they're Global communities that are forming um they're starting to have their own missions they start to organize themselves differently uh there are many interesting uh experiments like the noun style where um or people the communities are coming together across um to to really go after a specific mission right so um so if we look at if we look at all these different uh these different um unique value propositions um the next question is okay how do we use those prop value propositions to actually compete with a existing web 2 platform right well there's um there's this old Fable in um in Silicon Valley I think it comes from um Chris sticks and from um from a16z and and goes right come for the tools and stay for the network right so so what does that mean it means we first need to build an application that provides some core value for a set of users and then those users come and then you start to be able to build the network effect um some examples may include like um Instagram for example at the very beginning it was a tool for people to add filters on their on their photos right and and that that became a very unique value prop and then as people came in Instagram implemented the follow mechanisms right so people can start following each other and they start to build this social graph right um so come for the tool and stay for the network is an important lesson for for web 3 applications where we think about building something um and the other thing that that's interesting to think about is using these existing web web 2 platforms as distribution channels uh because there there's already all these users on these on those platforms right so you can actually um build your application in a way that bootstraps your own network effect on top of the existing social networks so we're starting to see applications that really lean into Twitter for example allowing users to allowing their users to post tweets inside Twitter that then drive and that with links that drive to Twitter users over to their application right so if you look at um if you look at it from in marketing terms you can really treat these web 2 platforms as the top of the funnel and then start to drive your users down to the bottom of the funnel where where you can continue to convert them right an example would be if you are minting if you're minting nfts right you can think of the nfts as the canonical representation of a piece of content in that case you know people can people say like oh you can like right right click and copy and pay um and save the nfts right but that's actually the best thing for the nft because the more people save it the more people copy it around the web the more valuable that that nft becomes and that's that's actually what you want right it's it's using it's having as many people post these nfts on other social platforms as possible so that the canonical representation of the of the image actually becomes more valuable so that so that's a that's a way that's a strategy and tactic to think about um so so you know when we when we talk about comforted tools and stay for the network right um these tools need to solve a problem what are so so what are some of the problems that that um that are in web3 today that we can actually solve right um here here are some examples um one is thous need a place to to organize their content right we have all these decentralized organizations that are popping up um and and I think it's only going to accelerate because it's just so much easier to to create a doubt and get a get a group of people to start working towards a mission then needing to like form a company right and or former organization um so those are kind of now the quintessential um internet native way to to get a group of people together and work on something but all of these Dows are now very fragmented right that they use Discord for their Community Management uh they use YouTube for for putting their content around right they really need one place to to actually organize their content and I think that I think the first application that cracks that um is going to get a lot of adoption in the web 3 ecosystem um the the second problem I will point out is um the fact that web 3 content today is still living at different places right we have these web um web3 um Publications you know coin desks things like that um there's uh crypto Twitter right and then if you think about crypto Twitter it's really kind of like a wild wild west where people are you know selecting the the people that their own people to follow Twitter was not created to be a web 3 tool it just it just happened to kind of like stumble into it right so um so so someone who who solves the problem of curating web 3 content to make sure that um when people people can go to a single place uh to uh to look at the best content for their specific interest um I think is going to have um uh have a lot of adoption in the web 3 space right because it's solving a real problem for for the for the web3 consumers today that are looking for high quality content but not knowing how to how to get there right um the third thing I want to point out is um incentivizing content creation I think that's something that that what that's really unique for the web3 um you know in the Webster ecosystem right because until until now um if you want to if you want to create content if you want to be a content creator you need to do it for free right in fact if you want for example today if you want to start to become a YouTuber um usually you just you need to create constantly consistently create content um at least on a weekly basis for a year a year and a half until you build up a big enough audience to be able to start monetize that that is a long time that is a long time for someone to work for free to create quality content for YouTube in order to start monetizing any of that web3 actually solves the big solves that problem right because there's this token mechanism so you can you can start to build into your application that starts to draw um draw creators from day one and start to start to um compensate them for for their work from day one um so so to make that more concrete um I think building a web 3 Zoom um is um is something that's that's unique um all of the dials right they're they're they're doing these Zoom calls um Zoom is not created for web3 it's actually a very concrete experience right now there are some applications that are already working on this um and then I'm going to give some examples later um building a web 3 native video CMS so again to solve that um that video fragmentation problem right so people are posting their videos on You Maybe on YouTube channels uh maybe on um you know maybe on a mirror right um being able to having a decentralized organization to be able to kind of organize all of their content into a web 3 native CMS um it can be a really powerful tool um and um and the the other um solution or or um the other opportunity um is a curation Dao and the Cure the idea of a curation dial is um to have a group of people who are incentivized not to create content but to put together the best content right you can use different types of metrics to to um to start to track who is performing well in a Dao but having a group of people um paying attention and actually contributing to the curation of web3 content uh can be a really powerful thing and if you think about it a lot of web 2 platforms actually behind the scenes use a lot of curators so Spotify is a perfect example where all the playlists the most popular play playlists in Spotify are actually curated by people right Spotify just creates a a standardized interface for you to for people to search between uh search amongst those Creations uh curations um and finally um when creating uh tools for that that targets creators which a lot of times you know consumer applications really about content Discovery and content consumption right so someone needs to be creating that content there is a there's a big number of creators that are now being underserved in today's um prevailing um uh applications like a YouTube or a Twitter right so targeting those those creators who are you know doing their one and a half year content creation without without getting paid but a lot of times having having really good um having a really good idea and really high quality content um that's a good way to to kind of pull pull creators into the web ecosystem so I want to show a couple of examples of of um applications that are already doing this to um to kind of illustrate this point huddle 01 is a kind of a web 3 Zoom um it um they they allow people to use um their metamask wallet or any their crypto identity to link to the application to to have their identity as that they can you can link your nfts right you can have your nfts your avatar as nfts um and and you know they they use live here to to make those streams um become uh broadcasts and and so a big Community can watch them right uh lens tube is an example that's built on the the lens protocol so they use the lens protocol for uh social kind of social profiles and right now it still you know kind of looks like a YouTube right so it's still kind of in the early phase but we're starting to see uh lens to do uh slightly different things in in the web 3 Sphere for example uh offering paid content or offering people to have the ability to Mint nfts using using these posts in fact every single Post in lens tube or every single post on lens is by default an nft right so that already just that already captures the ownership of the video to a link that to the Creator much more than what YouTube is able to do okay the 402 is a is a pretty good example of a live streaming application uh maybe similar to to your Twitch of the world uh they they they currently focus on musicians uh some musicians can come to the 402 and and and do live performances um and and sell tickets uh as nfts right they're already seeing really great success where the musicians are able to make hundreds or you know low thousands of dollars uh per show where you know they would have to do that for a whole month on the Twitch in order to make that much uh beam is another example where um you can um as a Dows or decentralized applications uh you can you can do real virtual events through uh through beam bonfire is one that um that allows the Creator to to connect directly with their fans so if you're a Creator you you would use bonfire to create your own almost like fan um uh fan club home page and fan and bonfire allows you to do things like nft drops or do live streams to their to your community there are token that are token gated using new web3 mechanisms for um for creators to really build their fan uh their fan base and know that the creators can actually own their fan base right because all of that is is on the blockchain and they can they can take their fan base to another application if they wanted to um last example stream Eve this is a really really cool collaboration that lifepair did with the ethereum foundation and it's a it's open source and and um project and and public good project where um um Defcon for example was streamed using stream Eve um and uh and devconnect earlier this year Berlin a couple of um kind of real world um web3 events are are all streamed on on this platform so you might notice all these all these examples are video based um why why do I talk about video based well um you know we're working on live here and and the reason we think videos is important for for the web 3 space is well 80 of the content on the internet in general is is video right so um so at any given time people are are consuming lots of video content and the reason is that video is the most engaging and most powerful medium of Storytelling and communication uh for for any consumer application the most viral the most engaging content type by far is always video so um so um so if you think about the the web 3 Tech stack um we can we can see um you know we have the blockchain base layer and you know we have the scalability layer of of L2 right we have we have our storage layer like ipfs um or our weave we have our index and query layer we have our you know identity layer that you know that our wallets themselves or there are things like wallet connect and and and we can we can combine all those things together and build applications using uh using video that take advantage of all of those different all of these different um other components to build really powerful video uh to build powerful web 3 video applications so I want to give you a couple of um examples of how how this works inside live peer the first thing I want to show you is um the your the ability to to um to upload videos right so all of this is available um as apis so but but also I'm just going to show you the the dashboard here real quickly so here for example I can upload any asset I'm not going to upload an asset right now because because it takes time but this is an asset that I've already uploaded before right so you know I can play it here um but um but more importantly um more importantly the these video assets can be exported into ipfs right so if you're minting an nft you can use this video asset however um there's a problem right and the problem is if you're minting if you're creating a so this is I'm trying to load the video from my PFS um they might work okay um because I'm I'm on I'm on like high bandwidth connection right but if I'm streaming this video a video file directly on my mobile phone or something um ipfs doesn't really have the ability to make the video streamable at scale right so um so instead I can I can go I can do it through life pure and still use the same ipfs hash and I can just load it into from Life pure and when I do this life peer under the hood transcodes the video into hls and it's able to stream that video in many different bit rates and formats so that anybody from from anywhere around the world is able to stream that video on any device um and so it's a it's an example of using this video layer that plugs into all the all the other blockchain components so that allows you to move into NF video based nft allows you to make that nft actually streamable across the world right and that's for example this is what lens tube uses to make their um to make their user experience as good as a YouTube right um another example I want to show you quickly is um the the live streaming experience the live streaming API so now I'm going to interact with the API um so what I'm doing here is I just created a live stream right and now what I can do is I can start to to stream I can I can send a video video live stream in there uh we created this testing tool that a lot uh that will send a send a life uh send a test stream right away because you know in in this in this room there's tons of hackers sharing the same Wi-Fi and and it's it's you can always uh get the get get the get the video stream going but you know I just sent a test stream so now I can see that it's live in here uh in fact the other thing that I can do is I can use the um I can use the video life pure video player to directly watch the video now it's a this is a a puppy video so it's about 10 minutes long um now you know anyone can create a live stream right so so this is and this is all working but um to kind of illustrate another point of building your application alongside of a web 2 app now we can you can start to you can start to say um you know what I I want to I want my live stream to also be restreamed into a YouTube right or into a into a Twitter or into a twitch to get more to get more audience to come right in fact this is what this is what the Devcon organizers did in Devcon uh we streamed um we streamed the live stream on both the uh the Defcon home page and on YouTube um so at the end there was about 40 percent of the people who watched um watch the video on live here and about 60 of the people who watch the video on YouTube so now we have a decentralized infrastructure that can that can stream and decentralized way but also leverage uh the existing social platform to to be able to to drive the eyeballs right cool let me go back to to the last bit um so for for this hackathon um we have ten thousand dollars of price um first place is five thousand second place is three thousand and third place is two thousand uh we really want to see some interesting applications that use video as a hook for consumers right so uh video based nfts or live streaming based video nfts uh there are some prior Arts if you if you search the global hackathon you'll find them uh decentralized video messaging applications or or video tools for Dows or web3 communities uh there's some high-level ideas and you know where our team is here and uh so you can come come find us in the booth we have um we have interesting um we have a hacker quick start guide to to help you get started you can join the community here um I want to show I want to specifically point out lifepure.js.org which is a new developer SDK that we created um that's inspired by by wagme if you're familiar with kind of the the ethereum world so it's it's very easy to get started building application using livestreet.

js thank you very much [Applause]