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A payment clearinghouse is a third-party service that takes on the Ethereum-related responsibilities of operating a Livepeer gateway — holding ETH, running a Remote Signer, managing PM settlement, and handling orchestrator payments — while settling with gateway operators and app developers in a traditional currency or alternative payment method.
The underlying protocol for clearinghouses is implemented and in production use. No public clearinghouse service is operating at general availability as of early 2026 — see the NaaP Platform for the emerging managed access layer.

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Why Clearinghouses Exist

Operating a Livepeer gateway currently requires:
  • Holding ETH on Arbitrum to fund PM deposits.
  • Managing Ethereum private keys securely across gateway instances.
  • Understanding PM protocol internals — nonces, ticket validity windows, fee calculations.
  • Debugging ETH-USD price oracle issues that affect ticket face values.
This is a significant barrier for most app developers. A clearinghouse absorbs all of this complexity. The developer receives an API key; the clearinghouse handles everything beneath.

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Architecture

App / Developer
      │  API Key (traditional auth)
      ▼
Clearinghouse Service
  ├── Remote Signer (ETH custody + PM signing)
  ├── User management / auth
  ├── Accounting (credits, usage tracking)
  └── Orchestrator discovery
      │  Livepeer PM tickets on Arbitrum
      ▼
Orchestrator Network
The clearinghouse runs one or more Remote Signer instances and fronts them with traditional developer tooling — API keys, usage dashboards, rate limits, and billing. Orchestrators receive standard Livepeer probabilistic micropayment tickets and settle on-chain as normal. The clearinghouse abstracts the on-chain layer from the developer entirely.

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What a Clearinghouse Manages

ResponsibilityTraditional GatewayWith Clearinghouse
ETH deposit managementGateway operatorClearinghouse
PM signing keysGateway operatorClearinghouse (Remote Signer)
Orchestrator discoveryGateway operatorClearinghouse
Billing / invoicingN/AClearinghouse ↔ developer
On-chain redemptionOrchestratorsOrchestrators (unchanged)

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Developer Experience

For app developers using a clearinghouse:
  1. Register with the clearinghouse service and obtain an API key.
  2. Point the Livepeer SDK or gateway to the clearinghouse endpoint.
  3. The clearinghouse provides a gateway interface — you submit AI inference jobs, the clearinghouse routes them to orchestrators and handles all payments.
  4. You receive usage reports and are billed in the clearinghouse’s chosen currency (fiat, stablecoins, or other).
This is the intended end state for direct-to-orchestrator SDK integrations, where a developer should be able to call start_lv2v(api_key="...") and have everything handled automatically.

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Relationship to Remote Signers

A clearinghouse is a remote signer plus:
  • User management and authentication
  • Accounting and credit tracking
  • Fiat or alternative currency billing
  • Potentially orchestrator discovery and geo-matching
The Remote Signer is the technical primitive. A clearinghouse layers commercial and operational services on top.

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Current Status and NaaP

The Livepeer Foundation’s NaaP Platform is the emerging managed access layer for the network and is expected to provide clearinghouse-adjacent capabilities including API key issuance and network observability. NaaP is targeting an MVP launch in 2026. Independent clearinghouse operators may also emerge through the network’s open infrastructure model.

Remote Signers

The technical building block underlying clearinghouse payment infrastructure.

NaaP Platform

The Foundation’s managed network access and observability platform.
Last modified on March 4, 2026