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The Livepeer Network supports a dynamic decentralized marketplace for real-time media compute: transcoding and AI inference. Unlike static infrastructure platforms, Livepeer’s open marketplace introduces real-time bidding, routing, and pricing of jobs across a global pool of Orchestrators. This page outlines the marketplace layer, actor behaviors, session economics, and how it relates to the protocol.

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Marketplace overview

ElementRole
This market is continuous — Orchestrators are always available for sessions; Gateways route work off-chain without per-job on-chain gas.

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Demand: client workloads

Clients submit various media compute jobs through Gateways:
Job typeExample use casePayment style
API examples: Livepeer Studio REST, Gateway POST job, ComfyStream interface (AI).

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Supply: Orchestrator nodes

Orchestrators advertise:
  • Hardware specs (GPU/CPU, memory)
  • Region and latency
  • Supported workloads (video, AI, or both)
  • Price per segment / frame / token
They update availability via gateway-side gRPC or REST heartbeat endpoints. Gateways use this information to route jobs to the best match.

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Routing logic

The Gateway scores Orchestrators by:
  • Latency to input source
  • Workload match (video vs AI)
  • Cost per job
  • Availability and retry buffer
Sessions are routed off-chain to the best match; no on-chain gas is spent per job.

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Price discovery

The current Livepeer implementation uses posted pricing (Orchestrator-set), not auction-based. A few notes:
  • Clients can be matched to the lowest available compatible provider.
  • Prices may vary by:
    • Region (e.g. US-East vs EU-Central)
    • GPU load (AI-heavy Orchestrators may charge more)
    • Quality profile (e.g. 1080p60 vs 720p30)
In development: LIPs may introduce dynamic auction mechanisms for AI sessions (e.g. spot job auctions). See the Forum LIPs for proposals.

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Payments and settlement

Clients pay via:
  • ETH tickets (settled on-chain via the protocol’s TicketBroker)
  • Credit balance (tracked off-chain by some Gateways)
Orchestrators:
  • Claim winning tickets to the TicketBroker on Arbitrum
  • Accumulate ETH earnings from transcoding/AI work
  • Claim inflation (LPT) rewards from the BondingManager each round

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Credit system extensions

Some Gateways provide user-friendly pricing in addition to direct ETH:
CurrencyTop-up methodsDenomination example
Orchestrators can price in USD-equivalent via oracle-based quoting where supported.

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Observability

Each session can be logged with:
  • Latency to first response
  • Retry count
  • Orchestrator ID and region
  • Price paid (ETH or credit)
Future marketplace indexers may surface real-time job flow stats for the network.

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Protocol–market boundaries

LayerDescriptionExample

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Future upgrades (LIPs proposed)

  • LIP-78: Spot job auctions
  • LIP-81: Credit-to-protocol sync bridge
  • LIP-85: Orchestrator staking influence on job routing
For current status, see the Forum LIPs and Technical roadmap.

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See also

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References

Last modified on February 18, 2026