As a new year begins, we need to take a moment to rewind the tape and reflect on the milestones StreamETH achieved through 2023. We started the year with a vision. Bringing Ethereum events on-chain and sharing them with the community transcending physical barriers.

We are ending it with a solid reality, 50+ events brought on-chain, a decentralised event-hosting platform and a decentralised public archive with thousands of hours of educational content stored on.

We also made history by launching the first ever LivestreamNFT during the BaseHouse in ArtBasel, Miami! Designed to deploy and store livestreams on an NFT, in a completely decentralized way, opening endless on-chain possibilities.

With all this said, let’s dive in!

The development of StreamETH

April 2022 sough the first iteration of Devconnect, a series of independent events and workshops hosted by the Ethereum community presenting in-depth discussions on topics including staking, L2s, MEV and more. A Web3-native solution was essential for an event like this, enabling the online participation of community members who couldn't attend the physical gathering in Amsterdam. That’s how StreamETH was born, out of a joint effort from the Devconnect team and the Livepeer team, to dogfood Ethereum technology and to escape the constraints of Web2 video platforms for Devconnect Amsterdam.

The flow was simple. Event organizers made use of the scheduling tools and integrations to external scheduling management tools to prepare their event, manage speakers, talks, panels etc. They uploaded logos, cover images and event descriptions and with that information, their virtual event page was created.

Then at the time of the event, StreamETH pulled the livestream from the event’s AV crew using Livepeer’s tech, and the magic happened. Their branded event page showed the livestreams, the schedule updated live, and the decentralised chatting box that allowed virtual attendees to chat and conversate through a simple wallet sign-in.

This all happened in 2022, but it wasn’t until 2023 that we saw a real demand in the industry and started offering services to decentralise content delivery and archiving to other events.

So what is StreamETH? StreamETH is an open-source, decentralised event-hosting platform and community archive that allows you to manage everything regarding the virtual aspects of their events. You can can take care of Livestreaming, scheduling and post-production of video material in one single place. StreamETH uses blockchain technologies to ensure a complete Web3 experience for both event organzers and virtual attendees. These technologies are Livepeer for video delivery, Swarm for archiving and DM3 for chatting features.

The necessity for decentralised content delivery and archiving in Ethereum Events

Our industry faces some serious issues when dealing with community events and educational content that comes from them. These problems are:

1. Connecting remote audiences that can’t make it to physical events

2. Censorship of content by centralised Web2 video platforms

3. History of content not being immutable

The Ethereum community is vast and spreads all around the world. Traditionally, event organizers focus a lot on the physical aspect of their events while ignoring the virtual side, forgoing a lot of potential reach. The people that do make it to these events are often interested in networking rather than listening to speakers and workshops, often leaving rooms empty and seats unoccupied.

Instead, our industry is experiencing rapid growth in places where blockchain technology does have an impact on people’s daily lives; the unbanked, the people left out of the global financial system. These people are often the ones facing the biggest barriers to entry for these physical events, and the ones the most eager to learn, grow, build and attend conferences. After all, they are the stakeholders and they should not be left out.

StreamETH tries to bridge this gap, making virtual events inclusive and captivating for the community to participate physically or remotely. Our goal is to give a remote attendee the same interacting possibilities that a physical attendee might have. Networking included.

Another key aspect to address is content removal by Web2 video platforms and the fact that on these platforms, the history of content is not immutable, meaning that no one can prove if the video was modified or not.

We believe that community gatherings make the history of our industry. They are fulcrums of innovation, growth, and communal checkpoints. During these events the industry comes together to present and discuss new projects, ideas, technologies, failure points, and generally to grow together. Keynotes, panels, talks, workshops, and discussions that come out of these events are the storyline of the growing infinite garden, they should be made immutable and saved permanently.

Relying on Web2 platforms to do this job is not in our ethos, and was proven to be ineffective.

<https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/03/11/youtube-temporarily-bans-two-popular-crypto-channels-claiming-policy-breach/#:\~:text=In late December 2019%2C YouTube,made the "wrong call.">

StreamETH fights this by leveraging top Web3 technologies to ensure a fully transparent and on-chain delivery and storage of content. Content on-chain is in fact immutable and spread across a network of validators that make sure that not one single entity can either modify it or delete it from the network. Ensuring that all this precious material is available for the community for the years to come, marking and tracing our history where it belongs. On-chain.

So 2023 was our year to try and improve these issues for community events, and what a year it has been!

2023 - What we achieved

Since then a lot has happened. In 2022, the StreamETH technology was used for Devconnect Amsterdam and ETHBerlin. In 2023, we became independent, made various partnerships and helped 20+ communities decentralising their livestreams and post-produced content.

In August, we released a V2 with a complete redesign of the UI, bug fixes and improvements, and added a very important feature. A clipping functionality (powered by Livepeer) that allows you to cut the livestream, while the event is happening, into individual clips, one per each scheduled session (talks, workshops, etc.) or custom clips. When these clips are processed (it takes the system around 1 minute per clip) they get put in the event archive, complete with introduction animation, session title and dedicated thumbnail image. This functionality saves a lot of effort after the event is completed and allows you to share the content immediately, capitalizing on the traction accumulated.

In 2023, StreamETH not only conceptualized but actualized a significant shift in how Ethereum events are experienced globally. We successfully decentralized 59 events, transcending geographical barriers and thus, enabling a vast virtual audience to partake in these gatherings. Our commitment to preserving the narrative of the Ethereum community led to over 700 sessions being archived on-chain.

The reach was truly global, with content viewed over 32,750 times across more than 90 countries, spanning 6 continents! Additionally, by supporting 20 distinct communities, StreamETH facilitated the growth and exchange of ideas around the world, fostering innovation and collaboration.

→https://snapshots.raintank.io/dashboard/snapshot/XtU4qfJhR221wQLvBdCjM4pbDbHHg

The journey of StreamETH in 2023 stands as a testament to our mission of elevating and preserving the collective wisdom of the Ethereum community. As we look forward to the future, we remain committed to pushing the boundaries of decentralized content delivery and archiving, ensuring that the voices and insights from our vibrant community are never lost.

Cheers to a decentralised year ✨

If you are interested in exploring our services contact us here!

Navigate our event archive → www.streameth.org