Crafting the Future of Live-Streaming with Peer-to-Peer Innovation

TL;DR:

• Live streaming has captivated global audiences, with over a billion hours of content watched in recent months. However, this surge in viewership comes with significant costs.
• Rilla’s protocol offers a collaborative model that is rewiring the live-streaming content economy by addressing the high costs of streaming infrastructure and enabling a more equitable distribution of revenues.
• By leveraging the power of trustless decentralized infrastructure networks, Rilla is set to become the biggest data path for the future of the Internet.

Live streaming (broadcasting live videos online) has rapidly gained popularity. Initially dominated by the video game and esports sectors, it has broadened in recent years to encompass music, entertainment, business, and technology.

In Q1 2024, YouTube Live and Twitch saw significant growth in viewership. YouTube Live reached 12.64 billion hours watched, with 1.749B hours from YouTube Gaming, a 24.7% increase from the previous quarter. Twitch accumulated 5.5B hours watched, with 4.48 billion hours from gaming content, showing a 4.1% growth. Despite Twitch’s exit from Korea and a ban in Turkey, both platforms benefited from a strong start to the esports season, breaking several viewership records.

This is hardly surprising; people enjoy watching content they can engage with, making it a prime opportunity for marketers, entrepreneurs, musicians, athletes, artists, and aspiring content creators to connect with fans and customers. However, these live-streaming platforms rely on traditional CDN infrastructure to broadcast content, which either requires significant infrastructure investment or is highly expensive to outsource to cloud providers. This is why platforms such as Twitch and YouTube Live often take a substantial cut from the revenue generated through ads and subscriptions, leaving content creators with a smaller share of the value they generate.

The Real Cost of Live Streaming

Live streaming, especially in gaming, is a phenomenon that has captured audiences worldwide. Over recent months, fans have tuned in for over a billion hours of gameplay. But behind these impressive numbers lies a hefty price tag: If you plugged that amount of live-streamed content into Amazon Web Services’ real-time streaming pricing, you would get $48M in network costs.

In a striking revelation from Twitch CEO Clancy in January 2024, the streaming giant’s struggle with profitability also came to light, reflecting a broader industry-wide issue: the urgent need for a revenue model that works for everyone involved.

Meanwhile, content creators, the very heart of the streaming world, often see only a fraction of the earnings. This disparity has fueled a growing call for a shift in how profits are shared, aiming for a more equitable distribution that fairly rewards those behind the camera for their captivating content.

DePIN for Live Streaming

Rilla Network is a peer-to-peer live-streaming service that uses viewers’ internet connections to reduce streaming costs. This method can save up to 90% compared to traditional streaming costs. The money saved can then be passed on to the creators and their fans, making it more beneficial for everyone involved.

Usually, streaming a live video online means sending the video data from a central point, like a data center, to each viewer’s device via a traditional CDN, which charges the live-streaming platform for every GB served to every single viewer. Now, Rilla is switching things up by spreading these tasks across the viewers’ devices, like a group project where everyone chips in a little bit.

How it works

When you watch a live stream on a Rilla-enabled platform, your device also helps send the stream to other viewers, spreading the work and cost. It’s like when you’re watching your favorite show and, at the same time, your computer helps other fans tune in, too. This takes a load off the main servers and slashes the cost of streaming by up to 90%. It’s a win-win; the platform saves money, and this saving can be passed on to the viewers and creators as rewards.

Built with the latest web technologies, such as WebRTC, WebAssembly, and WebGPU, Rilla can handle video processing (transcoding) and peer-to-peer connections in your browser and other viewing devices. You don’t need special software; it works when you open the stream on your favorite platform.

What’s cool is that the network gets stronger and more efficient as more people join and watch streams on Rilla. Imagine a concert getting better as more people show up — that’s how Rilla’s network improves with popularity.

In short, Rilla Network is creating a community-powered streaming service where everyone’s device contributes, making streaming better and cheaper for all involved — from creators to viewers. With everyone participating just by watching, it will grow rapidly, like a viral video.

By eliminating expensive centralized infrastructure costs, Rilla enables platforms to give a larger share of profits to content creators. For comparison, Twitch currently offers its creators about 50% of ad and subscription revenue. Over the years, many of its streamers have left the platform to look for better opportunities elsewhere.

In contrast, Rilla’s approach could allow platforms to give as much as 80% of the revenue back to the creators, significantly increasing their earnings. The big attraction allows even their audience to earn through their pooled network capacity, reducing the service cost and fostering true ownership in the network that delivers their favorite content. These rewards will be distributed directly and instantly to viewers based on their contributions. For example, a content platform that is Rilla Network enabled could save enough to give all its customers a free month’s subscription in return for just watching 1.5 hours of live content a day. Furthermore, the protocol will enable platforms to integrate interactive live commerce experiences, enabling fans to spend their rewards while viewing content seamlessly.

Live Streaming Market Landscape

The Global Live Streaming Market is estimated to grow by $13.49B, accelerating at a CAGR of 13.47% between 2023 and 2028. The market’s growth depends on several factors, including the rising penetration of smartphones and easy access to the internet, the growing popularity of live streaming, and the growing popularity of esports.

Research from Vimeo Livestream found that 82% of consumers prefer to see a brand’s livestream video instead of a social-media post. Similarly, 80% would rather watch a live video than read a blog.

The world is tuning in to live streams more than ever. Live Streaming accounts for 23% of global viewing time and 17% of all internet traffic. When given a choice between reading a blog or viewing a live video, 80% of viewers will pick the video.

The big buzz in the live-streaming scene is about how tech is changing the game. We’re talking about AI (Artificial Intelligence), deep learning, natural language processing, and blockchain tech, making streaming services smarter and more interactive.

AI acts as the multi-talented crew behind the scenes. It helps with the camera work, cuts the video into a slick final product, and even does voice-overs and scriptwriting. This isn’t just making videos look better; it’s actually making them smarter. For example, platforms like Hulu and YouTube use AI to spot and take down offensive material quickly.

Now, with blockchain, we’re seeing smart contracts come into play. These are like automatic agreements that ensure artists and contributors get paid quickly and that the right people get credit for their work. While blockchain is still new to this industry, it’s set to shake things up significantly.

Rilla is applying modern AI to optimize peer-to-peer live-streaming for large audiences and reduce cost-to-serve by an order of magnitude. The network utilizes blockchain to distribute that value to respective contributors fairly and to build a trustless network of infrastructure providers, ensuring the consistent supply of bandwidth required to deliver the quality of experience necessary for top-tier sports and esports live streams at a global scale. Rilla has just been fueled by leading VC’s to take this to the next level.

The Team behind Rilla

Hal Smith Stevens and Pulasthi Bandara have co-founded five ventures that cut across several sectors, including education, healthcare AI, air traffic control systems, AI in gaming, and AI infrastructure decentralization. Founder and CEO Hal boasts nearly a decade of software development experience and was a Co-Founder of Altered State Machine. At the same time, Founder and CTO Pulasthi excels at assembling and leading high-performance teams to solve complex engineering challenges; previously the Head of Engineering at Altered State Machine and Zero King.

Conclusion

Rilla Network is fundamentally shifting how video data is disseminated online. By harnessing peer-to-peer technology and utilizing audience bandwidth, they plan to lower the streaming cost dramatically. This allows the saved value to be redirected to creators and their communities. As the streaming industry grows, fostering a more equitable revenue distribution will make live streaming more sustainable and rewarding for everyone involved. And we can see it being the approach that will pave the way for a future where creators, platforms, and audiences can all thrive together, benefiting from a fairer and more efficient streaming ecosystem.

References

This is a repost of Pione3rs — Issue #16 written by Aly Madhavji on Medium on September 9, 2024.