 the402 enables creators to build communities and monetize through crypto

 is a livestreaming platform that enables creators to build communities and monetize superfans by leveraging crypto. Currently, the402 creators can token gate livestreams using both the402-exclusive NFT access passes and NFTs issued on other platforms, and sell digital collectibles during livestreams. Communities can also interact with creators and other fans using their chat functionality.

the402 is a platform designed to provide a seamless web3 experience for creators and users alike. For creators, the process of starting a livestream is quite simple and takes just a few steps.

“Once a creator has their own profile page setup, all they need to do is click on the "Go Live" button which displays their stream key and enter it into OBS. That's it.” - Ravi Bakhai, Founder of the402

Once livestreams are over, the402 also hosts VODs for token-holding fans that grant access to previous livestreams on creator profile pages.

The experience of creating an NFT is just as straightforward and requires no coding. They can publish content by simply uploading media, adding a cover photo, and setting desired parameters (e.g. price, quantity, and royalty percentage). From there, the402 handles everything else, including token gating, supporter tracking, and monetization.

If a creator would like to issue an NFT access pass, they can mint one on our site leveraging any of our creator-owned smart contracts. We also have credit card integration to seamlessly onboard non-crypto native fans.” - Ravi Bakhai, Founder of the402

For users, the UX is clean and easy to navigate, so they can quickly connect their wallets and begin exploring the platform. Buying and selling NFTs is simple, and marketplaces include transparent information like livestream NFT collection statistics. As such, the402 offers a low learning curve for anyone coming from web2.

. The project was born from an intrigue in NFTs. In particular, Ravi wanted to figure out “how [builders] could create a more sustainable ecosystem to drive NFT sales and provide actual utility to NFTs.” Then, at NFT.NYC, a spark of inspiration hit as the founders observed collectors buying NFTs offered by musicians performing live. Unsurprisingly, the halo effect of a memorable experience increased sales. The pair focused on building a platform that would further enable this type of interaction between creators and their communities in the digital world of web3.

The idea from NFT.NYC came to life at a hackathon where the duo created the first iteration of the402. Thanks to the positive response from the community, they plunged into building in web3 full time to pursue the402 as their new mission. The co-founders released the full creator platform just a few months later in June 2022.

 from researching the Ethereum ecosystem, as a cheaper alternative to host livestreams. The founders decided to migrate their video streaming to web3 with Livepeer Studio after meeting with and talking over technical details with the Livepeer core team. More specifically, they wanted to test out Livepeer Studio’s livestreaming capabilities and see how they “could use livestreams to drive sales for creators.”

Ravi described the transition to Livepeer as “pretty simple… It was too easy. So that’s why we’re [wondering] why is [Livepeer] not more of a thing? I think [Livepeer] is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.”

1. Livestreaming page and chat functionality

2. Creator profiles where fans can watch livestreams, collect NFT access passes, watch previous livestreams, and subscribe to creators

Creators that want to token gate livestreams can leverage various pricing mechanisms to issue an NFT access pass. Also, creators can use tokens from existing platforms to curate their own communities on the402. 

Fans can enter creator profiles to purchase NFT access passes in order to attend livestreams. Fans can also chat with creators, other fans, use on-chain 

 for notifications, and use NFTs as their verified profile picture.

During the livestream, creators can create custom emotes that can be minted as NFTs, and also place NFTs minted on other platforms (e.g. Zora, Manifold, POAP) for sale.

The platform has been hosting livestreams for artists since the end of July. Their first token-gated livestream was at the end of July 2022 with the indie pop musician 

. Though the402 is just beginning to establish a user base, Alara was 

 for a total compensation of $820 for a ~45 minute livestream. Alara 

 about the experience and expressed her excitement to livestream again soon.

the402 embodies the web3 ethos by enabling creators to reclaim ownership of their content and communities, and bypassing middlemen for direct compensation for their work. the402 is now focused on building its capabilities and spreading 

. Also, the team is particularly excited to discover additional methods to mobilize communities around their favorite creators and build more crypto-native integrations.

“[the402 team was initially in a] super fast experimental phase rapidly iterating on product and improving the experience with each livestream. With the underlying infrastructure in place, we’re looking forward to start scaling this to more creators and communites. There is still a ton of exciting things we’re planning on rolling out soon. We’re just scratching the surface.“ - Ravi Bakhai, Founder of the402

In the current web2 ecosystem, many creators follow a boom-and-bust model - banking on virality, views, and ad dollars to drive revenue. With token-gated livestreams, the402 hopes to build an alternative revenue stream for creators where they can provide exciting and exclusive experiences for their communities with greater ownership of those relationships.

the402 is a livestreaming platform that enables creators to build communities and monetize superfans by leveraging crypto. Currently, the402 enables creators to token gate livestreams using both the402-exclusive NFT access passes and NFTs issued on other platforms, and sell digital collectibles during livestreams. Communities can also interact with creators and other fans using their chat functionality.

How the402's Crypto-Enabled Livestreaming Benefits Creators

 StreamETH enables event organizers, communities and content creators to livestream and share video, in a decentralized way

Open-source video content management system (CMS)

In three hectic and exciting weeks in 2021, software engineer 

 and his team built an open-source livestreaming player, 

StreamETH attracted instant kudos and was used as the livestreaming solution for important web3 events including 

. Now the newest iteration, StreamETH 2.0, will be in the spotlight again – as the livestream provider for 

Pablo discovered Livepeer long before he conceived the idea for StreamETH. He’d been working in web2, livestreaming private group events. While he loved the creativity of his work, he found infrastructure on AWS to be prohibitively expensive.

“When I started looking for a decentralized solution and found Livepeer, I realized there was no need to pay high prices for transcoding. I was cutting my costs 10x.”

While the initial attraction may have been price, it was the Livepeer community and the web3 philosophy that captivated him. He was eager to contribute and soon became an active and committed part of the Livepeer ecosystem. He provided feedback to the Livepeer core team, ran an orchestrator node, and even set up a Livepeer channel for the Spanish community on Telegram.

Then, in 2020, the Ethereum Foundation reached out to Livepeer, seeking a decentralized streaming solution for Devconnect.

“They really needed someone from a broadcasting perspective, so Livepeer said to us, ‘Hey, maybe you could look into this.’ It was these two teams coming together who really believed in open source, and we also had a direct necessity. So we said, ‘let’s make StreamETH.’”

Pablo and his co-founders quickly spun up a prototype and put it through an intense and successful road-test at Devconnect. Pablo said organizers’ willingness to take a chance on a nascent project felt like “a magic opportunity” to the team.

At the conference, Pablo was immediately struck by attendees’ enthusiasm about the prospect of an open-source alternative for content distribution. Devconnect also offered a lesson in how eager projects are to enable monetization on their platforms. Several have been in touch since to talk about how to make this happen.

Now the StreamETH team is working on a complete UI design and adding new features and functionalities, most importantly the ability for developers to add plug-ins to the application.

“It’s now a more thought-out product philosophy. We’re looking to reproduce what Wordpress is doing in the content management system (CMS) space, but for video. We want to be a one-stop place for video content and distribution, focused towards events and their organizers.”

Devcon will be the biggest challenge to date, with 32 concurrent livestreams, including back-ups and translations into local languages. But Pablo says it will be a superb showcase for what StreamETH and Livepeer Studio can do together.

So what comes next? Pablo has a long list of plans, not least of which is finding a way for viewers to safely interact with one another on StreamETH to offer more of a community feel. And since web3 principles are central to StreamETH’s ethos, the team wants to one day delegate governance to the ecosystem.

“Our goal is to provide a service for the ages, not just something we can earn money from. Video is a great chunk of the internet’s bandwidth. Centralized providers control most of it and YouTube and Twitter own most of the content.”

StreamETH offers event organizers a streaming solution that is true to all the values of web3: open source, user owned, and adaptable. Pablo’s goal now is to attract more innovators to work on the protocol and to create more plug-ins.

“We want to attract builders to work on this and create more plug-ins for StreamETH. It’s a community project. We have to embrace it and move as far away from YouTube and Twitter as possible. That’s the main goal. Having a web3 event that’s not dependent on centralized identities is a massive win.”

StreamETH enables event organizers, communities and content creators to livestream and share video, in a decentralized way.

StreamETH Brings IRL Ethereum Events Online

 is an independent online radio station that broadcasts a 24/7 livestream of over 165 resident DJs. True to its artistic roots, The Lot Radio is housed in a reclaimed shipping container in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and provides a public space for enjoying electronic, disco, and soul music.

“It’s a regular 20-foot shipping container that we redesigned. It’s exactly divided in two. On the left side, you have a radio studio. On the right side, we have a kiosk where we sell beer, wine, and coffee. That’s how we finance the whole operation”

Over one million minutes of video has been transcoded by The Lot Radio since it started livestreaming on the Livepeer network almost two years ago.

Francois initially used livestream.com because it was one of the only 24/7 livestreaming services available, and it was a local company that provided a lot of hands-on support. However, he needed to find a new solution after livestream.com was acquired by Vimeo and stopped offering its 24/7 service. Francois searched for an alternative, but discovered that it was difficult to find a livestreaming platform that was affordable — this was important as The Lot Radio is a not-for-profit organization.

He eventually stumbled upon Livepeer in a Google search and found the website intriguing, even though he didn’t know much about “the blockchain.” Francois was impressed by how easy it was to start using Livepeer, and in just a few clicks, he was livestreaming.

“Basically, the fun thing was that you could start directly. I remember I [created] an account, I clicked a few clicks, and my RTMP server was set up. I tested directly with myself, it was streaming, and I was like - this seems pretty legit”

After successfully livestreaming a few of his events, Francois reached out to the Livepeer core team to learn more about the project.

“It has been a pleasure. When I reached out for the first time, they directly organized a big meeting with, kind of, all of the core team of the project… And since then, to be honest, the project is so stable, that I don’t really have to communicate with [Livepeer] ever… we just keep updated from time to time about the new technology, but overall, it does the job, the price is really affordable, and we’re really happy about it”

After almost two years of broadcasting music, The Lot Radio is still successfully running - the affordability of the Livepeer network being a key reason.

The Lot Radio has big plans for the future. They want to keep growing and provide an independent stage for more resident DJs and other creative talents. Francois wants to eventually purchase a brick-and-mortar location, and build two new multimedia studios.

Additionally, Francois’ experience with Livepeer Studio has sparked his curiosity about the potential of web3. He plans on making the full transition to a decentralized future when the time is right for The Lot Radio.

“We feel it’s too early, like some things are missing here and there, but [it’s] definitely somewhere we want to go and that’s also why I’m excited to work with Livepeer - because, for us, it’s one foot already towards there, and that’s where we want to go for sure”

Check out the full interview with Francois Vaxelaire on 

Founded in 2016 by Francois Vaxelaire, The Lot Radio is an independent online radio station that broadcasts a 24/7 livestream of over 165 resident DJs. Over one million minutes of video has been transcoded by The Lot Radio since it started livestreaming on the Livepeer network almost two years ago.

Why The Lot Radio Livestreams 24/7 with Livepeer Studio 

 Streaming platform for Italy’s first Ethereum hackathon


In May 2022, Matteo Tambussi, an Ethereum Foundation contributor and crypto enthusiast, and Maria Magenes (Balancer, Oasis) hosted Italy’s first Ethereum hackathon, 

. The event spanned three days in the heart of Milan with the mission to “buidl an open sauce future” and inspire web3-powered public goods.

Tambussi and Magenes hoped this regional event would act as a catalyst for a burgeoning, but underdeveloped, Italian web3 community. They designed the event to foster as much conversation and networking as possible, and chose to host 

“Instead of choosing a venue that could fit 2,000 or more people, we decided to go for something smaller. This allowed people to bump into each other more times during the free days. And, you know, deepen the conversation. Something similar happened in 

. It was actually a homey environment because so many people are hacking, working, giving talks, and establishing connections. All in all, it was [like] a big wedding.”

SpaghettETH included speakers and sponsors hailing from a variety of organizations including the 

Additionally, SpaghettETH hosted a hackathon involving six projects:

, for self-sovereign portable NFT Identity projects

, for IoT, Oracles, and “MachineFi” Dapps projects

CypherParty, for creating Extensions using EthOS Items

SpaghettETH, a non-coding hackathon track to educate about the web3 ecosystem

Each project offered a bounty that participants competed for, and winners were selected by the community using 

SpaghettETH was livestreamed on their event website with a Livepeer Studio integration. Tambussi previously worked as a member of the Livepeer core team, and he was excited to connect with the team again.

“Ever since I worked for Livepeer Inc. four years ago, every time I do something, I try to do it with Livepeer. I think it worked quite effortlessly. Overall, I know that people from all over the world managed to see the event.”

Although there were some hurdles, Tambussi believed that the event was largely a success, and it achieved something novel in web3 community building.

“There were problems, of course. There were many things we could have done better, and the hackathon was something we may have undercurated a bit. But something that we did, that was probably the first time that it's ever been done, was creating a non-coding track that people with educational, business, or social background could address.”

Matteo Tambussi and Maria Magenes hosted Italy’s first Ethereum hackathon, SpaghettETH. The event spanned three days in the heart of Milan with the mission to “buidl an open sauce future” and inspire web3-powered public goods.

How SpaghettETH Used Livepeer Studio to Stream Its Hackathon

 A web3 interactive video streaming platform for filmmakers

“How do we give the tools to filmmakers so that they are able to have a more straightforward way to finance, distribute, and get the community around the movies they're producing?” asked Beem co-founder 

Groundbreaking businesses are born when curious people ask big questions, such as the one Grau asked himself one day in 2018. With the help of his partner 

, these two experienced tech entrepreneurs decided to use the power of web3 to reshape the film industry

 (under the stealth name “Unchained”), they showed how the shift from DVDs and Blu-rays to the video-on-demand (VOD) world of Netflix generated revenue losses estimated at $12 billion.

Part of the blame can be attributed to the smaller selection of movies available (ten times smaller than in the DVD era, according to estimates cited in the whitepaper), erratic streaming quality, and poor user experience, which left many consumers dissatisfied.

, takes the best from platforms like YouTube Live, Eventbrite, and Patreon and combines them to create a web3-native platform for filmmakers. In this new world, filmmakers are the platform.

Beem allows filmmakers to upload their productions, distribute them to their audiences – free or paid – and create live events with full ticketing management in a few clicks. They can also stream their events on YouTube Live, Twitch, or Facebook Live to reach the largest audience possible and generate greater interaction and monetization. After the event, the creators can offer the recording for replay – once again, for free or paid.

These creators can also invite guests and fans on stage and interact with them via live video and chat. Participants, for their part, can easily access the events from any device and cast them to their TV through Airplay or Chromecast.

“You have two things: the video on one side, and the live experiences on the other. We are giving creators their own store where they can sell and distribute their content, but also the live experiences and live events with their fans,” said Grau.

They also offer a premium white-label solution called Beem Pro, which allows filmmakers to create a fully customizable page with unique branding, content, and events. Pro users have the tools to run their communities, and access analytics about their events, content distribution, and revenues while maintaining full ownership of their content and data.

Since their beta launch in October 2020, more than 2,000 creators have used Beem to host film premieres and festivals, live concerts, podcast recordings, interactive workshops, and fundraisers.

What drives movie fans to the platform isn’t just their filmmakers but the relationship they develop through their support and the experience of participating in live events. “It's the story you're telling and the project with an actual human being trying to create something,” said Grau. “We see that the community is actually craving for these kinds of stories […] the behind the scenes aspect of them.”

Beem has allowed filmmakers to distribute their productions and engage their audiences. “Since we offer live events and streaming, you can stream the content in sync for everyone at the same time. So everyone is chatting together while they see the content in HD.”

“This is why we really want to rely on Livepeer Studio. You can basically push what you want people to see on screen, and then stream that content on Facebook, YouTube Live, and any other RTMP endpoints,” said Grau.

For Grau, the benefits Livepeer Studio offered were perfect for creating a platform fully made on web3. As he explained:

“[Livepeer Studio allows] filmmakers to avoid managing ten different software tools just to do their own streaming and broadcasting. They can use a single one, and then stream through a bunch of different channels, and use those existing communities that they already have in all those different platforms, like the centralized web2 platforms, to attract them to their own video streaming platform with their own branding, their own content, their own look and feel.”

Crasneanu and Grau expect this experience-led concept to become the next big thing in the film industry, which has recently been dubbed the “film3” movement.

“We believe that the future of engagement will have micro-communities of super fans that are going to pay you a lot and that are going to be super invested in having that unique relationship with the creators.”

“We think that Livepeer plays a very important role in the web3 video ecosystem. And the way you started approaching it from the transcoding perspective makes a lot of sense,” said Grau. “Dealing with video at scale is incredibly hard and very demanding in terms of infrastructure needs. We’re happy to rely on partners that are specialized and that are leveraging an already pretty big network of nodes.”

They had thought of doing their own transcoding and video delivery. Still, as Grau explained, “the reality is that this is a very web2 way of thinking. In this new interoperable web3 world, it's way better to leverage Livepeer's different [...] integrations that you have because all those protocols are interoperable. It will cost you more if you try to do it yourself.”

For Grau, the integration with Livepeer Studio was the missing piece he and his team were looking for when creating Beem.

“I’ve been working on the video space for a while. So the first time Livepeer came out, I was like, ‘oh my god, this is awesome. Someone is doing it.’”

As they continue to grow, Beem’s core team expects to continue their integration with Livepeer Studio beyond livestreaming events. “We want the experience for our users and creators to be at least as good as what's happening on web2, and possibly even better,” said Grau. “And so this is why leveraging existing networks and leveraging strong partnerships, like the one we have with Livepeer Studio, makes a lot of sense – because it allows us to ensure a certain level of quality of delivery.”

Beem allows filmmakers to upload their productions, distribute them to their audiences – free or paid – and create live events with full ticketing management in a few clicks. They can also stream their events on YouTube Live, Twitch, or Facebook Live to reach the largest audience possible and generate greater interaction and monetization. 

How Beem Is Building a Web3 Video Streaming Platform for Filmmakers with Livepeer Studio

: Livestream and On-Demand Concert Platform

Fans have historically shown support for their favorite artists by buying records, concert tickets, or merchandise. The allure of streaming platforms didn't change this long-established dynamic.

Even though sales are crucial to any artist's financial well-being, money isn't the only thing that matters to them. Artists also want to engage with their followers in a much closer and direct fashion, which, up until recently, could only be achieved through social media.

Web3 offers a unique opportunity for artists to connect, livestream events, and reward their fans in a way never seen before through the use of tokens and NFTs.

The first company to create a platform that fulfills this promise is Inflow. We sat down with Alexander Yoseph, co-founder and CEO of 

, to talk about how their platform is poised to empower artists and fans alike, their story, and how they are doing so far.

Alexander first envisioned Inflow as a platform that allowed musicians, athletes, and content creators to launch their own social tokens and start monetizing their communities.

“As fans, we’re the biggest economic producers in the music industry, but we actually get no type of reward for being a fan, and so crypto lets us do that. A lot of the social token platforms are missing the social aspect, and so that’s what we wanted to bring – a way for you to interact with your favorite creator in our setting, on our platform.”

Inflow enables artists to mint tokens that give fans “access to their livestreams – thanks to Livepeer Studio – their music videos, their songs, their vlogs, interviews, or any type of studio sessions. The first kind of utility that we’re going to give is access to content and experiences.”

He rendered this vision in a white paper he wrote in 2019, and incorporated the company a year later. Afterward, he got into the 

, an accelerator for early-stage blockchain and web3 startups backed by 

“That really kicked off our journey and solidified us as a key player in the space,” said Alexander.

An experiential music platform for true music fans

 to create tokens that their fans can use to access:

Special events only accessible by token holders

Inflow also allows artists to create DAOs that give fans the power to vote on matters like what artists they should collaborate with.

Not only can artists reward fans for their support, but they can also create two new revenue streams free of intermediaries:

A 3% fee every time someone buys or sells their token

The sale of NFTs or royalties from their ownership

For Alexander, delivering unique experiences to token holders came down to video: “When we talk about experiences, video is the closest thing you can get to experiencing somebody, whether it be on a livestream, experiencing music videos or behind-the-scenes footage, or a studio session.”

During his time in Tachyon Accelerator, Alexander started to look for a web3 provider that enabled video streaming, particularly for live content like concerts and shows.

Alexander and Richard’s first decision was to use Amazon S3, but they soon realized its popularity wasn’t worth its high costs. They tried token gating YouTube and Vimeo videos, but that didn’t work for their users either.

As they scraped for a better solution, Alexander heard one of the founders of 

, a video NFT platform, praise Livepeer. That was followed by a second referral by someone from 

, an NFT-powered social platform. For the founders, it was crucial to leverage a web3-native tool. “Since we are progressively decentralizing, Livepeer just made sense,” Alexander explained.

Inflow’s web3 stack is made up of “whatever tools that makes us as autonomous and decentralized as possible, but then also, that it is not that hard to implement. I think it’s a mixture of ease of implementation and, “does it align with our core mission of being hands-off?”. We want to exist in the community and be really a tool that is run by the people.”

How Livepeer Studio helped Inflow deliver a unique fan experience

Richard, the CTO, was originally doubtful about trying Livepeer Studio because “he didn’t know what to build—we’re building so many things and he didn’t know how much time this would take.”

However, this feeling soon changed when Richard found that “just from a development standpoint, it’s been really easy to use. He said it works perfectly, and now we’re just getting the video-on-demand stuff ready to go.”

Alexander and Richard found Livepeer Studio ideal for livestreaming, which plays a major part in its value proposition.

“Being able to have this one-on-one conversation, or being able to have this intimate experience with them is very important. Attaching a value to that and basically being rewarded in experience with these tokens and with these livestreams—that’s the first thing that Livepeer Studio is going to be helping us with.”

A second crucial way they are using Livepeer Studio is for on-demand video and token-gating exclusive content. “Music and videos are going to be the core content that’s on our platforms,“ said Alexander. “Token-gating is important as well, too—being able to token-gate, not only with our technology but with the help of your technology.”

The fact that the Livepeer Studio team worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the founders was the final point that convinced them. “We need a team that can hop on calls with us and that’s really important for us,” explained Alexander.

Thanks to Livepeer Studio, the founders are ready to grow while keeping true to Alexander’s original vision. As he put it, “The reason why I started Inflow is because it’s a mixture of two of my passions, music and crypto – music and economics, really. I think creating an option where people could work on their passions is the biggest thing crypto could have –financial freedom for the everyday person.”

Interested in learning more about Livepeer Studio? Join the community on 

Web3 offers a unique opportunity for musicians to connect, livestream events, and reward their fans. The first company to create a platform that fulfills this promise is Inflow. We sat down with Alexander Yoseph, co-founder and CEO of Inflow, about how their platform is poised to empower artists and fans alike.

Blog

How the402's Crypto-Enabled Livestreaming Benefits Creators

How the402's Crypto-Enabled Livestreaming Benefits Creators

StreamETH Brings IRL Ethereum Events Online

Why The Lot Radio Livestreams 24/7 with Livepeer Studio

How SpaghettETH Used Livepeer Studio to Stream Its Hackathon

How Beem Is Building a Web3 Video Streaming Platform for Filmmakers with Livepeer Studio

How Inflow Created the First Music Platform for the Web3 Economy