What Is Livepeer (LPT)? An Open Network for AI Video

Livepeer (LPT) is an open network that processes video, increasingly for AI video, and its token is what operators stake to do that work and earn rewards. The operators who run the machines are called orchestrators, and LPT holders without their own hardware can stake with one and share its rewards.

Livepeer cut its inflation rate at every weekly reading for a year, yet the LPT supply still grew by more than a quarter. The protocol counted 58.74 million LPT in early November 2026, 27.19% more than a year earlier. Each cut is tiny, and the rate started from a high base, so the network kept minting new LPT every round.

Livepeer (LPT) at a Glance

What Is Livepeer Crypto?

Livepeer has two halves that work together. The network is a marketplace for video processing, where independent operators with GPUs take jobs and get paid in fees. LPT is the token that decides which operators make the active set and who collects the new LPT the protocol mints each round.

Livepeer's smart contracts call those operators transcoders, a name taken from transcoding, the step that turns one live stream into the sizes and formats phones and browsers can play. The project's documentation carries guides for adding AI inference and serving real-time AI, and its October 2026 post on Livepeer 2.0 describes the network as infrastructure for "media centric compute".

LPT is an ERC-20 token, the standard format for tokens on Ethereum, the second-largest crypto. It also has a second contract on Arbitrum One, a layer 2 network that settles to Ethereum, and that's where Livepeer's staking contracts run.

How Does Livepeer Work?

Livepeer runs in rounds. A round lasts 6,377 Ethereum blocks, or about 21 hours. At the start of each one the protocol sets how much new LPT it will mint. Orchestrators claim that mint in proportion to their stake, keep a cut they set and pass the rest to those who staked with them. A share left unclaimed in its round goes unminted.

Staking on Livepeer is called bonding. You bond LPT to an orchestrator, and only the 100 orchestrators with the most stake behind them form the active set that earns rewards and takes work. All 100 places were filled both a year earlier and in early November.

Those who bond without running hardware are called delegators, and they pick an operator by the reward cut and fee share it sets. A delegator can move stake to a better operator, which keeps the operators competing for it.

Leaving takes patience. Unbonded LPT stays locked for seven rounds, about six days, before you can withdraw it.

Why Is Livepeer Staking So High?

More than half of all LPT is staked because the protocol is built to pull it there. Its rules target a staked share of 50%. Whenever the share is below that, the inflation rate rises a notch each round. Whenever it's above 50%, the rate falls by the same notch.

The new LPT goes only to staked tokens and the treasury. A holder who leaves LPT idle in a wallet gets none of it, so their share of the network shrinks every round, and that dilution is the pressure that keeps stakers in. The staked share stood at about 52%, up from about 50.5% a year before.

That's also why staking rewards look generous. The mint is shared among roughly half of the supply, so stakers as a group collect new LPT at well above the rate at which the whole supply grows.

LPT Tokenomics: Why the Supply Grew While Inflation Fell

Livepeer's inflation rate is the share of the supply it mints each round. A year earlier it minted about 0.7 LPT for every 1,000 in supply each round, and by early November it was down to about 0.5. Over the 410 rounds in between, the rate fell by 408 of those notches, and it was lower at each weekly reading than at the one before.

The cuts were small. Each one took about a thousandth off the rate, and even the lower rate added about half a token per thousand to the supply every 21 hours or so. At that pace a year of rounds adds more than a fifth to the supply, which is how the protocol's count climbed from about 46.2 million LPT to 58.7 million while the rate kept falling.

Watch which supply number you're reading. CoinMarketCap showed about 49.7 million LPT in circulation, and the Ethereum contract alone reported about 24.9 million. Neither is the count Livepeer mints from. The protocol adds the LPT on Arbitrum One to the LPT still circulating on Ethereum, and every other supply figure here uses that total.

By early November, 10% of each round's reward went to Livepeer's on-chain treasury, a cut that stood at zero a year earlier. The treasury held about 451,000 LPT. The protocol stops paying into it once the balance reaches 750,000 LPT.

What Is Livepeer 2.0?

Livepeer 2.0 is a proposal to rewrite how the network pays for work, set out in a 12 October 2026 post on Livepeer's blog and a litepaper. The post is plain about its status, saying "nothing passes without governance and community approval".

The biggest change for holders is issuance. Under the current rules, inflation "adjusts based on how much LPT is staked". The proposal would replace that with a fixed schedule that starts at the issuance level of the time and would "halve every two years".

Fees would change too. Network payments would move from ETH to USDC, and at launch "50% are used to buy back and burn LPT", with the other half going to the node that did the work. Rewards would follow a rule the post calls Min-Fee-Stake, under which a node earns the smaller of its share of fees and its share of stake.

The proposal would also drop the 100-node limit on the active set and add validators drawn from the 33 nodes with the most stake. Unbonding would stretch from 7 rounds to 21. None of it takes effect unless it clears Livepeer's own governance, where stakers cast on-chain votes with their LPT.

Is Livepeer Dead?

The chain says the network kept running. The protocol moved through 410 rounds in the year to early November 2026, and its supply count grew by about 12.6 million LPT along the way. The project kept publishing too, with the October post on Livepeer 2.0 following a vision update it says was shared in July.

The market has been harsher. LPT closed early November at about $1.38 on CoinMarketCap's daily data, down about 72% from $4.91 a year earlier.

Plenty of crypto networks keep running while their tokens fall, and the figure that would change this story is fee income. Livepeer 2.0 would tie rewards and burns to fees, so if it passes, fee income would decide most of what LPT holders earn.

How to Buy LPT Safely

1. Note the two contract addresses before you buy any LPT. On Ethereum it's 0x58b6A8A3302369DAEc383334672404Ee733aB239. On Arbitrum One, Livepeer's own contract registry points to 0x289ba1701c2f088cf0faf8b3705246331cb8a839. A bridged copy exists on another chain, so an address that matches neither belongs to a different token.

2. Keep your LPT in a non-custodial wallet that supports Arbitrum One. That keeps the keys in your hands, and Arbitrum One is where you'll stake.

3. Compare any venue's LPT contract with the two addresses above before you trade.

4. Stake through Livepeer's own tools once the tokens reach your wallet. Livepeer's documentation walks through choosing an orchestrator and delegating, and the orchestrator's reward cut decides how much of the mint reaches you.

LPT's USDT perpetual left Phemex after an August 2026 delisting notice, and its USD perpetual and spot pair are no longer listed.

A delisting ends trading in that market.

Phemex's futures markets cover other crypto pairs. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin, a forced exit known as liquidation in crypto trading.

What Are the Risks of LPT?

Dilution if you don't stake. An unstaked holder's slice of Livepeer shrank by about a fifth over the year, because the supply grew while their tokens earned nothing. That cost lands every round, in calm markets as well as falling ones.

Rules that may change. Livepeer 2.0 would rewrite rewards, fees and unbonding if governance approves it. A node that earns little in fees would earn little in LPT under the proposed rule, so delegators who back idle operators would see their rewards shrink.

A slow exit. Bonded LPT can't be sold the moment the price moves. The seven-round wait gives the market about six days to move against you, and the proposal would make that wait three times as long.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Livepeer a good investment?

We can't make that call for you, but the record is plain. In the year to early November 2026, LPT's price fell about 72% while the supply grew about 27%, so holders who didn't stake lost on both counts. Livepeer 2.0 would put issuance on a fixed schedule if governance approves it.

How long does it take to unstake LPT?

Seven rounds, which came to about six days under the rules in place in early November 2026. A round lasts about 21 hours. The Livepeer 2.0 proposal would raise the wait to 21 rounds if it passes.

Is the LPT coin on Ethereum or Arbitrum?

Both. LPT has an ERC-20 contract on Ethereum and a second contract on Arbitrum One, where Livepeer's staking runs. The protocol counts LPT on both chains when it sets each round's mint.

Does LPT have a maximum supply?

No fixed maximum exists under the current rules, because the protocol mints new LPT every round at a rate tied to staking. Livepeer 2.0 would move to a halving schedule, which the post says means "the maximum LPT supply is known up front".

Bottom Line

Livepeer's falling inflation rate is a brake that bites a thousandth at a time. As long as more than half of all LPT stays staked, the rate keeps easing. The supply keeps growing anyway, and the stakers collect what unstaked holders give up. For LPT's supply, getting Livepeer 2.0 through governance would matter more than another year of these cuts.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.