Who Is Doug Petkanics? The Livepeer Co-Founder

Doug Petkanics is a software entrepreneur who co-founded Livepeer, an open network for video processing, and co-wrote its 2017 whitepaper. His newest dated title is from July 2025, when he signed a post as co-founder and CEO of Livepeer Inc. He then laid out Livepeer 2.0, the project's plan to become an open platform for AI video agents.

Petkanics is named as an author on 9 of the 27 proposals in Livepeer's public improvement-proposal repository, including all four that created its community treasury. None of the four proposals filed after his last one, in March 2025, carries his name. In that record he co-wrote the rules for how Livepeer votes and pays for shared work, and other contributors wrote what came next.

Doug Petkanics at a Glance

Doug Petkanics's Career and Background

Petkanics's early public record at Livepeer includes the Livepeer whitepaper, which lists him and Eric Tang as its two authors. A commit under his name added it to the project's wiki on 20 April 2017, with the note "Adding Whitepaper". A whitepaper is the design document a crypto project publishes to explain how it will work, in the line of Satoshi's 2008 Bitcoin paper.

Its subtitle set the goal as "Protocol and Economic Incentives For a Decentralized Live Video Streaming Network". That was the 2017 pitch, years before Petkanics and the project turned toward AI video. His personal website could not be reached over a secure connection, and his record here comes from that whitepaper, Livepeer's public proposals and posts on Livepeer's blog.

He also co-founded Livepeer Inc, which he described in July 2025 as "the company that I co-founded and operate".

Petkanics's public work at Livepeer falls into two stretches. Through March 2025 he wrote protocol proposals like an engineer, full of contract functions and gas costs. From mid-2025 his posts on the project's blog read like an executive's. They explained how Livepeer reorganized and where he thought it should go next. That shift tells you more about his role than any job title does.

What Is Livepeer?

Livepeer is an open network that pays independent operators to process video, from converting live streams into formats your phone can play (transcoding) to running AI models on live video. Its 2017 design built on Ethereum's smart-contract network, with broadcasters paying for video work in Ether.

LPT is the token those operators stake for the right to take on work and earn rewards. If you've read how Akash Network works, the idea is close, with a token coordinating strangers who supply their own hardware.

What Did Doug Petkanics Build at Livepeer?

Livepeer changes its protocol through Livepeer Improvement Proposals, or LIPs. Its public LIP repository holds 27 of them, filed from 2018 to 2026.

Petkanics's name is on nine of those files. The first, from May 2018, let stakers withdraw part of their stake while the rest kept working. In 2020 he co-wrote two of the three proposals that moved LIP decisions to polls, a form of on-chain governance, and another that cut the gas cost of claiming earnings.

The treasury is the clearest mark he left. Four 2023 proposals carry his name. Together they created an on-chain treasury that LPT holders control, set the conventions for what it should fund and fed it a share of newly minted LPT. He wrote one alone and the other three with Victor Elias.

In a November 2023 post on Livepeer's blog Petkanics wrote that the community had approved the treasury "a little over three weeks" earlier and that it "already contains over 29,000 LPT" for public goods funding.

Eight of his nine reached Final, the status for a proposal adopted in a protocol upgrade, and that's more than a third of the repository's 21 Final proposals. His last proposal in March 2025 would have put a floor and a ceiling on the network's inflation rate, and it was marked Abandoned. The four filed after it came from other contributors.

The repository holds only proposals written up there, so forum debates and work inside Livepeer Inc sit outside it. As a record of who wrote Livepeer's rules, it puts Petkanics at the center of how the network votes and funds itself.

What Happened to Livepeer?

In 2025 Livepeer split its work between a company and a new foundation, and in 2026 it outlined a rebuild called Livepeer 2.0.

Petkanics explained the split in his July 2025 post on Livepeer's blog. The Livepeer Foundation had "recently launched to steward the 10+ entities in the ecosystem that are core contributors to the project". In his own summary the foundation would steward the community and fund public goods. Livepeer Inc would focus on "driving demand to the network by building the realtime AI products" that run on it.

He was frank about what hadn't worked, writing that transcoding on its own hadn't won the market without heavy productization and enterprise support around it. Livepeer Studio would keep its existing enterprise users and pass their transcoding jobs through to the network.

A July 2026 post on the project's blog credited Petkanics with laying out the path to Livepeer 2.0. It described upgrades meant to let Livepeer go to market without relying on other companies' products or apps.

His October 2026 post on Livepeer's blog took the plan into the token itself. It describes proposals to use network fees to buy back and burn LPT and to put new issuance on a fixed schedule. Petkanics framed them as proposals for debate, writing that "nothing is set in stone" and that any change needs governance approval.

Is Livepeer Still Run by Doug Petkanics?

Not by him alone, since Livepeer's protocol changes through holder votes and its contributor teams have had a foundation to steward them since 2025. Petkanics's newest dated title comes from the July 2025 post, where he signed as "Co-founder and CEO at Livepeer Inc". So the Livepeer CEO title on the record belongs to the company, and it's dated July 2025.

The July 2026 post calls him a Livepeer co-founder, and his own October 2026 post carries his name with no title. Neither gives a newer title, so the July 2025 byline stays the last dated word on his role.

If you're trying to judge his influence, the proposals are the better guide. A title says which company Petkanics led in mid-2025, while the repository shows which of Livepeer's rules carry his name.

Can You Trade LPT on Phemex?

LPT's USDT perpetual left Phemex after an August 2026 delisting notice, and its USD perpetual and spot pair are no longer listed. If you want exposure to crypto more broadly, Phemex lists futures on other assets that you can trade long or short. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.

FAQ

Who founded Livepeer?

Livepeer's 2017 whitepaper names two authors, Doug Petkanics and Eric Tang, and the project's blog calls Petkanics a co-founder. He also co-founded Livepeer Inc, the company that works on the network.

Is Livepeer dead?

Livepeer's blog published plans in 2026, with a July outline of Livepeer 2.0 and an October post from Petkanics on protocol changes. Its public proposal repository took a new proposal in September 2026.

What is the difference between Livepeer Inc and the Livepeer Foundation?

Livepeer Inc is the company Petkanics co-founded. In 2025 it set out to grow demand for the network with real-time AI video products. The new Livepeer Foundation took on stewarding the community and funding public goods.

Where can you read Doug Petkanics's proposals?

They're in Livepeer's public LIP repository on GitHub. His first is LIP-8 from 2018, and the treasury set runs from LIP-89 to LIP-92. Each file lists its authors at the top, so you can check his name on each one.

What did Doug Petkanics propose for Livepeer 2.0?

In October 2026 he described burning LPT with part of the network's fees and moving new issuance to a fixed schedule. None of it is decided, and any change still needs a governance vote.

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.