Network Marketplace Model

How supply, demand, price, and settlement combine into the Livepeer Network’s open compute marketplace, and how honest work is enforced without a central operator.

Market Shape

The Livepeer Network is a posted-price market for GPU compute. Operators on the supply side publish their capabilities and prices. Gateways on the demand side discover, score, and route work to them. Payment runs continuously through probabilistic micropayments, with on-chain settlement only when a ticket wins.

The shape is deliberate. An auction would force every job through a bidding round, adding latency the workloads cannot absorb. On-chain settlement per job would cost more than the work itself. The marketplace runs continuously off-chain so per-pixel video and per-token AI remain economical at production volume.

How Work and Value Move

Two flows run continuously across the marketplace. Work flows from clients through gateways to orchestrators. Value flows in the opposite direction, mostly off-chain, with periodic on-chain settlement.

The diagram is the marketplace. Solid arrows are continuous off-chain traffic; dashed arrows are the periodic on-chain settlement. Most jobs never produce a dashed arrow. The marketplace runs at the speed of the solid lines, anchored by the dashed ones.

Settlement Boundary

The boundary between what the Protocol records and what stays off-chain is sharp. The Protocol sees deposits, winning tickets, active-set membership, and inflation distribution. Everything else is direct gateway-to-orchestrator traffic.

This split is what lets per-pixel and per-token pricing remain economical at production volume. On-chain settlement per segment would cost more than the work itself; off-chain ticketing with periodic redemption keeps the cost ratio sustainable.

How Honest Work is Enforced

The Network produces verifiable work without a central operator. Three mechanisms stack: stake exposure, fast verification, and the discovery surface itself.

The three mechanisms compose. Stake makes misbehaviour costly. Verification detects it when it happens. Selection routes around operators that produce it. None of the three depends on a central authority.

Related Pages

Purpose, properties, actors, where to go.

The running fleet’s structure and surfaces.

Staking, rewards, settlement, rounds.

Operator-side pricing, staking, earnings.