Setting Priorities For Network Engineering SPE II

1. General

Proposed By: Rich O'Grady
Proposed On: Tue 4 Aug 2026

2. What Is The Problem?

As the funding for the pilot SPE has been allocated, we now need to retro the first months, gauge what needs to be funded, and what are the best mechanisms to fund the priorities.

Before publishing a formal retro, the core SPE members wanted to give community contributors to raise feedback, concerns and ideas about the SPE’s operations and funding. By the end of the session, we hope to have a long list of priorities for the rest of the year and 

3. Why Does It Matter To the Livepeer Ecosystem?

The SPE plays a critical role in funding core network engineering and enabling demand bets on the network. It is the primary way to fund network engineering, particularly in smaller funding sizes (under $20k). It has a working track record to build the case on. With the first round of funding, it’s carried out work across agent experimentation, delegator experience, Explorer maintenance and network payments and billing as per the July update. A full retro will be published shortly.

The primary questions is whether the SPE is pointed at the right targets. Livepeer 2.0 is a shift in direction towards an agent-first future. We want to ensure that the network adapts, while remaining relatively neutral to enable a variety of demand bets.

4. What Does Success Look Like?

• Livepeer agents run on the network with relative low-latency and observable performance data.

• Developers can build against the network without fighting the tooling or documentation.

• The supply side is adapted to the job types 2.0 introduces, not just the ones it inherited.

• New demand bets can be built on infrastructure that already exists, rather than waiting on it.

• Payments and billing run on standardised rates, not a bespoke integration per demand bet.

5. Open Questions

• What's actually worked about the Network Engineering SPE so far, and what hasn't?

• What should the SPE's priorities be for the rest of the year, given the shift to 2.0?

• What mechanisms (process, review, funding cadence) does that reprioritisation require?