 Lenstube offers video on demand for both long-form and short-form videos

web3 social platform for video sharing built on Lens Protocol

 is a web3 social platform for video sharing that combines the best of traditional video-sharing platforms with the latest web3 functionalities. Whether you're a professional creator or an amateur, Lenstube gives you the ability to upload and monetize your video content with ease. Currently, Lenstube offers video on demand for both long-form videos and short-form videos.

Lenstube sets itself apart from traditional video-sharing platforms by incorporating web3 features such as connecting to a crypto wallet, enabling creators to receive tips in MATIC coins, collecting videos as NFTs, and charging membership fees for subscribers. These features are made possible through Lenstube's implementation of various web3 technologies, including Livepeer, Arweave, IPFS, and Lens. By utilizing decentralized technologies, Lenstube is revolutionizing the way creators can share and monetize their content, and provides a new and exciting way to engage with their audience.

 founded Lenstube with the goal of creating a decentralized video sharing platform for content creators. The idea for Lenstube came about after Sasi saw some of his favorite creators, who were creating and teaching web3, being unjustly removed from traditional web2 platforms. This led Sasi to understand the importance of web3 for content creators, and the significance of permanent data storage and content ownership. With this in mind, Sasi set out to create his own web3 video-sharing platform. The first step in this process was to find a video-on-demand service that transcodes and serves video from Arweave.

“I knew that creating a video delivery infrastructure and transcoding videos would be a significant challenge, and I definitely didn't want to spend all my time and resources on these technicalities, especially in the early stages of development. Luckily, I discovered Livepeer on the sponsor list of one of the EthGlobal hackathons. Livepeer provided exactly what I needed to move Lenstube forward, and integrating it into my platform was one the first, and easiest, decisions I made.”

Lenstube's partnership with Livepeer has been a vital component of the platform's success. Currently, all videos on Lenstube, whether they are long or short form, are powered by Livepeer. This means that Livepeer handles all the technical aspects of video delivery, such as ingesting, processing, and transcoding. This has afforded Sasi and the Lenstube team the freedom to focus on other important growth areas, like attracting new creators to the platform and improving user experience.

“Working with Livepeer has definitely been a great experience, and we receive tons of support from the team. Recently, Livepeer launched a feature that displays view counts beneath the video player. We were able to implement this feature pretty quickly, and the team was available to answer any questions we had. Although, most of the time we don’t really need the support, as the guides and docs for the Livepeer SDK and API are awesome.”

Today, Lenstube is thriving and making significant strides in its development. The platform has reached notable milestones, such as surpassing 10,000 video uploads in December 2022, averaging more than 1,000 daily sessions, and reaching more than 50,000 average monthly users in January 2023. These milestones demonstrate the effectiveness of the Lenstube team's efforts and the growing appeal of the platform among content creators and viewers alike.

Lenstube boasts a user-friendly interface that includes all of the features commonly found on traditional web2 video sharing platforms. The front page prominently showcases the most recent and popular short-form (Bytes) and long-form videos hosted on the platform, which can be filtered by video category for easy browsing. Users can log in with their Lens handle on the top right corner of the page. Additionally, various exploration tools can be found on the left-hand menu bar for easy access.

Bytes are short-form, vertical videos that are similar to TikToks and YouTube Shorts. Users can scroll through a feed, like and dislike videos, subscribe to channels, and share Bytes via URL or embed videos directly on websites. Additionally, Bytes can be easily shared on Lenster, Twitter, Reddit, and LinkedIn.

Sasi and the Lenstube team have recently made a concerted effort to develop the Bytes feature. This effort was motivated by the increasing popularity of short-form videos on web2 platforms. Not only do short videos have high user retention rates, but they also provide creators with an effective way to capture an audience and lead them to content on other platforms.

“In my opinion, short-form videos are one of the most effective ways to share content with a wide audience, and they offer creators greater opportunities for engagement. We predict that the use of short-form videos as NFTs will become a popular trend in the web3 community."

Do you want to build your own web3 short-form video app? Disrupt TikTok with this 

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Lenstube also enables creators to upload long-form, horizontal videos that are similar to standard YouTube videos. In addition to features found on Bytes, these long-form videos also include view counts, video descriptions, and a comment section.

Every video hosted on Lenstube is equipped with a variety of web3 features. These features not only enable content creators to earn revenue from their videos, but also provide fans with a way to support their favorite creators. This is what sets Lenstube apart from traditional web2 video sharing platforms. Some of the web3 features that Lenstube offers include:

Mirroring across Lens, with custom referral fees

Default sharing of all Lenstube videos across Lens ecosystem apps

Lenstube’s frontend was built using Next.Js, an open-source React framework for web applications. Lenstube uses Apollo Client to manage local and remote data, and to fetch data and do mutations through the Lens Protocol’s GraphQL backend.

Middleware is like a “software glue” that acts as a bridge between different technologies, tools, and databases so they can be integrated into a single system. Lenstube uses Lens Protocol’s indexer for its middleware, and this indexer streamlines data between Lens contracts and viewers. The Lens indexer is a GraphQL server that listens to events from Lens contracts and stores the data into a database. This indexer enables viewers to quickly and efficiently access video data, which leads to a better user experience.

Lenstube’s backend consists of four main components: Livepeer, Arweave, IPFS, and Lens

Lenstube uses Livepeer to process and play back video. Livepeer is a protocol built on Ethereum that distributes video transcoding work throughout its decentralized network. The protocol provides cost efficient, secure, and reliable infrastructure. Livepeer's mainnet launch took place in 2018 and the network now processes millions of minutes of video each week.

Lenstube stores its video files on Arweave and IPFS, web3 protocols that offer data storage on decentralized networks. Arweave and IPFS offer permanent and immutable data storage, and anyone can store data in the networks or offer storage space, without there being a centralized point of failure.

Lenstube uses Lens for its social graph. The Lens social graph is fully composable, open source, and decentralized. This helps transfer full rights and complete ownership of content into the hands of creators.

Sasi intends to improve the Lenstube platform by adding new features, with the primary objective of providing exceptional user experience and boosting user engagement on the platform. Furthermore, Sasi is currently building a mobile application that specifically caters to short-form videos, which will be released soon. This further solidifies his belief that short-form videos represent a rapidly expanding area in the video industry and is positioning Lenstube to capitalize on this growth potential.

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How to Analyze Livepeer Video Engagement Metrics with Timeplus

 comes from one very simple idea: creators should be able to earn a living wage from their work.

The journey to the launch of SubbSpace has been a long and eventful one that began with another project: PlayDJ, a livestreaming platform for DJs. Founders, Steve Ware, Thomas Burman, and Charles Chester, built a platform where individual DJs could broadcast remotely to multiple live venues simultaneously, taking advantage of the UK’s large number of bar chains. But then came COVID-19. Bars closed their doors, leaving DJs isolated from their fans.

It could all have ended there – but not for these three.

“We thought, okay, let’s flip this around. Rather than have one DJ streaming to many places, we’ll have many DJs go to one platform.”

PlayDJ initially used JW Player for video. But with 3,000 DJs signing up in the first couple of weeks, and individual events at times attracting more than 10,000 viewers, transcoding costs were soaring. Switching to Livepeer via 

, which is now part of the Livepeer ecosystem, reduced costs “massively.” By the time the founders decided to pivot their project, 16,000 DJs had streamed six million minutes of music through PlayDJ.

The SubbSpace founders were long-standing friends who met through the music and event industry. Now, they sought a new and more niche market within the creator economy. Their inspiration came from realizing that only one percent of content creators are able to earn enough to live on. The mission to boost that number was born, and with it came SubbSpace, a decentralized, community-first livestreaming platform.

A year in and SubbSpace has achieved a full transition to web3. The founders admitted that while they had previously been interested in web3 and were keen to explore it, they had come to realize they had not been making the most of what Livepeer could offer.

“We just used [Livepeer] for transcoding. We’re using the full Livepeer Studio package this time, all the APIs and webhooks. So the integration this time has been a lot smoother.”

The SubbSpace founders were also impressed by the support they’ve received since making the move.

“It's been great working with the Livepeer team. They’re always on call to make sure things work.”

That teamwork was instrumental when video on demand (VOD) was introduced as a feature of the SubbSpace platform. VOD had been on the team’s radar from the start, but the volume of user-generated content being uploaded proved too big an obstacle in the past. Storage costs were high, and other solutions too expensive for a startup. The platform’s partnership with Livepeer Studio means SubbSpace creators can now take advantage of both livestreaming and VOD.

SubbSpace is designed to give every creator their very own platform, complete with content and monetization strategies. It’s all in the name: the “subb” refers to these customized subscription spaces. 

Creators now have the power to accept tips, sell access, and distribute content how and when they wish – without the restrictive contracts and compromises forced on them by centralized providers.

The team’s excitement about the potential of this game-changing paradigm for the creator economy is palpable. And the platform is not limited, they stress, to DJs and musicians alone. Any creator who wants to build their own micro-economy free from web2 constraints can reap the benefits.

Looking ahead, crypto wallet compatibility, video clipping, and video NFT minting capabilities are next on the roadmap. This means a SubbSpace creator will be able to clip a segment from a stream, quickly mint an NFT, and sell it via the chat function to audiences enjoying the event in real time.

The SubbSpace founders say the ultimate goal is to be future-ready, providing real solutions for web3 creators while working to include those still in the web2 community.

“There’s a hybrid gap to fill, probably for the next five years, to help the world embrace web3. Livepeer is one of the big stepping stones to that. It’s the one project that has always provided real utility. That in itself is amazing. We’re hoping SubbSpace will be as well.”

SubbSpace is designed to give every creator their very own platform, complete with content and monetization strategies. It’s all in the name: the “subb” refers to these customized subscription spaces. Creators now have the power to accept tips, sell access, and distribute content how and when they wish – without the restrictive contracts and compromises forced on them by centralized providers.

SubbSpace Enables Creators to Monetize Their Communities on Their Own Platforms

Lenstube is a web3 social platform for video sharing that combines the best of traditional video-sharing platforms with the latest web3 functionalities. Whether you're a professional creator or an amateur, Lenstube gives you the ability to upload and monetize your video content with ease. Currently, Lenstube offers video on demand for both long-form videos and short-form videos.

How Lenstube Changed Video Sharing in Web3