Everyday millions of workers participate in virtual meetings, this continues to increase and is expected to reach 

25% of all professional jobs in North America by the end of 2022

. While the need for virtual meeting software is in high demand, it persistently under performs

Part of the problem with apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet comes from their use of centralized servers. Centralization causes bottlenecks that lead to latency issues, low resolution, outages, and privacy breaches.

Where some would feel resigned, others see opportunity. Such is the case of Susmit Lavania and Ayush Ranjan, who decided to create Huddle01, the first video conferencing solution built with decentralization, security, and performance in mind.

Huddle01 was built to compete with any online meeting tool while also giving it a modern twist. Here are some of the main features Huddle01 has to offer:

Signup through the use of web3 wallets—no email address or phone number needed

Meeting recordings stored on IPFS—a peer-to-peer network for network for storing and sharing data

Decentralized livestreaming using the Livepeer Studio API

Huddle01 is available on the App Store and the Google Play store and allows anyone to have a web3 virtual meeting experience. Web3 enthusiasts such as NFT Communities, DAOs, and web3 creators can enjoy web3 features such as rewarding creators with NFTs and crypto tipping during the sessions. Creators can also mint the stream as an NFT and send it to participants as soon as the stream is over.

Huddle01’s goal is to create a transparent and supportive environment where creators and fans can engage seamlessly over video from anywhere in the world.

Leveraging a Decentralized Livestreaming Network

When it comes to livestreaming, most video conferencing platforms struggle with latency. Whether there's network congestion or a company uses inefficient transcoding protocols, users have become accustomed to a poor video experience. Huddle01’s users communicate over video in real-time without any significant latency.

Huddle01 decided to use Livepeer Studio to serve its user base exclusively with web3-native features (some other tools they use include Moralis, Waku, and Biconomy). Livepeer Studio makes it easy to connect and stream video on the 

The entire transcoding process happens quickly and securely at a much lower cost than most traditional solutions like AWS and Azure. With a versatile number of codecs, resolutions, frame rates, and video players supported, Livepeer Studio was the most logical partner for Huddle01.

For a small company like Huddle01, Livepeer Studio was easy to set up and maintain. Creating a livestream, connecting it to encoding software like OBS, and recording it for playback is all included in the Livepeer Studio software.

If you are building a web3 application and are wondering how to implement livestreaming with Livepeer Studio, check out the following guides:

Stream into Livepeer Studio for the First Time

It will surprise few to hear that the online fitness market is growing at a tremendous speed, though it might elicit a gasp to hear just by how much. The online fitness industry, valued at $6 billion dollars in 

,  is expected to reach $59.2 billion by 2027.

Though this trend has accelerated due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, it is not one that was started by it. Prior to 2020, there had already been increasing interest in at-home workouts catering to the busy, those living or traveling in remote locations, and those looking to take advantage of lower pricing and higher optionality. One of the best examples of the trend is Peloton, a company selling high-end connected exercise bikes, treadmills, and fitness subscriptions. They were seeing 

The growth of companies like Peloton, of course, have accelerated this year thanks to quarantines around the world. Peloton’s stock is currently trading at about 

The question on most people’s minds, however, is whether the at-home workout trend will continue beyond 2020. The resounding answer is yes.

Research from fitness class schedule app Mindbody suggests that though in-person classes will continue to be popular after the COVID-19 pandemic, 

 of individuals still expect to do a virtual workout once a week, and 37% anticipate participating in two or three per week. Peloton predicts that at least 

 of Americans do not intend to renew their physical gym memberships once in-person classes are a safe option again.

This new “blended” in-person and virtual approach to fitness will see a shift in types of classes demanded in each of those settings. When restrictions were eased this summer in Australia, the most popular at-home workout became yoga. Weight training and pilates, classes that can require a significant investment in equipment, became the most popular in-person classes people returned to.

Apple, it turns out, is making a similar bet on “blended” fitness. It is projected to launch Fitness + by the end of 2020, a subscription fitness service that will feature yoga, strength, running, and cycling classes, amongst others. Apple expects that people will do many of 

, not just from the comfort of their own home. In places like NYC, where gyms are open but are not yet allowed to offer indoors fitness classes, Fitness + might be a game-changer, especially as the winter sets in and outdoor workout classes become less feasible.

It is clear to Apple, Peloton, and many others in the industry, that consumers will continue to expect fitness companies to offer technology-enabled virtual workouts alongside more traditional in-person fitness classes. Millions of people have purchased dumbbells, Peloton bikes and treadmills, OrangeTheory heart rate monitors, and other equipment to assist them in creating a similar environment to that of a physical gym, at home. Thanks to wearables and other fitness technology, instructors in live-streamed classes are now able to monitor their students’ heart rates, calories burned, speeds, posture, and level of effort throughout their workouts, which makes them able to intervene, correct, and motivate as they would in a physical fitness class. It also allows users to sync their workout data to smart devices of their choosing more smoothly, thus making it easier to track and control their overall health and fitness.

Those who have invested in an at-home workout space with equipment and fitness technology will find it harder to justify paying exorbitant membership fees for in-person classes post-pandemic.

Another lasting change stemming from at-home quarantines will be a heightened awareness of personal health. Rising rates of diabetes, obesity, and other chronic ailments due to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle is a wake-up call for many, which has left them with no other option than to engage in workouts at home. Needless to say, employers are paying attention. Many are helping their workforce stay healthy by sponsoring at-home exercise subscriptions, meditation, and general wellness programs.

Large companies like Peloton, OrangeTheory, and Apple are not the only ones who stand to capitalize on the at-home fitness trend. As the market continues to double, triple, and quadruple in size over the next decade, there is plenty of room for innovation.

Individual instructors and small independent gyms will be looking for help to digitize in the growing “blended” virtual and in-person model of fitness. Many have had to resort to using Zoom, Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and other live video platforms to stream their workouts to interested participants, a sub-par option. Streaming a live fitness class is one thing. Teaching is another. These small companies are looking for more customized fitness management platforms that will allow them to collect payment, interact with their students, monitor students’ progress live, and generally provide an excellent holistic remote fitness program experience. Zoom and social media platforms just don’t cut it.

As gyms are forced to shut down and lay-off their staff, more and more individuals will look to start their own independent “blended” fitness companies, where live, on-demand, and in-person classes will all be a part of their offerings. Technology can help ease the transition.

At Livepeer.com, we’re passionate about the live fitness streaming industry, and understand the incredible benefits working out can have on our health, especially as many continue to work from home. We offer reliable, scalable, and easy-to-use live video transcoding services at a fraction of the cost. We hope to enable use-cases in this industry that would have previously been cost-prohibitive. For more information, please get in touch with us at 

The Future of Online Fitness

If you’ve been looking to integrate a video player with Livepeer Video Services, you’ve come to the right place. This is the first of a series of posts that will guide you in integrating Livepeer.com with a video player of your choosing. On this post, we’ll be using THEOPlayer to stream using Livepeer Video Services.

 and click on the “Get Started” button in the “Web Browsers” section. You’ll be redirected to a login page. Click on the “Connect with Github”, “Connect with Google”, or click the “Sign up now” button at the bottom and follow the prompts to create an account.              

Once you’ve created an account and are logged in:

select “SDKs” on the left-hand side of the page

name your SDK what you’d like, click next

scroll to the bottom of the screen, click next

Congratulations! You’ve published your first THEOPlayer SDK.

Step 2: Integrating into your application

The SDK page you created above should look something like the screenshot below. Red squares have been added to hide two important fields unique to every SDK created - the “Key” and “Library Location” fields, both of which will be used to integrate THEOPlayer into your web app.

Click on “How to embed my THEOPlayer HTML5 SDK” tab at the bottom, then the “Step-By-Step” section to take a look at web app integration code unique to you.

Feel free to follow these “Step-By-Step” THEOPlayer instructions to continue integrating, especially if you’ve customized your player during the setup process, and skip to step 3 in this guide once you do so. Otherwise, for a more detailed THEOPlayer setup, continue reading here.

Let’s start by creating an HTML file that looks like this:

Add the following code inside the <body> tags in your HTML sheet. Replace {YOURKEY} with your unique THEOPlayer Key from your SDK home page. This will reference the THEOPlayer library and make it available on your homepage.

To add the THEOplayer UI, you need to reference the THEOplayer CSS file. Add the following Link tags inside the <body> tags of your HTML file, below the script tags we just added. These Link tags are used to add a CSS file to a web page.

Next we’ll create a video element and add it to our page. To start playing a video in your player, you’ll need a video manifest. Paste the following example inside your <body> tags. We're using an HLS sample URL here.

Once all this has been added, your complete HTML file should look like this:

Step 3: Integrate a Livepeer.com source into your THEOPlayer video player

Login to your livepeer.com account, go to your Livepeer Video Services Dashboard, and select a stream you’d like to integrate into your application. If you haven’t created a Livepeer stream yet and/or have not yet streamed a video into Livepeer.com, follow 

 to do so. Your stream page should look something like this:

Copy the “RTMP ingest URL” from your stream page. Using OBS, stream a video into Livepeer (see step 5 in 

 for detailed instructions on how to do so).​ 

Copy the “Playback URL” from your stream page. Paste into the player.source section of the HTML sheet we made in step 2 in this tutorial. You should be replacing the "https://cdn.theoplayer.com/video/elephants-dream/playlist-single-audio.m3u8" URL from our example with the Livepeer Video Services Playback URL.

Load up your page, and watch your video come to life!

What did you think of this tutorial? Give us any feedback on how it can be improved and send over any questions you might have by emailing us at

. We’d love to help you stream using Livepeer Video Services!

How to Integrate Livepeer in a Web App using THEOPlayer

Huddle01 was built to compete with any online meeting tool while also giving it a modern twist: signup through web3 wallets, meeting recordings stored on IPFS, token-gated meetings, & decentralized livestreaming using the Livepeer Studio API.

How Huddle01 built the world’s first Web3 meeting app

About Huddle01

Empowering Web3 Video Conferences

Leveraging a Decentralized Livestreaming Network