The Livepeer Foundation published the Cascade vision in late 2024, defining the project’s direction toward real-time AI video infrastructure. A November 2025 update refined that vision as early validation - AI inference fee growth of 3x year-on-year, with over 72% of fee revenue now driven by AI workloads - confirmed the direction. The roadmap below reflects the Foundation’s public planning as of early 2026. All protocol parameter values referenced in this page (inflation rate, bonding rate target, active set size) are governance-controlled and change between rounds. Verify current values at explorer.livepeer.org.
Phase overview
The Foundation’s roadmap is structured in three phases. Phase transitions are driven by ecosystem milestones, not fixed calendar dates.Current phase: Foundation
The network is in Phase 1 as of early 2026. The primary Phase 1 deliverables are the AI inference growth track, the SPE (Special Purpose Entity) organisational model, and go-livepeer software maturity. AI inference growth: AI inference fee revenue grew 21x over three consecutive quarters through Q3 2025. AI workloads now account for the majority of network fee revenue. Real-time AI video use cases - avatar generation, style transfer, video analysis pipelines - are the primary demand drivers. The Daydream platform and the Embody/Agent SPE represent the most visible demand-side initiatives. SPE model: The Foundation structured ecosystem work through specialised operational entities. Active SPEs include the Transformation SPE (ecosystem go-to-market), the Protocol R&D SPE (core go-livepeer and ai-worker development), and LiveInfra (network infrastructure reliability). SPE progress is tracked on the Livepeer Forum. go-livepeer releases: Releases v0.8.7 through v0.8.10 added significant AI pipeline capabilities, improved orchestrator session management, and expanded the supported model set. Release notes are at github.com/livepeer/go-livepeer/releases and github.com/livepeer/ai-worker/releases. Governance activity: Three major LIPs advanced in the 2025-2026 period:- LIP-107: Proposes reducing
targetBondingRatefrom 50% to 46% with an acceleratedinflationChangeparameter to reduce protocol inflation more responsively. - LIP-100: Proposes adding ceiling and floor bounds to the inflation rate to limit extreme inflation outcomes.
- LIP-101: Restarted the on-chain treasury, enabling community-governed grants funded by a percentage of inflation.
Where to track progress
Related pages
Protocol economics
How inflation, fees, and rewards work and what the current economic state of the network is.
Governance model
How LIPs are proposed, voted on, and implemented.
Livepeer overview
The top-level introduction to Livepeer’s mission, history, and network structure.
Design philosophy
The engineering trade-offs behind the protocol’s core mechanisms.