Our new live streaming stack carries a live stage from camera to viewer with Swarm as the storage and distribution layer, and no streaming platform in the middle. Its first public run is the Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress in Mumbai on 2 November 2026, where we stream the stage as a partner of Web3Privacy Now.
Most people attend a conference through its live stream. And most live streams still run through a few big platforms. Those platforms hold the recording, decide who can watch, and can take a talk down or block a country with one click.
For a congress about privacy, internet shutdowns and censorship, that is an awkward dependency. So at Solar Punk, we asked a simple question: can a live stage reach a worldwide audience over Swarm, with a recording anyone can verify and no platform that can switch it off?
We think it can, and we are about to show it in public. As a partner of Web3Privacy Now, we will stream the Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress #3 on 2 November, the day before Devcon 8 opens. It runs on a new streaming architecture, built for Swarm from the ground up.
Why Streaming Belongs on Swarm
On Swarm, content is found by its fingerprint, a hash of the data itself, not by the server that holds it. Anyone can serve it, and anyone can check that what they received is the original. For a live talk, that changes two things. Nobody owns the only copy, and the recording exists the moment the talk ends, with no upload step afterwards.
This is our third streaming iteration on Swarm, and each one removed a central dependency:
- MSSD was the first proof that live video can be streamed over Swarm at all.
- MSRS turned that proof into dedicated streaming infrastructure for partners. It worked, but each instance still leaned on central parts: an RTMP ingest server, relay servers that announced stream state, and a central stream directory.
- The new stack drops those central parts. Stream state lives in Swarm feeds, the ingest works with any transcoding engine, and anyone can run the same software for their own stage.
It is a step on Swarmcast, our roadmap to fully decentralized streaming, where streamers, viewers and operators need no permission from anyone, us included.
How It Works, in Plain Terms
The stack splits the job into three parts: getting the video in, keeping it, and serving it fast.
- Getting it in: one stage, two pipelines. The stage’s video feed is copied onto two independent network paths. Each copy goes into its own pipeline: a transcoder (OvenMediaEngine) cuts it into short segments in four qualities, from 1080p down to 360p. Then our open-source Bridge uploads every segment to Swarm through its own Bee node. One pipeline publishes; the other runs hot alongside it and takes over if the first one fails.
- Swarm as the memory. Every segment is stored on Swarm by its hash. The playlist that tells a player which segment comes next is published through a Swarm feed, a signed, updatable pointer. Only the stream’s own key can write to it, so nobody can slip a different video into the stream. When the talk ends, the last playlist simply becomes the recording.
- The edge as the fast lane. Swarm gateways near viewers keep the newest segments cached and hand them to browsers at the speed of a normal streaming site. Because a segment never changes once it has a hash, it can be cached forever; only the playlist lookup is cached, for about a second.
The viewer is a web app that is itself hosted on Swarm. It finds the gateways from a signed list that also lives on Swarm, measures which one answers fastest, and switches to another if that one goes away. Routing is data anyone can read, not a black box.
Two Ways to Watch
The stream reaches you by one of two roads. In both, the video itself lives on Swarm.
- In a browser, through the edge. Open the viewer link and press play. The app picks the nearest Swarm gateway, and you watch about 5 seconds behind the stage, like on any streaming site.
- Through a Swarm node of your own, straight from Swarm. If you run a Bee node, the app detects it and fetches everything peer to peer, about 10 to 30 seconds behind the stage. Soon you won’t need to install anything for this road: we are bringing in weeb-3, an in-browser Swarm node, so the browser tab itself joins the network. Either way, this road works even if every one of our gateways is down or blocked.
Infrastructure You Can Rebuild
We don’t rent a commercial content delivery network for this. Every machine is provisioned for the event from public code, started when the stream needs it and shut down when it is over. Anyone can rebuild the same machines from the same repository and compare the result. We also publish a signed list of the nodes that serve the stream, so you can check that the peers you see are the ones we claim.
The content is just as checkable. Any viewer can fetch the same segments through a completely independent Swarm node and compare them byte for byte with what our gateways delivered.
Where It Stands Today
We are building and load-testing the stack now, and the Cypherpunk Congress is its first public run. A few limits are worth knowing up front:
- Seconds behind live, not real time. A few seconds of delay is fine for watching a talk, but not for a two-way conversation. Swarm cannot hold a playlist request open until the next segment is ready, so players check for new segments on a short timer instead.
- Everything is public and permanent. The streams are not encrypted, which is what lets anyone cache, serve and pin them. That fits a public congress. Gated streams, using Swarm’s Access Control Trie, come later.
- Big floods are still the hard part. Large commercial networks can absorb attacks that our own gateways cannot. Our answer is many cheap, replaceable gateways, and a stream that stays reachable over Swarm whatever happens to them.
- The archive lasts as long as it is paid for. Swarm keeps data while its postage stamp is funded, so the recordings stay as long as we, or anyone else, keep paying for them.
Next on our list: watching through the weeb-3 in-browser node with nothing to install, chat and stream discovery built on Swarm feeds, going live straight from a browser without extra software, and lower delay through shorter partial segments. Each step takes us closer to Swarmcast.
See It Live in Mumbai
The Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress #3 takes place on 2 November 2026 in Mumbai. Organized by Web3Privacy Now, it brings together activists, cryptographers and builders working on digital rights, privacy and internet freedom. Entry is free; register on Luma.
Can’t be in the room? Watch the stage live over Swarm at [viewer link]. And during Devcon 8, 3 to 6 November, come find the Solar Punk team: we’ll show you the stream running on your own Bee node.
Get Involved
- Watch the stream: open [viewer link] on 2 November, in a browser or through your own Bee node.
- Run a Bee node: install Bee and watch the decentralized way, with nothing of ours in between.
- Help keep the archive: we will publish the stream references after the event. Pin them on your node and the talks stay reachable even if all of our nodes go offline.
- Explore the code: the Bridge and the provisioning setup are open source at [repository link]; issues and pull requests are welcome.
- Streaming an event of your own? Get in touch. We’d love to help you put your stage on Swarm.
Live streaming, without the platform. We’re putting it on stage in Mumbai.
