Workshop Swarm: Decentralized Video Streaming
Today, most live streaming depends on platforms that creators do not control.
YouTube, Twitch, and cloud-based streaming infrastructure can remove access, change monetization rules, freeze revenue, or interrupt distribution. For independent creators, journalists, media builders, and privacy-focused teams, this creates a serious dependency problem.
This workshop explores how live video can be streamed through Swarm, a decentralized peer-to-peer network built for resilient publishing and distribution.
Join Migle and Sandor for a practical session on how streaming works and how the current decentralized streaming works on Swarm, and where the technical tradeoffs still matter.
What you will learn
Whether you want to prototype a decentralized Twitch, publish independent broadcasts, or understand how media infrastructure can move beyond centralized platforms, this workshop will give you an overview of the core architecture and a starting point to get building.
Streaming architecture
Instead of treating live video as one continuous file, we will look at how small media segments and updated manifests can be published, retrieved, and distributed through Swarm.
Standard tools, decentralized backend
See how familiar tools like OBS Studio can connect to a modular streaming setup, including a transcoding engine such as SRS, before publishing stream segments to Swarm.
The goal is not to replace every tool creators already use. It is to change where the stream is published, stored, and retrieved from.
Distribution without platform dependency
Swarm gives builders a decentralized retrieval layer for content distribution, reducing reliance on centralized cloud hosting, proprietary CDNs, or a single platform gateway.
Gated and members-only streams
Explore how Swarm’s access control patterns can support premium, private, or members-only media experiences without relying entirely on third-party paywalls.
This part will focus on the infrastructure logic behind access-controlled streaming, not just the creator-facing interface.
Who should attend
Builders, independent journalists, content creators, media technologists, and privacy advocates attending BREW.
This session is useful for developers who want to have an overview of streaming for decentralized media platforms, but also for creators who want a clearer picture of what self-sovereign publishing infrastructure could look like.
You do not need to be a streaming engineer to follow the session. Some parts will be technical, but the workshop is designed to explain the full pipeline in a practical way.
Workshop Registration
This workshop is part of BREW: Privacy Matters and takes place during the BREW conference on 20 June 2026 in Berlin.
To get the most out of the session, we strongly recommend bringing a laptop, as many workshops include practical demonstrations and hands-on exercises.
Please only register if you genuinely intend to attend as space is limited