I've been building Circuit (gocircuit.tv), a live streaming and creator monetization platform, as a solo developer for the past couple of years. Coming from a 20-year background in broadcast production (multi-cam live events, ESPN+, that whole world), I figured I knew what I was getting into on the streaming side.
Things I underestimated:
Streaming infrastructure is a full-time job by itself. Running Ant Media Server, tuning WebRTC vs HLS tradeoffs, managing bandwidth, handling failover - none of this is glamorous and all of it can break a launch.
The "platform" isn't the streaming. It's the dashboard, the analytics, the payout flow, the support tooling. The video is maybe 20% of the actual product surface.
Live streaming and creator monetization on Base. Creators set their price and keep 100% of it. The platform fee is paid by the viewer on top, enforced by smart contracts. Not a rev-share.
Pay-per-view, USDC tipping, ticketed events with NFT tickets minted atomically with payment, token gating, interactive widgets, engagement rewards, all built using professional grade streaming infrastructure.
