One DePIN, Three Workloads: Storage, Compute, Streaming

Every well-known DePIN project in video and media picks one layer and specializes in it. Livepeer and Theta Network handle video transcoding and delivery. Filecoin, Storj, and Arweave handle storage. Render Network and io.net handle compute. If you are building a real product, that specialization usually means stitching two or three of these networks together yourself. AIOZ is one of the only DePIN networks that runs storage, compute, and streaming on a single network, and AIOZ Stream is built directly on top of that combined layer rather than bolting a delivery service onto someone else's storage.

TL;DR:

• Most decentralized infrastructure networks specialize in one workload: storage, compute, or streaming.
• AIOZ runs all three on one network, so AIOZ Stream handles ingest, transcoding, storage, and delivery without wiring together separate vendors or separate wallets for each layer.

What "one DePIN, three workloads" actually means

A DePIN, or decentralized physical infrastructure network, replaces a company's data centers with independently operated nodes that get paid for contributing a resource: disk space, GPU cycles, or bandwidth. Most DePIN projects built one kind of node for one kind of resource. AIOZ's node software instead exposes three resource types at once: storage capacity, transcoding and compute cycles, and delivery bandwidth. AIOZ Stream's own pipeline (ingest, transcode into adaptive bitrate renditions, store the renditions, then deliver them through the node network) runs entirely on that shared base instead of routing each step to a different specialized chain.

Why everyone else picked one layer

Looking at the highest-profile decentralized infrastructure projects in and around video, each one owns exactly one part of the stack:

This is not a coincidence. Livepeer's own documentation and blog focus entirely on transcoding and, more recently, real-time AI video, and its tutorials walk developers through pairing Livepeer with Arweave or Filecoin for storage because Livepeer itself does not store anything. Storj and Filecoin both publish media-specific content about video storage, but neither one transcodes or delivers a stream. The compute-focused networks tell the same story from a different angle. Render Network describes itself on its own homepage as built to "supercharge your creative workflow" by putting idle GPU capacity to work on rendering and, more recently, AI inference, a scope that stops well short of storing or delivering the video those GPUs might help produce. Each project made a reasonable bet to go deep on one problem. The tradeoff shows up on the builder's side: stitching a video product together from these pieces means managing a separate network, a separate SDK, and often a separate token balance for each layer, just to move a file from upload to playback.

What builders actually gain from one network

The practical benefit shows up before a single video is even encoded. Setting up AIOZ Stream means creating one wallet-linked account, funding it with AIOZ tokens, and generating one API key. That single key can create a video object, trigger transcoding, store the resulting renditions, and serve them through the CDN layer, because all four of those steps run on the same account and the same underlying network. There is no second contract to fund, no second dashboard to monitor, and no second support channel to file a ticket with when storage and delivery disagree about a file's status, because storage and delivery are not two different products here.

This also simplifies billing in a very concrete way. AIOZ Stream's streaming pipeline reports storage, delivery, and transcoding usage through the same account balance, in the same token, on the same invoice-equivalent usage log. A team that instead wires Livepeer plus Filecoin plus a CDN together is reconciling three separate cost centers, in at least two different tokens, to answer one question: what did this video actually cost to serve.

Where this shows up in AIOZ Stream today

You can see this in how the product is actually wired together, not just in how it is described. The same account that authenticates a video upload also authenticates storage usage and delivery usage, because the API keys, wallet balance, and usage reporting are shared across all three workloads rather than split across separate products. When AIOZ Stream's adaptive bitrate tooling, guided by its QoE targets, decides to step a viewer's quality up or down, it is making that call on infrastructure the same network already stores the source file on, not on a second delivery layer bolted on after the fact.

What stitching three networks together actually costs

The multi-vendor path isn't just three integrations, it's three separate sets of ongoing operational overhead. Each network has its own SDK to learn and keep updated, its own status page to watch, and its own token to keep funded, which in practice means a team is running three balance-monitoring habits instead of one. When something breaks in the pipeline, a team also has to work out which layer actually failed before they can even start debugging: was the upload slow because storage was congested, because the transcoding queue was backed up, or because the delivery network had a bad routing day? With three separate providers, that diagnosis starts from zero every time, since none of the three systems have any visibility into what the other two are doing. A combined network doesn't eliminate the possibility of something going wrong, but it does mean there's one system to look at, one support channel to escalate to, and one account where storage, compute, and delivery events show up in the same timeline.

This compounds over the life of a product, not just at initial setup. A pricing change, a rate-limit change, or a deprecation notice from any one of three vendors becomes a maintenance task on its own schedule, unrelated to the other two. AIOZ Stream's own pricing across storage, delivery, and transcoding is published as three numbers against one account instead of three separate vendor relationships to track and periodically renegotiate.

The honest tradeoff

A single combined network is not automatically the best network at each individual layer. Arweave's pay-once, store-forever model is a genuinely different product than pay-as-you-go storage, and some teams will want that specific guarantee. Livepeer and Theta have a longer track record specifically in large-scale live transcoding. AIOZ isn't claiming any one layer beats a specialist at its own game. Most products just don't need the single best storage network wired to the single best compute network wired to the single best delivery network. They need one account, one bill, and one thing to debug when a video doesn't play.

The other side of that tradeoff is worth naming honestly too: consolidating onto one network is a form of concentration, the same way choosing a single cloud provider is. A team that specifically wants the freedom to swap out its storage layer without touching delivery, or that wants each layer independently redundant across multiple vendors, is optimizing for something a combined network structurally can't offer as cleanly as three separately swappable pieces. That's a reasonable thing to want. It's just a different priority than the one this comparison is about, which is how much integration and operational work it takes to ship a working product in the first place.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is AIOZ the only DePIN network that combines storage, compute, and streaming?
Among the highest-profile decentralized infrastructure projects in this space, yes. Livepeer and Theta are streaming/compute-focused without native storage, and Filecoin, Storj, and Arweave are storage-focused without transcoding or delivery. AIOZ is the one we found running all three on one network.

Does using one network mean giving up flexibility?
No. AIOZ Stream still exposes storage, transcoding, and delivery as distinct API resources. The difference is that they share one account, one wallet balance, and one usage log instead of requiring separate integrations.

Do I still need a separate storage provider if I use AIOZ Stream?
No. Ingested video is transcoded and stored on the same network that serves it, so there is no separate storage contract to set up before you can go live.

Is this the same thing as a traditional multi-CDN setup?
No. Multi-CDN strategies combine several delivery networks for redundancy but still assume storage and compute happen somewhere else. AIOZ combines all three workload types on one network rather than adding redundancy to just one of them.

What happens if I only need one of the three workloads right now?
You can still use just storage or just delivery through AIOZ Stream's API. The combined network is there if your product grows into needing the other pieces, but nothing forces you to adopt all three on day one.

What's the actual downside of consolidating on one network instead of best-of-breed per layer?
Less flexibility to swap out just one layer independently, and less built-in redundancy across vendors if that specific layer has a bad day. For most product teams the operational savings of one integration outweigh that, but it's a real tradeoff, not a free upgrade.

Related Reading

• What Is a CDN Edge Node: the caching/edge-delivery workload specifically, one of the three this hub covers
• How Modern Streaming Pipelines Need to Evolve: why ingest-to-playback pipelines are changing shape
• What Developers Need Before Building Streaming Workflows: what to define before wiring up a video stack
• What Is Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) Streaming and How It Works: how adaptive bitrate decisions actually get made
• What Is QoE in Video Streaming, and Why It Matters: the quality targets that ABR is actually optimizing for
• What Is AIOZ DePIN and How It Powers Video Delivery: the node architecture behind the "one network, three workloads" claim this hub makes

References

• Livepeer's network vision update: Livepeer describing its own scope as transcoding and real-time AI video
• Filecoin for Media, Video, Gaming, and More: Filecoin's own positioning as a storage layer for media
• Render Network: Render's own homepage describing its scope as GPU rendering and AI compute, not storage or delivery