It will surprise few to hear that the online fitness market is growing at a tremendous speed, though it might elicit a gasp to hear just by how much. The online fitness industry, valued at $6 billion dollars in 

,  is expected to reach $59.2 billion by 2027.

Though this trend has accelerated due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, it is not one that was started by it. Prior to 2020, there had already been increasing interest in at-home workouts catering to the busy, those living or traveling in remote locations, and those looking to take advantage of lower pricing and higher optionality. One of the best examples of the trend is Peloton, a company selling high-end connected exercise bikes, treadmills, and fitness subscriptions. They were seeing 

The growth of companies like Peloton, of course, have accelerated this year thanks to quarantines around the world. Peloton’s stock is currently trading at about 

The question on most people’s minds, however, is whether the at-home workout trend will continue beyond 2020. The resounding answer is yes.

Research from fitness class schedule app Mindbody suggests that though in-person classes will continue to be popular after the COVID-19 pandemic, 

 of individuals still expect to do a virtual workout once a week, and 37% anticipate participating in two or three per week. Peloton predicts that at least 

 of Americans do not intend to renew their physical gym memberships once in-person classes are a safe option again.

This new “blended” in-person and virtual approach to fitness will see a shift in types of classes demanded in each of those settings. When restrictions were eased this summer in Australia, the most popular at-home workout became yoga. Weight training and pilates, classes that can require a significant investment in equipment, became the most popular in-person classes people returned to.

Apple, it turns out, is making a similar bet on “blended” fitness. It is projected to launch Fitness + by the end of 2020, a subscription fitness service that will feature yoga, strength, running, and cycling classes, amongst others. Apple expects that people will do many of 

, not just from the comfort of their own home. In places like NYC, where gyms are open but are not yet allowed to offer indoors fitness classes, Fitness + might be a game-changer, especially as the winter sets in and outdoor workout classes become less feasible.

It is clear to Apple, Peloton, and many others in the industry, that consumers will continue to expect fitness companies to offer technology-enabled virtual workouts alongside more traditional in-person fitness classes. Millions of people have purchased dumbbells, Peloton bikes and treadmills, OrangeTheory heart rate monitors, and other equipment to assist them in creating a similar environment to that of a physical gym, at home. Thanks to wearables and other fitness technology, instructors in live-streamed classes are now able to monitor their students’ heart rates, calories burned, speeds, posture, and level of effort throughout their workouts, which makes them able to intervene, correct, and motivate as they would in a physical fitness class. It also allows users to sync their workout data to smart devices of their choosing more smoothly, thus making it easier to track and control their overall health and fitness.

Those who have invested in an at-home workout space with equipment and fitness technology will find it harder to justify paying exorbitant membership fees for in-person classes post-pandemic.

Another lasting change stemming from at-home quarantines will be a heightened awareness of personal health. Rising rates of diabetes, obesity, and other chronic ailments due to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle is a wake-up call for many, which has left them with no other option than to engage in workouts at home. Needless to say, employers are paying attention. Many are helping their workforce stay healthy by sponsoring at-home exercise subscriptions, meditation, and general wellness programs.

Large companies like Peloton, OrangeTheory, and Apple are not the only ones who stand to capitalize on the at-home fitness trend. As the market continues to double, triple, and quadruple in size over the next decade, there is plenty of room for innovation.

Individual instructors and small independent gyms will be looking for help to digitize in the growing “blended” virtual and in-person model of fitness. Many have had to resort to using Zoom, Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and other live video platforms to stream their workouts to interested participants, a sub-par option. Streaming a live fitness class is one thing. Teaching is another. These small companies are looking for more customized fitness management platforms that will allow them to collect payment, interact with their students, monitor students’ progress live, and generally provide an excellent holistic remote fitness program experience. Zoom and social media platforms just don’t cut it.

As gyms are forced to shut down and lay-off their staff, more and more individuals will look to start their own independent “blended” fitness companies, where live, on-demand, and in-person classes will all be a part of their offerings. Technology can help ease the transition.

At Livepeer.com, we’re passionate about the live fitness streaming industry, and understand the incredible benefits working out can have on our health, especially as many continue to work from home. We offer reliable, scalable, and easy-to-use live video transcoding services at a fraction of the cost. We hope to enable use-cases in this industry that would have previously been cost-prohibitive. For more information, please get in touch with us at 

How to Analyze Livepeer Video Engagement Metrics with Timeplus

 Lenstube offers video on demand for both long-form and short-form videos

web3 social platform for video sharing built on Lens Protocol

 is a web3 social platform for video sharing that combines the best of traditional video-sharing platforms with the latest web3 functionalities. Whether you're a professional creator or an amateur, Lenstube gives you the ability to upload and monetize your video content with ease. Currently, Lenstube offers video on demand for both long-form videos and short-form videos.

Lenstube sets itself apart from traditional video-sharing platforms by incorporating web3 features such as connecting to a crypto wallet, enabling creators to receive tips in MATIC coins, collecting videos as NFTs, and charging membership fees for subscribers. These features are made possible through Lenstube's implementation of various web3 technologies, including Livepeer, Arweave, IPFS, and Lens. By utilizing decentralized technologies, Lenstube is revolutionizing the way creators can share and monetize their content, and provides a new and exciting way to engage with their audience.

 founded Lenstube with the goal of creating a decentralized video sharing platform for content creators. The idea for Lenstube came about after Sasi saw some of his favorite creators, who were creating and teaching web3, being unjustly removed from traditional web2 platforms. This led Sasi to understand the importance of web3 for content creators, and the significance of permanent data storage and content ownership. With this in mind, Sasi set out to create his own web3 video-sharing platform. The first step in this process was to find a video-on-demand service that transcodes and serves video from Arweave.

“I knew that creating a video delivery infrastructure and transcoding videos would be a significant challenge, and I definitely didn't want to spend all my time and resources on these technicalities, especially in the early stages of development. Luckily, I discovered Livepeer on the sponsor list of one of the EthGlobal hackathons. Livepeer provided exactly what I needed to move Lenstube forward, and integrating it into my platform was one the first, and easiest, decisions I made.”

Lenstube's partnership with Livepeer has been a vital component of the platform's success. Currently, all videos on Lenstube, whether they are long or short form, are powered by Livepeer. This means that Livepeer handles all the technical aspects of video delivery, such as ingesting, processing, and transcoding. This has afforded Sasi and the Lenstube team the freedom to focus on other important growth areas, like attracting new creators to the platform and improving user experience.

“Working with Livepeer has definitely been a great experience, and we receive tons of support from the team. Recently, Livepeer launched a feature that displays view counts beneath the video player. We were able to implement this feature pretty quickly, and the team was available to answer any questions we had. Although, most of the time we don’t really need the support, as the guides and docs for the Livepeer SDK and API are awesome.”

Today, Lenstube is thriving and making significant strides in its development. The platform has reached notable milestones, such as surpassing 10,000 video uploads in December 2022, averaging more than 1,000 daily sessions, and reaching more than 50,000 average monthly users in January 2023. These milestones demonstrate the effectiveness of the Lenstube team's efforts and the growing appeal of the platform among content creators and viewers alike.

Lenstube boasts a user-friendly interface that includes all of the features commonly found on traditional web2 video sharing platforms. The front page prominently showcases the most recent and popular short-form (Bytes) and long-form videos hosted on the platform, which can be filtered by video category for easy browsing. Users can log in with their Lens handle on the top right corner of the page. Additionally, various exploration tools can be found on the left-hand menu bar for easy access.

Bytes are short-form, vertical videos that are similar to TikToks and YouTube Shorts. Users can scroll through a feed, like and dislike videos, subscribe to channels, and share Bytes via URL or embed videos directly on websites. Additionally, Bytes can be easily shared on Lenster, Twitter, Reddit, and LinkedIn.

Sasi and the Lenstube team have recently made a concerted effort to develop the Bytes feature. This effort was motivated by the increasing popularity of short-form videos on web2 platforms. Not only do short videos have high user retention rates, but they also provide creators with an effective way to capture an audience and lead them to content on other platforms.

“In my opinion, short-form videos are one of the most effective ways to share content with a wide audience, and they offer creators greater opportunities for engagement. We predict that the use of short-form videos as NFTs will become a popular trend in the web3 community."

Do you want to build your own web3 short-form video app? Disrupt TikTok with this 

 walking through the key components of building a social app with quick, bite-sized video.

Lenstube also enables creators to upload long-form, horizontal videos that are similar to standard YouTube videos. In addition to features found on Bytes, these long-form videos also include view counts, video descriptions, and a comment section.

Every video hosted on Lenstube is equipped with a variety of web3 features. These features not only enable content creators to earn revenue from their videos, but also provide fans with a way to support their favorite creators. This is what sets Lenstube apart from traditional web2 video sharing platforms. Some of the web3 features that Lenstube offers include:

Mirroring across Lens, with custom referral fees

Default sharing of all Lenstube videos across Lens ecosystem apps

Lenstube’s frontend was built using Next.Js, an open-source React framework for web applications. Lenstube uses Apollo Client to manage local and remote data, and to fetch data and do mutations through the Lens Protocol’s GraphQL backend.

Middleware is like a “software glue” that acts as a bridge between different technologies, tools, and databases so they can be integrated into a single system. Lenstube uses Lens Protocol’s indexer for its middleware, and this indexer streamlines data between Lens contracts and viewers. The Lens indexer is a GraphQL server that listens to events from Lens contracts and stores the data into a database. This indexer enables viewers to quickly and efficiently access video data, which leads to a better user experience.

Lenstube’s backend consists of four main components: Livepeer, Arweave, IPFS, and Lens

Lenstube uses Livepeer to process and play back video. Livepeer is a protocol built on Ethereum that distributes video transcoding work throughout its decentralized network. The protocol provides cost efficient, secure, and reliable infrastructure. Livepeer's mainnet launch took place in 2018 and the network now processes millions of minutes of video each week.

Lenstube stores its video files on Arweave and IPFS, web3 protocols that offer data storage on decentralized networks. Arweave and IPFS offer permanent and immutable data storage, and anyone can store data in the networks or offer storage space, without there being a centralized point of failure.

Lenstube uses Lens for its social graph. The Lens social graph is fully composable, open source, and decentralized. This helps transfer full rights and complete ownership of content into the hands of creators.

Sasi intends to improve the Lenstube platform by adding new features, with the primary objective of providing exceptional user experience and boosting user engagement on the platform. Furthermore, Sasi is currently building a mobile application that specifically caters to short-form videos, which will be released soon. This further solidifies his belief that short-form videos represent a rapidly expanding area in the video industry and is positioning Lenstube to capitalize on this growth potential.

If you’re a developer that would like to build your own web3 video app, check out these 

 to get started. If you have any questions about building, 

Lenstube is a web3 social platform for video sharing that combines the best of traditional video-sharing platforms with the latest web3 functionalities. Whether you're a professional creator or an amateur, Lenstube gives you the ability to upload and monetize your video content with ease. Currently, Lenstube offers video on demand for both long-form videos and short-form videos.

The Future of Online Fitness