Audius
A Decentralized Protocol for Audio Content
Roneil Rumburg

Sid Sethi

Hareesh Nagaraj

Last Update: October 8, 2020*

Abstract
The music industry generates $43 billion in revenue but only 12% goes to content artists. Furthermore,artists have minimal control over how their music is distributed and little visibility into who is streaming
it. To address these and other problems faced by artists, we introduce Audius, a fully decentralizedmusic streaming protocol built with public blockchain infrastructure and other decentralized technologies.
Audius allows artists to distribute to and get paid directly from their fans, and is comprised of the following
components:
1. An efficient token economy powered by the Audius platform token ($AUDIO), 3rd-party stablecoins,and artist tokens
2. A decentralized storage solution and ledger for sharing audio and metadata
3. A unique track encryption scheme paired with a programmable mechanism to unlock user-specificproxy re-encryption keys for content
4. A discovery protocol for users to efficiently query metadata
5. A decentralized governance protocol, whereby artists, node operators, and fans are individually andcollectively enfranchised in decision making about protocol changes and upgrades
The Audius protocol is live today and fully decentralized, operated by a robust decentralized community of artists, fans, and node operators, and serves nearly 500,000 users every month at the time ofwriting.

* Audius is a work in progress and the contents of this paper are subject to change. The most current version can be found athttps://whitepaper.audius.co. For feedback and comments, please contact whitepaper@audius.co.

1

Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Current problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 The Audius project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3 Traction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3
3
3
4

2 Token Model
2.1 Audius Token ($AUDIO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.1 Audius Token Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 Stablecoin Payments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3 Artist Tokens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4 Why create a new token? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4
4
5
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5
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3 Content Node
3.1 AudSP: A decentralized storage protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2 Upload flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3 Content permissioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.1 Proxy re-encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.2 Unlock conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5
6
6
7
7
7

4 Content Ledger
4.1 Node registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2 Social features and fan feed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3 Tokens and governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7
8
8
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5 Discovery Node
5.1 Discovery API interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2 Future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 Governance
6.1 Short-circuiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2 Enforcing node response accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9
10
10

7 History and Roadmap
7.1 Genesis (05/2018—12/2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2 Private Alpha (01/2019—07/2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.3 Testnet (08/2019—09/2020) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.4 Mainnet Launch (10/2020) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.5 Crossing the Chasm (12/2020 and beyond) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10
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8 Community-owned Streaming

11

References

12

2

1

Introduction

everyone the freedom to distribute, monetize, and stream
any audio content.
The Audius protocol brings artists, node operators,
and fans together in an incentive-aligned way, allowing
these actors to collectively provide a high-quality audio
streaming experience guided by the foundational beliefs
that:
1. Users should be compensated in proportion to howmuch value they create for the network
2. Artists should directly engage with and transact
with their fans
3. Governance power should be earned by creating
value in Audius, and shared consistently between
user groups contributing to the protocol
4. Prices and earnings for participants should be consistent, predictable, and transparent
5. Access should be democratized; anyone can contribute to Audius if they follow the protocol rules,
and all information is publicly accessible
6. Intermediaries should be removed when possible;
when necessary, they should be algorithmic, transparent, and verifiably accurateMusic creation and distribution have been dramaticallychanged by technology in the last two decades. Creatingmusic no longer requires a team of producers and audio
engineers; anyone in their bedroom can start with inexpensive software. Similarly, distributing music no longer
requires factories that produce physical records and retail relationships for getting those records into stores;
music platforms have enabled artists to distribute theirown music.
Though redundant in the age of digital distribution, the network of intermediaries and middlemen thatformed in the early days of recorded music still persists,
thriving on the back of artists and curators while themechanics of value transfer and accrual are still largely
obfuscated [1].
In 2017, the music industry generated $43 billion inrevenue but only 12% of that made its way to artists [2].
As points of comparison, NFL players capture at least
47% of the revenue generated by the entire NFL [3], andNBA players capture between 49 and 51% [4]. Centralized user-generated music distribution platforms havesuccumbed to the influence of legacy institutions, struggling to find sustainable business models [5, 6] as existing
institutions reap the rewards of their (and artists’) labor.

1.1

The Audius protocol allows artists, fans, and node operators to collectively provide a high-quality end-usermusic streaming experience without centralized infrastructure. The protocol is comprised of the following 5components working in conjunction:
1. Audius token, stablecoins, and artist tokens:
A platform token and shared token economy thataligns the incentives of all participants with three
primary prongs of functionality: access, security,and governance (Section 2)
2. Content nodes: A user-operated network of nodes
to host content and permission access to content onbehalf of artists (Section 3)
3. Content ledger: A single source of truth for alldata accessible within the Audius protocol, anchoring references to content hosted by content nodes(Section 4)
4. Discovery nodes: A user-operated network of
nodes that index the Audius content ledger andprovide an easily queryable interface for retrieving
metadata (Section 5)
5. Governance: A mechanism for modifications andimprovements to Audius, which shares control
among those who have created and are creating
value on an ongoing basis (Section 6)

Current problems

We see a number of specific challenges faced by artists
and fans today:
1. There is little to no transparency around the origins
of artist payouts (e.g. number of plays, location,
original gross payment before fees)
2. Incomplete rights ownership data often prevents
content artists from getting paid; instead, earnings
accumulate in digital service providers (DSPs) andrights societies
3. There are layers of middlemen and significant timedelay involved in payments to artists
4. Publishing rights are complicated and opaque, withno incentives for the industry to make rights data
public and accurate
5. Remixes, covers, and other derivative content arelargely censored due to rights management issues
6. Licensing issues prevent DSPs and content from being accessible worldwide

1.2

The Audius project

Put together, Audius creates a protocol where theshared success of the platform directly benefits the users
responsible for its success.
Open-source implementations of all of these compo-

We propose the Audius project as a solution to these
problems. The mission of the Audius project is to give3

Publishcontent

Artists

Fans

Streamcontent

Content
nodes

co

nt In
en d
t m exetadatUploadcontentaAudiuscontent ledger

Discovery
nodes

Discovercontent

Figure 1: Audius content lifecycle
artist-specific tokens to unlock additional functionality
in future.

nents, live and being operated today by the community,
can be found on the project’s Github page.
The protocol will also require end-user facing
clients—these enable users to upload content, discoverand stream content, and follow one another within the
network. The project team has produced an open-source
reference client implementation, hosted at audius.co.
Any developer may produce and distribute their own
client too; many have already.

1.3

2.1

Audius platform tokens (ticker $AUDIO) have threeprongs of functionality within the protocol unlocked bystaking: Security
 Feature access GovernanceTraction

Since its beta release in September of 2019, Audius is
now home to over half a million monthly active users(MAUs), with over a million monthly streams as of October of 2020. Metrics regarding the protocol’s growth
can be tracked in real time using dashboard.audius.org.

2

Audius Token ($AUDIO)

Audius tokens are staked as collateral for a valueadded services. In exchange, stakers earn ongoing issuance, governance weight and access to exclusive features.
Audius tokens are staked by node operators to run the
Audius protocol, and by artists and curators to unlock
exclusive features and services. Any $AUDIO staked
within the protocol is assigned governance weight, used
to shape future iterations of the protocol.
Audius tokens will serve as collateral for artist-based
tooling as well. Early examples incubated by the community include artists tokens, badges and earnings multipliers. In the future, fans may delegate tokens to specific artists and curators to share in their growth on theplatform and the issuance of future tokens.
Node operators must stake Audius tokens to operatea discovery node or content node, with a larger stakecorrelating to a higher probability of being chosen by

Token Model

The Audius protocol will be used by a number of different stakeholders with different goals. In order for thesedifferent stakeholders to effectively work together toward
common network goals, there needs to be a unified incentive structure that aligns the interests of the individualwith the interests of the protocol.
The Audius protocol is powered by the Audius platform token ($AUDIO), and with the community’s support, will likely leverage 3rd-party stablecoins as well as

4fan clients. Node operators receive direct upside fromseeding in the form of $AUDIO and the possibility for
future protocol fees for actively seeding the protocol.
A community goal, via governance, is to ensure that
Audius tokens are always being funneled to the mostvalue-added actors by using onchain metrics as a measurement, rather than simply to those staking the mosttokens but not actively participating in the ecosystem.
2.1.1

Artist token artists stake Audius token to access distribution tools and may receive tailored support from
Audius representatives on best practices regarding theusage of their token in the wider Ethereum ecosystem.
Artists routing artist tokens through Audius benefit
from a tailored form of distribution, unique to the artist’s
discography. As artist tokens are distributed, artists
must maintain a bond in $AUDIO to continue using theprotocol. This stake ensures that artists are active inthe distribution and maintenance of their tokens while
giving fans the peace of mind that a artist has skin in
the game. As tokens are distributed, a portion of all
artist tokens claimed may be collected by the protocol
and managed through governance.
Artist tokens are earned by fans relative to how theartist sees fit using the data and interaction mechanics
available natively in the protocol. Artists could use theirtoken to limit access to token-restricted content or experiences such as unreleased tracks, stems and exclusive
remix competitions.
Audius serves as an aggregator of artist tokens acrossissuance platforms such as Roll, Zora and Rally—any
interoperable token can be allocated with the protocolnative distribution mechanisms.
Governance will play a key role in the structuring ofthese distribution channels along with the conditions
which artists must meet to create their own token on
Audius.

Audius Token Distribution

Audius token will be distributed with fixed genesis allocation and by ongoing issuance modifiable by governance.
The choice to launch with ongoing issuance isgrounded in the desire to continually align the network’s
growth with new actors and their relative contributions,rather than concentrating governance power in the handsof early actors.
Should the community see fit, a portion of ongoing token issuance will be allocated to the most active
users of the protocol, dictated based on platform metrics
and varying contributions in the form of discoverability,
streams and platform engagement.
More details about this initial supply and issuanceschedule will be provided in a separate specification document upon the release of Audius token on mainnet.

2.2

Stablecoin Payments
2.4

In future, the Audius community may choose to leverage
3rd-party stablecoins to unlock paid content. These tokens are price-stable, providing a stable unit of accountto ensure that artists, fans and node operators can participate in the Audius economy without concern for pricevolatility. Stablecoins are divisible and freely transferable, allowing for highly divisible micropayments. This
makes it easy for artists to set custom rates and for fans
to issue fractional payments with little friction or rounding.
A protocol fee may be captured as a percent of stablecoin transactions, including fan payments to artists.
These fees would be aggregated into a pool governed by
Audius token holders.

2.3

Why create a new token?

For value transfer in the Audius ecosystem, third-party
stablecoins allow micropayments to occur in real-time,
without oversight from a trusted third party to facilitate
the distribution, accounting or collection of royalties andnetwork fees. Stablecoins are pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar, providing a trusted unit of account with the inherent
benefits of smart contract composability.
Audius tokens exist to align governance and financial
incentives that increase protocol usage and create longterm protocol value. Participation in governance, as anode operator, artist or user, allows stakers to earn aclaim on future issuance, incentivizing value-added actors to increase protocol usage to drive demand back to
Audius tokens.
The inclusion of extendable assets like artist tokens
allows Audius to play an active role in the wider Ethereum and DeFi ecosystem, without having to recreate
the tokens, tooling, and primitives.

Artist Tokens

The project team also foresees Audius providing a direct mechanism for artists to better engage their community through the distribution of artist tokens. Artists
could have the ability to distribute a unique token directly through Audius, giving fans who hold a specified
amount of those tokens the ability to access exclusive
content.

3

Content NodeContent nodes maintain availability of content and metadata in Audius on AudSP, the Audius-native extension
5to IPFS. These nodes can be run by node operators
alongside an active network stake, giving them the opportunity to earn part of the ongoing Audius token issuance and aggregated fee pools, or can be run by a artist
themself to host their own content.1
By default, a artist’s client elects a set of these nodes
to maintain availability of content automatically on theartist’s behalf—the vast majority of artists do not needto have any knowledge of this proces. When relying on
the 3rd-party network of Audius content nodes, after
electing an initial set of nodes this set evolves automatically, with new nodes replacing old ones that are taken
offline or become unavailable.
If the artist chooses, though, they could select selfhosted node(s) to host their content instead. Runningtheir own content node(s) gives artists a higher degreeof control over their content distribution by 1) keeping
control of content encryption keys on infrastructure they
control and 2) allowing for custom permissioning extensions that are not native to the protocol.
If a artist fails to satisfy the election process or the
self-hosting process, their content will not be retrievableby participants in the network.

3.1

AudSP

Fetch
content

Fanclients

Submitproofs &requestkeys

Share
encrypted
content andmetadata

Content
nodeControls
nodeRegistered for
artistContent
ledgerRegister
new content

ArtistclientAudSP: A decentralized storage protocol

Figure 2: Content node interactions with protocol participants

Files distributed through the Audius protocol must be
highly available, independently verifiable, and decentralized. These principles are key to ensuring democratic
participation and accessibility for all users of the Audius protocol. Artists sharing their tracks and metadata,fans retrieving content, and node operators will all share
longer-form information via this protocol, while references to files in this protocol will reside in the Audius
content ledger. Additionally, the storage protocol must
provide an equivalent user experience to existing centralized solutions and scale effectively as network demand
increases.
To that end, we propose AudSP: a decentralized storage solution for the Audius network built on IPFS
(InterPlanetary File System). IPFS enables modular
object-level encryption, global distribution capability,
secure content addressing, and object immutability [7,§ 3.5.4]. In order to ensure high availability for files
stored through the Audius protocol, AudSP provides astaking-based incentive structure for users to host network content.

File references and associated metadata stored in the
Audius content ledger will be IPLD links [8]. As the decentralized storage market matures, the Audius protocol
may be extended to include other storage solutions suchas FileCoin [9], Sia [10], or Swarm [11].

3.2

Upload flow

To distribute a track on Audius, artists must agree tothe Audius open license (this license will be publishedin a separate brief), making the content available on the
broader Audius network.
The artist’s client will then (1) slice the track into
fixed-length segments, (2) encrypt them locally (if thecontent is permissioned) with segment-specific keys, and(3) upload these encrypted segments, the encryption
keys, and required metadata to their content node(s).
The content node(s) then publish the content and metadata to AudSP, producing an IPLD link for the metadata which the artist client adds to the Audius content
ledger via a new transaction (See Section 4 for more on
this process), which then prompts the discovery nodes
on the network to index the new content and make it
more broadly discoverable and available (see Section 5
for more on this process).

1 Previously, there was a concept of a ”creator node” that was
separate from a content node. These have been combined into asingle node type rather than being separate, with ”content node”
referring to the merged type. Some references to ”creator node”
still exist in Audius code and in other documentation; those cansafely be assumed to be referring to the content nodes outlined
here.

6

3.3

Content permissioning

This decrypts a given piece of content by locally reencrypting it using the aforementioned key and subsequently decrypting it with the user’s own private key.
There is no 3rd-party proxy, but proxy re-encryption
applied in this way allows everyone to share the sameencrypted content while users can only decrypt the content on a case-by-case basis. Potential cryptosystems,
including AFGH [12], are still being evaluated by thecommunity at this time.

In addition to maintaining content availability, content
nodes also take responsibility for permissioning access tocontent.
The content permissioning system in Audius aims tobe:
1. Transparent for all parties involved
2. Cost- and time- efficient for all transactions
3. Flexible, accounting for multiple streaming models
and any monetization scheme the artist sees fit
4. Granular, with users paying each other directly and
immediately for services rendered when possible

3.3.2

Artists can tie ability to unlock any piece of content toany condition they choose—some unlock conditions native to the protocol, if the community chooses, could
include: A payment being made
 Sufficient holding of an artist’s token (see 2.3)
 Past streaming behavior attested by a discovery
node, including but not limited to:– following the artist– streamed artist’s work more than a given number of times– reposted artist’s content more than a numberof times

As described in the upload flow in Section 4, if content
is permissioned, the artist’s client at upload time generates encryption keys for the content that are shared with/ managed by the content node(s) elected by the artist
thereafter.
Because of AudSP, anyone can now fetch the encrypted content being kept available by the elected content nodes. Proxy re-encryption is what allows a content
node to selectively issue a key to a given user upon request.
3.3.1

Unlock conditions

Proxy re-encryption

When beginning to stream a track, a fan’s client will
make a request to one of a artist’s elected content nodes,
including a payment or other proof if required, for a
proxy re-encryption key specific to the segment of the
track being consumed.
To service this request, the content node derives a
proxy re-encryption key using the fan’s public wallet key
and the private key used to encrypt the requested track
and returns it to the fan. Because the re-encryption
key is specific to the artist, fan, and segment, it canbe transmitted insecurely or published without revealing the track contents to the greater network.
The cryptosystem used to encrypt tracks will allow theissuance of fan-specific proxy re-encryption keys derived
from the track encryption key and the fan’s public key.
The artist’s content node(s) will handle key requests andissue new keys when the specified conditions are met,
issuing a new key by mixing the track encryption key
with the fan’s wallet’s public key.
After fetching encrypted content and a re-encryption
key, the fan client would locally decrypt the content using their wallet private key as follows:

The content node would look for the specified condition to be satisified to issue a proxy re-encryption key atthe fan’s request.
By running their own content node, a artist could permission content in any additional way they see fit. Theirnode software can be modified to add new unlocking permission modules, serving as a testbed for modules tomake their way into the core protocol too.

4

Content Ledger

The Audius content ledger, referred to as such throughout the paper, is the amalgamation of smart contracts on
Ethereum [13], POA network [14], and other future L1 or
L2 blockchain networks that host pieces of the Audius
ecosystem. Different parts of the Audius protocol willcontinue to run on different blockchain-based platforms,
or utilize off-chain scalability solutions, where scalability trilemma tradeoffs [15] can be made on a module andsubprotocol-specific basis.
Today, the content ledger for Audius includes: A consistent audio content and metadata format
specification to ensure accessibility (similar to the
OMI metadata spec [16, § 3.7.1-3.7.2])
 A decentralized process for artists to control:– Track content

proxied = reencrypt(encrypted_content,
reencryption_key)
plaintext = decrypt(proxied,
wallet_privkey)

7 Stream a track
 Like a track, adding it to the fans’ own library Follow other fans and artists, and receive notifications when new original content, reposts, playlists,or comments are created by them
 Create a public (shared to followers) or private
playlist Repost tracks to followers– Revenue splits– Content ownership structure A registry of all nodes reachable in Audius The social graph of all users interacting with Audius Implementations of the token and governance systems described in this paper

After generating upload artifacts from their content
nodes, as described in Section 3.2, a artist can add theircontent to the content ledger via a new transaction:

With more action types to be added in future via
community governance (eg. comments have been acommonly-requested addition). Actions taken by users
get organized into user-specific feeds that reflect the
time-sorted actions of the other users they follow—thisis enabled by the indexing functionality described in thenext section.
All social actions within Audius are represented in thecontent ledger, meaning users can use any client to connect to Audius and see the same social graph. Fans canalso view what other fans have been streaming, as candevelopers building third-party clients. This opens up
many possibilities around content recommendation systems and alternative client experiences built by membersof the Audius developer community.

Track {
owner_address
map(artistId => ownership)
metadataIPLD... other metadata ...
}Where the linked metadata could be a JSON file structured along these lines:{"trackTitle": "...","segmentIpldLinks": ["...", "...", ...],... other metadata ...
}4.3

The artist can then modify track content/metadata
by sharing the modified content to AudSP and updating
the metadata IPLD link in the content ledger.
Once content is listed in the content ledger, it is indexed by the discovery nodes as detailed in Section 5
which ultimately makes it easily queryable and discoverable by clients accessing Audius.

The Audius content ledger is also the home of the Audius token economy (Section 2) and Audius governancesystem (Section 6), described in further detail in theirrespective sections.

4.1

5Discovery Node

In order for a fan to discover content on the network,
Audius needs a mechanism for indexing metadata that is
efficiently queryable by users. Based on the philosophiesof the Audius project, this index must be: Decentralized Efficient and straightforward for user clients to consume (promoting accessibility) Provably correct and transparent, eliminating profit
incentives to manipulate the results returned tousers Extensible, so that the Audius community can explore different ranking and searching methodologies.

Node registry

The Audius content ledger maintains a single source of
truth for 1) all the valid versions of node software usable
within Audius, controlled by governance (Section 6), 2)
all the discovery and content nodes reachable within Audius and 3) how to find them (via IP address or fullyqualified domain name).
When a client connects to Audius for the first time, it
can use this on-chain registry to bootstrap its local state(eg. looking up which account maps to the active wallet,
what is the current user’s social graph / feed, etc. via achosen discovery node)

4.2

Tokens and governance

These requirements rule out the most decentralized
options due to usability and efficiency issues, e.g. users
replicating the Audius ledger locally and querying theirlocal dataset. This section outlines a protocol for a classof discovery nodes to form operated by the Audius community, serving this function in a way that meets theSocial features and fan feed

The content ledger also serves as a central source of
truth for fan/artist interactions happening within Audius. Users can take the following actions within Audius:8

sults for the same query. This consistency guarantee isessential for the penalty mechanism described in Section 6.2.

Clients

Chooseinterface

5.2

We foresee the community creating an incentive economy around discovery node interfaces, which would allow the creator / maintainer of an interface to earn a
portion of rewards earned by node operators using saidinterface. Node rewards could also be tied to numberof requests fielded to incentivize nodes to operate withhigher-quality infrastructure and in locations near large
population centers.

Interfaces

6

Registercompliancewith interface

GovernanceIntegral to achieving this mission is a decentralized governance protocol, whereby artists, node operators, andfans are individually and collectively enfranchised in decision making about protocol changes and upgrades.
In the spirit of creating a community-owned and operated streaming protocol, these key actors should be
empowered to shape, mend and modify underlying parameters of the Audius protocol including but not limited to: Feature Integrations
 Royalty Rates
 Token Distribution
 Fee Pool Allocation
 Staking Rewards

Discovery
nodes

Figure 3: Discovery API interface registration and usage
above requirements.
Discovery node operators earn revenue by registeringa node with an active network stake, letting them earnpart of the ongoing Audius token issuance and aggregated fee pools. Fan clients select discovery nodes toquery from via the content ledger’s node registry (Section 4.1).
Discovery nodes are read-only. Clients can use themto fetch a fan’s feed, a playlist, song and artist metadata, search the corpus of Audius entities, and execute
other queries about the network. Anyone can register adiscovery node if they meet the requirements outlined inthis section.

5.1

Future work

Everything in Audius is governable, and all Audius tokens staked in the protocol automatically receives governance weight on a 1 token, 1 vote basis.
Audius politicians differ in the sense that node operators are unique from artists and curators, both of which
are aligned in the growth of the protocol. Governancewill look to present both technical and nontechnical proposals, giving all users the ability to properly voice theirbeliefs without needing to run a node or have a deep
technical understanding of the Audius tech stack.
For node operators, Audius governance acts as a key
tool to empower decentralized content storage, providing a direct mechanism for rewards to be earned andamended in line with the costs, value and consensus ofother providers on the network.
By creating a framework for users to adjust the direction of the protocol in line with their shared beliefs,
Audius will curate governance to the most value-added
actors, possibly tying in incentives to those who are mostactive.

Discovery API interfaces

Audius will produce a first-party discovery API interface,but other community members are encouraged to author
their own interfaces that extend or modify the core API.
The protocol allows fans to select any discovery API interface registered in the Audius content ledger.
An API interface must index new blocks from the Audius ledger atomically (i.e. all-or-nothing), and all API
methods must be deterministic. Because of these requirements, for a given block hash, all discovery nodes
running a given API interface will produce identical re-9In doing so, core Audius politicians will play an active role in both future token issuance, node operator
incentives, and creative mechanisms for artists to better
engage their community.

6.1

this alleged misbehavior. The governance process candecide whether there is indeed inaccuracy, whether said
inaccuracy was caused by negligence or maliciousness vs.
a system error, and slash the node operators stake accordingly. Slashed tokens are burned rather than redistributed to stakers to avoid incentivizing slashes.

Short-circuiting

There is a short-circuit process that allows both 1) proposals to be passed without broader vote if urgency requires, eg. during active exploitation of a vulnerability
in the protocol, and 2) proposals to be vetoed if they
are not consistent with the philosophies outlined in thispaper.
This short-circuit capability will be controlled by acommunity multisig with an initial set of signers. Additional signers can be voted into place via the open community governance process.
The community, at any time, can vote to remove theability to short-circuit governance if they choose, and thecontrollers of the short-circuit multisig have committed
to not veto said proposal when the time comes to relinquish control.
The project team added this functionality to the governance process with the intention for it to be removed—
it is up to the community to decide when it makes sense
to take off the training wheels or whether it makes sense
to have this functionality at all.

6.2

7

History and Roadmap

Detailed below is a breakdown of the progress Audius has
made to date, culminating in a transition to protocolowned and operated decentralized governance.

7.1

Genesis (05/2018—12/2018)

Shortly after the project was founded, the project teamreleased an initial version of the Audius whitepaper detailing the plans for the architecture, and shipped thefirst functional implementations of the Audius smart
contracts, content node, and discovery node.

7.2

Private Alpha (01/2019—07/2019)

6 months after founding the project, the project teambegan inviting early users to engage with the protocol
and an early client implementation to provide feedback.
In this phase, access to the product was granted on an
invite-only basis and major issues were ironed out ina controlled environment before introducing 3rd-party
node operators into the network.
At this time, all content uploaded to Audius washosted on IPFS, and the client was interacting directlywith the initial implementations of the content node anddiscovery node. The Audius client also featured a unique
web3 login mechanism called Hedgehog, allowing users
to sign up with an email and password in a trustlessmanner, rather than having to connect with Metamask.
This was open-sourced as a standalone project to help
other consumer-facing products achieve a higher degreeof usability.

Enforcing node response accuracy

Every response a community-operated node in Audius
returns is signed with the private key that was used to
stake the original tokens or a designated delegate, theblock hash of the block they have incorporated up to thatpoint (for discovery nodes) or a timestamp (for content
nodes), inputs provided to query, and the node software
version from the public version registry they are using
to generate results.
Blocks are indexed atomically in discovery nodes andAPI methods are deterministic, meaning that every discovery node should produce identical results for the same
query, block hash, and API interface.
The content node by nature cannot provide as strongof guarantees by timestamp as the discovery node can byblock numbers and deterministic indexing, but sequencesof requests with responses (ordered by timestamp) signedby the operator key can provide a similar function for
demonstrating behavior in a provable way.
If either node type produces invalid or inaccurate results, the signed result document returned by the node
is a self-contained proof that the given node produced
the given set of results.
Using these proofs as evidence, a claimant could open
a governance proposal to slash a given node operator for

7.3

Testnet (08/2019—09/2020)

The Audius protocol began welcoming its first 3rd-party
node operators into the network, with artist content andmetadata being hosted by end users for the first time.
Through this period, as more node operators were onboarded, the project team wound down most of theirinternally-operated nodes, maintaining a few as a canarymechanism to understand how the network is performing.
One month into this testnet period, at the end of
September 2019, the Audius first-party client implementation launched publicly for the first time. This included
10basic functionality for uploading content, playing content, searching for / following artists, and more.
Over the following months, many more client features were shipped, including: notifications, mobile
apps / desktop apps, remix competitions, and a welldocumented API for interfacing with user-operated
nodes directly.
By the end of the testnet period, the protocol was
being used by over 500,000 fans every month (see Section 1.3 for more details).

7.4

community governance.

8

Audius stands at the forefront of pioneering the vision
for a community owned streaming protocol. The community that has formed around this protocol has become
formiddable, growing far beyond the reaches of the small
project team that built the initial implementations ofeach respective component.
Audius has historically thrived on word of mouth referrals. As a protocol empowering anyone in the world
to become a talent scout and capture value from that activity, growth has been highly correlated with passionate
artists and curators taking advantage of the high degreeof control and leverage that this community owned andoperated streaming protocol provides.
With the support of many of the great builders in thespace that have preceded us in the intersection of music
and decentralization, Audius stands on the shoulders ofgiants, taking best practices around music distribution,
governance, and token mechanics to create a streaming
protocol that is owned and operated by its most active,
valuable users.
For artists, we encourage you to take this opportunity
to make your mark as an early adopter. The spectrum
in which value can be created varies greatly, and the
Audius community prides itself on creating opportunities for artists, curators and fans of all shapes and sizes
to collectively share in the upside of the unstoppablestreaming protocol of tomorrow.
To those who have been plagued by industry incumbents for the duration of their artistic career, let this bea call to arms to reimagine and pave a new path—one
in which every aspect of the experience is grounded insovereignty and decentralization.
We look forward to seeing you along the way.

Mainnet Launch (10/2020)

The mainnet launch of Audius is the genesis of the Audius platform token, allowing fans, artists and curators
to earn a piece of the platform as a value-added user.
Alongside the suite of client use-cases detailed previously, Audius will introduce a protocol dashboard to
showcase analytics and governance for all stakeholders.

7.5

Community-owned Streaming

Crossing the Chasm (12/2020 andbeyond)The Audius community will roll out new mechanisms
for content ownership and revenue never before possible, backed by the crypto-native primitives driving theprotocol under the hood. As a platform well poised tobridge the gap between crypto and a mainstream audience, Audius will always prioritize simplicity to offer an
intuitive user experience grounded in web3.
With Audius token, active participants will dictate
protocol changes through an ongoing distribution to newstakeholders. To maintain governance weight, participants of the protocol must continually contribute invalue-added ways, or have their governance power diluted and replaced by others doing the same.
In doing so, Audius will live forever as a protocol
owned and operated entirely by its users, stewarded by11

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[11] What is swarm? Ethersphere. 2017. url: https://bit.ly/audius-swarm (visited on 08/28/2018).
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Giuseppe Ateniese, Kevin Fu, Matthew Green, and Susan Hohenberger. “Improved Proxy Re-Encryption
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[13] What is Ethereum? Ethereum Foundation. 2020. url: https : / / ethereum . org / en / what - is - ethereum/(visited on 10/05/2020).
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