Today marks a major upgrade to the Marketplace: the Streamr Marketplace has integrated with Uniswap — in addition to DATA, buyers can now spend ETH or DAI, the decentralized stablecoin from MakerDAO, to pay for all data products.
What is Uniswap?
Uniswap is a token-swapping smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s built upon an ingenious mechanism of pooled liquidity that allows for token swaps without an explicit counter party or third party custodian of funds. This makes it particularly secure because there are no trusted third parties — you’re in control of your funds at all times. Leveraging decentralized infrastructure like Uniswap is what makes building on Ethereum so powerful.
Why did we do this?
To accelerate the growth of data consumers on the Marketplace. Using crypto is still a common point of friction for most people and there is a much larger pool of potential data consumers that hold ETH and DAI compared with DATA token holders.
Does this reduce the utility of the DATA token?
In short, no. The beneficiary of the Marketplace transaction is still paid in DATA — this hasn’t changed.
To the contrary, improving the accessibility of the Marketplace comes with its own benefits for the DATA token. Higher activity on the Marketplace means more data throughput on the Streamr Network. This will count when upcoming releases of the Network include token incentives for node operators that transport this data, from producer to consumer.
How does it work?
If you choose to pay with ETH or DAI, you will execute a single transaction through a chain of smart contracts, though these will be invisible to you. These are the Uniswap Adaptor and Marketplace contracts.
The Uniswap Adaptor will perform an initial token swap, then send DATA tokens to the Marketplace contract to pay for the data product, authorise access and transfer the DATA tokens to the seller.
Technically, any ERC-20 token with sufficient liquidity on Uniswap could be used for the purchase. However, we decided to take it one step at a time and kick off with a trio of just DATA, ETH, and DAI. We’re looking to add more options over time.
What’s next for the Marketplace?
A huge amount of groundwork has been done behind the scenes to prepare for the full rollout of Data Unions, which will be launched later this year. The upgraded Marketplace contract will also provide the provision of buyer whitelisting — a commonly requested feature from many data providers.
Head to the Streamr Marketplace to check out available data products.
The content here is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as legal, business, tax or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any holders or potential holders of the DATA token.
