The end is near! 2023 brings the setting of the original Streamr roadmap and with it the dawning of the Streamr Network 1.0! It’s going to be a busy year so let’s dive into what you can expect.
Table of Contents
The Streamr Network 1.0 release
In 2022 we launched the Brubeck Mainnet, which moved the Streamr protocol to a fully permissionless state as community-run nodes now stake to power the Network. Brubeck delivers on the decentralized promise of the protocol, but missing are the full tokenomics and bounty smart contracts that the team has been working towards for the past five years. This is what 1.0, previously called the Tatum Milestone, brings.
One of the key changes with this release are the automatic node incentive mechanisms and reward distribution. In the current setup, the team manually distributes rewards to node runners each month, but post 1.0 the process becomes automatic. This decouples the core team from the Streamr Network and allows it to take on a life of its own.
The 1.0 release also brings capabilities for sponsors to create Bounties to incentivise Brokers and streams, allows Delegators to stake on Brokers to share revenue, and makes the Network trackerless. We’ll have more details to share on 1.0, including key takeaways for builders, in a later blog.
The Chat
There have been several communication protocols built on Streamr in the past, so we thought it’s time to build one of our own! The Chat is a decentralized instant messenger where users can communicate on-chain in public or private group chats in a completely serverless, peer-to-peer configuration. It will launch as a desktop web app and potentially expand later to mobile.
The app will come with features including token gated access control, where permissions are decided based on whether a user holds a certain amount of a chosen token, and hot wallet signing, which allows users to sign message transactions without manual MetaMask pop ups.
There’s plenty more innovation under the hood that we’re excited to share with you in a later blog.
We’re aiming to start beta testing in February!
Streamr Hub
The Streamr Hub is an upgrading and relaunch of the Streamr Marketplace that brings a more open, and explorable user interface. The main idea of the Hub is to encourage users to create, share, and more easily discover some of the world’s amazing real-time data streams.
The Hub will see the Core App and marketplace functionality merged and new features added to make finding, publishing, and subscribing to streams as frictionless as possible. Established projects will also have their own pages on the Hub to act as a touchpoint for devs to build with the open data.
These changes, along with the multi-chain upgrade we shipped last year, should make the Hub into an attractive all-in-one repository for Web3 and open data builders to unlock more value from live data.
Log Store
A collaborative effort is underway to offer Arweave’s decentralized storage for users of the Streamr Network. Currently the Streamr project does not offer a decentralized way to store and query the streaming data flowing through it, but thanks to a proposal from Usher’s Ryan Soury, which was approved in the SIP-13 vote, this is about to change.
This is an exciting new capability that will add value to the Network’s real-time data streams by enabling a complete end-to-end decentralized data solution that links together a chain of composable Web3 protocols. The Log Store is backed by and will use technologies from Usher, Kyve, and Arweave. Keep an eye out for an update from Ryan on how this is progressing soon!
Streamr Ecosystem
2023 also looks set to be a significant year for the projects building with Streamr. The Swash Data Union recently formed a partnership with DataHive DAO to co-launch sIntelligence, a zero-party data analytics platform for businesses that will leverage zero-party data. Swash is also set to launch sAds, which allows users to opt-in to and receive bonuses for the delivery of targeted ads as they browse.
The DIMO Network finished the year strong by launching its mainnet and token rewards and has since connected over 5,000 cars and growing. Connected car data is surely an area to watch closely this year.
GM to 5k connected vehicles on @DIMO_Network pic.twitter.com/rDNh0RNXXp
— alex.dimo (@alexsrawitz) January 10, 2023
A new feature also arrived for the Data Unions DAO—weighted revenue distribution. You can read more about this much requested capability in their developer docs and make sure to give them a follow for more updates.
Streamr Awards and the Talko platform has through a new way to reward and acknowledge contributions made by the community. You can see for yourself by browsing the unique sNFTs already sent and hopefully receive your own in 2023.
Growth and Protocol Adoption
As the final milestone of the Streamr roadmap, 1.0 (formerly Tatum), approaches—this represents an opportunity to step change protocol usage and adoption in 2023. There are some key reasons for this. Firstly, the 1.0 release means the network is at a more user-friendly stage—with developers more able to access key features. Secondly, it means we can focus more of our resources on Growth Marketing, Ecosystem partnerships, Dev Relations, and Business Development.
From a marketing and business development perspective, 2022 was a year of putting the foundations in place. The team revisited our thinking on positioning, use cases, and go to market approach—and with a renewed focus on the core of Streamr as Web3 infrastructure, we have been working to realize new partnership opportunities, and grow Streamr awareness and usage within the EVM ecosystem.
In addition, the growth team has tested various acquisition and retention channels against this objective and are well placed to adopt these learnings in 2023. Key highlights are search and paid ads campaigns, which delivered over 3 million impressions, and thanks to our split testing process, significantly reduced the CPA over the course of the year.
The StreamTeam monthly bounty contest also launched last year to give the community chances to win rewards by helping find new supporters and builders for the Streamr project. Over 150,000 users signed up on the StreamTeam app with over 1 million actions taken to support Streamr awareness. As a result, all channels saw significant growth adding around 10,000 new followers to Twitter alone.
The core objective of driving protocol adoption will remain the same in 2023, but we are always looking to optimise further. StreamTeam will evolve to become more developer and node runner focussed, accelerating adoption and usage on both the demand and supply sides of the protocol. Furthermore, we are investing in SEO and relevant content that ranks on keyword search terms.
Our Ecosystem efforts will continue as we see spaces like TIPIN develop as well as increase the Streamr presence within the broader EVM space. We are resourcing our ‘Dev Rel’ team accordingly who will represent us at forthcoming ETHGlobal Hackathon events (both physical and virtual) as well as working directly with the Developer DAO community, amongst others. Holding a greater presence at hackathons and developer events is a proven way to bring more Web3 builders to the Streamr protocol. Meanwhile, the team have reworked the developer docs to make onboarding of developers that much easier.
Finally, a big thank you to all of the active members of the Data Union DAO and Discord community! The Streamr community is made up of passionate decentralists—without whom Streamr would not be here. The ongoing efforts of contributors and moderators are the backbone of the project.
So thanks again and we look forward to working with you throughout 2023 and beyond. See you in the community!
