What is Streamr?
Streamr tokenizes streaming data to enable a new way for machines & people to trade it on a decentralised P2P network. To make this happen, they’re building a marketplace for real-time data.
Companies will be able to better build and market their products in the Internet of Things (IoT) and people will regain control of the data they produce. And society as a whole will be better off when the wealth of the data economy is not concentrated in the hands of a few giant companies (Google, Facebook, Amazon etc).
Founded by algorithmic traders, Streamr raised $30M in October 2017 through crowdfunding their cryptographic access token, DATAcoin.
With this funding the project has set about building an open-source, decentralised, marketplace for buying and selling real-time data streams which will sit on top of the Ethereum blockchain.
“Soon, Marketplace users — either companies or individuals — will be able to trade information over our P2P decentralised Network without anyone taking a cut. Streamr is also enabling the future data economy. With data permissioning and value transfer built in the distributed ledger, machines and connected devices will be able to securely and automatically trade the real-time information they generate between themselves.”
That’s neat. But how to use Ruuvi sensors on the Streamr platform?
This part is easy. Streamr is already a lot more than just promises about the upcoming marketplace.
Using technology that has been in development since 2011, Streamr has created easy to use tools which work out of the box.
Their Editor offers a simple visual programming environment to solve various kinds of problems without needing to code anything.
That means you can start connecting data streams (like from Ruuvi sensors) to build applications that connect to bespoke Ethereum smart contracts in a few minutes.
To get an idea of what we’re talking about, check out the following video:
In the video, Streamr’s CEO, Henri Pihkala, shows how RuuviTags can be used to set up cold chain monitoring.
“When millions of tons of frozen foods are transported around the world everyday, ensuring that foods remain frozen whilst in transit is really important for the end consumer. No one wants to buy defrosted then refrozen ice cream and restaurants don’t want to be cooking meat infested with bacteria.”
Using both RuuviTags and the Streamr Editor, you can set up a monitoring system where a “courier” can place a stake in ETH into a smart contract.
If the measured temperature exceeds an agreed threshold, a penalty can be subtracted from the stake and sent to the “beneficiary”.
You can try this yourself by using this self-explanatory guide for further support.
Below you can see the live canvas, embedded onto this tutorial.
What next?
Streamr’s master plan is to allow businesses and individuals to monetise all forms of real-time data including the vast amount of information from sensors that is expected to increase exponentially in the next decade.
They expect to launch a fully functioning Marketplace this year.
Of course, the easier it becomes to monetise people’s sensor data, the more incentive there is for those people to find smarter, and more useful reasons for its collection.
Being able to broadcast your Ruuvi sensor data to anyone around the world who might chose to subscribe, should open up a whole host of interesting use cases.
Let the experimentation begin!
