Streamr Announces Testnet Launch with 2M DATA in Mining Rewards

More than 1000 people have already signed up to run a node in the Streamr testnet. The Streamr project recently announced that it will launch a series of several testnets this summer. Interested miners can already sign up to secure a spot as node operators. The project has committed to distributing 2M DATA tokens in mining rewards to testnet participants.

The Streamr Network is a decentralized, topic-based publish-subscribe system. Each stream or pub-sub topic has its own peer-to-peer overlay network that is built and maintained by a set of BitTorrent-like trackers. Development is still in progress, with Brubeck as the current milestone.

Unlike with PoW blockchains, DATA mining rewards aren’t created by solving hash functions, an activity which requires top notch hardware, but instead by sharing bandwidth. Therefore, miners should be able to run it on an idle laptop, or even a device such as a Raspberry Pi. People can simply participate by downloading a special testnet release of the Streamr Broker node software and run it for the lifespan of the testnet.

To be eligible for rewards you’ll need to successfully run a Broker node and have sufficient uptime in the testnets. DATA rewards will get distributed on the xDai sidechain. The rewards will be based on a bonding curve; the more nodes in the testnets, the more rewards earned by each node. This incentivises existing participants to get more miners on-boarded to the testnet. However, ultimately the profitability of running a node depends on external factors, such as the price of DATA and your cost of running the node.

There will be at least two testnet rounds — the first testnet will have a lifespan of 3 days, while the final testnet will run for 14 days. Additional testnet iterations may be added to the schedule, depending on whether any problems arise in the first testnets.

Streamr Network Use Cases

The Streamr Network is a middleware solution to be leveraged by any decentralized application such as Web 3.0 applications or blockchain networks as an infrastructure lego. Popular use cases like DeFi or NFTs get augmented by adding real-time data functionality. When building on Streamr, dApp developers no longer have to rely on centralized services like AWS for message transport. The Network serves as a seamless plug and play solution which enables permissionless systems to connect to the data economy.

Potential future use cases include social media, chat apps, decentralized application metrics, public or industrial data, real-time collaboration tools, or even video streaming.

Existing use cases include Swash a browser plugin which lets users earn from their data as they surf the web. Tracey a supply chain data tracking app. And Kraken, a brokerage and market platform for personal data.

The Future of the Streamr Network

While the network itself is already up and running, the tokenomics are currently in development and will be fully introduced to the Network in 2022. Along the way, the DATA token will be used to bootstrap the growth of the Streamr Network, for example for the testnet series. By 2022 Network participants can also stake DATA tokens to earn yield.