Streamr: Data Streaming Marketplace with Henri Pihkala

Blockchain – Software Engineering Daily

Data streams about the weather can be used to predict how soybean futures are going to change in price. Satellite data streams can take pictures of the number of cars on the road, and judge how traffic patterns are changing. Search engines can aggregate data from different queries and determine what people are most interested in.

Data streams define how the world is changing over time. Technology companies process these data streams and make decisions based on that stream. The most direct example of this might be financial trading companies, which use all kinds of data streams to predict economic price changes.

When Henri Pihkala worked on algorithmic trading systems, he saw how useful these data streams are, and decided to build products around data streaming. Eventually, Henri started working on Streamr, a platform for data streams to be bought and sold on top of the Ethereum network.

Streamr is an adaptation of technology that Henri worked on before he started working on the decentralized version. The original technology is a user interface for connecting data streams and building applications on top of them, and he acquired several customers for that platform. Today, the Streamr platform is still mostly centralized, but Henri and his team are working on building out the decentralized infrastructure.

Streamr raised an ICO worth ~25 million Euros. Most startups would not raise this amount of money before series B, much less before they have a product with a large user base. In this episode, Henri discusses why they raised so much money and explains why ICOs are different than equity raises. The investors who participated in the Streamr ICO received the DATAcoin token. Henri also explained why it makes sense for this ecosystem to have its own token.

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