The Ethereum Blockchain has 3,000 nodes and the Bitcoin Blockchain around 12,000 nodes on a daily average. The Streamr Network, which is not a blockchain, had in total 130,000 nodes joining throughout its testnet phase that ran over the course of the past two months. At its peak, the third Testnet had 90,000 node runners simultaneously participating from 85 different countries. This made the Streamr Testnet one of the biggest P2P networks in computing history. So what is the Streamr Network? Streamr is a decentralized network for real-time data transport. Real-time data services are needed when you receive a notification on your phone, or when someone sends a tweet. If we look at the existing web 3 stack, we have blockchains for security, financial transactions and identity management, then there are data storage solutions like IPFS or Skynet, but these components alone do not make the decentralized web as instantaneous as the centralized web. An NFT stored on IPFS will take several seconds to load, but web 2 operates at the speed of milliseconds. That’s where the Streamr Network becomes an important component of the web 3 stack. During the Streamr Testnets, node runners were able to broadcast messages to every other node in the network in about 350 milliseconds on average. What do we need these fast broadcasting services for? How about decentralized in browser gaming, decentralized social media, decentralized live streaming! ...
