Lightstreams is a peer-to-peer network enabling commerce and content distribution via a blockchain. It aims to provide confidentiality to all network participants via permissions controls set by content creators, sellers, and buyers. Established companies such as Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix are their target centralized competitors. Talk about aiming high. Buying and selling goods and services will be a first use case for the Lightstreams platform. Businesses today are evaluating how blockchain will disrupt their operations or how it can harness the power of this new technology to further its agenda. Private blockchains have become the tool of choice over public blockchains for a variety of reasons including: privacy laws, permissions capabilities, and scalability.
The Lightstreams Test Network is already up and running. Developers and entrepreneurs can download the application and download a local copy of the blockchain today. Lightstreams is just starting to make the rounds in the influencer and marketing communities, but the team has been hard at work having a product semi-ready to ship. Rather than raising money with just a whitepaper - blood, sweat, and tears went into building the project prior to raising their public profile.
On a macro level, IPFS and the entire distributed storage space is contingent upon recruiting storage capacity from unused hardware. Idle servers and computers are finite, thus presenting a likely non-scalable supply. Decentralized storage projects (Storj, Siacoin, Filecoin) that are first to solve the incentive problem or any of the other featured prized attributes (privacy, low-latency) may capture a slight to super majority of market share. The remaining protocols would be fighting for a smaller share of the overall market. Lightstream is banking on privacy and permissions as a key identifiable feature for developers of decntralized applications (dApps).
In situations of excess demand for storage, prices across these networks may rapidly increase. Arbitrage opportunists may find, for a short time, price differences between these networks and indirectly serve to equalize prices along these networks. While good for token investors, it presents a potentially expensive solution for application developers.
The Lightstreams team looks and feels light on the relevant experience. I see three talented developers early in their careers. When I compare them side by side with the other players in the space I would have loved to see a team member with deep experience already working with IPFS or distributed storage. With the likely capital from their ICO I am sure they will staff their bench.
Overall, Lightstreams does a nice job of laying where they differentiate against their peers (Filecoin, Swarm). Knowing where you stand on the battlefield will help see where you can take on your rivals. With the experienced and well advised teams behind Filecoin and Swarm, I see Lightstreams competing against well funded peers in the distributed storage and blockchain space. For investors who do not have access to Filecoin and Swarm, Lightstreams might be a nice hedge alongside Siacoin.
Disclaimer: I do not own any Siacoin, Lightstreams, Filecoin, or Swarm. These opinions are my own.
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