Token Streaming
Continuous, real-time transfer of tokens from sender to recipient, enabling salary streams, subscriptions, and ongoing funding flows.
How It Works
1. Sender creates a stream with token and flow rate 2. Tokens continuously transfer in real-time 3. Recipient can withdraw accumulated funds anytime 4. Stream continues until stopped or funds depleted 5. Can be combined with other DeFi primitives
Deep Dive
Token streaming enables continuous, real-time transfer of tokens. Instead of lump sum payments, funds flow constantly from sender to recipient at a defined rate per second. This enables new financial primitives like real-time salary payments, continuous subscriptions, and streaming grants. Recipients can access their earned funds at any moment, improving cash flow and reducing trust requirements. Protocols like Superfluid and Drips have pioneered this approach.
Advantages
- Improved cash flow for recipients
- Real-time compensation
- Reduced counterparty risk
- Composable with DeFi
- Automatic, requires no manual transactions
Limitations
- Requires consistent sender balance
- Gas costs for modifications
- Complex accounting
- Limited to compatible tokens
- Learning curve for users
Apps Using This Mechanism
Superfluid
Money streaming protocol
Superfluid is a smart contract framework for programmable money streams. It enables real-time finance applications including continuous salary payments, subscriptions, and streaming grants. The protocol processes over $50M in active monthly streams across multiple networks.
Drips
Streaming funding for open source
Drips enables continuous token streaming to fund open source dependencies. It creates sustainable funding flows from projects to their dependencies using a novel Drip List model. Projects can split incoming funds to their dependencies automatically, creating supply chain funding graphs.
Protocol Guild
Funding Ethereum core contributors
Protocol Guild is a collective funding mechanism for Ethereum's core protocol contributors. It has received over $92.9M in pledges and donations from the Ethereum ecosystem and currently distributes funds to 187+ active Ethereum core developers. Major contributors include Lido, Uniswap, ENS, and many others.
Best Used For
- Ongoing salaries and compensation
- Subscription services
- Continuous grants
- Vesting schedules
Tags
Last updated: 12/1/2024