During this Core Unit Tools session organized by MakerDAO, Paul Razvan Berg presented the Sablier protocol and answered questions from the audience.
Who are you and what is Sablier?
Sablier is a money-streaming app which was created 2 years ago in 2019. In the meantime, we have been acquired by Hifi, a fixed rate lending protocol also on Ethereum.
Are you on any kind of layer-2?
We are actively exploring solutions, it’s mostly a coordination problem right now where everybody is wondering what the other person is going to do. At the moment there is a community-built version of Sablier on xDai using the same contracts and almost the same user interface.
Do I need to lock up all the funds upfront?
Yes, that’s the current behavior. You could create several stream batches, though.
How efficient is Sablier in terms of gas costs?
It costs 250K gas to create a stream and 120K gas to withdraw from a stream.
Were you the inventor of the ERC-1620?
Yes, I (Paul) authored it a few years ago and Sablier is an extension of ERC-1620 but with a nice user interface and a more polished implementation.
Could you use this to stream NFT royalties?
I (Paul) don’t see why that couldn’t happen. There is nothing stopping you from using this in your own NFT protocol. We could even tokenize streams into NFTs which would allow you to give your stream to somebody else or use them as collateral in a lending protocol.
How long is the average stream?
Most of them are long-term for two reasons. The first one is that the highest-paying users are teams vesting their tokens. The second reason is that because of the gas costs it’s cheaper to create one long stream instead of two shorter ones.
Do you support any ERC-20 token?
Yes, it’s compatible with any token. We are working on implementing token lists, but for now it’s a manually defined list of tokens.
Are there integrations which you find interesting?
We have an integration with Gnosis and they have been a huge avenue for us to get more users. In the future, we are looking to get Sablier listed on more DeFi lists, like DeFi Pulse for example.
Do you make money in any way?
It’s a public good. The contracts have no fee, it’s free to use.
Have you had any conversations with crypto payroll providers?
We are not focusing on the legal dimension where crypto meets the law.
It seems like this is better for fixed-term salary payments with no changes in the amounts being paid.
That is true. Although you could integrate a time-tracking mechanism to start and stop the stream when the person is actively working and when he or she isn’t.
Is there a way to pause the stream instead of canceling it?
No, we kept the implementation rather minimal for security purposes. Security is very important for us.
Can you stream to multiple recipients?
If you set a recipient as a contract which implements your logic which has multiple recipients, yes you can.
Do you support any type of exponential streaming?
We have thought about it, but we don’t support it yet. It’s certainly very interesting.
What’s the roadmap for Sablier?
For now we are exploring layer-2s. We do have some interesting ideas to solve the money lock-up problem.
If you have any questions, ideas, or issues, ping us on Discord or Twitter — we’d love to hear from you.
