Constellation, a distributed infrastructure that connects Big Data and the blockchain, has announced that it has acquired Dor, a startup that helps retail brands expand their business operations by “empowering them to improve customer outcomes through its data analytics solution that enables them to better understand store foot traffic.”
As mentioned in a release:
“With the acquisition, Constellation is positioned to acquire and codify Dor’s voluminous foot traffic data and link this data with other large consumer datasets. Equipped with this information, the company will be able to provide a new level of insight into spending habits of millions of consumers without compromising privacy.”
By combining its mobile node infrastructure and Dor’s hardware, Constellation is set to establish the largest mesh network in blockchain.
“Acquiring a data-driven hardware and software company will help us increase Constellation’s network utility,” stated Ben Jorgensen, CEO at Constellation.
Jorgensen added:
“With its cutting edge technology, Dor is providing critical data that is enabling thousands of retail stores in the US and Canada to improve the customer experience, and ultimately to grow their businesses. With this acquisition, and the data we can obtain with Dor’s battery-operated and cellular-powered thermal sensors, we can put millions of monthly data points into our network. This acquisition kickstarts our vision and ambition to merge crypto businesses with traditional businesses.”
Dor, a start-up, headquartered in San Francisco, will continue its retail operations while working cooperatively with Constellation to create new blockchain-powered products.
Dor was established by two former Apple engineers in 2015 and “funded by leading venture capital firms including Zetta Ventures, Bolt Ventures, BCV, Conductive Ventures, RevTech Ventures, Precursor Ventures, and Vertex Ventures in Seed and Series A rounds with a total investment of more than $15 million.”
Michael Brand, the CEO of Dor, remarked:
“Dor has tens of millions of data points per month. The data that Dor provides allows retailers to make changes to better optimize their stores’ performance. In a world where stores use an endless amount of experiments and tactics to increase sales, there is no way to pinpoint which methods work unless you have the data that can back it up. Constellation will help us streamline that data in addition to exploring new possibilities in the world of cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technology.”
A Scalable Blockchain Model That Supports a World of New Applications
Unlike blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which face scalability challenges because of their linear networks, the Constellation network is based on a directed acyclic graph (DAG) model. The model “forms a database of nodes in a decentralized lattice structure that can handle millions of data inputs and grow exponentially as the amount of data grows,” the announcement explained.
With the combined growth of Constellation’s Hypergraph network and Dor’s hardware innovation, the acquisition “lays the foundation for new developments in blockchain technology and integrations into real-world applications and bolstered infrastructure,” the update noted.
Over 2,000 retailers depend on Dor’s tech to “make actionable, data-driven decisions based on foot traffic information.”
Dor’s thermal foot traffic “counter counts the heat signatures of store visitors and is supported by its proprietary machine learning algorithms to maintain and increase the accuracy rates.”
Dor’s sensor is a peel-and-stick solution that “uses a cellular connection which makes it easy and secure to install for both independent and enterprise retailers.” The release also noted that Dor’s thermal sensor “tracks customers anonymously, so there’s no risk of compromising customer privacy.”
The acquisition of Dor reflects Constellation’s vision “to lead a global mesh network on distributed devices.” By acquiring Dor, Constellation will have “the capability to deploy its technology to the retail sector and tap into the significant market size of brick and mortar stores by extending its network with mobile nodes for transactions,” the announcement noted.