Bitcoin and the concept of decentralization made many things possible, such as Bitnation, a decentralized government. I have recently gotten the chance to talk to some people behind Zennet, the worlds first public super computer.
1. What is Zennet?
Zennet is a decentralized peer-to-peer platform that lets anyone rent out and profit from their idle computation power, and anyone rent this power.
2. What does it aim to achieve?
Zennet aims to create the world’s biggest decentralized supercomputer, accessible to anyone around the globe.
3. How does it plan on doing just that?
Zennet will run on a blockchain. Anyone with computation power can offer it to the public, and anyone who needs computation power can bid on this power. The bidder will pay for her power using ZenCoin. Having our own form of payment means that the process is faster and more secure. In a nutshell, the process works automatically like this:
1. A Publisher announces his need for worker nodes on the blockchain.
2. A Provider in search of employment looks for these announcements on the blockchain.
3. When a matching announcement is found, the Provider and Publisher negotiate a contract.
4. The Publisher places an initial fund in the Provider’s account and locks it.
5. The publisher places additional funds in the account in accordance with the work ordered.
6. The Provider creates a Virtual Machine on his device.
7. The Publisher gets control over the VM from the Provider. He can then frequently check the progress, and terminate the connection at will.
4. Why was Zennet developed?
For many years developers had thoughts about the huge amount of idle computation power that is not utilized around the world. Zennet’s founder Ohad Asor came up with Zennet to address this waste and to make computational power accessible to anyone with access to the internet. Zennet is the first solution developed for this purpose which addresses security concerns, accountability, pricing, generality and money transfer.
5. What is the current status of Zennet?
Zennet is currently in development. We are about to launch the presale of ZenCoins. This will help fund our beta program. We plan to deliver Zennet around Q3 next year.
6. How do you believe Zennet will impact cryptocurrency and the world?
Scientists will have access to computational power that may be even 1 million times the current largest world supercomputer. The vast amount of money that now goes to centralized companies, will go to the public. This is a market of billions.
It also turns out that the waste of old computers is very toxic. With Zennet, less hardware will be dumped, since it can generate income. Finally, Zennet does not deal with cryptocurrency as is. ZenCoin is not intended to be a currency but merely a token. The connection to the cryptocurrency world is using cryptocurrencies’ algorithms in order to implement this token.
7. What can we expect from Zennet in the future?
After we deliver Zennet we plan to work on ZenFS (a torrent-compatible distributed file system over Zennet) and ZenTube, a decentralised video network.
Zennet opens possibilities for endless applications that were impossible before. These include distributed applications that need to rely on computational resources in order to be implemented, or applications requiring open and huge computational network.
For more information:
Website: http://zennet.sc/
Photo and Video Source: Zennet Super Computers website
