Golem: what & who we are, where we are at (revisited)
We’ve come a long way since we defined the project in words and not commits, pull requests and testnet releases. A year and a half in Blockchain equals a decade in the real world. We’ve gone through many changes, challenges, and every day we get closer to our mainnet release (though we’re still not there — so hold your horses, dear hodlers), so a a high level recap of Golem is in order.
Our team has also grown — people from all over the world are joining the Golem family to work together on a multi-cultural team that’s smart, ambitious, receptive and responsible at the same time. We’ll soon dig deeper into this matter on an upcoming blogpost.
We are allocating efforts and resources to cater to the demands and inquiries of our community better; particularly in regards to business development and improving our marketing resources and strategies. We are growing, changing and experimenting, as well as facing some challenges, while we navigate the uncharted territory that is building our project.
Without further ado, please allow us to re-introduce Golem:
Golem connects computers in a peer-to-peer network, enabling both application owners and individual users (“requestors”) to rent the resources of other users’ (“providers”) machines. These resources can be used to complete tasks that require diverse computation times and capacities. Today, such resources are supplied by centralized cloud providers which, are constrained by closed networks, proprietary payment systems, and hard-coded provisioning operations. Also, core to Golem’s built-in feature set is a dedicated Ethereum-based transaction system, which enables direct payments between requestors, providers, and software developers.
Golem is a p2p network where users are equally privileged. People who seek to compute tasks broadcast their offers in the network, while those parties that have computer power, scan the offers and try to connect with the requestors of choice. Golem’s transaction system matches providers and requestors, taking into account prices, reputations and their machines’ performance. Resources, i.e., files needed for computation are sent to the provider’s machine. After the computation is completed, the provider’s app sends back results to the requestor’s app.
What’s the current state of the project and the way ahead?
The alpha version was launched in August 2016, with the code available for review. The Alpha version (codename Brass Golem) will be focused on CGI rendering in Blender (blender.org).
Most recently, we have released the Alpha2 0.11.0 version, and our testers are providing constant feedback to fine-tune the MVP. Even though we don’t have a fixed mainnet release date, we are working around the clock to deliver the best product possible.
Our community grows every day, and the blockchain ecosystem is evolving at a rapid pace. So for those who have just started dipping their toes into the decentralized world: welcome to the future, we look forward to building it with you and for you.
Curious for more? Check our Wiki here
Wanna chat with the team and other users? Click over here