Summary of the Golem AMA March 2020: getting closer to Clay and headed towards a new paradigm

The Golem AMA concluded yesterday, and as we are at the threshold of completing our second milestone, Clay and heading towards a new paradigm and token migration, we thought it was a good idea to summarize it and post it in our blog.

In case you don’t want to read the whole thing, we’ve put a TL;DR at the end of this post.

This is a summary of the technical news concerning the Golem software and roadmap, but for the full version that includes other topics, you can directly head over to the Reddit thread.  This summary is divided into three topics: the Task API and its progress, our upcoming ERC20 migration (GNT is not ERC20, yet!), and The Next Milestone beyond Clay.

Task API

There were multiple questions regarding the Task API and transition to Clay - this is great, as we are finalizing the details to launch the Task API into the Mainnet, and this will complete the Clay milestone, which was started as a progressive transition back at the end of 2018.

In the first week of this month, we answered a question asking about a rough estimate on the Task API being available on the Mainnet. As a followup in this AMA, we confirm that we are in the very last sprint before releasing it onto the Mainnet and completing Clay. The Task API is on track for our initial aim to launch at the end of the month (so, in a matter of days).

As for integration ideas for developers working on the current version of the Task API, “we expect to see more scientific use cases. The most interesting use case that we would like to see would be one that uses the heterogeneity of Golem Network, for example, one that compares the computation times on different machines—with different parameters—that are distributed across the globe (to gather statistics and optimize the code).”

We encourage developers and testers to download Golem and deep dive into the Task API. As with any major release, our Bug Bounty Competition for security bugs is in place, so developers and enthusiasts will be able to be rewarded if the reports are considered bugs. For more details read here.

ERC20 Migration

We understand that migrating GNT to be an ERC20 token will have benefits to many stakeholders including our user experience (onboarding of users/requestors), tokens holders and, hopefully, the defi space as a whole.

Our migration to ERC20 effort is ongoing. As mentioned, we commissioned the build of the smart contracts and application to ETHWorks, and this has been completed.The ERC20 compliant token will allow improvements to UX and L2, so the two roadmaps will be merged. The audit by Trail Of Bits for (one of the most reputable auditing firms in the space) is already in progress, and we will be also auditing the app and a second smart contract audit round with an up-and-coming firm,, .  The token migration is scheduled for this first half of 2020.

The Next Milestone

In regards to topic Golem going forward Aleksandra followed up that “... taking into account our experience we’ve decided to take a different approach this time and we started preparing The Next Milestone with a completely new codebase. You can expect a much clearer architecture, significantly smaller size of the application, modularization of all parts of the software and full concentration on being a universal platform instead of on specific use cases developed locally.”

This was a topic also brought up by a number of team members, Viggith expanded “After the Task API launches into the Mainnet, we will be focusing our efforts on an ongoing new paradigm that has been under research and construction for at least six months now.”

“The New Milestone’s PoC will be announced shortly, and its MVP will be live in the second half of 2020. In the meantime, Clay will be operational.”

“The migration to ERC20 will fit very nicely into The Next Milestone, as the upcoming ERC20 token will allow for UX and L2 solutions to be integrated with Golem.All the puzzle pieces are now on the table and being worked on. It’s just a matter of waiting a short while until we see them come together, and we will be ready to inform the community.”

Conclusion

We’d like to highlight that we hear all your feedback, both inside and outside of the AMA. This feedback means a lot to us and we’re always working to progress the project with our community in mind. Our current focus as described above is releasing the Task API on the Mainnet, the ERC20 Migration, and The Next Milestone which will be aimed at developers and improving the onboarding of requestors (developers) in the network.

It’s important to note, we had a number of conferences in the pipeline but with the current world climate and uncertainty revolving COVID-19, we are taking a conservative approach and will likely be focusing on online content. So stay tuned and watch our communication channels because that’s where the action will happen.

Also, as we go into a  migration we can expect new scammers trying to take advantage of our users. Remember Golem is not doing airdrops and the migration will ONLY be announced in this blog, where in the future you will find all instructions. Do not trust external sources. Please stick to the official channels:

Website: http://golem.network/Twitter: https://twitter.com/golemprojectChat http://chat.golem.network/Blog: https://blog.golemproject.net/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/golemproject/Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl3fxgrSML2sL3UYZrynbMgGithub: https://github.com/golemfactoryDocumentation: https://docs.golem.network/

Stay safe everyone.

TL;DR

March AMA focused on three primary topics.

1. The Task API, that we are on track and aim to release the end of this month.2. The ERC20 Migration, we have been working with Trail Of Bits for our smart contract auditing.3. The Next Milestone, where we go after the Task API and Clay are on the Mainnet.

If you have questions then don’t hesitate to reach out to us in our community chat, create a post here on Reddit, tag us on Twitter, and we’re looking into more ways to communicate in the future.