While it is true that humankind put a man on the moon using the computing power equivalent to a modern programmable calculator, there are many great things that still don’t happen because the computational power is scarce and expensive. High-performance computing is still a closely guarded secret weapon of the rich and privileged. Large banks and traders use proprietary algorithms for automated trading, movie makers create impressive special effects, pharmaceutical companies research new drugs and enormous mining farms generate Bitcoin wealth from the thin air. The future seems already to be here, but not for everyone.
And, at the same time, there are millions of computers and servers throughout the world that waste energy and money, idle and underemployed. What if this resource, still untapped, could be pooled and sold to anyone who needs it, so that users won’t have to actually purchase expensive servers or rack up mind-boggling bills on Amazon Web Services or Azure?
This is the idea of iExec Computing Power Marketplace — a sort of Airbnb for computing power that allows anyone, business or individual, to rent out their unused computing resources like a spare room in their apartment. It’s there, anyway, so why not make some money on it?
Based in Lyon, France, iExec[1] aims to make cheap and abundant computing power available to anyone by releasing a marketplace that enables one to trade cloud computing power as a commodity. On this marketplace, anyone can pledge computing power to whatever task that requires it and be rewarded in RLC tokens — their native cryptocurrency — for their contribution. iExec raised about $12 million in their ICO — 10,000 BTC, at the time — in May, 2017. The iExec founders were involved in cloud and distributed computing
