#187 Alex Leverington & Julian Zawistowski: Golem – The Worldwide Decentralized Supercomputer

Transcript

[Music] this episode of epicenter is brought to you by The Ledger Nano s the hardware wallet which sets the new standard in security and usability get it today at Ledger wallet.com and use the offer code epicenter to get 10% off your order hi welcome to presenter the show which talks about the Technologies projects and startups driving decentralization and the global blockchain Revolution my name is Sebastian kuo and my name is Brian pan crane we're here today with Julian zavis offski and

Alex lington I'm sure many of you will have heard of these guys before they are uh working on on Golem Golem is one of the was one of the quite earlyish um ethereum uh what's called Ico today know they they did a crowd sale raising about uh9 million at some point last year to build a decentralized cloud computing platform and so we have today here Julian who's the CEO and Alex lington who is working on their peer toer uh networking architecture and he's also an advisor of the project I know Alex because we used to both work from the ethereum Hub in

Berlin so I've known him for a while he was before a developer at ethereum and then also Julian I known because he's he's gave a talk before about Golem before their fundrais or even at the at the meet up in Berlin and yeah so super excited to have you guys on thank you and thank you for inviting us yeah I mean you guys have have been I guess through a quite a insane journey to know because you had this this early fundraiser which was already uh very successful right I think you guys raised like $9 million and like half an hour and since then this just this whole crowdfunding thing has has gone exponential and exponential but Golem

has faed very well right there there a lot of attention uh on the project uh and and pricewise is appreciate a lot as well how much that means about the project I guess is always a question but um so how has that Journey been for you guys yeah well actually that wasn't that long time ago when we um had our crowd funding it was November uh 2016 but already I think that things were starting to to go uh pretty insane at that time so our our like obviously our our crowdfunding took uh 29 minutes but like the last 10 minutes were only

because we we were like waiting for a fraction of eer to to close the uh the the crowdfunding amount and and also like perhaps perhaps it would take uh around 2 minutes if we uh had not DDOS uh my eer wallet for which we are like very sorry uh uh until today uh by by recommending like everyone to use uh Mator wallet during during crowdfunding that was that was uh to big uh success and and and of course like uh ever since we we feel the responsibility of of all the people uh trusting us uh during this CR planing we're working hard to to

deliver and and of course this is this is this is um this is difficult technology this is Bing at technology but I think we are making for progress and yeah and personally I'm I'm still as excited about that as I was half a year ago or even like few times more it's definitely very exciting um it's good to see other projects um also sort of um growing in the space as well so my ether wallet you know they did a great job and they were really responsive um and uh um so it it's it's that kind of

thing where you know Rising Tides raise raises All Ships um and uh it it it's it's also interesting to see people around the world who have um who said they they bought Golem tokens because they believe in the project that's also um a little nervous too so uh we we we have a lot of work to do and and security is really important in this space so it's it's really intense yeah I should also disclaim at this point that I I also put in a little bit of money into the Golem fundraiser back then so I I still hold some Golem tokens so so so you actually made it into the crowd fund I I did actually I did actually using my ether wallet too I

think oh yeah that's great that's great yeah but maybe we can take even a set before that crowdfunding event and maybe Julian can just tell us a bit about how did you original idea of Golem come about and how was that project born yeah well although I'm I'm I'm not engineer I I always was a kind of techy person and and especially uh uh decentralized Computing I always found um a very apping idea like running uh set at home on my on my desktop back uh in the late '90s uh in in college times and back then I thought that is something that kind of

make sense to to use computers that wouldn't be used otherwise but then of course I I I worked for many years on on different different things then and then a couple of years uh ago I I started working much more with the software development uh and then we we came across eum project very early uh in Ean project like early uh 2014 and and then we we we realized at some at some point that that you could combine uh the etherium network where like for the security and for consensus every company computer basically does the same with the other

network which we eventually named Golem Network where every computer does something different because like the the the critical problem with the truly decentralized Computing network is is is how to coordinate all the nodes in in a in a decentralized uh way like by coordination you can you can understand a lot of different things like like payments like uh like security like uh uh how to operate in in a in in a trustless way that that was the beginning when we when we when you thought that using smart contracts on ethereum you can actually create a truly decentralized network decentralized not

only in in a way that you decentralize Computing over noes because this is something very basic like this is this is this is successfully done for for a long time but but also like how to introduce U uh economy in in in into that system to to give people incentives to to contribute the power to uh the computing power to to any project brand on the on on the network not necessarily like cool one like searching for audience like we just said at home so maybe just at this point uh remind our listeners uh what is distributed computing I mean we've had uh other distributed computing projects on the show before and we can talk about those

and you know how they're similar or different to Gollum later on the show but give us just a sort of high level overview of this type of technology and how it exists today and how it's it's being used and applied in you know different fields Industries Etc so um I I think a sort of quick summary of distributed computing is um it's I mean it's very much what the term the the the term says what it is and it is what it says simp simply put distributed computing is taking some task or set of tasks and um coordinating the separation the optimal separation of the tasks into smaller pieces and then

Distributing those onto multiple machines distributed computing can even be like a small scale where you have one machine with a lot of CPU cores um and it can also go through the network where you have um where you have a data center full of machines and um and you distribute uh the computational task across those machines and what makes distributed computing a little different um is that often times the the type of task that needs to be executed the algorithms involved in that task determine um how it can or can't be distributed um because in some cases

there are tasks that are sequential and they can't be distributed so um distributed computing uh is is uh is is coordinating all of that and um uh for us the decentralized distributed computing is where that coordination can take place um on a peer-to-peer Network without um without a lot of um Administration or manual coordination from a human operator what you can do with distributed computing is execute highly parallel tasks by leveraging massive amounts uh or in in in volume of uh Computing

units uh and those Computing units execute those tasks in parallel uh and therefore you sort of distribute um uh the execution to all these nodes um now what what Gollum is is building is the uh Network that will organize the uh sort of supply and demand of these Computing resources and the tools and the marketplaces in order for users to be able to um have access to Distributing Computing networks if if I can sum it up that way how different is that from how things are done now like if I want to use a distributed computing Network

today because they you know they're they're out there um how do I do that so right now today um most software libraries for distributed computing are either very lowlevel or they if they're high level they're very application specific um so one maybe for a certain machine algorithm machine learning algorithm another may be for a certain image processing algorithm um and uh and and and what we're doing with Gollum is building tools as as well as a network topology that is is generalized um rather than uh being very low level and

specific to a certain processor um or being uh application specific at a high level so it's it's almost like a middleware framework for distributed computing uh to together with the transactional aspect of course and so why what's Golem adding to this like is it is it mainly to make it generalized and and why is that such an important thing yeah well maybe I start and then then then you will add what you uh what you think I'm I'm I'm missing in my answer so um I I think there are at least two like important things here like one one is

the the economy of the system and second is is technology but both Pils down into into the no that that we want to like abstract um we want to abstract Computing and using Hardware from using software so so like actually you never need your compter or you never need your cloud or your decentralized system all all you need is is is the result produced by by your software so what you're interested in basically is is software and the result of the whatever you want your software to do uh like

everything else is not really necessary it it can be abstracted so what what we want to do is is is we want to like create market for for computing power but also combined with with the market for for software and and this way like abstract both and like I I know that that might sound very abstract and put it that way but but I think that at the end of the day this is exactly what we want to do now what what are the benefits like like if if you of course if you create like one one one market which is uh you you can hope that it will work much better than a lot of small fragmented markets as they are as

as it is at the moment because because they basically cloud computing uh Market which is not at least at the moment it's not exactly uh uh substitute to Golem but let's say it is like a close analog to to Golem so so this Market works on a in a little bit wide way because you have like a very few very large players and and and a lot a lot a lot a lot of of of medium and and small players uh and and I believe that only like adding a market being a kind of middleware as Alex described it will make much EAS easier to rent this computing power for anybody

around the world will be like hard will be important Distortion of the of the market not not only in terms of price but also in in terms like who got the job uh but but also on I think that that the fact that um uh how we want software to be used on top of Golem gives a a very interesting new distribution channel for for software developers uh and and on top of that of course you you you have all the uh economies of scale by which we we hope that that price will be lower uh than in traditional system but of course this is

this is not like the this is this is one of the promises but I don't think this is the most important part of it and and the second you have you have all the uh all the uh advantages and disadvantages of of the centralized system and and I believe that in this particular case like advantages are are much more important than disadvantages so you you described so of the stack right at the bottom layer we have the the the different distributed computing networks and then golum is somewhere in the middle there between those networks and and the applications would Gollum then enable sort of new types of apps uh or new types of business models you know maybe describe

uh at the higher level in the stack uh what types of new applications could emerge you if golum would be successful sure so um I I I would say that that to start with we are we are not addressing uh new applications we we we are addressing like a new uh ways of using uh applications that are already here so so this this is also why why I think this this is a really valid business model because we just you you know look around we see a lot of software that that could benefit from running on software on on goem and and and this is this is what we hope to see on goldm in in in a few years or or

a few quarters perhaps in in in some these cases uh at at the end at the end of the day I I would say that the the most important difference is uh in a in a business model uh for uh for the software developer so so now usually in in a in a in a task we we are in in a software we are we are aiming to is is it works like that that you that you get the software and then you deploy it some somewhere or you've got Hardware you deploy software on your hardware and then you are seeking for users to use

the software to Trans on your hardware and what we want to do is that user gets software and then like rents using this software along with renting the hardware that this software is running on and and I think this is this is a a really a game changer here also if you think about about uh about open source software and and and Community Driven Integrations or you by by by by deploying them on Golem you you you you you you solve both um uh the problem you you want to uh to solve with the software itself but also like the usability problem like the problem of

how to deploy that on on a large Network perhaps Alex would like to comment on that as well yeah yeah I I think that um there there may be some new apps but I I think we're going to see new apps because we're seeing more peer-to-peer networks I I I can't necessarily say that those new apps are going to be something that is made possible because of Gollum um but more because people learn how to Leverage The peer-to-peer networks um and but I do think like to what Julian's saying that um we will see applications function differently um so some of the

stuff is going to be under the hood and I I think that's the same case with with like ethereum that um we may see some interesting new apps but they're going to be like sort of Recreations of what we already have um you know only powered by Gollum or powered by uh ethereum and the the economics you know for example crowd funds um that's something ethereum enabled and so we're not sure you know exactly what golum will enable but um we think it's going to have to do with the software devel Vel opers and the providers providing their resources to the Internet so it seems that at this

time there there's sort of a lot of projects in the space that are doing things that are quite similar or somewhat similar to to Gollum so our listeners will be familiar with episodes we did with uh with exac with true bit and then perhaps a little bit more um further away from G but to some extent still with the same looking to do the same thing projects like uh Microsoft Bletchley and they what they're doing there with kets and town crier um maybe more focused on the Distributing on the distributed computing projects like like AAC and trit uh can can you perhaps talk about

how Gollum is similar or different to to those two projects so I EXA can trb uh I guess those are I think those are two very different projects um from from our understanding of exac um it's it's sort of a gateway to um to leveraging compute resources um I I think um their software will evolve so um as as will go them so it's it's really hard to say where these two will stand um long term um but right now um Gollum is focused on uh integration with ethereum um together with this sort of

uh decentralized peer-to-peer Network so um any peers can join or leave the compute Network um whereas with I exac there's sort of a kind of a guardian system there what what we're doing is we are building up this um this peer-to-peer Network that's stable given any peers coming in um and then we can layer uh more application specific networks on top of that um there's been some mention of um AAC being used for daps and gum not um but I think uh Gollum will be used for daps as well um

somebody will come up with some silly little thing where uh it launches a service on a Gollum node that then kicks off a smart contract that then launches another service or some silly thing like that so um really I I think it's going to be up to the the developers and how they leverage our transaction framework and uh with truebit so um truid is a really solid piece of technology I think um however um trit I think is more aligned with something like the ethereum VM uh or some kind of deter um concise environment like an evm

or proof of work where um you expect every machine to do the same piece of work um for for validation and um uh Gollum I think will be similar and at some point it might even make sense to implement true bit um but we're focused on building a sort of framework and layer for applications to interconnect and perform distributed computations whereas I suppose true bid is focused on a validation algorithm and uh I exac is focused on um a sort of Gateway for leveraging Computer

Resources okay yeah so on on the on the truebit side we're talking more about validating complex computations outside of ethereum uh but not necessarily computations that are meant to be highly parallel whereas uh on the gollum and perhaps IAC side uh mostly those projects are geared towards providing the tools and creating the marketplace for distributed computing resources yeah somewhat and and I think um trit is really good for um like one evm so one piece of software and all all the nodes run the same

software whereas what we're doing with Gollum is that um every node is going to run and execute the software that it chooses um and the and the requesters are going to choose which software they're executing so truebit we sort of might fit inside that um but we're building the whole um the whole stack yeah yeah exactly just giving some head head up to how we see the whole system working like the the verification is is often has to be like integration specific and and for some use cases for some Integrations like trit may be great to to the verification

for others it will not work so I I would I would rather say that that that trit is in fact uh po potentially really like synergistic we call them competitive at all let's take a break to talk about The Ledger Nano s the new flagship Hardware wallet by Ledger I'll pass it over to Ledger CTO Nikola Baka who can tell you all about Ledger security features and SDK so Ledger Nano s is a personal security device based on a secure element screen and button so that you can verify everything that is done on device and make sure that you are really doing what you wanted to do compared to our previous solution this device is

based on the latest generation secure element the st31 from STD mro the sd31 is an is using a secure arm core which means that you can have the same ease of development that you would have on a generic microcontroller but benefit from the security features of a secure element security features include an application firewall at the lowest level that let you protect applications from each other which means that you can load multiple application on the hardware wallet even post issuance and you as a developer will be able to leverage these features to load your own application without our authorization and without any kind of authorization from the vendor we will be providing this device with an open SDK um that let you do

anything you want with this device we provide simple applications for cryptocurrencies different cryptocurrencies so Bitcoin ethereum uh uh we will also provide Pho authenticator and you will be free to add everything you like for example you could add some secure messages some encrypted chat and you'll see that the solution is quite powerful and very easy to develop with the Nano s sets the new standard in Hardware wallet security and usability you can get yours today at Ledger wallet.com and when you do be sure to use the offer code epicenter to get 10% off your first order we'd like to thank Ledger for their support of epicenter let's dive a little bit deeper into how Golem Works technically so

first of all Golem is Network there's different parties that do different things in the goldl network can you just run us through you know who are the different actors and what are their roles the different actors are we have the providers who have the compute resources um we have the uh requester which is kind of like the enduser that's like you know the guy ordering a taxi um and the provider's the driver and then we we have the we have the application we have the software developer and the software developer you know implements software that's going to be run by the providers and um and the requestor is

going to utilize that software as a part of dispatching the request the to the to the network maybe we can run through a concrete example uh rendering images or 3D um computations are often mentioned as a use case for Golem so let's say I'm an architect you know I'm I'm designing some building have this really heavy computational task I want to send this to the G network for uh for to be rendered and executed so what steps would I go through on my end and then what would happen on the side of the network you know to deliver that service to me at at the moment perhaps fing is is the best example because that's the one

which is working at the moment so maybe maybe maybe the best would be just describe how how go works right now so how the how the Alpha version works right now from the user perspective so so so basically of course you you prepare your work in in your in your um in your software you use to do the work and then you you in case of blender you you write it to the to the blender file perhaps with some uh more files used as resources to to do the job and and and then once you've got that already then you start using Golem so you you create a task you you add this

file with any any any additional resources that are to be used uh you can of course like change some parameters like if this is like an animation how many frames which frames do you want to render what is the resolution those those kinds of things um you you can also like uh this on on the on the price this is like a little bit tricky but BS down at the end uh on on setting like the price for for for a for a benchmark uh hour of computing so this this is what you said this is not exactly how it works but but but at the end of the day this is as it work that way and and then you just send

it to the notes that that technically to the notes that that uh uh accept your your work maybe maybe maybe Al want to elaborate more more on on the on the protocol but uh what happens then of course is the the Computing of U of the chunks of this uh of this part on different computers on and by the way at the moment like you decide how this is how this is distributed so uh that might be very straightforward if if you have like 100 frames you may want like every frame to be computed by a different note if you have uh you can also like render one frame splitting that into into into 6 12 10 20 whatever

tiles uh and then and then and then you you gather back the results and and you have your work done uh underneath of of course when this is completed uh etherium transaction happens with a transfer of um of of TNT from you to the other noes uh this is still works in a in a rather basic way one of the or the efforts we are in at the moment is how to make that very much complicated in a in a different ways depending on the on the on the use case so I I think this is like the very high level Alex yes that that's high level and a little low level too um so yeah right I think right now

the current I mean the current interface we have under development is that you drag and drop the render file the the blender file into golum and then say Oh this is is a uh this is a blender file that I want to render um and then set the parameters like Julian said uh price and everything and um and then heit hit go I don't know if the button says go but maybe yeah well at the moment at the moment do track and drop not not not in a on not in a not in a release like like uh track and drop is still on the on the on the development project yeah yeah like I said But ultimately this is like a Dr dropped and

drop Dr drop yeah and um and so it's I think it's important to note though that um other software applications in the future using golum they may integrate golum directly into their software so you would just inside the software you would click uh render and then have a little check boox that says render with golum and then hit okay and then you'll get the golum parameters and then finish and then the you know this sort of application will drive the process instead of external software um but right now uh it's it's it's much easier and more effective for us to develop the software as a separate application and and I guess that's also one of the

because one of the big obstacles with this right is going to be whole like cryptocurrency buying g&t first like all of that is like uh not something that's going to be I think achievable for mainstream users anytime soon but then if you have Golem integrated into the website I presumably you can pay uh with your credit card to the application developer and then behind the scenes uh you know he kind of loads g&t in the application and Pace based on behalf of the user do you guys see it playing kind of like that not exactly I think that that depends on developer I believe but I I I rather think what Alex described is is like uh them running somewhere in

a system tray as a kind of demon that you could that do your services for you like provides Golem services to your applications and and then this is not really visible to the user if he uses any kind of friend or software any other software that uses golum what exactly happens with golum but then as for the As for the tokens part and if this is like uh dealt by the uh by the software developer or the user uh our thinking is that both should be possible but basically uh uh we we should not delegate hard thing to the software developer but we just should make the

hard thing easy and and then and then and then at some point this is what I described before that uh just user uh pays for using the software over the central the centralized Network and the network itself using this Golem that works seeming LLY uh somewhere in in a system and I I'm I'm not very much worried about uh how uh people will get tokens I I think that we will witness like a massive progress with usability of TS tokens over the next uh couple of quarters or maybe even over the next couple of months uh basically this is

this is what this industry needs to take off well with one of the things this industry needs to take off this is not Colm specific problem and and a lot of people are working on on making that simper and this is going to happen like because there are so many options um we're also going to try and build in that usability to where there's something consistent so a sort of like Facebook connect or PayPal but more for like these native applications that need to interface with a with with tokens um but we we do you know we do have to sort of progress along with the industry and help where we can um making it as easy to use as possible now one important

question I want to dive into and I remember when you gave to talk in Berlin Julian that was also one of the questions a lot of people asked is the question about you know verifying work because there's something actually interesting in which a Golem is is similar to proof of work in Bitcoin right so in Bitcoin right you you in a way you share also this computational problem with all the different miners all do their work and the unique feature in Bitcoin of course is because of the hashes you can verify the work very very cheaply and very efficiently and you don't actually have to kind of rerun the work to make sure they did it correctly but now if you talk about you know rendering these 100 frames we we sent out to different people like how do I

actually make sure that what is sent back is you know the work done properly as opposed to you know maybe half asked or not at all uh or you know in in some way that's that's not you know according to specification like how can you ensure that in golum so there are several versions of golum and um uh in the first version we will be working on tasks like rendering where we can linearly split up the task um and and sort of uniformly um split the workload of the tasks uniformly across the peers um and when we do that uh there's a couple of

ways that we can get uh validated work um and uh and one of them is to add redundancy to where some peers execute random pieces an additional time and they they don't know that that's what they're doing so you know basically you have you know peers Z through nine and uh and peers one and five work on the same piece of work and they don't know that they're working on the same piece of work um and then if you know if if they don't match then there's this sort of implicit arbitration so it's sort of like a preemptive true bit together with kind of a staking system now what we have

right now is um we have a reputation system together with this redundancy slowly we will progress toward WS stronger validation algorithms um which basically have um punishing mechanisms similar to what vitalics described with this slasher protocol it's also important to point out that we will need to have different validation algorithms over time because other comp computational tasks like machine learning it may be possible to get the results in the deterministic way but the funny thing is is like with machine learning you you sort of have to do another test in order to test the

quality of the results and and with machine learning that the the the quality may be easy to cheat these validation problems depend on the use case and the application proof of work is something where everybody sees the same data and so and and it's also self- validating you just check the hash and everybody in the world doesn't need some custom software to to to verify the proof of work output with ethereum it's the same exact thing another important thing about ethereum is that ethereum operates on shared data and so when some ethereum transaction goes through every node in the world needs to see the

result with Gollum however what we're doing is we have one requestor and he sends out this work to you know 32 64 128 peers and only the requester needs the out needs to see the output at the end of the day and so because our situation is a little different we don't have this uh shared data like shared State like Bitcoin and ethereum um we can we can build on different kinds of validation uh algorithms we can do some of the things like with hashes and such but um it like I said it's a little different

environment so um we can do validation through redundancy not because there isn't shared State um but because the output only is needed by the requester yeah I I would add to that that also one one of the things we are seriously considering that not not working on yet but but considering is is introducing some kind of uh voluntary identification so like that you can voluntarily identify yourself uh in a way commit to the some rule of conduct and then uh users might opt out to use only a tier of of providers for example with this with this kind of of uh

self-imposed notification which in fact would create a a situation a little bit similar to the the public Cloud where you don't have any any other uh way of uh being sure that this is okay apart from trusting the cloud provider because he's a priv cloud provider you know yeah it's and I I think another thing to point out that's interesting about this validation algorithms and Gollum and maybe there's a question uh later on this that I'm sort of preempting um but there's the the question of privacy right so with Gollum you're going to you're going to send out request to some

random providers and maybe they're going to look they're going to they're going to decrypt your input and then take your work and then go and render it themselves and do something with it hopefully we we can make that difficult enough that you know they don't do that but the thing is is it's a public decentralized peer-to-peer Network um it'll be more secure than bit Tor you know we we'll have encrypted traffic so your internet service provider can't see what's going on um But ultimately the providers can actually see the work so to Julian's point about having named provider sets uh where there's some uh trust mechanism with that individual provider

um this allows for situations where um Gollum can route work to providers that need to be pre-selected ahead of time and I know that's not important to the validation algorithm but um what's important is that we we have to consider with the validation algorithm we also have to consider privacy um because there are software situations medical records and things like that where they just can't run the tasks on a um you know on on on public nodes so you you you guys did a your crowd sale on uh on ethereum and so I was wondering um why is it that you need

the ethereum network uh for to run golum are you tied to the ethereum network is could you potentially also used of used some other uh payment mechanism uh you know perhaps such as Bitcoin or is is it possible in the future that um you would use some other smart contract um enabled blockchain to to run the golum network so there's a couple of answers to that question um but up front because of the transaction framework and application registry that we have um we need a sort of global you know Global State system with consensus um for the transactions um and uh and and we're

building on the evm and we're building with solidity um ethereum is uh it's viable it's in production there's a team supporting its development um and I mean it's been running for a couple years so yeah maybe we could look at other chains or something but it would just it would be a huge distraction and and um and we don't see how it would add any value to the project as far as why something like ethereum the the answer to that is with ethereum the the accounts can sort of talk to each other um so with our transaction framework um in the in the later releases we we won't have this in brass

but um when when a transaction completes some other event can happen on the chain and uh and that's really important for uh providers and software developers like for billing systems and and and and things like that and it's also important for our transaction framework so that software developers can make it where when their software is run on the golum network maybe they get some percentage of the of the g&t as a as a part of their software being run um or maybe they need to um you know have a set of authorized peers or something like that

and the only way to do that in a decentralized way is to have something like ethereum where where we can have certain pieces of logic executed flawlessly um in a in a in a global State just point out real quick with Bitcoin they have this the script hashes but one script hash can't trigger another script hash and this is this is like the only way that they could possibly add that is they have to then add this sort of gas cost like mechanism that ethereum has um and so at at a at a technical basis um it's easier to just build on ethereum because if we want to

build on a chain that doesn't have the evm like ethereum does and the gas mechanism then we would essentially have to rebuild the same thing is ethereum and we like Golem is complex enough as it is so we don't want to rebuild a blockchain yeah and why rebuild a blockchain when you've get one that works like you said I mean it's in production there's applications running on it there's a road map there's a team there I mean it totally makes sense to be building it on on ethereum um so let's talk about economics a little bit uh so there as as we mentioned there's a a Golem Network token g&t that is the the unit of account the unit value um with which you pay for uh Computing

resources and so in in in this and I believe there will there's a decentralized Marketplace as well essentially yeah okay so in in this Marketplace um you you have uh buyers that are looking to buy uh distributed computing resources and sellers that are selling um access to the resources their the unused resources on their computer to uh to to those buyers um what are the types of par aside from sort of you know supply and demand that may affect the price of a Computing resource what are the other parameters that might affect price you know I'm thinking of things like you geography latency the the power

of the Computing resources uh maybe like the rate of um the rate of success uh of you know the the resource in question uh so what what goes into basically like if if I'm providing a resources to the network uh how how how do I compare to to others for instance on what parameters yeah I I think we will know it once we once we are in production because only then we will see like what computers do we really have in in the network like we we we can have some idea of of like what is in in in small or medium data centers we we accept to to to join but apart from that like we

don't we don't really know like what what Hardware like specifically will join the network and and of course the other level of complexity is added by um GPU Computing which is uh a little bit more tricky than CPU Computing but which we are going to to support for sure and we working on it I I I believe like having said that I I believe that market like colum uh should eventually uh convert with the price to the the marginal cost of of computing so this like a little bit like like perfect competition situation of course like this is this will not be like a single

price because um although I think like the hardare price is is is quite similar around the globe then electricity price for sure is not identical lot of of course is not identical and and and leny might be uh an issue uh I don't think this this will be like much of an issue in a in a very early uh Integrations like with high Computing but well yeah that even even that that might be an issue and and later on definitely latency will be an issue so where you're geographically will will be important not only because cost of electricity but also because of latency and then of

course on on top of it um we believe that that that Runing your uh Hardware with with with go them will be much more efficient like um in in an upkeep effort needed than than anything else also like marketing effort needed uh but but first like the the cost of Labor will also play role so that that was kind of uh a long way of of of telling you uh we don't really know we don't know yet but but but the price should be should be should be quite low because uh because we we want to create

like highly competitive market okay and so on your website there's a video where you're sort of explaining the high level vision of Gollum and one of the things you mention uh is this idea that you want to create a network where anybody can participate and there's sort of this underlying feeling that okay right now like we send our distributed computing you know um executions to software companies like Amazon and Google and it would be ideal if that could be a bit more distributed and not so centralized there um however uh it seems that if Gollum is to be successful uh that companies like Google like Amazon and others with massive amounts of computing resources might also want to participate

in these networks to to make money right and with just just the what would happen if they were just to come in and flood the market and bring the price down how would I be competitive to you know with them is that something that's desirable are there mechanisms in place to prevent this sort of thing yeah if if if AWS or or Google join goem that that would be great and they they should I believe uh and and in fact like the very early in the project like like uh two years ago in more uh we we we thought about goem mostly as uh over a sharing competing Network so so

we so we we thought about Golem as as as as running predominantly on on uh home computers on on people's desktops and laptops maybe sometimes a little bit more sophisticated like gaming uh computers or or rendering machines in in someone sellers but but but still that the the Assumption was that this is basically director directed to individuals in a in a in a computer shuring mechanism and although like uh we still still believe in this idea and this is this is something that keeps motivating us and we want to create technology that that that will make it possible I I I think that we realized that actually this technology is of a

mat interest of of small and medium that centers also and and not only not only miners afraid of proof of stake in ethereum but but also like just regular data centers and if you if you think about it it makes sense not only because they have unused capacity which is somehow obvious that they have but also because like true Edge in in in in running data center now as far as I understand that small or or medium data center is it's not because you have like some Hardware but because you have some hardware and you know how to put it into

into use so you you you have already some software your software or your client software that needs a lot of a lot of computing and and the fact your at is with this software and not necessarily with the hardware which you need for this software so so perhaps we can give them even greater ad but just giving them more Hardware yeah I I I think there's also one one possibility which is which is definitely you know on the road map is that um if Gollum is easier to use than those other systems um pricing is important but um those systems are also still kind of hard to use and the building systems are not fun

um it's it's also important to remember that the larger players have tiered pricing so while while the majority of their clients May pay one price some of their clients who uh are compute who have high Computing needs for example with Amazon reserve the instances even when they're not using them because the price is lower and there's just now they've basically reserved something that they may not use but it's still an advantage because it's cheaper than if they use it on demand um and uh this similar thing happens with the larger data centers and probably with Google too um my point here is that um there is some median market

price and uh the larger players have discounted services for larger clients those larger clients who are have committed to that um if they are paying less than the market price for on demand Computing then they may actually run Gollum on their nodes even though they're on AWS or software or Google or whatever um and those data center companies can't tell them you can't run Golem you know they can't go and block Gollum on their firewall um so the thing is is um in those environments Gollum is Unstoppable once it gets launched um and there's an incentive to actually run

Gollum um so the the the real question is is you know um are people going to want to run it is there enough incentive incentive and and I think we've talked to a lot of providers and they want to see our software running um universities want to use it so that the universities can you know lease out their idle compute Hardware um and um it it'll be really interesting to see how how large the uh um non AWS non- Google non Air Market is it'll also be interest interesting for us to see how many people run golum on those environments when they have discounted pricing so can you guys tell us a bit

about the the current status after project I know you had a a release schedule and I think uh brass release is supposed to be coming up soon what can we expect then and then when when is the time when it will come out it's coming soon but we are not giving any any dates any any longer like we we we really believed the back in November 2016 that 6 months is is doable uh but obviously it was not so so we we are really Advanced and and we did really a lot over the last six months but but still we don't feel that this

is ready for all these yet uh what we are aiming for at the moment is is is having uh beta what what we have those are just names but what what we have at the moment we call Alpha because still it it's not stable enough and uh uix is not good enough to for that to be to be like usable in in like anything close to real use uh this is still like like for testing mostly but but we we hope that we will be able to to put together really really soon the version that we intend to name beta so this will be brass Golem beta version and and actually this this this software should

be of of much use for for our first potential user group and and and and actually the the plan is now to to to start with the onboarding of of the first uh early adapters with this with this better version so make that in not really in in in a production but in in a production like environment to have like real users over a real Network which we will probably subsidize a little bit just to make sure that the user experience for the users is is is great and and this this is basically how we want to to create some scale to uh to finish all the testing and all the work that that

we need to secure the network with before the the the release and by release Here I I mean switching to the uh ethereum main net and and g&t for transactions so so what's coming soon is I hope this this batt release uh sometime after that uh production release like press Golem 1 uh o yeah but of course like the the only true answer is like this is ready when it is ready and yeah and as as for the progress uh we we made over the last

six six months if you we can tell you more about that but this is like a little bit technical so yeah may maybe we are running quite late but maybe Alex you can just give us a three a three minutes like what you know highlight things of of the technical progress you guys have made this at a real high level um uh somewhat technical um we replaced in the process of replacing a QT interface um QT based uh which is like sort of um you know n native user interface uh from python code uh with electron um and electron is like this sort of web-based user interface for

desktop apps um GitHub uses it now and a couple of other large projects mist is built with that um but uh it's a little easier to do um development changes and design changes we have also spent quite a bit of time on the storage layer um a lot of storage projects that we're looking at are content Delivery Systems and we really need something for like these sort of OnDemand compute swarms we're evaluating those different storage subsystems and understanding like how they're going to fit into golum in the future and uh sort of cating it to something that's going to work

effectively for brass um also working on specifications so that we can have effective uh security audits we'll also we've drafted some ideas for smart contracts um for the providers um the I mean GNT is really this sort of token for machine to machine transactions you have somebody's computer you know who knows could be in Montana and you have these other computers all over the world um the the the the providers may be in the Data Center and they don't want to put private keys on their provider machine so we're looking at um how to do the payment system in a way that

providers can can also sort of have remote um Remote Management of the of the of the tokens and the and the other thing is um we are integrating the dev P2P Library which is the one used by ethereum for the underlying peer-to-peer Network um that golum going to use in brass um and uh this is so that we could scale up um Discovery a a little easier um and uh and and and that's going well um we were supposed to do some of that a couple of releases later um but found

that it's a little more um time effective to to do that now rather than later which is cool because hopefully it'll mean well I don't want to talk anything about timelines but um the releases that come shortly after brass hopefully maybe they'll have more functionality than than what we had in the road map but no no promises until we get it done cool I'm sure people will be excited to hear that uh thanks so much for the update now I have one last question before we wrap up so U Julian can you can you share like to what extent has a a Golem community formed with people who aren't just you know interested in the price or

own some tokens but you know actually are interested in in building projects on Golem um do you have some some exciting things happening in that area yeah definitely so of course like the community is is of course like mostly uh crypto community at the moment so people who just uh are very very fascinated about about the technology but but coming from from crypto World also some some token holders and this is great Community but but not necessarily like uh uh they have uh they they they will be using go them for for doing any Computing but we see more and more

projects coming and some of them really really great uh that are interested in in in building on Golem and and we we see that both from uh rendering industry so like the the first Niche we uh we want to work with but also we from from data centers uh industry um uh from from all things that have some like something like high throughput Computing so we we had already some uh very early talks with with with companies processing large mods of financial datas large mods of of of satellite data so I I I would say

that that that there is more and more interest of of how Golem can be used I'm I'm I'm pretty optimistic about that that if only we are able to deliver technology that that others can use they will use it cool well thanks so much for coming on guys it was a pleasure talking to you and and learning a bit more about what's going on with Golem at the moment thank you very much that was pleasure yeah thank you thank you as well and thanks so so much for our listener for once again tuning in uh we are going to be back next week with another episode and of course this part this show is part of let's talk Bitcoin so you can find this show and all the shows on let's talk bitcoin.com and if you want to support the show what you can do that

does a huge favor is leaving an iTunes review and so new people can find it so thanks so much and we look forward to being back next [Music] week no [Music]