Saw a panel with the golem people just last night, and sure enough this question came up. The short answer is that they don't have a solution yet and IMO their thinking was no more advanced than what I'm seeing on this thread.
How is their problem substantially different from this project? Apart of course from the overheard and complexity caused by trying to force what should probably just be a centralised service into a blockchain.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great idea. I just don't see why it needs a blockchain and all the associated trustless infrastructure. Even nicehash doesn't bother with all that.
I suppose the approach by the Golem team is substantially different because the ideology associated with it.
What you see as “trying to force what should probably just be a centralized service,” I see as “innovating a new approach to powering decentralized architecture.”
I’m not saying you’re wrong. It would be easier to solve the problem using existing tool sets and more mature protocols. Yet, I’m pretty sure that the Golem team is doing something right. So there’s that. Maybe this isn’t a zerosum thing.
> I’m pretty sure that the Golem team is doing something right
I'm not at all convinced that the golem team have any particular insight to solve this obvious and common problem that everyone else doesn't have. And frankly I think that the overhead of running unnecessary infrastructure will render them price-uncompetitive to any reasonable centralised provider. In short, I predict they will fail.
But eh, they raised USD$8m and I didn't, so what do I know.
The Golem team doesn't necessarily need to solve every problem. Being built on top of the Ethereum Network is advantageous. If they make an appealing, open platform with potential, maybe other developers will pick up the ball and run with it to power their own ends.