If so, I’m curious — how does the amount of compute on these distributed networks compare to the cloud platforms, and what is the overhead resulting from the infrastructure protocol?
I’ve heard numbers to the effect of the global BTC network having a throughput of a couple of dozen transactions per second, for all the song and dance. Is there any hope of such networks realistically becoming compute platforms?
> Is there any hope of such networks realistically becoming compute platforms?
Bluntly: no.
Open (e.g. decentralized) networks must solve a unique class of problems, like Byzantine fault tolerance, in some cases censorship resistance, etc. The solutions to those problems necessarily impose performance constraints at the system level that are effectively incompatible with any nontrivial use case.
You are correct for the use case you specified, but his isn't about utilizing the entire grid at once. A common use case would be getting for example Minecraft chunk generation offloaded, or rendering VR content at a very local compute node.
Yeah, it's a good term to use when testing the waters for blockchain acceptance. =)
Bitcoin is as inefficient as everyone but the cultists claim. The tech I have been looking at resides in another ecosystem with a more academic bent and a much more careful approach to engineering the global economy.
The use case isn't really for utilizing all the compute of the grid for a single task, but instead finding resources for your workload in an efficient manner. E.g. paying your neighbors to generate Minecraft chunks for you without hassle or even speaking with them.
This is what i've seen from the "decentralized aws" cropping up: cryptocurrency is used to incentivize people to provide compute to the network, not for people to try to do the actual computing tasks they want on the cryptocurrency layer. So the long term with that is the centralized computing providers will have to provide better/cheaper services as this space grows and becomes more competitive (alot of this overlaps with some of "orcale" networks/protocols).
If so, I’m curious — how does the amount of compute on these distributed networks compare to the cloud platforms, and what is the overhead resulting from the infrastructure protocol?
I’ve heard numbers to the effect of the global BTC network having a throughput of a couple of dozen transactions per second, for all the song and dance. Is there any hope of such networks realistically becoming compute platforms?