Akash Network — airbnb for clouds
Distributed peer-to-peer marketplace for cloud compute.
In order to understand Akash, it is important to understand what the cloud is.
What is the cloud?
The “cloud” is an IT term to describe the amalgamation of global servers which can be leased out to end-users, developers, and organizations. When you access the internet through a web browser, your computer is requesting another machine, called a server, to show you some information, which is a web page. The servers which display these web pages can be run by the owner of the website, or they can be rented from third party organizations, such as Google Cloud (GCP) or Amazon Web Services (AWS). Hiring ‘cloud companies’ helps organizations to focus on a limited service which they can become experts in and deliver high-quality products cheaply. Instead of every company having to buy a bunch of machines to act as servers, they can outsource all of this to ‘cloud companies’ such as Amazon Web Services and focus on their core product.
However outsorcing cloud services involves risks. Cloud based services can go down and crash your application. To avoid that, it makes sense to deploy website or application on multiple cloud platforms. Another issue with cloud services is that they can censor your content or make deals with political rivals.
How to benefit from using cloud services without the fear of crash or being censored? The answer is blockchain and decetralized cloud solutions which is represented by AKASH NETWORK $AKT. Blockchains themselves have inherent censorship resistant qualities. So long as you can find someone willing to sell you a cryptoasset, no one can stop you from owning it, unless they shut down the internet itself. The infrastructure running the blockchain protocol is also designed to be decentralized; with Akash, there are 100 different validators who produce blocks. This means that no one entity can shut down the chain and multiple actors would need to coordinate to take action on something.
Akash
Akash Network is a distributed peer-to-peer marketplace for cloud computing. Akash means “open space” or “sky” in ancient Sanskrit. Akash enables access to the multi-cloud on one platform. The platform is known as the “Airbnb for Cloud Compute”.
Akash Network works by allowing anyone to offer their machines as servers on a network. This allows you to use regular people as your data centers instead of just big tech companies. Big tech companies could also provide their services on Akash, because Akash is permissionless and can’t restrict anyone from joining. However, you as the user get to decide to use big tech companies or individual providers. Providers maintain their individual sovereignty as well, they can host or not host whatever they like. As long as just one person is willing to host your deployment though, it will be deployed. Besides censorship protection, this format also allows you to deploy your apps anonymously. Instead of making a bunch of accounts tied to your name, you own an Akash wallet with a cryptographic address protecting your identity.
However, there are some difficulties which Akash is facing right now. Project touched on the coordination issues between using different companies, and some centralized providers want to keep you entirely on their native platform. Moreover It takes more work to manage your deployments on different accounts than it is on one account. According to the team, Akash makes significant strides in some of these areas, but there are still some problems to be solved. For example there’s currently no managed service to automatically switch the active provider if one goes down.
Akash is less than a year old. There is a lot to build but the most important thing is that the core technology works, which gives the project solid fundamentals for new features. The team can’t see that Web 3.0 will continue using centralized cloud services in the future. That’s why development of Akash is so important.
Cost of using Akash
The cost of hosting your application using Akash is about one-third the cost of Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure.
You can check it here:
Why is it cheaper?
Akash negotiates lower than market rates with data centers to lease their underutilized server resources. Most data centers have unused capacity sitting idle. Akash’s software helps them to lease out their compute resources.
How to start guide:
What’s going on in the project right now?
Akash concluded their 3rd testnet, which is one of the final steps before being able to offer the same or equal cloud services to centralized alternatives. Akash’s 3rd Testnet proved that they could run Bitcoin and Ethereum RPC nodes. Success of the testnet marks the final step to launching Mainnet 3 (estimated for the end of April).
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Keep in mind that Akash has not begun marketing heavily. Rather than that the team is focusing on developing the project.
Akash Token
Akash Token (AKT) is the platform’s native utility token, used as the primary means to govern, secure the blockchain, incentivize participants, and provide a default mechanism to store and exchange value. AKT has decaying model of token emission.
More about tokenomics:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MUULetp59lgNq0z4ckVI51QdtMGvqtKOW8wRfX5R8yY/htmlview?lsrp=1#
https://akash.network/blog/the-earning-potential-of-akash-token
Key info
MC — 169 M
Inflation — 24%
Price — 1.29$
Bonded ratio — 73%
Staking — 31% APR
Most important info about Akash (where to buy, how to stake etc):
Author: Kyudo Team
