On That $AKT Thang

Spacedust 009

Oct 11, 2021

Welcome back to Spacedust, your weekly source of news from around the Cosmos 🌌

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Bitcoin is up and RUNNING this week, while alts, including our beloved $ATOM, have taken a backseat and consolidating…for now.

This week, we’re diving into the Unstoppable Cloud! Akash and the $AKT token!

What is Akash?

While you can read more than we'll even attempt to crack open in the Akash whitepaper here, we have endeavored in this newsletter to highlight the most critical information about Akash.

Known as the “Airbnb for Cloud Compute”, Akash Network provides a fast, efficient and low-cost application deployment solution. Developers leveraging Akash’s platform can access cloud computing at up to three times less than the cost of centralized cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Utilizing containerization and open-source technology, Akash Network leverages 85% of underutilized cloud capacity in 8.4 million global data centers, enabling anyone to buy and sell cloud computing.

How does it work?

Akash is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK. The blockchain's native token, $AKT, is used to govern and the secure the blockchain. As with other PoS chains, holders of $AKT may stake the token to provide security and receive with inflation rewards.

Great. So, it's just another PoS blockchain? Not at all. Akash is building an open-source cloud that allows any applications to be run "faster, more flexibly, and at lower cost". It's built to be censorship-resistant, permissionless, and self-sovereign.

Cloud providers running on Akash are compensated in $AKT and, after an initial rollout phase, Akash will bring incentivizes to providers that will encourage lower prices and to stakers that participate in securing the network. Over time, inflation will be phased out and revenue sharing that will incentivize staking will begin in earnest - 20% of revenue will be shared directly with stakers beginning in 2022.

What’s the big deal?

Why is the "open cloud" so powerful?

If you’ve spent any time in crypto, you’ve certainly seen the term “decentralized” thrown around. But what’s the point? And why should cloud computing be decentralized?

In a decentralized system, a network is less vulnerable to an attack, because the nodes that keep the network running are scattered among many providers. Now imagine a centralized system, that can be shut down by a single authority or entity. Think about a site like Twitter or Facebook. If Facebook or Twitter decided to shut down their services to a region or people group, they could, because it is a centrally controlled entity. Decentralized blockchains, on the other hand, cannot be stopped this way, since it would require shutting down every (or at least the large majority) of nodes running the network.

Now, take this idea and apply it to cloud computing. Akash is a censorship resistant, permissionless, DeCloud. Amazon Web Services can wake up tomorrow and “turn off” your favorite website, just for fun. If that website were run on Akash though…”turning it off” would require knocking down the entire node infrastructure of the blockchain, a nearly impossible task. Akash protects your right to the unfiltered internet, from all centralized entities, including governments, corporations, big tech, and other bad actors.

What is the Supermini?

All the decentralization is great right? But what if all the cloud providers banded together to stop selling their excess compute to Akash, to “re-centralize” cloud compute? Well, the team is working on a solution, in the form of the Supermini. The Supermini is a portable supercomputer that provides decentralized computational power and passive income to cloud providers who own them.

Unfortunately, the team has delayed the release of the Supermini. The full announcement can be read here. The team, it seems, is focusing on adoption, before release of the Supermini. However, they certainly are trying to do right by the early buyers who paid to hold their Superminis, in the form of 100 AKT with the continued promise of a future Supermini.

Know the faces

Who is involved in building the future of decentralized cloud computing? You can see the entire team here.

Greg Osuri founded Akash Network in 2018 and has succeeded in building an important piece of the Cosmos ecosystem. But he hasn't done it without help. Well known Cosmonauts, Sunny Aggarwal and Jack Zampolin are advisors to the project. In fact, Jack was formerly the VP of Product at Akash.

Interested in learning more? Check out the whitepaper.