Today we are still talking about a project with great potential, which is AKT. Its current market value is US$200 million and its market value ranks around 130+. This market value is very consistent with what we call a hundred-fold coin, and the track it is in is a huge market that has been verified in the web2 world.
Akash is a decentralized cloud computing marketplace. Akash Token (AKT) is the platform’s native utility token and serves as the primary means of governance, securing the blockchain, incentivizing participants, and providing the default mechanism for storing and exchanging value.
background
Currently, the dominant centralized cloud service providers include: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Microsoft (Azure) and Alibaba Cloud. The four giants collectively occupy 71% of the market share. The industry leader Amazon (AWS) is three times the size of the second largest company Microsoft (Azure). Among them, Amazon, Google and Microsoft all have market values of more than one trillion US dollars.
But with the development of the industry, cloud computing has gradually transformed from a boy slaying a dragon into a dragon. The market currently presents the following shortcomings:
High degree of concentration and oligopoly - four giants occupy more than 70% of the market share;
Large cloud service providers take advantage of the existing market, easily copy the products of small businesses and bundle them for sale, suppressing competitors and greatly damaging innovation;
Product pricing is inefficient. After forming a monopoly, large service providers can raise product prices at will, forcing users to choose limited products;
The most important thing is that users’ data privacy and autonomy are not guaranteed, and scandals involving platforms selling user data occur from time to time.
Therefore, the cloud computing market is in urgent need of a paradigm shift. This is the reason why Akash was born, as the first decentralized cloud computing market.
There are currently approximately 8.4 million data centers in the world, of which 85% server capacity is underutilized. How will Akash’s decentralized cloud computing market revolutionize and redefine the cloud market?
Why use Akash
Akash is based on Cosmos, one of the cross-chain duo, and uses Tendermint technology to introduce the natural advantages of the blockchain and has the following advantages:
Decentralization: Akash provides a trusted execution environment. After the network is launched, even if the team stops development, users can still use Askah normally.
No permission is required: you only need to access the market according to standards, everyone can freely lend computing power to obtain income, and everyone can borrow computing power as needed.
Lower cost: Akash users bid directly, and suppliers bid to obtain the task. Buying and selling is directly affected by supply and demand, which can provide more reasonable prices. According to test data, Akash’s cloud computing costs are 10 times lower than existing market providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud).
Akash Network offers consumers an alternative to centralized cloud providers in its Akash Deployment Marketplace, allowing users to set the price they are willing to pay to deploy their software, while providers with additional computing power bid to host users' app. This marketplace for underutilized computing resources functions much like Airbnb, allowing providers to rent out unused capacity.
On the importance of cloud computing
No one is immune to the ubiquity of the cloud. Whether it’s your phone, car, streaming service, or social media account, you use cloud technology every day. In its simplest form, cloud computing allows you to access services over the Internet rather than on your machine.
In the ancient days of DVD players, the only legal way to watch a Disney movie was to actually buy the DVD and insert it into a player connected to your TV. Viewing many movies requires purchasing a collection of these discs. The cloud changes the mechanics of this physical interaction while retaining the same product, movies. By storing archived movie data on remote servers and running the back-end processes for the Disney Plus streaming service, Disney eliminates the requirement for users to have product-specific hardware (DVD players) so it can deliver the same products over the Internet.
Disney doesn't just use the cloud to host customer-facing applications, such as its streaming service. On the business operations side, Disney and many other companies use cloud technology for data protection, data analysis, storage backup, server virtualization (virtual machines), and software development. But a company like Disney doesn't need to have the server infrastructure to facilitate all of these necessary operations. Instead, most companies outsource server management to cloud service providers.
Before Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure became popular, companies had their own on-site data centers. From hiring an IT team to manage hardware updates and maintenance to purchasing large tracts of real estate and paying huge energy bills, costs associated with IT infrastructure will be recorded as capital expenditures. However, where the cloud provider bears all costs associated with the IT infrastructure, paying for cloud computing is considered an operating expense, which has tax benefits. Despite the monetary benefits and operational efficiencies of deploying applications to the three major cloud providers, cloud consumers are locked into the vendors and have limited control over their deployment in centralized cloud environments.
As more enterprises understand the higher levels of scalability, flexibility and cost savings they can achieve by outsourcing their IT infrastructure to cloud service providers, Gartner predicts that by 2022, end users will be on cloud services Spending $482 billion. This is a 54% increase from 2020’s $313 billion. The pandemic's push for remote hybrid work will only help accelerate the growth of the cloud computing industry. According to Flexera, 92% of U.S. companies are already using cloud technology, with 90% claiming higher usage than originally planned due to the pandemic. This is in stark contrast to Europe, where only 42% of enterprises are in the cloud in 2021, up from 19% in 2016.
Despite the rapid growth and popularity of cloud computing, 30% of server capacity remains idle in many data centers. As the cloud computing market continues to grow globally, there will be convergence between vendors looking to correct supply-side inefficiencies and enterprises looking to flexibly scale their operations, outsource IT infrastructure and avoid the complexity caused by centralized entities.
Akash Market
Akash is an open source platform with a distributed peer-to-peer cloud marketplace that connects users seeking cloud services with infrastructure providers with excess computing resources. Its platform is used to host and manage deployments and includes cloud management services that leverage Kubernetes to run workloads.
These users are called tenants and are typically developers seeking to deploy Docker containers to cloud providers that meet specific criteria. Docker containers essentially contain packaged code and its dependencies and ensure that the corresponding application runs the same in any computing environment. For example, even if an application is developed on a laptop, tested in a sandbox, and sent to run in the cloud with different configurations, containers can support all three environments without requiring code changes.
The Akash Market operates through a reverse auction model, enabling users to name a price and describe the resources they want to deploy containers on. When a cloud provider, from individuals to data centers, is underutilizing computing resources, it rents out those resources by bidding on host deployments, much like Airbnb hosts can rent out their extra space. The cost of deploying containers on Akash is approximately 10 times lower than any of the three major cloud providers (Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure).
Records of all requests, bids, leases and settlement payments are stored on-chain using Akash Tokens (AKT).
team
Greg Osuri, Co-Founder and CEO: With a background in cloud architecture and entrepreneurship dating back to 2008, Osuri founded Akash as a decentralized alternative to the traditional cloud computing industry. Prior to Akash, Osuri founded four other companies and worked at prominent companies, including Miracle Software Systems as a technical architect, IBM as a critical infrastructure consultant, and Kaiser Permanente as a cloud infrastructure consultant. Osuri's notable founding projects include AngelHack, one of the most diverse developer ecosystems in the world with over 175,000 developers in 50 cities, and Overclock, a core contributor to Akash focused on building a decentralized and open internet Labs.
Adam Bozanich, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer: Bozanich is a veteran of the software engineering field, having held senior positions since 2006. With experience across software development domains, Bozanich has worked at Symantec in QA automation, Mu Dynamics security engineering, and Topspin Media in server engineering. Prior to Akash, he co-founded two other companies with Osuri: Sproouts Tech and Overclock Labs.
Akash Network
Akash Network builds its blockchain on the Cosmos SDK framework, leveraging the Tendermint Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) engine for its Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus algorithm. To simplify the seven or eight buzzwords used in the previous sentence, Akash at its core uses the Tendermint engine as the security and networking layer of its blockchain. It uses the Cosmos SDK to customize every aspect of its blockchain, from governance to staking.
Staking AKT in the DPoS protocol
Since Akash uses the DPoS consensus algorithm, staking responsibilities vary between delegators and validators. Validators operate nodes to secure on-chain AKT network transactions. While anyone can become a validator, only those with the computing resources and technical expertise to run an Akash node can.
Akash recommends that the minimum system requirements for running a validator node include a 4-core CPU, 16GB RAM (memory), 256GB SSD (storage), and a Linux Ubuntu operating system. Of course, better specs will equal better performance; regardless, these are relatively modest minimum requirements compared to a blockchain like Solana. On Solana, validators require a 12-core/24-thread CPU, at least 128GB of RAM (256GB RAM recommended), and three separate storage units (recommended) for a total of 2 TB (account 500 GB, ledger 1 TB, 500 GB for the operating system).
The consensus algorithm selects how frequently validators approve network transactions—and therefore, receive inflationary rewards—in direct proportion to the amount of AKT held by the validator. This creates a playing field among validators to earn AKT themselves or from delegators.
Delegators delegate their rights to receive validation rewards on AKT to validators who perform the work of running the node. This validator then splits the rewards with the delegators (proportional to the amount they delegated) and takes a commission off the top. AKT holders can delegate through the Keplr desktop wallet.
AKT
AKT is a utility token that serves multiple purposes within the protocol, including security, rewards, network governance, and transactions.
Node operators who verify mainnet transactions and receive rewards must own an amount of AKT that makes them among the top 100 holders among their peers. This amount comes from the amount assigned to them by the validators plus the amount delegated to them. Validators on Akash are not required to stake at least their own AKT. Consider that more AKT increases the odds that a node operator will be selected to validate transactions, thereby increasing their reward frequency. To dissuade malicious/lazy validators, those who do not adhere to consensus guidelines may have a portion of their number slashed.
Not yet implemented but mentioned in the white paper, Akash plans to charge a “collection fee” for each successful lease. It then sends the fees to the Take Income Pool to be distributed to holders. The plan is to charge a 10% fee for AKT transactions and a 20% fee when using other cryptocurrencies. Akash also plans to reward holders for the time they lock their AKT holdings. Holders who hold on longer will be eligible for larger rewards.
Only AKT holders can participate in governance. This includes submitting proposals and voting on them. The fee for submitting a proposal is a non-refundable deposit of AKT 1,000. For passed proposals that require binary updates (code changes), validators must update the codebase to avoid penalties and continue validating the network.
AKT is the ecosystem’s reserve currency, used to pay gas fees and serves as the default medium of exchange for transactions between providers and tenants. The Akash white paper describes a settlement option for locking the exchange rate between AKT and the settlement currency, designed to deal with AKT price fluctuations in market transactions. This billing option has not been implemented yet.
The total number of tokens is 388,539,008 AKT, and the current circulating supply is 30%. The current currency price is around 1.1 US dollars, with the highest peak around 9 US dollars. It has also risen a lot recently, from a low of 0.2 in May to 1.1 now, which has increased five times in three months.
In conclusion, this project is still relatively new to the currency and will be launched around 2021. Blockchain + cloud computing is also the leader, but traditional cloud computing is now very powerful and cheap. Blockchain Is the cloud computing on the Internet so stable and shared by others? As a commercial application, stability is very important, including simple operation and maintenance management. These are your shortcomings, and you may be very disappointed. Cheap, but in business competition, it is not cheapness that is the most critical deciding factor, but cost-effectiveness, what is your price under the premise of the same stability, and whether cloud computing requires blockchain. In fact, I think It is not very necessary, but its advantage is that it is the leader in this field, and the cloud computing market is very large (trillions), and it can only cut into a small part (hundreds of billions), which is enough. .