SONM: A Computer Power Marketplace

When people have room to spare and are looking to profit from it, they sign up for AirBNB. When miners have idle computer power to part with, they can sign up for SONM and leverage their unused computer power, connecting to buyers in need of cloud computing services.

With this, SONM makes miners out of everyone and takes the sharing economy to the next level.

The SONM Supercomputer

SONM is a fog supercomputer. It acts as a computer power marketplace between sellers (i.e. miners) and buyers who need computing power for a wide variety of deployments.

Thanks to its fog computing capabilities, it has a distinct advantage over traditional cloud services. Fog computing is considered to be the future of cloud systems and the Internet of Things (IoT), as it is able to reduce the processing burdens placed on traditional cloud services.

Fog Computing

Fog computing transcends issues faced by its technological predecessors, including geographic, latency, mobility, network bandwidth, privacy, reliability, and security. Fog overcomes these challenges by distributing communication, computing, control, decision-making, and storage to where the data originates. The result is faster processing time and lower network costs.

Images courtesy of Cisco

SONM builds on this by creating a decentralized fog computer system on the blockchain and offering a dramatically lowered barrier to entry for anyone to get involved in its marketplace.

Creating and Rewarding Miners

Thanks to SONM, anyone can be a miner. The SONM Application Pool that runs this peer-to-peer exchange can run on any smart device, including CPU, GPU, a smartphone, or a Playstation.

Through performing network calculations (similar to the verifications performed by the mining network during a cryptocurrency transaction), miners are rewarded for the processing power they lend to the transactions. The SOMN network is essentially organized thanks to network mining.

With a move away from cryptocurrency’s GPU mining to proof-of-stake algorithms, there’s a lot of hardware that will be rendered unusable in the process. Thanks to the SONM business model, miners could still capitalize on blockchain transactions using their existing set-up.

Using SONM

For businesses that require external cloud computing services, SONM can serve as a lifesaver. Through SONM, infrastructure and human capital needs can be greatly reduced.

The need for on-site computing power or costly cloud services is greatly reduced, as is the number of employees required. Instead, buyers dictate the cost, rental period, and computer architecture they require for their project.

SONM Use Cases

According to the SONM website, these are some of the use cases for which the SONM system can be deployed:

• Back-end applications for mobile apps or app hosting platforms
• Game servers
• Machine learning (end-buyers and sub-hosting alike)
• Scientific research and calculations
• Site hosting (both end-buyers and sub-hosting)
• Video rendering
• Video streaming

This will, in turn, provide a real opportunity for disruption in each of these industries.

SOSNA Technology

SONM’s technological architecture, called SOSNA, is sound, robust, and state-of-the-art. It’s built on Ethereum’s smart contracts consensus system, incorporates decentralized fog computing, and is a decentralized platform thanks to open-source Paas system, Yandex.Cocaine.

Docker Container ensures computing parallelism, while peer-to-peer (P2P) BtSync ensures quick and secure data transfers. Finally, P2P tech Whisper allows for effective node communication.

SONM So Far

SONM counts Max Kordek, Lisk president and co-founder, as an advisor. CEO Sergey Ponomarev and the predominantly Russian team have a rich collective background in software and blockchain. However, an internal team member dispute has raised eyebrows.

A site crash during the ICO launch sparked controversy at the time, but the ICO nevertheless hit its US$42 market cap after only 4 days. According to advisory board member Jaron Lukasiewicz, the CEO of Coinsetter and Cavirtex exchanges acquired by Kraken:

“Following the impressive success of its ICO, which attracted an extraordinary level of interest from investors, I trust SONM will quickly establish itself as a leader and innovator in the distributed computing market.”

Alpha 0.2.1. is currently live and can be downloaded here. If SONM can make good on its deliverables, it will be a lucrative new avenue for miners to explore, and buyers to test out.

More details can be found in their business overview and technical specs. Catch SONM on Twitter, Facebook,  Reddit, GitHub, or their blog.