Ankr — what makes it unique?

Let’s talk a little about what makes Ankr really unique. On the face of it, it’s a Cloud-computing platform among all the other Cloud-computing platforms out there.

Of course, it utilises the blockchain and tokens, plus some interesting technical approaches behind the scenes, but let’s think beyond this a little: What sets Ankr apart?

The conclusion I came to was really three-fold:

• Eco-efficiency
• Lucrative business model
• Smart connections

Let’s take a look at each of these, briefly:

Unique Selling Point One: Eco-efficiency
Cryptocurrency and Eco-efficiency aren’t often uttered in the same breath, however in Ankr’s case, this may be true, because the key idea is to utilise existing idle resources…

Imagine school computers being used out of hours. Data centers that aren’t being stretched to capacity, either due to lack of business or the cyclic nature of working in a specific timezone. Imagine mobile phones in their idle state, or games consoles in ‘sleep’ mode or on pause.

Rather than build new hardware to meet compute requirements, Ankr looks to connect idle resources such as these into its network to meet the requirements of its business users.

But why would anyone bother letting Ankr use their device(s)? Easy:

Unique Selling Point Two: Lucrative Business Model
Once MainNet has been launched, Miners on Ankr will play three roles: mining for coins, the traditional transaction validation work in return for payment, and also (and most interestingly) they provide computational power to help solve the tasks submitted to the platform. And they get paid for all of these — and because of this lucrative model, the miners can afford to accept a lower price for the computational work, which allows Ankr to pass this cost-save on to their clients. Not only that, but because anyone contributing compute power also mines, this ensures rapidly processed transactions on the blockchain.

And when I spoke about Boinc in an earlier article, one of the problems I mentioned was that the users donating their resources are all doing so voluntarily and therefore availability can vary. With Ankr, the continual payment ensures there’s always high compute power available.

And talking of Boinc, this leads nicely on to the final feature:

Unique Selling Point Three: Smart Connections

So anyone can use the tech. Anyone can build a blockchain. Anyone can assemble a dev team and point the way.

What sets Ankr apart, however, and gives the project something that no competitor could ever duplicate or imitate, are the people running the show.

Chandler Song (CEO), Ryan Fang (COO) and Stanley Wu (CTO) are the co-founders of the company and possess two particularly significant qualities:

• They all believe in the product and simply do not rest, as they ensure it is successful. They are incredibly passionate about Ankr and this shows when they interact with the community.
• They have superb connections with leading institutions such as Amazon, SAP and Berkeley) and they know how to utilise them. Ankr as a project seems like an intricate web of clever interactions and associations that have blossomed from the collaborations they’re forging.

The team are working the tech side, the PR side (as evidenced by their recent award at the Global Blockchain Leadership Summit where Ankr won “Global Blockchain Cross-border Value Application”) and also continually driving their vision forward, at a relentless pace.

These three guys seem to bring an almost complete package to the table and, if I’ve learned anything from Crypto investment, it’s to invest in the teams as much as the concepts.

But no one’s perfect…
I say ‘almost complete’ package because I believe the one final piece of the puzzle required is someone with strong marketing experience to help spread awareness and drive up adoption; particularly in bringing clients to the platform; it needs users as well as miners to make it work. I’d hope (and expect) this to be something the team will focus more on as we approach product release, and ultimately MainNet!

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About the author: Jamie Badman is a keen crypto-enthusiast who’s worked in the IT software industry for over 30 years and is currently an IT manager, application architect and UX consultant working for Deutsche Bank in London, England.