Matrix — The Crypto Gift That Just Keeps on Giving…
How Matrix AI Network is carving out new business models and saving the planet all at the same time
I’ve been in crypto for quite a while now and seen lots of projects take off and many fade away. For any of you that have read my other articles, there is no hiding my interest in Matrix. That’s mostly because the more I research Matrix the more hidden gems I find. The diamond I’m going to focus on is Matrix’s hardware and mining ambitions.
One of the reasons I love Matrix is that it breaks a lot of the blockchain norms. Using AI to replace a lot of the conventional and standard blockchain models has been their hallmark. Their hardware and mining ambitions are no different and no less significant.
Traditional mining models use cryptographic hash functions to do what is commonly referred to as “roll of the dice” calculations. The calculations themselves are fairly simple, but use a lot of energy. Proof of Work (think Bitcoin) models are commonly referenced as being environmentally wasteful for these simple calculations.
Matrix went a different route from a standard hash model and built an MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) engine. MCMC is a more modern day statistical model with many possible applications. While MCMC is computationally heavy, it is much more powerful than standard hash functions. Given that MCMC isn’t very friendly to standard CPU and GPU systems Matrix is building their own chips and algorithms for hyper fast calculations.
In reading over the white paper and some articles it gets extremely technical, but the general concept is that Matrix is building stochastic multiprocessors to support their MCMC model. In essence this will allow Matrix to calculate both mining and purposeful statistics on a grand scale.
At some point, Matrix is planning to do a second ICO to support the hardware portion of their business. It’s immensely costly and labor intensive to build a hardware business, but this is also yet another reason why Matrix is different from its competitors and another way they can pull away from the competition. The best part from this investment is that rich business models should be realized. Steve mentions this in his video with Boxmining (seen below).
Typical mining equipment is “dumb” and performs a single task. MCMC is different as it will have the ability to calculate complex probability, statistical, and AI computations. This is where new business models come into place and also where purposeful mining is exposed. By combining friendly (low energy) and purposeful (multi-use) mining, Matrix will be able to better support their own platform and open up the environment for shared computational power.
Golem, another big crypto name, is building a wide scale and distributed super computer platform. Academics, businesses, and common folk will all be able to use their platform for shared computing power. Matrix’s model is to allow others to calculate probabilities (think finance, predictive analytics), statistics (think finance, healthcare, academics), and AI (think broadly).
While it’s early stages, Matrix already has a working prototype for their Bayesian interface. They also have their algorithms on github.
While all the energy is on completing the project first it’s easy to see that once this is created many novel and viable business opportunities could surface. Some of the ideas are rentable computational power, licensing the chip for new calculation engines, collaborative relationships with industry heavyweights like AMD and nVidia. Gamers have long complained that miners are buying up all of the GPUs and making them difficult to find — wouldn’t it be an interesting addition to GPU card makers to have Matrix’s chips embedded within their workhorse mining cards?
While a lot of Matrix’s attention is on the AI and blockchain side, one must look at the team that Matrix is building to understand how important their hardware business is to them and how many connections they have. As if Steve hadn’t already achieved rock star status, he is also listed on Nvidia’s website as a professor associate to them. (Found Here). In addition, take a look at Tim Shi their Chief Chip Scientist. He was the Principal System Architect at AMD and senior chip designer at Samsung. I must admit — when I read about Matrix’s team, I find myself feeling very inadequate.
I could delve into all of the white papers the team has written like real-time ray tracing, energy-efficient automatic train driving, innovative hand gesture recognition for smart cities, but there is so much depth that this would have to be a three part article.
As a parting shot and an ‘oh by the way’ moment, Matrix has a prototype of their own digital asset safe deposit box. Though I have little information on this and what I do have is highly technical it appears to be a Ledger style device with “hot and cold end separation, private key disconnection, proactive test confirmation before trading to prevent wrong address insertion, active sniffing and protection of trade loopholes and the support of mainstream blockchain digital assets” — whew, I hope you got something from that…
Suffice to say that, for good reason, most of the attention towards Matrix is on their AI, adaptive blockchain, and partnerships but we shouldn’t forget that the weight of their team is focused and well equipped on the hardware front.
There is a most excellent interview that Boxmining did with Steve Deng where they talk about the details of the hardware, algorithms, and MCMC. It can get a bit technical so I wrote a breakdown article which spells it out in clearer language HERE.
I continue to be amazed at Matrix’s breath and just how many sandboxes they play in. Normally I would argue that focus is better, but Matrix has a very clear vision on where they want to go and certainly the team to pull it off. I intend to sit back and enjoy the ride because what a wild one it should be.
Really? Again? No payment, just a continued passion for, in my opinion, the #1 crypto to own.
