HoloPort Manufacturing has Begun!
We at Holo are excited to share that we have made a significant step towards achieving a milestone event. The hardware components for the highly anticipated HoloPorts have been purchased and the manufacturing process has begun!
Holo has the potential to do to the internet what AirBnB has done to the hotel industry. Now everyone can be a host… online. Together we can take back the internet!
Holoports give you the ability to share or sell your computer’s spare capacity to help others connect to each other via peer-to-peer apps using Holochain. When people use the apps you host, you can get rewarded in cryptocurrency. This currency is designed to give the world more “value-stable” digital assets that it is backed by a vital modern asset: computing power.
But that is just the beginning.
By pooling together our computing resources we make possible an entire network of distributed apps that are free from centralized control.
A centralized Internet makes us more vulnerable to hacking, censorship, tracking, and numerous other abuses. And because we have little say in how these systems we rely upon operate, we aren’t able to improve how they work for us.
Building the distributed internet is important because it has the potential to change the world in powerful ways by empowering individuals, fostering trust, and helping build thriving communities.
Backers of the Holo’s crowdfunding campaign, some of the organizations longest standing supporters, recently received details about HoloPort manufacturing as well as general updates regarding Holochain in this (further updated) progress report on Indiegogo:
It’s high time for a Holo crowdfunding campaign update to all of you our most faithful backers — and it’s a mega one because we’ve made a ton of progress over the last weeks of summer! The most exciting news for many will be that we’ve made the payments that have officially kicked off the process of manufacturing the HoloPorts! We’ll be receiving the first shipment of official prototypes in the next few days, and continue our testing efforts with these latest versions. As that process goes forward we’ll continue keeping you in the loop. But the entire Holo team is just as excited to share many others details with you now about the Holo ecosystem.
HoloPort Updates
HoloPort & HoloPort+ Processor Upgrade: As can be expected we faced some challenges finding a large enough supply of the processors initially chosen for the HoloPorts. Rather than a delay in delivery, we’ve opted to give the HoloPorts a speed upgrade! The only drawback with a processor upgrade is that it naturally comes with a slightly higher energy usage. The original specs for maximum continuous power were 15 watts for the Nano, 35 watts for the HoloPort, and 45 watts for the HoloPort+. The Nano will remain at 15 watts and we even expect that typical usage for the HoloPorts will be in that original range, but those who wish to push the limits will be able to access more power. Regardless, HoloPorts will still require massively less energy to host a distributed app than anything built on a blockchain. We’re doing some final testing for heat dissipation at peak load to make sure we can proceed with the upgraded CPUs but we do not expect this to affect the average HoloPort user or our expected delivery target.
One Year Warranty: We’re excited to officially announce that there will be a one year warranty for all HoloPort Nanos, HoloPorts, and HoloPorts+.
HoloPort Cases: In the last update, you may have noticed the sleek design of our latest cases brought to life with our latest renderings. The custom cases for the HoloPorts and HoloPorts+ as well as the Nano’s have been molded and nearly finalized so they’ll be ready for assembly after all of the last few hardware components have been purchased.
HoloPort Operating System: HoloPorts boot up with NixOS which was chosen in order make it as reliable as possible to manage the stability and state of the HoloPorts and to help smooth the way for excellent Holo customer service.
Holochain Core Upgrades (Warning: Tech Jargon!)
If you have been following the action on our Github repositories, you will have noticed that the first iteration of Holochain, “holochain-proto” is no longer under active development. That’s because we have been busy with the current refactoring of Holochain Rust, which is getting closer to completion. The development team is excited to release the Alpha version with Rust incorporated into the design that will enable several key improvements in a matter of weeks. There will be more details on our Medium blog soon but system upgrades will include:
- Native Cross-Platform & Mobile Ready Deployment: The entire Holochain App (hApp) ecosystem is starting to take shape as our DevOps team has upgraded several features that have equally enhanced both the developer and user experience. Using core Holochain libraries with Qt — a cross-platform application framework and toolkit — has enabled Holochain deployments on mobile platforms as well as all three major desktop platforms.
- Harnessing Web Assembly as the execution engine for Holochain Apps: Web Assembly runs in a device’s browser and we expect someday in the near future that Holochain will compile in the browser as well.
- Language Extensibility: It is now much easier to create Holochain Development Kits for languages which compile to Web Assembly. Our team is experiencing success using TypeScript, a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript, and Rust which we will continue to evolve. We expect that community contributions will expand the reach into other languages.
- Richer Interfaces with Unity: The addition of C bindings to the Holochain rust-library has enabled development of Holochain UI in platforms such as Unity, the 2D / 3D gaming engine which is widely found in over twenty-five home consoles, smart TVs, and mobile platforms and other computing systems.
Holochain Applications
In combination with upcoming Holochain Rust release, our summer interns, and Holochain Apps team (hApps!) got some fantastic work done. We have made significant progress on HoloChat and we have demonstrated key aspects of app bridging (connecting multiple Holochain applications) as well as Holochain core app integration. By launch, we will have a completely automated build, test, and deploy pipeline with patterns for extension by Holochain application developers.
Some of the hApps that should be ready in Alpha or Beta by launch include:
- HoloVault: A working name for a personal identity and personas management application
- HoloChat: A base chat application (The Mother App!) akin to slack or Mattermost, portions of which will be used by many other hApps
- Fractal Wiki: Exactly like it sounds! A wiki with wikis inside of wikis which were started at our last hackathon in London and extended at a Vancouver hackathon.
- Errand: A simple kanban project management tool with similarities to Waffle or Trello
- Games: Who doesn’t love a distributed minesweeper, battleship, or chess?!
We will also soon have a complete guide to all of the Holochain UI Components. Our process uses Storybook from the moment a hApp or feature is requested, right through to being in use, so it’s always up to date and accurate.
Join the Community!
If you haven’t already, get our community newsletter and be part of the conversation on social media (Twitter/Telegram/YouTube/FB) where we’ll be sharing more details about Holo and Holochain and continue conversing with our global community.
If you did not participate in the Indiegogo campaign you will soon be able to order a HoloPort directly from our online store. Get our newsletter to be amongst the first to have the opportunity to purchase a HoloPort and be part of this transformative technology.
We remain in a steady state of gratitude for all of your support, big and small, and the heaps of patience you extend to our team as we continue pushing forward on this complex project. You’re the roots that keep us fed, grounded, and focused on continued growth. You’re the best.
The Holo team
