DApp Challenge: 15 New Applications Using the iExec Decentralized Cloud

Published in

iExec

6 min readFeb 17, 2018

iExec re-invents cloud computing by building a decentralized marketplace where everyone can monetize their applications, servers, and data-sets. Blockchains cannot support the kind of computational needs that many dapps will require, and this problem will only compound exponentially as more dapps release their working platforms and products. Blockchains need a solution that allows them to compute off-chain and bring only the results on-chain. iExec provides exactly that solution.

Decentralized cloud computing is hot!

In November 2017, iExec released its V1 along with an SDK (Software Development Kit) allowing developers to take full advantage of the decentralized cloud.

In order to boost the development of applications on the blockchain and encourage developers to try out its SDK, iExec reserved a prize pool of $150,000 to be distributed among different dapp projects.

We’ve received 37 participations in total from multiple countries, which is a real success! The iExec Jury ran its due diligence processes on these projects, and has retained 15 winners of development grants.

We are sorry for the other participants that didn’t meet our selection criteria. Some of the proposals we’ve received but not retained were of outstanding quality, and we would like to encourage their developers to pursue their ideas and make them a reality.

Cloud computing has already permeated every facet of online activity, and as can be seen on the pie chart above, we’ve received application proposals spanning many different categories. While the most represented categories were AI, data analytics and DevOps, some proposals have also covered smart cities, supply chains, real estate, mining, gaming, healthcare, energy or scientific calculations.

Below, we are happy to present to you the 15 winners of the 1st Edition of the iExec DApp Challenge. These dapps will be the ones that will receive funding in order for them to reach their milestones and integrate our DApp Store.

15 new applications to be run on iExec

Athina ($6,000)
A conversational interface to blockchain applications, working as an ensemble of agents, each of which would be a dapp, built and monetized by diﬀerent people.
Advisor: Eric Rodriguez
Axie Infinity ($6,000)
Axie Inﬁnity is a game about collecting and raising fantasy creatures called Axie. Although they share the same name, each one has a unique look and different attributes.
Advisor: Blaise Cavalli
BirdieBlue ($6,000)
Dapp for advanced sentiment prediction on crypto tweets.
Advisor: Wassim Bendella
Cerebrum ($20,000)
Cerebrum is a decentralized platform for crowdsourced machine learning. Like Kaggle and Numerai, Cerebrum leverages crowdsourcing and machine learning (ML) for solving big data problems and drawing insights from them. https://cerebrum.world
Advisor: Wassim Bendella
DAISEE ($6,000)
The DAISEE dapp treats electricity consumption and production data and discriminates electricty flow allocation. The application embeds learning algorithms for automation of electricity flows allocation and potential predictions.
Advisor: Blaise Cavalli
Deep Learning Art Generator ($4,000)
DLAG let users pay for the prediction steps of a deep learning network based on https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06576. Input: two pictures; Output: picture 1 painted in the style of picture 2.
Advisor: Vladimir Ostapenco
Jupyter Extension ($6,000)
A Jupyter (python ide) extension allowing to deport heavy computing tasks to iExec in a transparent way for the user.
Advisor: Eric Rodriguez
Kidner ($10,000)
The Kidner Project is a platform which aims to help Kidney Paired-Exchange (KPE) programs to find life-saving opportunities and improve access to kidney transplants in an efficient and more rapid way. Kidner’s focus is, first, on the French national level followed by a perspective of European and international development.
Advisor: Blaise Cavalli
OpenMOLE ($20,000)
OpenMOLE is a computational engine for custom simulation experiments. It explores, diagnoses your numerical model and optimizes its dynamics, taking advantage of distributed computing environments. The typical usages are model calibration, model exploration, machine learning, optimization, data processing.
Advisor: Eric Rodriguez
Proof-of-Work ($6,000)
A decentralized crypto-mining marketplace helping miners to increase their gains by reducing pool fees.
Advisor: Vladimir Ostapenco
TensorFlow ($4,000)
TensorFlow is an open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs. This dapp enables Tensorflow’s distributed calculation codes on the iExec SDK.
Advisor: Vladimir Ostapenco
Troubadour ($10,000)
A data enhancement platform providing intuitive and accessible natural language processing (NLP) solutions, as a solution to the information overload problem that unstructured data causes.
Advisor: Wassim Bendella
Starfish Analytics ($10,000)
A marketplace that boosts collaboration between freelancers, small, medium and alrge businesses around the creation and the refinement of data. iExec is used to serve the data, execute scrapers and run analytics code. https://www.starfish-blockchain.com
Advisor: Blaise Cavalli
Voluspa ($6,000)
A platform allowing individuals and companies to specify their analysis needs and to share their data with scientists and other kinds of data experts who will be able to respond to these needs by building predictive models. These models will run on the iExec platform, allowing to use the blockchain technology to secure the transactions.
Advisor: Wassim Bendella
Websensors ($20,000)
Artificial intelligence-based oracles for smart contracts. Users are able to train an oracle (Websensors learned indicator), evaluate the accuracy of the indicator in a simulated scenario (backtracking and cross-validation) as well as generate a smart contract according to agreement between parties. http://websensors.net.br/websensors/
Advisors: Eric Rodriguez & Vladimir Ostapenco

Internal submissions

We’ve also received a number of internal submissions by motivated team members. These projects will not receive funding from the DApp Challenge prize pool, but showcase other possible use cases that build on top of iExec.

BlockSearch Orchestra
BlockSearch Orchestra is a decentralized blockchain-based search and analysis engine to monitor ﬂows and orchestrate decentralized economy development. Thanks to blockchain graph representation correlated with advanced machine learning algorithms, BlockSearch Orchestra will provide to the community the ﬁrst decentralized tool to understand and envision the crypto-economy.
By: Blaise Cavalli
Deepr
Deepr is a decentralized marketplace that allows developers to monetize their deep learning algorithms. Developers make profit when users utilize their algorithms or deep learning models. By doing so, users are able to generate and train their own deep learning models, and in turn are able to monetize them too. Since training models can reveal costly and time-consuming, users can crowdfund this step of the process, and own a stake in the result model proportional to their investment. Deepr makes the worlds of AI and blockchain collide to power the creation and sharing of higher-accuracy deep learning models and algorithms.
By: Wassim Bendella & Vladimir Ostapenco
Natron
Using the iExec platform to perform distributed image composition with Natron. In addition to the already available Blender dapp, this would make iExec the go-to platform for distributed rendering.
By: Hadrien Croubois

What now?

Each project has been assigned an advisor, who will assist developers when needed. Advisors can assist in making applications run on the iExec infrastructure, by being the intermediary between developers and the iExec team, but also on the strategic level, for developers to release a succesful dapp that will attract a vast pool of users.

Advisors and developers will be in contact soon in order to agree on the deliverables, and the roadmap milestones. Whenever a milestone is reached, advisors will validate it and unlock a round of funding. In case you are the project lead of one of the selected dapps, you can expect an email next week from your advisor. We’re excited to get to know you more!

Still $10,000 to be granted

If you’ve made your maths, you’ve noticed that the 15 dapps have been awarded a total of $140,000 out of $150,000. There is still $10,000 of funding to be received by an additional dapp (or two).

There were some use cases and ideas that we were expecting, but unfortunately didn’t receive as dapp submissions. For this reason, we would like to grant the remaining $10,000 to developpers willing to implement the ideas we have in mind (or their own idea if it seduces us).

Feel free to contact us on our Slack, Telegram or by email to know more about the additional applications we would like to have on our DApp Store, or shoot us your own proposal.

Stay in touch

Website: https://iex.ec/
Telegram (Discussion): https://t.me/iexec_discussion
Telegram (Announcements): https://t.me/iexec_announcements
Slack: https://iexec-team.slack.com/
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/iexec/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/iEx_ec
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/iexecteam/
Tutorials: https://www.katacoda.com/sulliwane/