How NuNet Will Help Cardano Stay Decentralized
Greetings Singularitarians,
On April 18th, 2022, the ERC-20 Converter will go live, allowing tokens to be moved to and from the Ethereum and Cardano blockchains. NuNet’s utility token, NTX, will be among the first tokens to be bridged in this way, in addition to SingularityNET’s AGIX. With this historic event quickly approaching, we want to explain why it will be so significant to the future of both NuNet and Cardano, and the symbiotic relationship we will form to maintain decentralization.
Systems Tend Towards Centralization
It can be easy to assume that using a decentralized blockchain, such as Cardano or Ethereum, ensures that an application is decentralized and cannot be shut down or manipulated by a single entity. However, this has proven to not be the case.
Recently, Metamask wallet users in Venezuela were blocked, effectively denying them access to their funds, albeit temporarily. This was due to the fact that Metamask’s API provider, Infura, was blocking access to Russia in compliance with international sanctions, and accidentally cut off support to Venezuela as well (source). This illustrated to many that systems we assume are decentralized and permissionless, such as a popular cryptocurrency wallet, are actually dependent on largely centralized services with single points of failure which can be controlled.
One cryptographer took it upon themself to analyze the current situation in blockchain and outline the findings in an article titled My first impressions of Web3. Their report revealed many other centralized systems used by so-called decentralized applications (dapps). For example, most NFTs (non-fungible tokens) do not actually contain the data for images associated with them; instead, they simply contain a link to an image hosting site where it can be referenced. The author even demonstrated that they could manipulate an NFT they created to display a different image in their wallet than when it was on OpenSea, the most popular NFT marketplace on Ethereum. In fact, when OpenSea removed the NFT from their marketplace because of this, it caused it to not display an image at all, even inside the owner’s wallet.
Due to the need to provide convenience and accessibility to end users, systems have a tendency towards centralization. Decentralization, therefore, is not a given, but rather a goal which requires constant effort to be achieved and maintained. It takes more than just a distributed ledger to make a blockchain’s ecosystem free from centralized control; the APIs and even the hardware the applications are running on must be decentralized as well.
NuNet As Decentralized Infrastructure For Cardano
NuNet is offering to provide the kind of architecture the Cardano blockchain needs to maintain its decentralization. Following our successful funding through Catalyst Fund7, we have already begun development to allow stake pool operators to run their nodes on community provisioned hardware. This will allow Cardano’s consensus layer to be less reliant on centralized cloud computing providers.
Moreover, NuNet also plans to provide infrastructure for applications that utilize Cardano, such as machine learning algorithms, dapps, and metaverse projects. To do this, we need to add GPU capabilities, outlined in our Decentralized GPU ML Cloud proposal, which will soon be voted on in Cardano’s Catalyst Fund8, in the Developer Ecosystem category. Once we secure funding, we can develop a system to onboard GPUs from anyone who becomes a compute provider.
A future where online technology is truly democratized and in the hands of the people is still a distant goal. However, systems such as NuNet’s decentralized cloud computing can strive to make it a reality, and we look forward to joining Cardano in this journey.
NuNet Is Hiring!
NuNet currently has a number of open positions for various roles within the team. If you have the skills and desire to join us in our journey, you can find more information and contact us through our jobs page.
About NuNet
NuNet lets anyone share and monetize their computing resources, turning cloud computing power from a centralized service into an open protocol powered by blockchain. Find out more via:
