Growing the Render Network Community though RNP-003: Resource Acquisition and Allocation for Core Team and Grants
As part of the creation of the Render Network Foundation, the founding group transferred control of the core Render Network repos and the Render Network brand to the Foundation, a major step in decentralization and putting governance and control in the hands of the community. The Render Network protocol was initially founded by OTOY but is now growing beyond the leadership of a core team through many of the first proposed Network Protocols.
The launch of the Render Network Foundation brings a wave of transparency to the project at the request of the community. In this post we aim to give some history as to what led to the creation of Render Network, the push for decentralization, and how RNP-003 will aid in the future of the efforts to decentralize and grow the network.
The Render Network provides near real-time rendering using a decentralized GPU processing model to meet users’ increasing GPU compute needs — both for current 3D rendering tasks and for emerging 3D applications. The Network allows for a model that improves render speed for artists, while reducing costs and increasing scale. It improves capital efficiency by utilizing idle GPU compute capability, and rewarding GPU providers for their service. It also creates the opportunity for open-access to a growing suite of render and render-related software providers.
The network is still in its infancy with a multi-decade use case to enable real-time fully immersive and interactive streaming experiences, and provide a platform for next generation holographic virtual assets. Early incubation efforts have led the Render Network to already become one of the most widely used decentralized GPU computing platforms in the world, with the ability to access far greater GPU capacity for 3D rendering jobs than what the centralized GPU cloud provides.
The current RNPs are key to our transition from a project started by a core team to one run by the community. While OTOY intends to remain a significant participant and to continue to contribute resources, it is now time for the project to take active steps to being independently viable. The project has grown to be much more than just OTOY.
With the formalization of the Foundation, the network is now at a place where it can expand to having its own independent resources in order to be able to commence taking advantage of additional independent opportunities. It is what allows the Network to grow and diversify its service offering beyond OTOY, and further realize the vision described in the whitepaper.
OTOY’s retention of its Treasury Wallet (which holds around ~23% of total supply after the minting of RNP-001 Emissions) will enable OTOY’s continued participation as a key corporate sponsor of the Render Network, enabling it to advance emerging technologies like holographic computing, immersive streaming, artificial intelligence, and lightfield rendering. Participation will take the form of mediated voting and utilization or operational needs in the advancement of emerging technologies on the network. It will also inform the community and the Foundation in advance about usage for operational purposes and in doing so will see a reduction of the total ownership. OTOY agreed to fund the Foundation with loans. Long term, the expectation is the foundation will generate sufficient funds from a percentage usage fee for all transactions.
Some community feedback on the Treasury Wallet is that it hosts too much power for the voting and discourages community participation. To address, the Foundation has expanded the available voting options to now also include the right to “abstain”, which will still be included for the purpose of calculating whether the quorum has been met.
The emissions resource grant proposed in RNP-003 is an important step in expanding the network. It dilutes all parties equally, including OTOY’s own RNDR holding — thus increasing decentralization of network ownership. This approach was approved by the community via the vote on the BME proposal, RNP-001. As outlined in the proposal OTOY will be loaning the assets to the Foundation to make this happen if the proposal is approved by the community.
Some community members have raised concerns that this will reduce rewards potentially available for providing liquidity, which it is an important consideration. This element should be balanced with the benefit the grants will provide to the Network, accelerating the release of the BME model and the commencement of such rewards, as well as in driving additional usage of the network outside of OTOY’s 3D workflow investment plan.
Further RNPs proposed and voted on by the community can introduce mechanisms for increasing liquidity provider rewards. These rewards may be best introduced as the network expands its usage through the mechanisms proposed in the BME, creating increased transactional velocity for which liquidity services provided by the community becomes vital for network operations. Therefore, the emissions allocation grant in RNP-003 should not be seen as a zero sum reduction of rewards for liquidity providers but instead should be viewed as an important sequencing of network needs in providing a multi-sided decentralized marketplace.
Join us in the Rendering Revolution at:
Website: https://render.x.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rendernetwork
Knowledge Base: https://know.rendernetwork.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/rendernetwork
Render Network Foundation: https://renderfoundation.com/
