What is Golem?
The Golem project has come under a lot of criticism because of the underlying protocols that make up the Golem network. A former project manager of the project, Bartosz Milewski, laid out the problems that Golem faces here. I don’t want to quote Bartosz all over the Internet, so I’m not going to link him to this post (although you’re probably welcome to do so if you’re interested in reading a more thorough critique). I’m going to link to a site that takes his criticisms very seriously, and takes on the Golem critics head on: Golem Another example of an internet project trying to tackle the issue of energy use by decentralizing it comes from TorOS, an operating system for completely anonymous communication, written in the Go programming language.
https://hardgamerx.com/
Who is the Golem?
Golem is a little like the Airbnb of computing power. Through its online marketplace, anyone can register a server or make an offer to generate computing power for their clients. Golem, similar to Airbnb, allows users to rent and lease super-computing power to one another. Golem’s objective is to allow the provision of computational power to be democratized to all those who have Internet access. The company also states that by providing computing power on demand to people who need it most, they will be able to reduce the cost of access to high performance computing while also allowing users to avoid the costs of electricity in order to enjoy cloud computing at home. How is Golem Going to work?
Why does Golem exist?
To make the free market work. You could ask any technical person, and they’ll tell you that one of the biggest problems with the internet today is the cost of bandwidth. Let’s say a Youtube video has a pretty decent amount of views. If you want to show that video to more people, you’ll have to pay for bandwidth. And if you don’t have any friends, it’s going to cost you even more to upload your video. This is because Youtube has some of the best computing power in the world. So if you have the money to pay, you can get what you need, and others can’t, even if they are just as good of a videographer as you. But you could do the same thing, but without the internet. If you had a house with enough computing power, you could put it to work doing computations for other people. For free.
How does Golem work?
Golem’s users are called Golem users. They can be individuals, businesses or communities. There are over 35,000 users on the platform, and Golem has handled over one million transactions since it launched. This centralized storage has always existed in some form, but it’s the ability for it to be secure and reliable that Golem provides. With it, users can work and store their files in secure, off-the-grid facilities. Golem charges a storage fee, but that amount can be paid monthly or hourly. Golem also provides services in other areas of computing that users of the platform would normally pay a service to provide.
Where does Golem stand in the blockchain ecosystem?
Golem acts as a middleman in a blockchain ecosystem. They connect the buyers and sellers of computational power and store all transactions on their own blockchain. Users can add as many computing units as they need, and users can add as many computers as they need. The community decides how much computing power is available for each unit. How do they work? Anyone with an internet connection can become a Golem user. Users simply buy as many computational units as they want. This approach is reminiscent of Bitcoin mining. Buy a computing unit (note: not a GPU) and enter in the amount you want to pay to rent it. Golem will decide on a price based on the market rate for computation power.
Conclusion
At the moment Golem is in its infancy. It has a limited number of users, and limited support by the developers. The dev team are also aware of a couple of fatal flaws which should be fixed before Golem is released to the public. However, the technology is promising and has a lot of potential. With the right development team and a little bit of luck, Golem could very well be the future of decentralised computing. If you’re interested in getting involved, there are a lot of ways to participate.