Name of Project
DeepSquare
Proposal overview
Preamble: This application is done in Collaboration with Harmony @SpanishDAO. We personally met recently with Marc Morales @marcmorales94 while at the Avalanche Summit in Spain. We had a very interesting conversation around current cloud centralisation on how DeepSquare could help. This proposal is the outcome of our discussion. We would be very happy to join the Harmony ecosystem with DeepSquare and this project is not a go/no go for us. Just a way to accelerate DeepSquare becoming available to Harmony users.
We are dedicated to solving the problem of the lack of sustainable, available decentralised compute resources to power Web and Web 3 and Metaverse. We are creating an interoperability layer to link professional computer resource providers (tier2 cloud providers, research centers, …) in a trustless manner. The DeepSquare project wants to tackle all types of compute workloads from High Performance Computing to standard Web hostings. High performance computing powers heavy workload intense disciplines such as AI, edge gaming, simulations, rendering, and is dominated by centralised hyperscalers. Because of the lack of alternatives, most of the blockchain gaming and metaverse projects are forced to use services from the metadonts such as AWS, not because they love them but because they do not have viable alternatives. What DeepSuare is set to do is to change this by creating a decentralised, sustainable computing ecosystem. This inclusive ecosystem provides an opportunity to everyone to build their amazing projects without giving up on their decentralised ethos and enables anyone interested to get involved to the extent they want.
We already have a functional stack and we were able to emboard several HPC users coming from different sectors such as universities, AI companies. We need additional funding to develop the trustless aspects of the DeepSquare grid (proof of compute blockchain), create a sustainable standard for compute resources and enforce partnership to increase the scope of potential applications that can run on the DeepSquare Grid to meet the growing demand for compute resources within blockchain (gaming, metaverse, NFTs) but also simply empower project that needs decentralisation.
Where we need help:
- Blockchain / smart contract development: we have a team of developers that build the first sets of smart contracts but we clearly need help on this (at least to review the smart contract code). The development is separated in two tracks: the smart contract layer allows you to purchase compute resources with your metamask. And the trustless grid network will be a PoC (Proof of Compute ) blockchain. PoC can be viewed as a variation of Proof of Stake with extra validation of compute tasks execution correctness.
- Networking/contact with Web3 projects needing compute resources
- Multi-chain logic to implement an arbitrage mechanism for SQUARE price and allow people to pay for computers from different EVM compatible blockchains.
- We will be hiring researchers experts in consensus algorithm to develop the theoretical framework of what we call Proof of Compute (we currently have a discussion with a researcher working with protocol labs, filecoin). We might need help in the implementation of the proof in the blockchain layer.
Milestones Q2:
- Finalise private sale round
- First version of cluster factory (the toolset allowing to deploy clusters both on bare metal hardware and in a virtualized environment). This is the keystone of the DeepSquare grid allowing us to onboard local cloud providers and research centers supercomputers before connecting them to the network to sell spare compute resources.
Milestones Q3:
- Public launch
- Pre-sale of compute resources
- Staking rewards mechanism
Milestones Q4:
- Compute smart contract layer for EVM compatible blockchains (running on testnet) allowing EVM compatible smart contract blockchain to request compute resources in a non-custodial fashion (pay with tokens on their Metamask).
We started our private sale 1 on Ethereum, we now moved to Avalanche to finalise private sale 2 on a much more sustainable blockchain. The current plan is to run the Proof of Compute blockchain as a subnet on the Avalanche ecosystem. But we want to be a multichain project because we strongly believe that the future will be a multi chain. We want any blockchain users to be able to interact with the DeepSquare grid. This is why we plan to integrate other blockchains after Avalanche. And we decided to choose Harmony as our next blockchain where users will be able to use SQUARE to pay for compute resources. We also want to leverage the Harmony bridges to reach the multichain vision of the DeepSquare project. The vision is to go beyond EVM compatible blockchain and also integrate into the Cosmos ecosystem.
Proposal ask
$300k
There is four axes with potential cross benefits for Harmony and DeepSquare and this is where we focused the current proposal:
- Our primary focus is on HPC workloads but why limiting our users to HPC workloads. Our software stack is currently already able to handle both standard virtualized workloads (kubernetes based) and specialised HPC workloads (SLURM based). This opens up the possibilities! What we would like to add in our offering is the ability to spin up blockchain nodes for PoS blockchains. We think the decentralisation, professional grade, sustainable aspects of the DeepSquare grid will allow removing the pain point of single point of failure when running nodes in big tech giants while still giving to the people setting up the nodes unified interfaces to access cloud hoster in many different countries and jurisdictions at the same time. Here a potential collaboration with projects like Pocket Network could clearly be envisioned.
- The development of the Proof of Compute blockchain will require a Consensus team to build the theoretical proof, we will work with researchers active in the Protocol lab and apply for funding with them. The first version of the Proof of Compute will be based on partial job replication to ensure that actors are providing the requested compute resources to the customers.
- The development of the Compute Payment Protocol will be done in EVM compatible blockchain. We are looking for smart contracts devs aligned with our vision to complement our current team.
- The multichain logic implementation
Metrics for success
- The ability to spin up blockchain nodes using the DeepSquare Cluster factory stack
- The ability to spin up blockchain nodes in the DeepSquare Grid in many different locations with a single interface.
- The ability to pay for compute natively in Harmony
- The first steps towards the multichain vision of DeepSquare
Note: the amount in this proposal does not cover all the costs. But it would already be a very valuable contribution. And also creating a strong link between our emerging community and Harmony.
Success metrics and KPI:
- Successful public token launch
- Onboarding 5-10 tiers 2 cloud providers
- Onboarding 2-5 research center with supercomputers
- Onboarding 5-10 startup incubators in the AI space
- Onboarding 5-10 utility companies (for heat re-use)
- Providing DeepSquare branded turnkey sustainable clusters
- Have 2 DeepSquare HPC clusters
External links
The current whitepaper is being currently rewritten. All the general concepts still apply. But the fact that we now focus on a broader range of compute tasks, the High Performance Aspect becomes one of our core strengths but it does not restrict the possibilities to use DeepSquare for other types of workloads.