Dive into IO.NET, a GPU Internet

Forward the Original Title‘【保姆级攻略】一篇文章读懂GPU互联网io.net，空头+挖矿 必看’.

1. io.net Background Introduction

1. Artificial intelligence computing demand is growing exponentially. The demand for artificial intelligence computation is growing at an astonishing rate, and the demand is insatiable. By 2023, the income of AI workload data centers will exceed 100 billion US dollars, and even in the most conservative cases, the demand for artificial intelligence still exceeds chip supply.

During periods of high interest rates and scarce capital, new data centers capable of accommodating such hardware require a lot of upfront investment. The key issue is that advanced chips such as NVidia A100 and H100 have production constraints. Although GPU performance is constantly improving and costs are steadily decreasing, the physical manufacturing process is not accelerating fast enough, and shortages of raw materials, components, and production capabilities have limited the pace of development.

1. The contradiction of centralized hardware resources is increasingly prominent. In the history of computing, software frameworks and design patterns are self-shaping around the hardware configuration available in the market. Most of the frameworks and libraries used for artificial intelligence development heavily depend on centralized hardware resources, but in the past decade, significant progress has been made in distributing workloads across geographically distributed hardware.

2. Distributed hardware load mode has obvious advantages

(1) Hardware is not subject to current supply chain restrictions;

(2) Fully exploit existing GPU resources;

(3) Distributed loads reduce centralized dependence.

1. It is increasingly becoming the focus of recent market investment trends.

DePIN has become rapidly popular as one of several key narratives, especially on Solana. With projects like Render and Helium making significant progress, DePIN and AI-type related projects are worth studying. In addition to a large number of AI projects that have recently emerged as memes, there are also strong contenders in the market such as Bittensor, Render, Arkham, etc. from the last round, and the most popular recently is io.net!

Under the continued new highs of BTC, the AI sector returned strongly after a week of consolidation. From the time scale of nearly half a year, the tokens of various projects in the AI sector have continued to rise, and WLD, RNDR, AGIX, FET, and other tokens have increased several times. And in this month starting from the beginning of February, a large number of new projects with token increases of more than five times, or even tens of times, appeared in the AI sector in less than two weeks.

Depin+AI+Sol Ecosystem = The best combination of 2024, the protagonist is io.net

2. Introduction to the io.net Project

io.net is a decentralized computing network that supports the development, execution, and scaling of ML applications on the Solana blockchain. It combines a million GPUs to form the world’s largest GPU cluster. DePIN.io.net aggregates underutilized resources such as independent data centers, crypto miners, and GPUs from crypto projects like Filecoin and Render to solve this problem. These resources are combined in a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN), allowing engineers to access substantial computational power in a system that is accessible, customizable, cost-effective, and easy to implement.

3. Practical Path of io.net

io.net is a classic example of the DePIN theory: it uses a token incentive mechanism to structurally reduce the cost of acquiring and retaining supplier resources, and ultimately reduce the cost for the end consumer. The network aggregates a large number of heterogeneous GPUs into a shared pool for use by artificial intelligence developers and companies. Today, this network includes thousands of GPUs from data centers, mines, and consumer-grade devices.

io.net takes advantage of potential hardware worldwide, deploying a customized network and coordination layer on it to create a highly scalable GPU internet online. The network utilizes Ray, Ludwig, Kubernetes, and a variety of other open-source distributed computing frameworks, allowing machine learning engineering and operations teams to make minor adjustments on the GPU network to scale their workloads. Clusters can be launched on demand to handle workloads in parallel on io.net GPUs, and these libraries are used to handle coordination, scheduling, fault tolerance, and scaling.

4. Unique Advantages of io.net

io.net has a unique advantage in maintaining light assets and reducing the marginal cost of serving any established customer to almost zero, while establishing a direct relationship with both supply and demand in the market. They are in a favorable position to serve thousands of new businesses that need to use GPUs to build competitive products that everyone will interact with in the future.。

5. Main Features of io.net Platform

1. Decentralized Computing Network: io.net utilizes a decentralized computing mode, distributing computing resources globally to improve computational efficiency and stability.

2. Low-cost Access: Compared to traditional centralized services, io.net Cloud provides lower access costs, enabling more machine learning engineers and researchers to obtain computational resources.

3. Distributed Cloud Cluster: The platform offers a distributed cloud cluster. Users can select appropriate computational resources according to their needs and assign tasks to different nodes for processing.

4. Support for Machine Learning Tasks: io.net Cloud is dedicated to providing computation resources for machine learning engineers, making it easier for them to carry out tasks like model training and data processing.

6. How to Obtain Airdrops

1. One is to provide GPU computing power (machine mining).

2. Another way is to provide CPU computing power to earn points. According to the project founder, io.net will be released on April 28 this year. The specific point rules have not been made public yet, and point rewards cannot be checked at this time, currently it is in the blind mining stage.

7. io.net Technology Progress

Currently io.net has made good progress:

• It is a decentralized AWS for ML (Machine Learning) training on GPUs.
• It provides instant, permissionless access to a global GPU and CPU network, which is already online.
• They have 25,000 nodes; their revolutionary technology can cluster GPU clouds together.
• It can save 90% of the computing cost for large-scale AI startups.
• It is integrated with Render and Filecoin.
• It is based on Solana.

8. io.net Phase Plan

• io.net will launch the first phase of the points reward program on March 1, expecting to launch IO tokens by the end of April. This plan is called Ignition and will last until April 28. The plan will reward points based on the GPU provided by the user to the network.
• When asked whether the reward points will be converted into io.net’s native token IO, io.net’s founder and CEO Ahmad Shadid declined to comment, but he said that the token is expected to be launched on April 28.
• io.net stated that the upcoming Ignition reward program is the first step for io.net to decentralize and transfer governance to the community.

9. io.net Founding Team

10. io.net Investors

11. Financing situation of io.net

On March 6, 2024, Solana’s DePIN protocol io.net announced the completion of a $30 million Series A financing round. io.net stated that the funds raised will be used to build the world’s largest decentralized GPU network and address the shortage of AI computation. Multicoin Capital participated in the investment. Multicoin Capital partner Shayon Sengupta wrote an article explaining why he invested in io.net.

Currently, the official announcement only reveals the Series A investors. The lead investment was completed on March 5, raising $30 million with a valuation of $1 billion. The investors include: Hack VC*, Multicoin Capital, 6th Man Ventures, M13, Delphi Digital, Foresight Ventures, Animoca Brands, Continue Capital, Solana Ventures, Aptos, LongHash Ventures, SevenX Ventures, ArkStream Capital, MH Ventures, OKX Ventures, Amber Group, Modular Capital, Mo Shaikh, Avery Ching, Yat Siu, Jin Kang, Anatoly Yakovenko, and Sebastien Borget.

12. Brief Review of the io.net Project

(1) In terms of platform philosophy: io.net is an advanced decentralized computing network, offering machine learning engineers a way to access distributed cloud clusters at a relatively low cost. The launch of this platform provides users with more choices, enabling them to compute and process data in a more economical and efficient way.

(2) In terms of investment value: The emergence of io.net fills a gap in the decentralized computing field, providing users with a novel and potentially powerful way of computing. As the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to develop, the demand for computing resources is also increasing, therefore io.net has high market potential and value.

(3) In terms of institutional strength: Many leading institutions are involved, including famous industry leaders who participated in this financing, including Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenk, Aptos founder Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, Yat Siu from Animoca Brands, Sebastien Borget from Sandbox, and Jin Kang from Perlone Capital.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [矿圈百事通]. Forward the Original Title‘【保姆级攻略】一篇文章读懂GPU互联网io.net，空头+挖矿 必看’. All copyrights belong to the original author [Miner uncle]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
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