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What’s new with iExec? We’re delighted to share some recent news in this new Project Update blog post! As always, the goal remains the same: update the community on what the team has been working on over the past few weeks. As it’s impossible to capture everything in a single article, we’ll continue to focus on a few selected topics that have not yet been communicated heavily. Here’s what we’ll be looking at:
⚡️ The iExec Worker Pass NFT — earning RLC in the iExec Workerpool
🔥 Collaborative events with Binance
🪐 Results from iExec’s Web3 Incubator for startups
⭐️ Recent advancements with Research
We can’t start this blog post without speaking about the iExec Worker Pass! After the 3 drops in January, lucky holders of the iExec Worker Pass Utility NFT connected to the iExec Worker Pool and earned RLC tokens in exchange for providing their computing power for a period of 30 days.
We know our community continues to grow, so if you’re new, here’s a quick refresher on the Worker Pass project:
We’ve just completed the first phase of the iExec Worker Pass Utility NFT project. The iExec Worker Pass is a Utility NFT, which allowed holders access to a public iExec Worker Pool for a special operation period lasting 30 days. This means connecting their machine to the network, becoming “iExec Workers”. These iExec Workers were then able to provide computing power by executing computational tasks, getting paid in RLC tokens based on the number of tasks completed.
The first phase of the iExec Worker Pass project was a huge success! Following huge interest during the NFT distribution campaign, with over 50,000 applicants, we were happy to see the public iExec Workerpool being so productive. To share some of the figures with you, machines in the iExec Worker Pool racked up more than 56,000 hours of computation, completing over 65,000 tasks, totaling over 15,000 RLC tokens distributed among workers!
You might be wondering — what were iExec Worker machines providing their computing power for? Workers were executing tasks for the Universe@home scientific research project. Put simply, Universe@Home does what’s known as “universe modeling” through astronomy simulations. Running these simulations is not possible in a laboratory due to a lack of computing power, so it is outsourced to a distributed network of computers. The iExec Workers were able to contribute to this project, helping scientists answer fundamental questions of the universe — from the birth of stars to identifying supernova explosions!
Oh, and in case you missed it: the iExec Workerpool was in 21st place in the #BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) world ranking of over 400,000 machines! The iExec Workers were competing with massive research institutes from around the world!
We would like to give a huge thanks to the thousands that participated in the drops, and a massive congratulations to the lucky winners of the iExec Worker Pass who contributed to the operation and earned RLC!
This was the big surprise of January. iExec ran a few collaborations with the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance! Here’s a bit of context: When Binance France asked its community which town they should go to meet the French Web3 projects, the first answer was Lyon! Being iExec’s HQ city — a huge thanks to all of those who have voted for the city, by the way. Following that, we had the pleasure to welcome the Binance team here at the iExec office, at what we call the “iMaison”!
First, we set up a Live Stream with iExec CEO Gilles Fedak and Binance France Head of Marketing Hamid B. The occasion for Gilles to introduce iExec to the Binance audience connected online, to explain our value proposition, and to speak a bit about his journey in the blockchain world.
🇫🇷 If you haven’t watched the replay yet, here is it: https://www.binance.com/fr/live/video?roomId=2119610
🇬🇧 And for all our community members around the world, you can read the translated interview here in English:
Binance Meet-up: Interview with CEO Gilles Fedak
The next day was the meet-up at the iExec office, with the iExec and Binance teams and members of both communities! Here again, Gilles presented iExec, and Head of Adoption Nelly Cornejo and Strategy Community Manager Blair Maclennan had the occasion to explain all the programs in place to be part of the iExec journey.
In the end, it was time for a raclette party! If you are not familiar with this typical winter dish, well, think of cheese on potatoes, and charcuteries. Yes, it’s delicious if you like cheese.
We really enjoyed meeting with the Binance community and discussing crypto and Web3!
Now, the latest news on the Web3 Incubator front. As you may remember, we launched our own Web3 Incubator in November, in partnership with the well-established startup accelerator H7 (Lyon member of the “French Tech”). The goal? Help startups enter Web3, through support from the iExec and H7 teams and the use of the iExec technology.
For some figures: since the start of the Incubator 3 months ago, the startups enjoyed about 40 contents, including 25 individual training sessions and 15 inspirational workshops! Among the topics covered by the iExec team members: introduction to blockchain, principles of the token economy, how to start a Web3 project, how to sell a Web3 product to big companies…
At the end of January, we held a Demo-Day event to gather the local Web3 communities, and for the startups to show the first version of their project. The event began with a talk by Head of Adoption Nelly Cornejo and Starton CEO Fabien Poggi. We were happy to join forces with Starton one more time, after the Starton Web3 Hackathon for which iExec was a partner. Here, the talk was focused on this central question: ‘How to accelerate Web3 adoption?’. For those who know French, you can read this article based on what Nelly presented.
This was followed by pitches from the startups themselves, showing their progress and demonstrating how they use the iExec stack.
The first startup was LAfricaMobile. The team provides a multi-channel communication platform to help companies in Africa engage with their clients, thanks to solutions aligned to local specificities. The LAfricaMobile ambition by using the iExec technology is to implement data user governance. When users share data with companies to benefit from a service, the companies then send targeted SMS advertisements.
In exchange, they would be given free phone credit. Thanks to iExec, users will be able to choose the frequency of reception and advertising themes of the messages they receive. In other words, LAfricaMobile aims to democratize phone credit by allowing users to retain full control over their data and how it is used. This data security would be guaranteed by the iExec blockchain and confidential computing solution.
Then came Ziplo, a solution for transfer and repository files that allows freelancers, small businesses, and SMEs to protect their intellectual property in 3 clicks. The tool is very easy to use, and it keeps the file for up to 15 years, depending on the user’s choice. Each file that passes through Ziplo has a unique file fingerprint, a serial number, and a time stamp to ensure ownership. The time-stamping is done with the help of the iExec blockchain, ensuring transparency and unfalsifiability of operations!
The last one was Wearspaces, an immersive marketplace dedicated to fashion that aims to offer a new retail experience with clothes that can be worn in real life and within Metaverses. The project is still under development, but as there are several topics involving personal data, the ambition is that Wearspaces includes the iExec solution ‘Hologram’ to allow personal data monetization without users losing privacy and ownership of their data. And create more business opportunities!
How this fits into the bigger picture? These projects are in line with the market segments we want to address and the applications we want to create for them thanks to our technology.
Now, what’s next? The startups continue to be supported by iExec and H7 during the last 3 months of incubation. The first period was focused on education, and the coming one is more about building actual solutions.
If you live in Lyon, you will be able to see the results during the incubator closing event on April 6th! Register here to attend.
On the research part, several good news to share! Let’s start with the European project ONTOCHAIN, for which iExec is a founding and core partner. If you remember, last summer, iExec furthered its partnership with ONTOCHAIN by becoming the pilot infrastructure of the project. Meaning that for the third year of the project (Open Call 3), the ONTOCHAIN network and selected teams would use the iExec Sidechain. The goal for them? Benefiting from a trustable, fast, and fee-less blockchain to develop and run their projects. For us? Increasing the use of the Marketplace, and reinforcing security by adding new nodes to our Sidechain!
As a result, some teams from ONTOCHAIN (Open Call 1 and 2) have already deployed their applications on the iExec Sidechain (including Knowledge-X of course, but also the projects DESMO-LD, MFSSIA and PS-SDA), and many are still to come. Indeed we expect around 25/30 projects in total! They will be part of the iExec network and ecosystem and run their app on the stack, increasing the activity in the platform.
Still on the research side, what about DataCloud? The team has been working on several new features for the infrastructure built within this European project. Among the features the team is especially proud of are the ‘Service Tasks’. Service Tasks can be executed in the long run and paid on a time basis, with a cost per hour. Service tasks will be great to support compute-intensive applications like streaming video processing and latency-bound applications because having a task running continuously means you can often save the task startup time.
The end goal then is to transfer the features deployed within DataCloud to the iExec Marketplace, so these features will be available to the whole iExec community. Here again, if we look at the bigger picture, these capabilities will help us in the development of the applications we want to offer to the market segments we identify.
Last but not least, we have recently joined a new European project, this time for the industrial area. The project is called ‘CAST’ and it’s part of the European research initiative i4Trust. CAST aims to provide a trustworthy solution for carbon capture. In a few words, the solidified carbon product involves a complex supply chain, where many different actors are involved (producer, transport company, chemical plant…). Like in all multi-participant processes, data comes from different sources, and it is highly susceptible to breaches of integrity.
The challenge of the CAST project is to create a single truth without a single source to help identify fraud. iExec will provide its blockchain infrastructure to make the project possible. The goal remains the same: increasing adoption of the Sidechain! We can also mention that KnowledgeX is working with us on this project.
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