- I don't have any info on how this works from the repo. 99% of people will click on the repo and click back because of the lack of this. I went on google and found a [this](https://sideprojects.net/posts/NB697xnBrWQioywoP/rentmycpu-r...) link, but still no information.
- How are payments processed? Do you need to trust the other party a good amount? As a cpu cycle seller, how do I know I'll get money for time I process? How does a cpu buyer know they aren't getting scammed?
- How are computations done? If I have to re-write my existing software to leverage this, I might as well rent a VPS to save a lot of time.
- Do I need to select user by user at a granular level to run my tasks, or can I just throw a task + $ at a pool and have the system figure it out?
I love the idea though, it's really been a bit of a pipe dream for the past 20 or so years. It's just a very tough problem to execute correctly. Best of luck.
I remember doing the Seti at Home and Folding at Home projects as a screen saver that used CPU time to solve problems. That was for charity.
How is this different than mining for Bitcoin or any other virtual currency? I want to make sure my CPU is not used for illegal means and then the FBI busted down my door because my CPU was part of a peer to peer network serving kiddie porn?
Bitcoin mining is finding y < sha256(sha256(x)) - that's it. When you mine coin you don't give anyone the ability to execute Turing complete code. Even their transaction "scripting" language isn't Turing complete.
> I want to make sure my CPU is not used for illegal means and then the FBI busted down my door because my CPU was part of a peer to peer network serving [illegal material]?
You run the same risks every time you click a link in a web browser currently. It can execute WASM code and it has network access.
Distributed computing for hire.
Families around the world have reasonable amounts of computing power that sits mostly unused; why not make a few bucks doing things similar to Folding@Home Seti@Home, but for a price? Get paid for your computations.
Of course this was before Bitcoin was a thing, and looking back, it feels naïve to have thought it could be successful. I certainly lacked the expertise to build such a thing. But I wasn't the only one thinking of it. Others tried it and appear to have failed. From 2011:
Ask HN: Is there a paid Distributed Computing service? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2499466
These days I'd be concerned to run somebody else's workload on my own equipment, lest the FBI/CIA/KGB/FSB/Interpol/SecretService/GRU show up at my door.
Still, an interesting thought especially given how powerful so many devices have become.
It’s not just your spare compute, but your residential IP address is valuable as an unblockable address for bots and scrapers
Isn’t that precisely how IPFS works?
https://web.archive.org/web/20060118044349/http://www.cpusha...
So I've been doing this for a couple decades now: You create an ad tag that does some work, and you buy some impressions. You then get to "hire" thousands or millions of compute-nodes around the world to do some work. Tooling to split up the work into ad tags is just something I've accumulated in the while.
The real trick I think would be allowing users to join the (ad) network as an audience-of-one that we can pay directly, and my thinking is it was always less of a technical problem than a tax/legal problem. If you (or anyone) think this part of the problem is easy you should get in touch.
[0] https://gridcoin.us/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Open_Infrastructure_f...
Edited to add footnote: no affiliation or familiarity with GridCoin! Just that the concept described rang a bell, and I was able to find the link.
I remember I was excited about that based on CORBA, ages ago. There was a paper where this was outlined (which I can't find).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Object_Request_Broker_A...
Several others have pointed out why they wouldn't use such a service, I would definitely use this; Not to make money per se but to distribute my compute load within my network across the computers, smartphones, tablets, TVs i.e. whatever with a browser capable of running web assembly.
Consumer level distributed computing is my pet peeve and I'm obsessively power conscious about my computing needs. I use low power, silent computing systems in my house that means Intel U/ AMD G series CPU, loads of ARM SoCs, Consoles for gaming etc. and for anything demanding I compute using cloud.
Considering I use only low power systems, I could really use distributed computing to improve my productivity and that's been currently limited to some data science loads using Dask, Modin and occasional use of programming languages designed for DC.
Update: I have added your project link to a distributed computing problem thread on my problem validation platform. Hopefully those who are looking for such a solution would be able to find it there.
[1] https://needgap.com/problems/218-distributing-computing-load...
Haven’t thought of these guys in a while.
https://orchid.com/ and https://mysterium.network/ are doing something similar but with network/bandwidth; whilst https://filecoin.com/ and https://sia.tech/ are focused on storage.
Got to say, despite HN's general aversion towards blockchain/crypto, the space is budding with some really interesting decentralized frameworks, platforms, and apps not possible before at this scale.
As evidenced by Coinbase's numbers, they seemed to have absolutely zoomed past Stripe, and so it looks like there's some undeniable momentum and velocity in web3 initiatives.
Seems they recently rebranded, they used to be luminati.io
I will be exitedly following this closely.
An app made to compute tasks from other nodes in the network using your CPU and you earn money for that.
[...]
How it works
This app works with webassembly files. These files are executed in a sandboxed environment (because uwp apps are sandboxed by default). You have the ability to execute a webassembly file on many nodes. To differentiate the node on which the webassembly file is executed, a numeric parameter is passed."
What's the story with WebAssembly and sockets/API calls?
I assume that WebAssembly prevents whatever it is running from opening sockets and making API calls...
If it doesn't -- then how will you prevent Black Hats / ill-intentioned people -- from creating Bot and DDoS networks, and other mayhem?
Interesting way to make crypto eco-friendly: acknowledge that even the most exploitative mining rigs can't economically compete against literal cpu-jacking at scale :)
