Overview from the Golem Project Whitepaper
● Golem is the first truly decentralized supercomputer, creating a global market for computing power. Combined with flexible tools to aid developers in securely distributing and monetizing their software, Golem altogether changes the way compute tasks are organized and executed. By powering decentralized microservices and asynchronous task execution, Golem is set to become a key building block for future Internet service providers and software development. And, by substantially lowering the price of computations, complex applications such as CGI rendering, scientific calculation, and machine learning become more accessible to everyone.
● Golem connects computers in a peer-to-peer network, enabling both application owners and individual users ("requestors") to rent resources of other users’ ("providers") machines. These resources can be used to complete tasks requiring any amount of computation time and capacity. Today, such resources are supplied by centralized cloud providers which, are constrained by closed networks, proprietary payment systems, and hard-coded provisioning operations. Also core to Golem’s built-in feature set is a dedicated Ethereum-based transaction system, which enables direct payments between requestors, providers, and software developers.
● The function of Golem as the backbone of a decentralized market for computing power can be considered both Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), as well as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). However, Golem reveals its true potential by adding dedicated software integrations to the equation. Any interested party is free to create and deploy software to the Golem network by publishing it to the Application Registry. Together with the Transaction Framework, developers can also extend and customize the payment mechanism resulting in unique mechanisms for monetizing software.
Golem is basically a decentralized massive supercomputer where applications that would normally take a lot of time to execute can be inserted into the golem network for a much faster computation time. The Golem network will break down the computation into smaller pieces and send them to other computers to be worked on simultaneously. The network completes the tasks and pieces them back together in order to finish a large computation much more efficiently.
More information
● Project webpage: golem.network
● Official Twitter: twitter.com/golemproject
● Official Slack: golemproject.slack.com (you can join here)
● Official Blog: blog.golemproject.net
● Reddit: reddit.com/r/golemproject