Golem

What is Golem (GLM)?

Golem is a peer-to-peer market for computing power, providing a decentralized platform for users to rent resources from other users’ computers.

Attempting to disrupt the dominance of a handful of megacorporations, Golem is a path back toward pricing efficiency in the computing market. It operates as an “Infrastructure-as-a-Service” (IaaS) and a “Platform-as-a-Service” (PaaS) and allows anyone to create and deploy software onto its network.

Golem is billed as a global, open-source, decentralized supercomputer that anyone can use. It is also one of the oldest projects on Ethereum and one of the first to carry out an ICO.

When Was Golem Launched?

Golem dates back to 2014, when a group of blockchain enthusiasts presented their concept at the DevCon 0 conference. The following year, Golem Network’s CEO presented Nanopayments in Ethereum at DevCon 1.

Golem was originally slated to be funded by DAOist but became one of the first projects to crowdfund for development. The team carried out an ICO in November 2016, raising over $8 million in ETH. According to the Golem team, they were able to reach their funding target in just 29 minutes.

The first Golem implementation, Brass Golem, was one of the first decentralized applications (dApps) to be launched on the Ethereum mainnet. Brass was followed by Clay, and in 2021, Golem iterated again by launching its “Yagna” implementation mainnet.

Who are the Founders of Golem?

Golem was founded by Aleksandra Skrzypczak, Andrzej Regulski, Julian Zawistowski, and Piotr Janiuk under the company Golem Factory.

At launch, Zawistowski was the leader of the project and CEO of Golem Factory. He holds an MA in Economics from the Warsaw School of Economics and created a consulting and software development company called “imapp” with Golem COO Regulski.

Skrzypczak, an employee of imapp and holder of two Master’s degrees in Science from the University of Warsaw, was the first to work full-time on the Golem project. She led R&D efforts from the start, planned the project, and took on the role of Lead Software Engineer.

Janiuk was the project’s CTO. He worked on several bleeding-edge tech projects, including CUDA shortly after its implementation, and even assisted in the development of the hit computer game “The Witcher 2.” He is also considered the father of BlackVision, a real-time TV broadcast rendering engine used by BlackBurst, a leading Polish broadcaster.

Janiuk appears to be the only member of the original founding team still actively involved in the project. He is currently the company’s Acting CEO.

How Does Golem Work?

Aside from software developers, Golem Yagna is focused on two particular categories of users: requesters and providers.

Providers have free IT resources and decide to sell these spare resources in the Golem decentralized market. The buyers are requesters, parties that need IT hardware for various purposes.

The process begins with the provider announcing the availability of resources on the market. This is called an “Offer.” Meanwhile, a requestor publishes the resources it needs (for example, CPU and memory requirements or the type of runtime) in a “Demand.”

The Golem market matches these Offers and Demands, and when a requestor is willing to use the provider’s resources, an “Agreement” is signed. The resources are then used by the requestor, who is billed in GLM tokens by the provider. To conclude the Agreement, the requestor transfers GLM to the provider.

Both requesters and providers may be launched on different hardware, from cloud environments and servers to desktop and laptop computers. Requesters can even be run on mobile devices with the right operating environment.

What Makes Golem Unique?

Golem is a project that has been around for a long time but is still very much on the cutting edge of technology. Furthermore, it attempts to disrupt an industry that is very much controlled by a select number of corporations.

However, it is also one of a number of cryptocurrency projects that attempt to allow individuals to make the most of their hardware. Like GPU mining and memory plotting, Golem gives users a way to earn a little bit if they have some computing power to spare.

If you have free hardware and are interested in earning GLM for being a provider, take a look at this tutorial in Golem’s documentation. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS are officially supported, although it is possible to use macOS and Windows as provider hosts with WASI execution environments. GLM payments are made on the Ethereum mainnet or Polygon.

How is the Golem Network Secured?

The Golem team could have launched their own blockchain but decided against it, opting instead to use Ethereum. As such, Golem is reliant on Ethereum for the security of its consensus and to ensure that all payments from Golem requesters to providers go through.

Fortunately, Ethereum is one of the most secure blockchains in existence. While claims of battle-tested may have to wait since it has recently switched to a new means of attaining consensus, Ethereum does also have the additional advantage of massive decentralization.

Now powered by proof-of-stake (PoS), Ethereum relies on validators rather than miners to create and verify blocks. These validators have to bond a minimum of 32 ETH to the protocol.

This “stake” is central to consensus because it can be confiscated if the validator misbehaves while also defining the probability of the validator winning a block and therefore earning rewards as a return on investment.

What is the Use of GLM?

GLM is an ERC-20 fungible token on the Ethereum blockchain and is used as a utility token on the Golem network. It is also the currency used in peer-to-peer transactions for renting idle digital resources, including spare computing power.

However, GLM isn’t Golem’s first token. The Golem project is old enough that it launched the GNT token before the benefits of ERC-20 were widely understood. As these became clearer and the ERC-20 standard became key to the use of layer 2 scaling solutions and decentralized exchanges on Ethereum, the team decided to switch. GNT tokens are being migrated to GLM at a 1:1 ratio via a perpetual smart contract. This means migration is irreversible, but there is no deadline for GNT holders to migrate. Currently, over 62% of the total GNT token supply has been migrated to GLM. Most major centralized cryptocurrencies have either finished the migration of their token reserves or acknowledged them. However, a select few have declined to perform the migration.

How Much GLM is In Circulation?

Golem has a total maximum supply of 1 billion GLM, minted during its 2016 ICO in the form of GNT tokens.

82% of the token sale went to ICO participants, while 12% went to Golem Factory and 6% went to the founders.

How Do You Buy GLM?

You can buy GLM on a variety of cryptocurrency exchanges, the vast majority of which have already finalized work on the GNT to GLM migration. You can also buy GLM on Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges (DEX), since it is an ERC-20 token.

When using a DEX like Uniswap, make sure to double-check the contract address of the GLM token.

How Do You Store GLM?

GLM is an ERC-20 token and, therefore, extremely easy to store. Ethereum is a blockchain with a significant network effect, so there are a number of highly rated ERC-20 compatible wallets out there.

Trust Wallet, MetaMask, and the GameStop Wallet are some examples of hot wallets you can easily access and transact with. If you want the added security of a hardware wallet, both Ledger and Trezor can store ERC-20 tokens.

Golem Energy Consumption

Golem isn’t a blockchain network on its own. Rather, it comes in the form of a dApp built on the Ethereum blockchain. As mentioned already, Ethereum is a PoS blockchain. This means it is no longer reliant on energy-intensive mining.

In fact, you could argue that GLM makes the most of idle computing power, ensuring that whatever is powered on gets used to the fullest for only a marginal increase in energy consumed.

Is GLM a Good Investment?

GLM is an attractive token for proponents of peer-to-peer technologies and resource sharing. Its billing as a decentralized supercomputer paints a vision of a resource-efficient future that nevertheless needs adoption to be realized.

The GLM token also possesses a relatively attractive distribution, with a good 82% of its entire supply in the hands of ICO participants. Better yet, no GLM tokens were handed to venture capitalists or hedge funds, which is an issue that plagues many newer projects.

The value of GLM will depend on the project’s long-term success with respect to the network effect. As more and more providers come online to share their unused computing resources, and as more requesters move away from legacy alternatives and onto Golem, demand for GLM can only grow.