The Golem Project or Golem Network is a CPU power rental network based on Ethereum. The project that started in 2016, is considered by the community and blockchain enthusiasts as the “Airbnb” company for computers, whose mission is to pay users of the network to lend their processing power not used for commercial purposes.
Table of Contents
What is Golem?
Before starting, the name Golem that the company embraced, was inspired by Stanislaw Lem’s novel called ‘Golem XIV.’ It may be something not important, but some users want to know where projects took their name from.
As such, throughout its history, it has suffered great controversies with public opinion. Finally, it launched its beta mainnet implementation on April 10 of this year (2018), that is, a year and a half after the launch of its ICO in November 2016 with 820,000 ETH, which is equivalent to approximately $466 million dollars today (June 2018).
Golem Logo and website
Its main competitors are SONM and the French company iEXEC that has a value in its cryptocurrency of $ 1.61, press time. However, the trend of the GNT seems to be attracting the attention of investors and capital.
Golem allows anything that requires great computing power – such as scientific calculations, CGI, artificial intelligence processes and data processing – to access it more easily. Users can do their tests with Brass Golem, which can be used for processing 3D images.
Its first version, better known as Brass Golem, is the first stage of the project. The next step will be the launch of Clay Golem, followed by Stone Golem, ending with Iron Golem.
Each new implementation entails an update of the platform, which guarantees that it will become more powerful as its development progresses. Therefore, if it succeeds and as it progresses, greater operational capacity of the entire blockchain project and a safe place in the industry are guaranteed.
One of the main purposes behind Golem is to solve problems and help in different areas. There could be an important potential in medical research and discoveries, urban planning and more.
The GNT Cryptocurrency
The GNT or GLM cryptocurrency can be used by users to pay for computation on the network. You can pay other computer networks to have a task completed. Users that provide computational power can get paid in GNT coins.
The GNT cryptocurrency was released to the market as an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The successful ICO allowed GNT to become one of the largest virtual currencies in the world. However, over time, the GNT digital asset lost part of its value.
Golem (GNT) was positioned in April 2018 as the tenth altcoins with the highest market value in the last week up to a level of capitalization of $175.70 million dollars, according to reports from CoinMarketCap.
It was accepted by Exodus, both in its token mode and waiting for its modality as cryptocurrency. Also implemented in other large exchange wallets such as Bittrex, Poloniex or Binance. Golem (GNT) risen 20% on April 11 to reach $ 0.25, with a history of previously rising to $ 1.25 during a broad increase in alternative currencies earlier this year.
According to data provided by CoinMarketCap, the digital asset reached an all-time high of $1.25 in early January 2018. The bear market for the GNT digital asset ended in January 2020 when the virtual currency fell below $0.03. This shows that the GNT virtual currency lost 97,6% of its value.
As the crypto market started moving higher at the end of 2020. GNT was able to recover part of the price lost. Indeed, the digital currency was able to surpass $0,10 for the first time since November 2018.
It is worth taking into consideration that GNT token holders were able to burn their coins and receive GLM coins on a 1-to-1 ratio. This took place on November 19th, 2020 after a token migration. There is no limit for users to migrate their GNT tokens and convert them into GLM.
Team
The team behind Golem is very solid and with an incredible experience.
Julian Zawistowski
Julian Zawistowski is the CEO and Founder of Golem. He has a MA in International Politics and Economic at the Warsaw School of Economics. He has also been working at the National Bank of Poland, Ministry of Economy and Labour, and was the CEO of Co-founder of Claimstorm. Additionally, he is now working in Golem since it was founded.
During a TNW Answer Session, Mr. Zawistowski commented about Ethereum:
“Ethereum is by far the most promising platform and we cannot see another on that’s remotely close to it. Of course we would like to interact with blockchain more and once Ethereum scales we will be able to do it in a wider manner.”
Piotrek ‘Viggith’ Janiuk
Piotr Janiuk is the CTO and Co-Founder of the company. He has been working as Analyst and Project Manager at the Institute for Structural Research (IBC). Additionally, he was Evaluation Programme Director. Since Golem started, he has been the COO of the project.
Andrzej Regulski
Andrzej Regulski holds an MA in Economics from the Warsaw School of Economics. He was also working at the Institute for Structural Research (IBS) and was Managing Director at imapp.pl.
Aleksandra Skrzypczak
Aleksandra Skrzypczak is the Lead Software Engineer and Co-Founder of the project. She was working as a Software Engineer and Deployment Specialist at Red Ocean, and later she was a Lead Software Engineer at imapp.pl.
Other important team members are Grzegorz Nowakowski, Pawel ‘chfast’ Bylica, Anna Sawicka, Marek Franciszkiewicz, Dariusz Rybi, Muhammed Tanrikulu, Lukasz Foniok, Elena Steiner, Lukasz Glen, Adam Mizerski, Igor Adamski, Magdalena Szydlowska, Gert-Jan Rebel, Chris Waclawek, and many others from different countries.
New Golem
In April 2020, the Golem Project released a blog post in which they share their “next milestone.” In this post, the team explains that the New Golm project proposes a more “overarching platform for more generalized distributed compute.”
The main goal is to focus on developer experience to make it easier for them to build decentralized applications (dApps). During the last years, dApps have expanded in a wide range of blockchain networks.
The Legacy Golem project is now being left behind to start the New Golem project. In this way, there will be new and much more possibilities for developers and other creators. The next goal is to implement a complete architectural vision that we will explain in the next section.
The Next Milestone
As of April 2020, the Next Milestone proposed by the Golem team is a reference implementation of a complete architectural vision. The main goal is to be open, modular and based on industry standards.
The aim of this vision is to use a structured approach that leverages models, standards and blocks that are known from industry-standard architectural frameworks. Everything will be conducted with a platform-agnostic approach to integrate different software development frameworks.
The initial birthplace of this vision is the Golem Factory. With it, it is possible to define patterns and standards. Moreover, it also allows the network to provide reference implementations and share the vision of the new ecosystem. The goal is also to get a more participative community that will be engaged with the project on a regular basis.
With the implementation of the New Golem, it will be possible to release decentralized compute platforms, data centres, decentralized apps, and more. Everything will be facilitated with the APIs provided by the network.
Furthermore, client applications will also be interacting with these APIs. All this network is going to be renewed. From scratch. The New Golem architecture will also include a concept of ExeUnits that would allow for hosting and execution of standardized WebAssembly code packages. This would make it easier for developers to run their projects and release new solutions on top of Golem.
The GLM token is now running on top of a new blockchain network (the New Golem). This would allow the cryptocurrency to leverage better transaction speed, avoid network clogging and more.
Bounties
The team behind Golem is also pushing for the community to provide feedback about the brand new protocol that is being developed. With a series of bounties, they are trying to capture the attention of users. People can earn rewards and give feedback to the Golem team.
One of the examples was related to installing Golemsp, run the Golemsp provider for 2 weeks and fill out a survey. This information will be very useful to improve the whole network and offer better services to users.
This is one of the easiest methods to get the community interested. In the future, new bounties could be available for users all over the world that want to be part of the Golem network.
Conclusion
Golem has a very professional team and a project that is calling the attention of many developers and enthusiasts all over the world. It will be very important for the team to keep focused on it and see what this project will be able to develop in the future.
The team continues working on new implementations, which could be very positive for this cryptocurrency. Moreover, the GNT / GLM digital currency could be positively affected if a new bull trend starts in the market. However, take into consideration that we are not financial advisors and this is for educational purposes only.
