The iEx.ec project

is all about connecting Blockchain technology and cloud computing business. It aims to create a decentralized cloud and set up a marketplace for computing resources. Its founders conducted numerous scientific research over the years at prominent research institutions, such as the French INRIA and CNRS. The team has a step-by-step plan for the four years ahead. iEx.ec will rely on a set of its own technological solutions. However, the team has not done a lot of dissemination work till recently. Its track record on Github is quite modest. So the question remains open, whether the iEx.ec technological base is as good as they claim it to be.

Konstantin Lomashuk, CEO of Satoshi.Fund:

“The market of cloud computing is huge and we will see more and more new companies aiming at it. It’s really good for the decentralized ecosystem.”

iEx.ec

iEx.ec stands for “I Execute”. Headquartered in Lyon, France, the project was created in October 2016. It is a spin-off company from INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science. iEx.ec aims at starting off as a fully distributed Blockchain-based cloud platform. It is designed for distributed Blockchain-based applications (DApps) with plans to evolving into a market network for decentralized computing products and services. In total, their five editions of the project planned within four years from the launch date. The last outlined edition will represent a fully distributed platform for Blockchain computing.

Potential market

The iEx.ec market network will be designed for various participants of the distributed computing ecosystem. It will enable them to do business with each other to better monetize their products and services. Each new version of the network will be updated to host new types of participants:

• DApps providers (version 1)
• application and server providers (version 2)
• data providers (version 3)
• mining farms, miners, GPU apps providers (version 4)
• emerging classes of applications (version 5)
• at this stage, iEx.ec also plans to partner with telecom companies, attracting the latter, among other, with the possibility to halve their infrastructure costs, distributing small data centers along their network point-of-presence

The market network is to provide its users with

• full traceability and trust
• a wide range of customers and, consequently, new markets
• an innovative Blockchain-based environment, tailored for its users’ features and needs

Competitors

The project’s closest challenger is the Golem Network. It is a decentralized economy of computing power, where one can rent it out or develop and sell software. As pointed out in iEx.ec whitepaper, the key difference between the two is that Golem, with its supercomputer, focuses mainly on High-Performance Computing (HPC) users, while iEx.ec, with its decentralized cloud, will first attract DApps and expect Cloud and HPC users to join later when the Network will evolve becoming more competitive. The economy of DApps is on the rise now, and iEx.ec seems to fit perfectly in it.

Main features

• Desktop Grid Software XtremWeb-HEP, to enable use of any computing resources to execute compute- or data-intensive applications
• Blockchain, to coordinate the access of computing resources to distributed apps
• Claim of Proof-of-Contribution consensus protocol, to certify off chain contributions directly on the Blockchain
• Matchmaking smart contracts, to pair a resource request with a resource offer according to their description
• Simplified version of a multicriteria scheduler [MulticritSched], to enable customers to define their own preferences based on specific criteria
• Market management framework, including API to register bids, a set of template contracts, a web user interface and JavaScript code
• Result checking algorithm, including escrow mechanisms and a reputation system, to choose business partners from the market based on their provable reputation and on the established budget
• Native RLC token, to pay for Application, Server and Data providers on the market network

Team

The core team members, including Gilles Fedak, Haiwu He, Oleg Lodygensky, and Mircea Moca, have an impressive research and development background in big data, grid and cloud computing. Gilles Fedak alone co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers. The core features underlying the iEx.ec are their own developments. They were produced in the scope of their work at INRIA and CNRS. The team is also linked with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Blockchain part is done by two experts from La Javaness, a French digital innovation accelerator. There are also a data management expert, the Energy Positive Server developer, two PR specialists and a new media expert based in the company’s China office. In the future, the team considers collaborating with several well-known European and Chinese universities in research. It also intends to obtain complementary funding through national and European research agencies.

ICO Details

• Launch: 19 April, 2017 at 13:00 UTC
• End: as soon as the max cap of 60.000.000 RLC is reached (otherwise – in 30 days)
• Max RLC total supply: 87,000,000 RLC
• Max RLC sold by crowdsale: 60,000,000 RLC
• RLC minimum objective: 10,000,000 RLC
• Both BTC and ETH are accepted
• 1 BTC = 5000 RLC
• USD/ETH – to be defined at the start of ICO, according to the ETHBTC rate
• 20% bonus – April 19 to April 29
• 10% bonus – April 29 to May 9
• Crowdsale terms and funding URL: http://crowdsale.iex.ec

Token distribution

• Maximum of 60,000,000 RLC – crowdsale
• 12,000,000 RLC to 15,000,000 RLC – founders, team and early investors
• 1,700,000 RLC to 6,000,000 RLC – a fund for developers, to be distributed in the form of bounty grants, marketing actions, and research grants
• 1,700,000 RLC to 6,000,000 RLC – special contingency reserve (not sold on markets)