iExec, a blockchain-based distributed cloud computing platform, last Wednesday reached its crowdfunding target of $12 million within just three hours, making it the 5th largest Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in history.
More than 1,200 individuals contributed the equivalent of 10,000 BTC in return for RLC tokens. RLC tokens (Runs on Lots of Computers) are the sole means of paying for services on the iExec platform, granting holders payment and access rights to the first distributed cloud network.
Headquartered in Lyon, France, the iExec team will now start work on building a distributed computing network that will allow anyone anywhere in the world to provision computing resources through the cloud.
Cloud Services
Current cloud services are struggling to meet the demand for resource-intensive business practices and their centralized design creates a bottleneck for data. iExec proposes a completely new model that pools computing resources from participants on the network making them available to everyone.
iExec will provide distributed applications running on the blockchain with scalable, secure and easy access to the services, the data sets and the computing resources they need. Its technology relies on Ethereum smart contracts to manage virtual cloud infrastructure and enable high-performance computing services on demand.
Gilles Fedak, CEO, iExec said:
“At iExec, we can now organize decentralized infrastructures and marketplaces, where everyone will be able to rent its computing resources, where the innovative SMEs which design Big Data and HPC applications will be able to sell them online immediately with the needed resources to run them, and where highly valued datasets will be rentable with a fine-grain business model.”
The team is lead by CEO Dr. Gilles Fedak and Chief Scientist Dr. Haiwu He, two well-respected researchers in distributed and cloud computing. Together they have co-authored over 120 papers in their respective fields. They will now lead the team on a four-year plan with the first milestone scheduled for release at Devcon 3 in October 2017, a highly anticipated mainnet with off-chain computing for DApps.
iExec’s token known as RLC is listed on Bittrex and Liqui.