Akash, a serverless platform where users can run any application currently running on the cloud; while leveraging the benefits of decentralized computation enabled by the Akash blockchain, announced that it has partnered with Solana to bring web-scale smart contracts to Akash super cloud.
Utilizing blockchain for provisioning and settlement, deployment on Akash occurs off-chain; limiting users from running verifiable smart contracts as the scalability envelope is not designed for on-chain execution.
Solana is a performant permissionless blockchain which raised $20 million last year. On variants of the Solana testnet; a network of 200 physically distinct nodes supports a sustained throughput of more than 50,000 transactions per second when running with GPUs.
Akash + Solana
By interoperating with Solana, Akash users will soon be able to run secure and scalable smart contracts on Solana’s hyper-performance platform and pay using Akash Token (AKT). Whereas Solana’s users will soon be able to run distributed applications; (like machine learning or web apps) and settle using the Solana token (SOL) on Akash. Additionally, Akash will provide support for Solana’s validators to run nodes in highly secure and scalable environments.
“When we were exploring potential ways to enable smart contracts, Solana was the only platform that met our requirements. Currently, validators have little to no option other than to run their nodes on centralized cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. 60% of Ethereum nodes currently run on AWS and other centralized cloud service providers. This threatens decentralization at the core. Validators have few alternatives and are forced to make a massive upfront investment in talent, servers, and flexible scalability or choose the big cloud. By leveraging Akash decentralized cloud; Solana’s validators will no longer be required to do this, and they’ll be able to stay decentralized.”
– The Akash team
