Hi there, not sure of the best way to word this topic I’m afraid.
My question is around what stops a powerful computing system (e.g. an established miner’s setup) from providing the bulk of the holo ecosystem hosting at a much cheaper price than any individual home based node. I’m sure this has been addressed so feel free to link me to existing topics.
If I am trying to provide hosting services with my existing Holoport, but in the future the energy cost is say twice as much as a competitor, does it lead to a dominance of hosts, which is more reflective of current web hosting situations? This might not be the case when the network is just running on Holoports which are distributed around the world, but what about down the track when you can host without specific devices?
If a small number of people provide the majority of the hosting this seems counter to the aims of Holochain and a truly decentralised internet.
I am not a technical / computer person as such so keep that in mind in your replies
Hi Leo - great name, I’m Leo Sun, Scorpio rising, Gemini Moon!
Can’t remember where I saw it but yes, in terms of what holo.host are providing they have limits set to address the issue. But remember, they are only one provider of hosting services, marketing themselves as the ‘AirBnB’ of hosting, so if you think along those lines there are still hotels and other forms of the ‘hosting people’ business and there will be for hosting Holochain apps too, provided of course the project manages to grow enough for services to be needed and wanted.
I’m half-way through listening to Andrew Chen’s new book The Cold Start Problem: Using Network Effects to Scale Your Product which came out yesterday and is an interesting study from the Silicon Valley insider as to how the most successful projects like Uber and AirBnB did this. From what I’ve listened to so far this project has done well to grow the community it has so far, the real test is how does it scale this as it begins to emerge into the commercial arena, and that’s where I’m finding Andrew Chen’s book enlightening and provides some insight into the question you ask (which I’m going to post about separately when I’ve finished listening to it and gathered my thoughts):
Personally I see Holoport hosting as a bridge from the current centralised world to begin to seed the decentralised and distributed one. It is just a very small start. So the questions you and many ask are based on current world issues, and thus it is hard to answer as different problems will arise. For example, there may indeed be a network of supercomputers set up to provide hosting for Holochain apps, the source code for the hosting is open source. Holoports will need to forge their own brand, market niche, community, etc. as in any healthy business environment a brand would. We do not live in a world where that happens right now, so the issues you worry about are the ones Holochain is being created to address, currently funded by Holoports.
There is a big difference between Holochain, which is a language you can build a truly decentralised and distributed internet with; and Holo hosting, which is a service created to both promote Holochain and provide funding for the development of the language. It is up to the users of the Holochain language to ensure the sustainability of it, and equally those of the Holo hosting community, however they are not 100% tied together. At the moment they rely on each other however that should not be the case in the long term, otherwise we will have successfully rebuilt the current world.
I can waffle on for hours, I hope I wasn’t too technical for you in my reply!
ATEOTD the future with Holochain is a world of endless possibilities. The future without Holochain is, at the moment, IMHO, a world of few possibilities due to ‘reality’ being controlled by technocrats. I believe in a technology-enabled self-sovereignty, and one of the mission-critical requirements of that is me being in control of my code, data, and algorithms… all of which Holochain provides. Holo hosting lives in an ever-changing world of business and the ride will be bumpy for sure, only by being part of it will you have the influence to take it where you see the future, or not.
Anyway I guess I’d better get on with something productive like checking out how long it takes my new MacBook Pro to build code given it’s 2021 and my old one was 2012…!
…also here’s an example which could resonate a little better. With Holochain I could host an app for my local village/town on a small matchbox-size computer and connect to the next town who has a similar box.
No super-computers required.
Also means Holo hosting & Holoports will need to keep up with the marketplace as it grows, focusing on the needs of its members in order for its own survival, which it may or may not want to do - presumably it does so perhaps pop over there as I believe they also have discussion forums… hopefully I’ll be over there once I have the funds for a Holoport and they become available!
And if you take a look at the HoloFuel design it basically does not need to be a “super” computer. Bandwidth is almost equally as CPU power. Running a virtualized environment with multiple Holoport OS (60% of total asset calculation) can do the trick too. And this can be done with a small server.
serindipitously I discover I never replied to your wonderfully generous response only 888 days later - while I’m re-registering my dormant Holoport which has been sitting on a shelf for years. Thank you! Really appreciate your answers and especially the nuance about solving challenges in the current situation while striving for a future which is fundamentally different (better). Looking forward to seeing how things progress as the lengthy roadmap is getting so near the pointy end of the journey.
Hope all is well in your world,
Leo
