iEx.ec is a decentralized cloud computing project built on top of Ethereum public blockchain. The vision is to aid resource-hungry dApps (decentralized applications) through iEx.ec’s unique technology. Through iEx.ec, developers can get computing powers, data centers, and servers easily. All the transactions inside iEx.ec ecosystem would involve iEx.ec’s native cryptocurrency that is called the RLC.

So, how strong the fundamentals of iEx.ec? And is it worth it to invest our money in RLC for the long-term? Let’s find out together with this article!

Cloud Computing And The Future

Before we get into the fundamentals of iEx.ec, we need to understand the basics of cloud computing. Maybe you have been wondering why cloud computing is such a big deal. Well, it is actually a big deal. In short, cloud computing is an industry that is solving the problems with expensive storage and processing power because they offer solutions by connecting everything to the “cloud”.

It’s like when you backup messages and media files from your phone to the cloud. You don’t need to worry about the storage capacity of your hardware anymore, and you can restore the same backup to the other phones. Use the same concept but scale it 10000x bigger to include all the big corporations in the tech industry. That’s the true potential of the cloud computing industry.

In the past, many tech companies had to buy all the expensive hardware equipment as well as expensive storage and even expensive applications. All these costs could be reduced thanks to the utilization of cloud computing significantly.

The easiest example of cloud computing is AWS (Amazon Web Service). For your information, the entire ecosystem of Netflix is 100% operated on top of AWS. That shows you the capabilities of cloud computing in the modern era.

And yes, by utilizing cloud computing, you can save a lot of unnecessary costs. When you set up a hardware server by yourself, you “estimate” how many resources you will need. But, in reality, the costs that you actually need are often far lower than what you bought in the first place. It’s like when you buy a high-end gaming PC, but you don’t actually use it for super-heavy games.

With cloud computing, you pay for what you actually need. And this is a big deal. Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Google, Alibaba, and all the big Chinese tech companies all have their own cloud-based solutions. Because they know it’s the norm and the future of the tech world.

Centralized vs Decentralized Cloud Computing

Well, now you understand why cloud computing is a big deal for the corporations to save costs. But, most of the cloud solutions that I mentioned above are still “centralized.” So, how about iEx.ec, which is promoting a decentralized cloud computing solution?

Well, in the not-so-distant future where decentralized services won’t have much problem with heavy resources, there is actually one big advantage. With a decentralized cloud computing solution, there’s no one single point of failure. You will have different computers from all over the world, forming one giant network instead of multiple data centers in the same location.

Not only about a single point of failure, but being decentralized also means you re-distribute the influence that the community has over the network. With these potentials that decentralized cloud computing has over centralized solutions, iEx.ec is hoping to capture this moment and get the first-mover advantage, before bigger tech startups enter the same industry.

However, being decentralized also means you are still sacrificing the scalability and stability of your speed. As of today, the demand for “eliminating a single point of failure” is simply not big enough. Most corporations care much more about stability, scalability, and speed rather than decentralization. And thus, the likes of Amazon cloud solution is still much more popular than iEx.ec.

That does not stop iEx.ec from thinking bigger and more long-term. In the future, there’s a chance that decentralized cloud solutions will be as good as centralized ones in terms of speed and scalability. And when it happens, people might look for decentralized cloud computing like iEx.ec itself, due to its superiority in terms of security and redistribution of power.

iEx.ec And Off-chain Solution

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The good thing about iEx.ec technology is that it uses an off-chain computing technology. It means decentralized apps on top of the iEx.ec ecosystem will have to connect to the off-chain computing before the data and results can be transferred to the Ethereum blockchain for verification.

This is a crucial step in solving scalability issues because many resource-hungry processes are being done off the chain. If they were all done on the chain (directly on Ethereum), they could easily clog the Ethereum network. And iEx.ec wants to make sure they will avoid that specific problem.

iEx.ec team claim by combining off-chain computing technology with on-chain blockchain verification, the whole concept becomes much more efficient than utilizing Ethereum Virtual Machine itself (EVM).

If you want to know some examples of the decentralized application (dApp) that have utilized iEx.ec, we have three examples to show you. First of all, a YouTube challenger called Flixxo. Basically, it is a decentralized YouTube. It utilizes iEx.ec because it knows it cannot rely on Ethereum blockchain alone. With heavy resources on the videos, Flixxo needs off-chain computing, which iEx.ec store on its cloud resources.

The second example is Request Network. For your information, Request Network promises people will be able to invoice buyers on the blockchain automatically, and they can receive it in local fiat currencies. Request Network is also a financial report auditing tool that can take too many resources on the chain. That’s why it utilizes iEx.ec to “shift” the resources off the chain.

Another good example of iEx.ec utilization is the popular Artificial Intelligence chess bot created by Stockfish. As we all know, AI is very complex, and Ethereum blockchain won’t be able to handle massive AI resources as of now. That’s why Stockfish preferred to utilize iEx.ec to store their AI movements. Only the move results are transferred back to Ethereum blockchain.

Analyzing iEx.ec Team

Of course, understanding the fundamentals of one crypto project is not enough to make our decision. Sometimes we need to buy the core team’s promises as well. After all, investing in a crypto token often means investing in the future of the same token. And who knows better what will happen to the future of the crypto if not the core team itself?

So, how about the core team of iEx.ec? Well, iEx.ec project is headquartered in Lyon (France). The founders of the project are two young men, Gilles Fedak and Haiwu He. The Chief Executive Officer is Gilles Fedak, and Haiwu He here acts as the Head of the Asia Pacific Region. Another guy, Oleg Lodygensky, is the Chief Technology Officer.

All the core members of iEx.ec have their own PhDs, and four of these people have tons of experience with the cloud computing business for more than one decade. For your information, Haiwu He, Gilles Fedak, Oleg Lodygensky, and Mircea Mora were all developers for Desktop Grid applications, which inspired them to start iEx.ec.

The project itself successfully collected $12 million in just 6 hours, and it was the 5th largest ICO at the time the sale was conducted (in April 2017).

From the team background that I wrote above, I say the core team members are very capable of bringing their experience to the blockchain. Hopefully, decentralized cloud computing will become much more mainstream one day.

Use-Case Of RLC Token In The iEx.ec Ecosystem

iEx.ec native cryptocurrency is called “Run on Lots of Computers” or RLC. The use-case of the RLC token is pretty straightforward. It is used to access different types of services in the iEx.ec ecosystem.

Some people say that the branding of the token RLC is a bit off, as they could have given a different name for the token. But either way, it’s already live now, and they don’t have any plan to rebrand the token name.

Potential Roadblocks For iEx.ec Future

The biggest potential roadblock for iEx.ec future is still the idea of centralized cloud computing solutions controlling the tech industry. Big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have all invested quite heavily in their own centralized data centers.

And obviously, it will take a lot of time before people get used to decentralized alternatives. As long as most corporations choose centralized solutions over decentralized ones, it will be hard for iEx.ec to gain a good amount of publicity and revenues.

And not only that, there is still no clear winner yet in the decentralized cloud computing space. At the moment, Golem, Sonm, and Dadi are all trying to get the biggest shares of the same cake. However, iEx.ec is putting a good fight against them. Let’s see who will actually come out on top in the next few years!

External Factor And RLC Token Price

Well, we have learned much about iEx.ec project, but is it enough to make our decision whether to invest in RLC token? Unfortunately not. When it comes to altcoin price, you also need to pay attention to one big external factor. That external factor is called Bitcoin price.

Yes, whether you like it or not, you need to understand that Bitcoin price plays a huge role in moving altcoin prices. It’s been like this since forever. It means that altcoin prices often go up whenever Bitcoin price goes up — Vice versa. When Bitcoin price goes down, altcoin prices often go down as well.

And talking about Bitcoin price, there are dividing opinions about its price in the upcoming year (2020). Some people say that Bitcoin price would jump high in 2020 following the next mining reward halving event. However, some other analysts predict the opposite. They believe Bitcoin price would actually go down because there’s simply not enough new demand to pump the price.

Either way, you need to pay close attention to Bitcoin price action. It’s one of the deciding factors for future RLC price.

Conclusion

iEx.ec is an interesting project that tries to solve the cloud computing problem by utilizing blockchain. Not only that, but it is also trying to bring real corporate use-cases to the blockchain. However, there are a lot of big challenges that it faces, such as the people’s preference to use mainstream centralized cloud solutions from big tech companies.

RLC is a decent token to invest, but its future (just like the future of decentralized cloud computing solutions) is still questionable.