Purpose

SONM, or "Supercomputer Organized by Network Mining", is a very interesting project with an upcoming initial coin offering (ICO) in about 72 , 48 , 24 hours from now (things just kept getting in the way :c). Here, I want to go over the project and my thoughts on the ICO.

DISCLAIMER: I do not represent the SONM project in any way. I do not currently have any stake in the project, but would like to see its success. I plan on getting SNM tokens either through the ICO or on exchanges because I believe in the project and team, so my opinions are based on fundamentals and not market speculation. Any decision you make is your responsibility alone, you should always do your own due diligence and verify all information yourself through official sources.

NOTE: I'm not 100% sure about the ICO address. It seems like it's being reused from the original sale, and may not be up to date. Regardless, you should be getting the ICO address, transaction data, and gas limit information directly from sonm.io.

Overview

SONM is a fog computing platform that takes advantage of distributed processing and blockchain technology. No, those aren't just a bunch of buzz words. SONM exemplifies what it means to be a valuable decentralized application by:

Meeting a current need in the market with massive potential use cases and adoption routes

Providing a solution that is blockchain / decentralization dependent (can't be done without it)

Is technically impressive and improves upon similar projects being developed

How does it work?

At a high level, SONM is a top layer platform that relies on other technologies. It uses:

BTSync for data transfer

Cocain open-source Platform as a Service (PaaS) for decentralized computing

Ethereum blockchain Smart Contracts as a consensus manager

Whisper for p2p node communication

Docker for ensuring computational parallelism

SONM is implemented using what they call SOSNA, or "Superglobal Operating System with Network Architecture". Without getting too technical, SOSNA is essentially the OS of the SONM network. It's structured using the nesting doll principle that allows modular usage similar to PC components like CPU, GPU, RAM, motherboard, etc.

Overall, I find the technology one of the biggest highlights about this project. I'm familiar with many of the platforms they are building on such as Docker and Cocain, and everything seems to be in order and not technically impossible to do. Still, it is a major undertaking and will be extremely impressive if things go smoothly.

Where's the value?

The SONM platform meets the needs of several use cases from computationally-intense scientific projects (climate modeling, drug development, etc.), site hosting that uses Cocaine PaaS and IPFS, game servers, neural networks, render farms, and more.

You may be thinking "this sounds an awful like Golem", and you'd be on the right track. From the SONM whitepaper:

There are other projects which are developing a decentralized world computer (Golem, iEx.Ec and others). It is important to note that all of them are being implemented using the same principles as Ethereum. They also have the same problem: excessive parallelization leading to high costs of operations. This is caused by the absence of any control centers managing task processing in real time that can stop it after receiving the desired result. This in turn leads to running parallel/asynchronous processes.

In fact, these projects can’t provide the functionality which any usual personal computer has nowadays.

The SONM team has much experience developing a World Computer functional concept able to process any task, up to the standard of a fully functional computer.

From the whitepaper:

Regardless of whether Golem and others will be hugely successful or not, SONM's platform simply lends itself to more use cases and potentially much greater growth. They claim that any smart device (CPU, GPU, PlayStation, even smartphones) can join the fog network and sell computing power.

SONM, Golem, iEX, and Gridcoin all have their use cases, and the difference in usability, accessibility, and customization will certainly segment the distributed computation market. I do believe that SONM will end up with a sizable portion of it though.

Development Roadmap

SONM is currently in v.0.1 - ANGE. There is a decent list of fundamental services that are running.

v.0.2 - PRINCIP is the version we are entering with the ICO. To demonstrate some of their progress, SONM plans to launch a QUAKE game server.

v.0.3 - v.0.5 are planned from sept. 2017 to aug. 2018 and will flesh out lots of the project and get it prepared for v.1.0

v.1.0 is scheduled for aug. 2018 and will be the first commercial version of the platform. UX improvements are then planned for nov. 2018 in v.1.1.

2019 and 2020 are when the new SOSNA version will be started and released. This hopes to implement SONM on platforms like smart-watches, microwaves, washing machines, etc.

The main date to watch is aug. 2018 when v.1.0 releases. The SONM team hopes to attract a lot of open-source community members to create decentralized grid-compatible apps. This will push adoption and interest from the market. SONM recognizes that community-made tools for interaction with the SONM platform will most likely be even better than their original apps, and "understand and welcome it".

Team

The SONM team is largely comprised of Russian developers.

Sergey Ponomarev is the founder and creator of SONM and SOSNA globalOS concept.

Andrey Voronkov is a founder and CEO of [email protected] project. He is a great example of how SONM is being developed for distributed processing for scientific projects.

Anton Tiurin works on the SONM p2p and PaaS technology. He's one of the leading Cocaine platform creators and has immense experience in many of SONM's core technologies.

Many more impressive names can be found in the business overview.

My general impression of the SONM team is that they are all highly qualified individuals. They bring a massive amount of intellectual weight and prior success to the project. If I had any doubts about the team, I would consider this project too advanced to be successful without massive risk, but I do not have any doubts at this time.

ICO Details

SONM is looking to raise ~$45 million USD, or 117337 ETH (~$384 USD per ETH). The ETH cap can be adjusted before the ICO start depending on the current conversion rate, so we may see some slight changes in these numbers. The current conversion is 1 ETH = 2824 SNM, or 1 USD = 7 SNM.

Something that wont change is the total amount of SNM tokens being issued: 331,360,000.

Tokens are being distributed with a progressive bonus scale, starting at 15% bonus and going down by 2.5% for every 10% of tokens sold until half are gone. At that point, the bonus decreases by about 1.25% for every 10% sold until there is no bonus once 80% of tokens are gone.

The token distribution is as follows:

And the ICO fund info & allocation:

Getting into the ICO

Things you will need:

The ICO smart contract address: 0xc8e3aA7718CF72f927B845D834be0b93C66b34E1 Any transaction data field information for the "Migrate" function: TBA Gas limit / price*: TBA Start time / block number: TBA, we know it's on 6/15/17 at

* Gas price will depend on network congestion. It also depends on how much you are willing to pay in fees in order to get your transaction mined asap. Etherscan and EthGasStation are a good place to see some info on current prices.

The SONM Business Overview states that the ICO smart-contract address is at:

0xc8e3aA7718CF72f927B845D834be0b93C66b34E1

You should verify this address at sonm.io before sending funds

As far as getting in, my previous article on the BAT ICO is going to be pretty relevant. Until SONM releases the block number that their ICO contract goes live though, we can't set up automatic transfers. Also, many people did not get into the BAT ICO even though they used my guide. It largely came down to gas price and entering 1 or 2 blocks later than the start block. Many people even broadcast a couple blocks before the BAT ICO went live and their transaction happened to be mined on the next blocks. The fact is, if the SONM ICO is as popular as BAT, many people simply won't get in.

FAQs

Which wallet can I store SNM tokens in?

SNM is an ERC20 complient token, so any Ethereum address can store SNM. You can view the tokens on MyEtherWallet by going to "View Wallet Info" and selecting the "Add Custom Token" box. Here you will put in the ICO contract address (0xc8e3aa7718cf72f927b845d834be0b93c66b34e1), symbol (SNM), and decimals (18).

Can I send funds to the ICO from an exchange?

NO. You do not control the private key on exchange addresses, so accessing the SNM tokens will be nearly impossible once they are issued to you. Additionally, exchanges do not allow you to customize the gas limit or price, and the transaction will fail if you try to send funds without an appropriate gas limit.

Can US citizens participate in the ICO?

NO. US law prohibits citizens from legally participating.

Will SNM be on exchanges after the token sale?

Yes, major exchanges will list them soon after the ICO.

Sources and Links

SONM website, blog, and team

SONM Whitepaper

SONM Business Overview

SONM ICO Details

SONM ICO Contract

GitHub