Crowd Machine — A Distributed Network for Faster, Simpler App Development

BLOG: If blockchain technology is to underpin the architecture of the new decentralized internet, how many apps must be built to replace the ones in use today?

Craig Sproule — 7 November 2017

Crowd Machine CEO & Founder

Even with the steady flow of hype and hyperbole about anything crypto-related right now, it’s hard to overemphasise the effect that blockchain technology will have on almost every part of the internet.

Instead of getting wrapped up in the headlines though, it’s worth considering whether the industry is really on an unstoppable growth curve. Because, from the inside, it seems like there’s a lot of talk about potential but a lack of awareness of some major gaps that could derail our journey to this future state.

Developer skills do not match demand

If blockchain technology is to underpin the architecture of the new decentralized internet as is expected, just think how many apps will need to be built to replace the ones in use today. And that doesn’t even take into account the raft of potential new ones.

The current pool of highly skilled developers able to develop apps that take advantage of distributed ledger technologies is far too small to service demand.

The US government predicts that the software development workforce will grow by 22% over the next ten years. However that is unlikely to be enough to serve the range of complementary technologies that are emerging at the moment.

A report from VisionMobile estimates that the 300,000 developers contributing to the area of Internet of Thing (IoT) apps in 2014 needs to grow to nearly 4.5 million developers by 2020. When you consider this pressure alongside the parallel demand from Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the problem could grow to epic proportions.

Either a huge number of highly skilled developers need to be trained up to deal with it or solutions that make it easier to create and manage apps need to be widely adopted soon.

Compute power is underutilised

While there aren’t enough skilled app developers to go around, there’s plenty of underutilized processing capacity. The problem here is that it isn’t unified.

The largest cloud providers can make their existing services available because of their massive infrastructure. However, it is essentially siloed, centralized data storage with limited deployment in markets that do not provide a healthy return on investment.

A network that could connect underutilized capacity, while also providing device owners with an opportunity to be paid for their involvement, could form the sort of decentralized cloud that is needed to fuel app development.

A decentralised app execution engine

Crowd Machine is the only distributed network technology that enables the creation and management of apps. It tackles the twin problems of app development shortages and the underutilisation of surplus device processor capacity.

Not only will it accelerate the creation of apps and the adoption of blockchain networks, it will also reward developers’ code contributions and usher in market ready applications that can disrupt the dominance of centralized infrastructure companies.

Crowd Machine is blockchain agnostic, so app developers are not constrained by the functional limits of a particular chain. Instead, they’ll be able to create an app using the Crowd Machine platform and deploy it to any chain they choose, as well as integrating with and adding to existing smart contracts if desired.

Crowd Machine’s key components

The Crowd Machine platform consists of three key components, which can be utilised by everyone from startups to large enterprises wanting to quickly and easily launch apps.

Crowd Machine’s App Studio makes it significantly faster and cheaper to build traditional and blockchain apps for anyone that understands logic and rule-based processes. We have seen how low code and no code solutions have gained traction in Cloud markets and App Studio can be used in the same way by non-technical staff, without writing code. Furthermore, onboarding and training can happen quickly and lead to an explosion in new apps.

Crowd Computer is a powerful peer-to-peer computational network that leverages underutilized device memory and processor capacity to power apps. It works with the Crowd App Studio to make it possible for anyone to create decentralized apps up to 45x faster than traditional methods. Device owners can join the network of Crowd Virtual Machines (CVM) and be compensated for the use of surplus processing power.

Crowd Share is a Git-hub like code repository that allows developers to contribute code that developers and App Studio users can use in their own apps. It provides an opportunity for them to monetize their Intellectual Property on an ongoing basis and will help accelerate the creation of apps.

Monetisation based on app execution

We will make the App Studio and Crowd Share free to access to help build the Crowd Machine Community (CMC) and keep the emphasis of monetization on app execution. Payments are made for the compute resource required to execute apps, providing an incentive for device owners to join the CVM and make surplus processing power available.

Developers will also be compensated when their code, which has been made available in the Crowd Share repository, is utilised in production.

Roadmap and token sale

The Crowd Machine platform has already seen early adoption from Fortune 500 companies, with a roadmap of development scheduled for throughout 2018. Our aim is to release the App Studio, Crowd Share and Crown Virtual Machine to public beta in January 2018, with the Crowd Computer public beta release taking place in May.

We will also hold a public token sale of Crowd Machine Tokens (CMT) which is planned for early next year.

Interested parties can sign up to be placed on Crowd Machine’s whitelist at https://www.crowdmachine.com/#WHITELIST