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.
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 DrugDiscovery@home 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:
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
This post has a lot of info in it, and I wrote it over 4 days sporadically when I had time. If you find anything to be incorrect, please let me know asap so I can change it. I plan on updating this post and making another separate post once I know more about the specifics of the ICO, so be on the lookout for that.
Thank yoou very much for this elaborate explanation. It helps me a lot to understand it.
That's great! Feel free to ask any questions you may have
Is it the platform actually called Cocaine or Cocain? I am bringing this up, because its the former and in our cryptosphere we are trying to bring. credibility and respect, it would have been better for them to use something less relevant to an illegal drug....just saying.
It's Cocaine, I misstyped it once. Cocaine actually stands for Configurable Omnipotent Custom Applications Integrated Network Engine, and has been around for over 6 years. It's developed by the Yandex team (the largest search engine in Russia & massive multinational technology company). Developers and people in related fields know what Cocaine is, and it doesn't have a stigma in those communities. End users will likely never know much about the backend technology, only the SONM name.
Excellent! Thanks so much for the clarification.
Great post, thanks! Now it is even cheaper, my opinion is that it might be big thing next year
Appears they moved the SONM ICO smart contract address to:
0x93025150b13eb744d51d927549a30630912e8fe8
"Send the desired Ethereum amount from your ETH wallet to the ICO smart contract address. After ETH transaction confirmation SNM tokens will be automatically issued to the ETH address, that you used for deposit.
0x93025150b13eb744d51d927549a30630912e8fe8
SONM ICO smart contract address"
Great info..looks like they raised over $30M in first 24 hours.