Golem is an innovative blockchain system that lets computer owners sell spare computational power in real time on the open global market. Users around the world can use memory from your gaming rig at night, when you’re asleep. This memory can be used for computation-intensive applications like CGI rendering. With Golem, you can put your PC to work, or turn it into a supercomputer using the remote power of other computers brought together through Golem and the Ethereum blockchain.
The Golem project was originally founded by CEO Julian Zawistowski in 2016. Zawistowski studied at the Warsaw School of Economics and worked for the National Bank of Poland and other government bodies, before entering the tech industry and founding a few of his own companies. The Golem ICO was completed in a single day on November 13, 2016. Zawistowski and his team saw an untapped resource in the unused computer time of PCs all around the world. By linking thousands of computers into a single blockchain network, regular PCs could team up to provide the specs of a supercomputer, the power of which could be accessed through any PC on the network. Golem remains one of the most easy-to-understand big ideas on the blockchain, and with the Beta release of the Golem network live, users can buy and sell computer power just as originally envisioned by Zawistowski and his team.
Golem is named after ‘Golem XIV’, a book by sci-fi writer Stanislaw Lem. In Lem’s book, ‘Golem’ is a supercomputer. It’s likely that Lem chose the name based on the Golem definition from Jewish folklore, which is an anthropomorphic manmade entity made of clay that can help with physical tasks. In a way, today’s supercomputers are modern golems, with vast intelligences and powers beyond the capability of any single person.
The Golem project is complex under the hood but very simple from a user perspective. Golem ‘Providers’ sign onto the Golem app to sell surplus computer resources. ‘Requestors’ are people who wish to buy computer resources from others. Providers can set their computers to be active even when their owner is not sitting at them. During this time, Requestors remotely use computer resources like memory for resource-intensive tasks, like CGI rendering, gaming, artificial intelligence, and more. In this way, the project resembles the approach UC Berkley’s SETI@Home follows, but taken to a much more complex, interactive level.
Golem is developed by a team of more than 30, led by CEO Julian Zawistowski. The project has Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin as an advisor. Numerous internet-famous crypto investors such as Crypto Lark included GNT in their portfolios at various times but GNT has not been associated with any household name investors.
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Golem has certain direct competitors, like SONM and iExec, but there isn’t another blockchain project that is as complete or advanced as Golem. There are alternative crypto projects like DeepBrainChain, which offer one component of the Golem cryptocurrency ecosystem, but there’s no true clone project in the crypto space that we’re aware of. For the real competition, we’ve got to look to centralised services offered by global giants like Google, Apple, Amazon, and the like. There are plenty of cloud services by which individuals can buy up computer resources. However, there’s no marketplace by which these same users can sell the unused resources they already have.
Golem GNT is sold on many cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance (see Binance Review), Bittrex (see Bittrex Review), Poloniex (see Poloniex Review), and others. As one of the older coins still widely traded in today’s market, you won’t have trouble finding large exchanges that sell the Golem crypto.
As a representation of price history, the Golem GNT chart is pretty wild. GNT debuted at ICO in late 2016. That’s far enough in the past that GNT is traded today well above ICO levels. Early investors of younger projects may be in the red during the dark days of Crypto Winter, but GNT ICO investors are still very much in the green. There are 1 Billion GNT, nearly all of which are in active circulation. For its first months on the market, GNT sold for about £0.01 each. This changed quickly in early 2017, when Golem coin future prices doubled, tripled, and topped out at nearly £0.06 by summer. Golem coin prices tumbled down to about $0.02 by late 2017, before making a massive rally right at year’s end. Golem crypto prices spiked to £0.81 (!!!) on January 2, 2018, before tumbling to about £0.13 in April. Another rally carried GNT to £0.60 in May, and another decline followed, dragging GNT prices steadily down to sub-£0.05. As is often the case, low prices in an active project often mean the coin is ‘oversold’. This could be a precursor state to big price increases for Golem coin.
GNT is not mined. GNT was sold at ICO, and today nearly all of the supply is publicly available. However, it is possible to earn GNT using your own computer by using the beta version of Golem’s software. Now you can passively earn income with your computer. The process is very similar to mining, when you think about it. The main difference is that, rather than securing the network like you would as a Bitcoin miner, Golem Providers’ computer resources are a product they put up for sale on the open market, via Golem.
Golem is a digital currency, so it must be stored in a digital wallet. Wallets are pieces of software that keep track of different kinds of cryptocurrency. Some, like the wallet built into the Golem client, only hold a single cryptocurrency balance. Others, like MyEtherWallet, can store dozens or even hundreds of kinds of cryptocurrency. We would recommend the Golem wallet within the Golem client, MyEtherWallet, Mist, Exodus Wallet, Jaxx Wallet, or any other Golem-supporting crypto wallet you know and trust. Hardware wallets like the Ledger Nano S also support GNT.
The future of Golem appears bright. Golem has released its software on schedule, and its Beta is currently operational. Thousands of users are working with the beta release to find flaws and suggest improvements for the Mainnet version, which is set to come out soon. As it stands, Golem already works, with computational resources being bought, sold, and delivered, and GNT is used every step of the way. Once its mainnet is released, Golem will be like any other technology startup, trying to compete for market share on the global market.
By this time, Golem’s competitors will be international giants like Amazon Cloud Services. At this point, Golem will be appealing to users well outside of the blockchain space, and it will succeed or fail based on its own merits compared to conventional tech leaders. We think that the price of GNT will increase in proportion to the company’s success. If Golem becomes a new global standard for shared computing, GNT prices could match and far exceed past all-time high Golem coin prices.
Golem really isn’t anything like Bitcoin. Though a cryptocurrency, with specific currency applications within the Golem software, it’s not mined, nor is it widely used as money by retailers and their customers. Golem is an application, and GNT is a currency built to help it run efficiently. Though it can be traded against other cryptocurrencies, it’s not really very similar to Bitcoin BTC at all. For news updates about Golem and other cryptocurrencies, check out the CoinJournal.me news section. For even deeper updates about Bitcoin and the altcoins, check out our newsletter and exclusive Bitcoin Handbook.