Context

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) represent a transformative approach in constructing and scaling infrastructure networks, which are categorized into two primary types: physical and digital. DePIN projects are unified by a core philosophy aimed at fostering a more open, decentralized, and transparent infrastructure network across various sectors. This methodology presents clear advantages over traditional web2 models for several key reasons:

1. Resource Utilization and Cost Efficiency. DePin projects leverage two key facts to gain this key competitive advantage: a) using existing under-utilized equipment, and b) reducing upfront costs and risks for new hardware investors (with token incentives and already secured demand).
2. Localized Service Provisioning: Distributed resources within the DePIN framework are adept at understanding and catering to the specific needs and demands of local markets. For example, in a decentralized cloud gaming framework, recognizing regional gaming preferences allows for the provision of popular, on-demand games, enhancing service flexibility and user satisfaction.
3. Reliability and Reduced Failure Risk: Decentralized networks inherently diminish single point of failure risks, leading to increased reliability and resilience of the services offered.
4. Accelerated Innovation: The decentralized and permissionless nature of DePIN networks fosters a rapid pace of innovation. The further alignment of multiple parties behind a common goal (and asset) incentivizes third-party development.

In 2023, the DePIN sector experienced explosive growth, surpassing 755 projects and a $32 billion market capitalization. This surge underscores robust demand and investor confidence in decentralized infrastructure. It is worth highlighting that, generalized-compute structures have shown increasing demand for their services, reaching utilization rates in the range between 40-70% over the past year. This has converted the subsector into the highest revenue generator within the DePin sector achieving $27.5 million of annual revenue in 2023.

Furthermore, it is important to remark the growth of the GPU-compute sector beyond DePin. Currently, the demand for processing power is outpacing the available supply, mainly driven by emerging technological fields such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), telecommunications and cloud gaming, which necessitate vast amounts of computing power. This issue is pushing a global race for the acquisition of GPU resources led by players like Meta, OpenAI, Alibaba and others; with the main focus being oriented towards processors in the highest performance bracket, specifically the H100 GPUs developed by Nvidia.

As a consequence, the North American GPU cloud market, serving as a leader for this trend, is expected to undergo a rapid rise from $3.2 billion in 2023 to an impressive $25.5 billion by 2030, charting a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 34.8%.

Project Overview

Aethir Cloud is a decentralized platform that connects computational processing service providers and consumers with a focus in compute-intensive applications reliant on GPU hardware - aiming to be an aggregator of GPUs for the masses.

On the GPU-compute supply side, Aethir Cloud is composed by a network of enterprises, data centers, miners and retail GPU providers. On the GPU-compute demand side, Aethir is targeting the enterprise segments of the following verticals: AI Training, AI Inference, Gaming, and Virtualized Devices (primarily phones).

Source: Aethir investor deck

One of the key innovations that enables Aethir’s strategy to address enterprise markets is resource pooling; aggregating distributed contributors under a united interface to serve large-scale clients globally. One key implication of resource pooling is that GPU providers can freely connect or disconnect from the network, enabling data centers with idle hardware to participate in the network in their downtimes. This flexibility leads to higher utilization rates for GPU providers, while enabling Aethir to offer reduced prices for their consumers.

Source: Aethir investor deck

Additionally, Aethir’s alignment with web3 ethos and the introduction of $ATH token will enable the network participants to co-own the platform and reduce the financial risks for network participants at early stages. This will allow Aethir to scale rapidly, especially in the early stages of its life cycle.

The core of Aethir’s ecosystem runs on three central pieces of back-end infrastructure that are crucial to operations:

Containers: Fundamental to the Aethir network, the Container is where the actual use of the cloud takes place. It acts as a virtual endpoint, executing and rendering the application (e.g., rendering the game for a player, executing an inference task for an AI consumer, powering a virtual phone). The Container's purpose is to ensure that the cloud experience is immediate and responsive, offering a "zero lag" experience. This is achieved by shifting the workload from the local device to the Container (e.g., shifting all game execution and command processing).

Checkers: The Checker ensures the integrity and performance of Containers within the Aethir network. Verifying container specifications as provided by the Container Providers is essential to maintain the network's Quality of Service (QoS).