Overview
What is Fluence
Fluence is a decentralized serverless platform & computing marketplace powered by blockchain economics. Fluence is a global, permissionless, scalable, and secure alternative to centralized cloud computing platforms. We say that Fluence is a Cloudless Platform, because it enables serverless without the cloud.
Using Fluence, developers build and deploy applications to a network of compute providers, where providers can range from professional data centers to home computers. Providers compete on price and performance and, to be paid and earn rewards, they constantly prove that they are serving applications.
Fluence is powered by a cryptographic token which is used by providers as collateral for participation and as a monetary incentive. Providers earn both the Fluence token and payment (usually stablecoin) for serving applications.
For Developers
Developers can use Fluence to build and deploy applications, backends, APIs, and other digital services. Fluence’s serverless platform provides a developer experience similar to the traditional serverless cloud but additionally allows developers to manage an application’s execution over the distributed network; choose providers and switch them at will.
Unlike on cloud platforms, when using Fluence, developers may verify that their applications are served as intended and computations executed correctly by checking proofs posted by providers on-chain.
Fluence integrates both Web2 and Web3 data storage and management platforms to plug data inputs and outputs for application execution. While Fluence isn’t designed for large scale data persistence, it perfectly fits for data caching, indexing, processing, and querying.
| Fluence Component | Web 2 Analogy | |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Functions | Compute Functions, Marine | AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions |
| Distributed Workflows | Cloudless Functions, Aqua | AWS Step functions, Google Workflows |
| Cloud services | Aqua libraries | Route53, ELB, Consul |
| Data services | Subnets | S3, RDS, DynamoDB, MongoDB |
For Compute Providers
Compute providers earn rewards for offering their capacity for rent on the marketplace.
Providers can offer for rent any device connected to a network including a professional rig or data center or even a personal computing device (even a laptop or raspberry pi). It is easy to become a provider: it is not required to establish complex setups for fault tolerance. Instead, reliability is provided by the protocol. Performance though depends on the provider's hardware and internet connection, so professional server hardware would most likely be favored by customers in most cases.
Provider revenue comes from two main sources. Developers pay to providers for useful work: serving applications. The protocol additionally rewards providers with Fluence token for keeping compute capacity connected to the network and contributing to improving network performance and latency.
Providers also don’t need to specifically advertise their services as the marketplace connects them to customers interested in their services.
For Community
Fluence's compute security model is powered by cryptoeconomic incentives. Fluence token holders may stake for compute hardware to support the attestation that the hardware is available on the network and performs compute jobs correctly. For this, the protocol rewards stakers with additional tokens.
Fluence is managed by digital governance (DAO), so token holders may participate in governance process: create proposals, choose delegators and governance committee, and vote for proposals.