Akash Open Dev Diaries - Feb '24

Steering Committee Meeting

No 

Special Interest Group Summaries

Special Interest Groups, or SIGs guide the direction of development under their specific special interests. They meet on a regular schedule and will be covered here as they occur. The only SIGs listed are the ones that met within the month of February 2024.

SIG Chain:

SIG Chain is responsible for the maintenance/upgrades that support the Akash Network blockchain.

This meeting took place on 1/9/24

• There was a request for engagement from Akash's validators to take part in the decision-making/governance process by voting on live proposals.

• Network Upgrade 1: Updates to the governance proposal structure to be able to have different voting periods for different proposal types.

• Network Upgrade 2: Akash Marketplace will now explain why a lease has been closed.

• Network Upgrade 3: Implementation of packet forwarding.

Analysis

To start, decentralization is a very hard thing to accomplish. It requires participation from a lot of sources to get proposals passed and is vital to the operations of any blockchain. These sources include end users and retail investors like yourself, but a large portion of the responsibility falls upon validators who are entrusted with large portions of $AKT voting power via their staking operations. This is why it is extremely important to vet your validators because if they do not participate, upgrades don't get passed. Bearish.

Network upgrades 1 and 2 are basic quality-of-life upgrades to the chain and marketplace respectively; nothing to see here, just some fine-tuning.

A lot of alpha here in Network Upgrade 3. Packet forwarding may sound boring, but will make native stablecoins as well as liquid-staking with $Stride or others a possibility. They are hoping to have this done by Q1, perhaps the community can push forth in finding new utility for $AKT... $stAKT in that $PASG pool on Osmosis perhaps? Bullish.

SIG Clients: 

SIG Clients is responsible for the maintenance/upgrades for the onboarding/deployment client software that reduces friction for tenants and providers to deploy on the Akash marketplace.

This meeting took place 2/22/24

• Significant progress has been made in open-source efforts, notably the Cloudmos API. The integration of the Cloudmos API by teams like Praetor highlights the API's importance.
• Joao Luna shared that client libraries are close to launching and will be open-sourced soon. Luna provided a brief overview of the Quasarch platform, targeting web2 devs familiar with services like GCP and AWS.
• Efforts are underway to enhance the Akash API, including solving issues related to API versioning and ensuring better documentation for external users.
• Greg raised the idea of reconsidering the five AKT parameter as a deposit for deployments, suggesting a potential reduction in future network upgrades.

Sig Design:

SIG Economics is responsible for the management of the community funds within the Akash Network.

This meeting took place on 2/7/24

• Provider Incentive Program (PIP) divided into 3 pools out of the original $5 mil community-approved incentive rollout.

• Phase 1 - 3.5 million $AKT to sign year-long commitments with professional resource providers.

• Phase 2 - Incentivizes community/consumer grade chips in its separate pool of resources.

• Phase 3 - Gives core team flexibility to stay on the cutting edge of GPU options as new technology releases.

•  

  Analysis

  Cheng Wang, CFO of Overclock Labs, spends a lot of time talking over the final details of the $5 million provider incentive program that is due to roll out this month. Splitting the incentive into three pools aligns their use of incentive funds with their objectives and this is another fine example of Akash's community layer at work.

  The important takeaways here is that after the incentives pass, the higher-end resources will still take some time to proliferate on the network. We can expect to hear announcements as their business development goes through the agreements with the large GPU providers. Cheng suggests a timeline measured in weeks to onboard these resources.

  Phase 2 will be of interest to many more independent providers as it'll focus on the consumer-grade chips such as RTX 4090s, 3090s, etc.

Working Group Summaries

Akash's Community Driven Development

Background

Akash's already open-sourced code became governed openly by its community in 2023. Every roadmap, funding, etc, decision is made in the open via monthly public discussions that anyone can join on their discord, anyone can roll up their . Original summaries of these discussions, including transcripts are kept meticulously here. The purpose of this article is to put all of the summaries in one place with my thoughts and analysis where appropriate.

All opinions are my own, this is not financial advice, but my interpretation of Akash's ongoing developments.

Community-Driven Development Model

Akash Network's development is guided by two types of groups that do all the work: special interest groups (SIGs), and working groups (WGs). You go to special interest groups to guide Akash's direction and working groups to actually do the work. These groups meet at their own regular schedules that can be found ahead of time in their respective folders on Github.

Akash Accomplishments in 2023 Under New the Dev Model

• Open-Sourcing of Entire Codebase: Akash made its entire codebase open-source, including core network deployment applications and the website, fostering transparency and community collaboration.

• Introduction of GPU Support: Akash added support for GPUs, starting with NVIDIA models and later expanding to include AMD models, addressing the global GPU shortage and enabling AI model training.

• Establishment of Community-Driven Model: Akash implemented a distributed community model inspired by Kubernetes and DAO structures, organizing Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and Working Groups (WGs) overseen by a Steering Committee.

• Creation of Akash-Thumper AI Model: Akash began training the "Akash-Thumper" AI model alongside ThumperAI, aiming to create an open-source AI model for training and fine-tuning, showcasing the potential for distributed model training.

• Development of Akash Chat: Akash introduced Akash Chat, providing a user-friendly interface for interacting with open-source AI models, catering to the need for unrestricted access to AI models in a permissionless environment.

• Deployment of SDXL on Akash: Akash facilitated the building of SDXL on its platform, showcasing its capabilities in hosting AI applications and attracting high-performance compute providers transitioning from Ethereum mining operations.

• Growth of Akash Insiders: The Akash Insiders, a core group within the community, played a pivotal role in setting the network's direction, organizing events, and driving community engagement.

• Media Recognition and Thought Leadership: Akash received significant media coverage, emphasizing its contributions to decentralized compute and positioning key members, such as Greg Osuri, as thought leaders in the industry.

These accomplishments reflect Akash's commitment to decentralized computing and its efforts to advance technological innovation in a transparent and community-driven manner.

Hope you enjoyed our opinion here.

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