Learn more about the future of mobile phone-powered decentralised computing and how you can use it to earn cryptocurrency. Are you ready to gamble on the future?
Created by Gene Roddenberry in 1965, the Star Trek series took contemporary ideas about science and technology and pushed them to their (then) limits. One of the most commonly recognised innovations from that series that we see in modern life is the mobile phone.
Star Trek’s handheld communicators were incredible devices, untethered from the cords and cables of the telephones they knew, able to allow conversations between people not only across the ship but even those who had been sent to investigate a planet - it is often seen as the inspiration for early flip phones, which led to our current smartphones.
While Roddenberry only lived long enough to see his vision come to life in the form of the early 1G/2G mobile era (1991), he would be enchanted with how powerful and ubiquitous his dreamchild has become. For most of us digital degens, it is a must-have device, not a nice-to-have.
In most households, the mobile phone is so commonplace that the biggest debate is how early children should be allowed to transition from the family phone to their own device. This doesn’t even take into account how powerful iPads are used as nothing more than reading screens for the Kindle and other book apps.
Studies postulate that only around 5%-10% of a device's true processing power is ever used. At most, they are pushed to around 80% of their capacity, and this is when they are used to play slots and live casino games, enjoy popular esports video games like Dota or League of Legends, or do video editing.
However, it is this mobile underutilisation that could see the world of decentralised tech get the push that it needs to take the blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and web3 apps to the next level.
Realising this glut of unused processing power exists, companies, labs, and even academic institutions have been delving into how to gain access to it and then leverage it to enhance the world of decentralised development.
While not the only player in the game, Acurast is considered to be the company that has the most defined, real-world application of decentralised mobile computing mapped out.
The vision is to create a global network of mobile phones that can be used to provide the computing power needed for true decentralisation.
The challenge decentralised platforms and developers face at the moment is that most of the tech centres and infrastructure rely on centralised servers and processing farms. To provide their decentralised service, they are forced to rent servers and processing capacity from centralised providers, putting the entire system at risk.
Even what we consider the Cloud is still hosted on centralised servers, where key points of failure can take down the entire network, impacting thousands of commercially critical companies and services.
Smartphones pose a unique and intriguing solution to this problem for several reasons:
Successfully tapping into Apple and Android mobile devices for processing would create a super-processing unit on a scale never before seen in human history.
Acurast has launched its in-house ACU token. This cryptocurrency will be the basis for user payment, with each device being rewarded on-chain for its participation in the program. In the same way that playing at a Bitcoin casino allowed interested parties to test the waters in a known environment, this program offers another channel for earning virtual currency.
One of the biggest challenges with any innovation is proving to early adopters that their personal information is safe. With the mobile computing network literally relying on the processing power of your devices, this concern is more valid than ever.
The key to safely deploying this technology is TEE (trusted execution environments). While most developers rave about their apps, programs, and AI assistants, TEE ensures user safety at a hardware level.
Trusted Execution Environments are these safe zones that exist within the actual processor of your device. They were specifically designed in the mid-2000s to be safe zones where processing could take place without creating a weakness that could be exploited by any nasty programs that gain access to your device.
In its simplest form, you can think of the TEE space as a secure vault that cannot see into your phone. In this vault, a task has been set, and only this task can be fulfilled, with the result being shipped from this location. Nothing outside of the TEE will be accessed or engaged with as part of a decentralised computing network.
It essentially uses your phone like a calculator to perform complex equations and then ships the result. Nothing is written to or installed on your device permanently.
At the time of writing, Acurast was beginning to show some promise, with nearly 200,000 smartphones in its network and having processed close to 600,000,000 on-chain transactions.
However, with nearly 1.4 billion phones around the world, and a growing interest in new ways to acquire potentially valuable cryptocurrencies outside of the mainstays like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, renting our mobile processing capacity when not in use could easily become the world’s new normal.
One of the benefits of this emerging technology network is that there is no way to be late to the party. The only benefit to early adopters is a longer earning window, while waiting means avoiding bugs and enjoying a more refined product.
Not quite ready to go where no man has gone before? Why not put your device's processing power to good use by checking out our selection of world-class mobile casinos and crypto gambling providers? They have all been playtested and vetted to ensure you have the best experience possible.
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