Fluence Challenges Cloud Giants with Decentralized Compute Network

Decentralized computing has surged to the forefront as industries demand greater flexibility and autonomy beyond the reach of traditional cloud giants. Fluence, co-founded by Evgeny Ponomarev, is boldly challenging the dominance of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud with its concept of “cloudless computing”—aggregating global compute power through an open, decentralized network.

Fluence’s platform, known as a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN), offers developers and companies access to compute resources without relying on centralized cloud services. This approach is likened to the Uber or Airbnb of the cloud, aggregating compute resources from a wide range of independent sources. It is an open-source, permissionless protocol that enables developers to tap into these resources, providing a reliable alternative to traditional cloud infrastructure for running various workloads, including backends, databases, game servers, and web apps.

Fluence’s primary focus is on computing, with a secondary emphasis on storage. The company aims to provide compute resources to meet the growing demand, especially with the rise of AI. Initially targeting the Web3 market, Fluence supports node operators, a critical segment within the Web3 ecosystem. The platform is designed to run any kind of workloads, similar to traditional clouds, but with the added benefit of decentralization.

One of the key challenges in building decentralized orchestration is reducing vendor lock-in. Large cloud providers dominate the market, creating platform risk for companies that rely entirely on a single provider. Fluence’s decentralized platform aims to mitigate this risk, ensuring business continuity and sustainability. The FLT token plays a crucial role in securing the compute power and hardware within the network. Providers must stake FLT tokens to prove that their hardware is online, available, and performs as expected. Staking helps ensure that providers risk losing their stake if they fail to meet their commitments, while successful providers earn staking rewards.

Fluence is also exploring additional ways to enhance the utility of FLT, such as enabling loans collateralized in FLT. This would allow providers to borrow against their token rewards to quickly acquire new hardware, connect it to the network, and earn more rewards. On the customer side, Fluence aims to subsidize prices, making the platform more accessible and cost-effective.

From the customer perspective, Fluence aims to provide an experience similar to centralized cloud platforms. Developers can easily switch to Fluence, deploying their workloads to virtual machines and virtual servers using standard authorization processes. Fluence is working to bridge the trust gap by being present everywhere, staying open and transparent, providing quick support, and even offering financial assistance when needed, especially for bringing smaller projects onto their platform.

Fluence’s cost structure is designed to offer significant savings compared to traditional cloud providers. By buying servers directly from manufacturers and running a business model where the server pays itself back over two or three years, Fluence can offer prices several times lower than what traditional cloud providers charge. The economics are purely based on the provider’s side, with reasonable margins, and Fluence allows providers to access the customer base directly, reducing the need for sales handling and enabling thinner margins.

Fluence has a significant pipeline of companies in the Web3 space, including node operators and companies offering node-as-a-service. The platform supports these companies with compute infrastructure, and several names are lined up in the pipeline, with announcements expected soon. Fluence is also planning to add GPUs to support AI inference and training, ensuring that these resources will be available at some of the best prices on the market.

Fluence’s DAO governance model is based on on-chain voting, with certain thresholds in place for creating and passing proposals. A governance committee is responsible for overseeing and facilitating the execution process, and the committee is elected by the community every one to two years. This model is standard in the Web3 space, with voting weighted by the number of tokens held.

For enterprise users, Fluence offers Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to guarantee service availability, relevant certifications for security and compliance, and the option to pay in fiat. Fluence is making good progress in this area, working on on-chain SLAs and ensuring that the necessary systems are in place to successfully onboard large enterprises from the Web2 space.

Fluence believes that decentralized models can sometimes be more efficient and significantly lower the barriers to entry for many services and technologies. The dramatic growth in compute demand driven by AI makes it essential to deliver easy and affordable access to compute resources to a much wider audience. Fluence offers an alternative to traditional cloud platforms, with a DAO-managed, permissionless infrastructure model that avoids KYC requirements, credit card barriers, and the primary obligation to serve shareholders.

Fluence is inviting people to join their upcoming beta for virtual servers and is currently collecting applications. The company is excited to see more people try out the platform, share their feedback, and help grow this open and permissionless compute infrastructure for humanity.