Monthly Report: September 2018

September was an intense month for Sonm. We welcomed the business season at the busiest tech conference in the world — TC Disrupt — where we were presented with quite a number of team members. We released a new roadmap for future developments, tested the brand advocacy program, and prepared a bunch of massive releases planned for October — a massive rollout of the brand advocacy program, four conferences in different countries (with eight speaking options in total), a newly designed page for the Community, a finalized Sonm OS featuring a built-in autoinstaller, integration with third-party KYC provider Cryponominca, and a lot of development tweaks to make our product’s user experience smoother and more secure.

Product development

Platform

• First, Sonm OS public beta with automated installer was released : This is a customized Linux distribution image based on Ubuntu 18.04 (Server edition) that includes all Sonm components and environments for the supplier. At the current stage of development, we consider it an alternative installation method for the Sonm platform.
• Completed work on integration with the third-party KYC validator Cryptonomica. Now you can obtain the status “Identified” after passing the KYC procedure. Detailed information and instructions for passing the KYС procedure are available here. Now, after going through the procedure, users can execute their own task containers instead of just being whitelisted.
• Sonm platform now can precisely control the storage volume sold using docker quotas. Each container receives the exact requested amount of disk space.
• A profitability calculator has been implemented. This will allow suppliers to evaluate the profitability of renting out resources on the Sonm platform. The calculator analyzes the current deals in the market and calculates the approximate value of the specified configuration at the current moment.
• Support for forward deals (deals with a fixed timeframe that cannot be abandoned by the hardware supplier at will) has been implemented. We are testing this new feature and are working to improve the algorithms of Optimus, which can enter into such deals if there are corresponding orders on the market. The inclusion of this type of deal in Optimus will be available in the next release.

Changelog

v0.4.11

• Added the ability to the NPP metric collection on the client side, allowing clients to see exactly how connections are established, which kind of NAT-punching tool was used, and how much time it consumed. Also, there is a new service in Node — monitoring, where one can fetch collected metrics.
• Added the ability to specify a custom worker address in the CLI.
• Added a push_on_stop flag to the container desc.
• Added log requests in Rendezvous.
• Added extended status for Worker.
• Added the ability to generate an SSH key instead of requiring it (now the SSH key is generated at the Worker startup and cached in boltdb)
• Changed the process blockchain in Worker in parallel (enables parallel blockchain-processing)
• Fixed platform component bugs.
• Optimus algorithm improvements:
• added the ability to restrict Optimus CPU usage via cgroups from the config,
• added the ability to detect duplicate orders in Optimus,
• added verbose filtering in Optimus,
• fixed bugs.
• Connor algorithm improvements:
• added null log and pool processors for Connor’s anti-fraud module
• added the ability to store Connor task logs
• added the ability to set a counterparty address for Connor’s orders,
• added Connor’s log processor for XMRig miner, which is used to mine Monero (cryptonight) on CPUs,
• fixed bugs.

Work in progress

Development is concentrated around these planned features, described in the updated roadmap.

Implementations in progress:

• Ratings and SLA: This is a system to enforce the reliability of rented resources. It is based on the economic incentive of receiving higher ratings. A higher rating means higher profit, but it also requires SLA to be maintained.
• New version of Sonm OS: It will include an automatic bootable flash drive creation tool and the ability to boot into the “live USB” mode
• Sonm token purchase with bank cards for users who prefer to purchase resources with a bank card
• A Blockchain Explorer, which will track transactions in the Sonm blockchain
• Geolocation for suppliers/workers: filter-by-geolocation option for the consumer, providing the opportunity to rent resources in a chosen country or region
• Module for the automatic management of deals and tasks: This is a new release bot using the Conner bot algorithm that enables automatic resource provision on the Sonm platform

Research in progress:

• Recipe to deploy a CGI render farm on Sonm using Afanasy render farm manager
• Referral system to reward network users who contribute to the platform’s growth.
• Market explorer, a system to give Sonm users the ability to track deal history and view platform usage statistics
• The purchasing of Sonm tokens with wire transfers for corporate clients (fiat gate)
• Gate Masternodes: our current understanding is that Plasma scalability design is not suitable for Sonm (and probably not for other real-world projects, either), so a different system will be introduced.
• Sidechain PoS: We are closely evaluating a couple of existing Ethereum-compatible blockchain solutions.
• Kubernetes integration: a K8s orchestration layer on top of Sonm.

Marketing

September brought a lot of promising things for Sonm this year, and we started the new business season at the most influential tech conference in the world — TC Disrupt SF.

We talked about the event in more details earlier, but for those of you who missed that news or just want to refresh their memory, let us describe it in a nutshell.

So, we spend an amazing week there at TC Disrupt, presenting, networking, spreading the word about Sonm across the world’s brightest minds, and sharing our journey with you on social media. By the way, Twitter is the easiest way to follow our news and RTs from officially verified team members. If you’re not following us yet, why not to do it now? https://twitter.com/sonmdevelopment

At the conference, we had a booth, branded clothing and merchandise, a big team working at the event, and two important speaking slots:

• a Q&A session titled “Inside ICOs,” in which our co-founder Aleksei Antonov took part, joined on stage by Avichal Garg (Electric Capital), Arianna Simpson (Autonomous Partners), and Valerie Szczepanik (SEC).
• a special workshop titled “Bleeding-Edge IT Trends Explained.” CTO Igor Lebedev talked about the hottest concepts of the year: blockchain, smart contracts, and distributed computing.

The conference was an intense experience for Sonm, but, at the same time, a highly rewarding one. Each time we meet more and more people who already know about us, and this time at Disrupt SF, we even had two special guests from South Korea, the winners of the ITM Global Challenge, from Seoul National University of Science and Technology, who visited the event with the goal of seeing our product and team.

We prepared a short video recap to sum up our visit at the event — bold, energetic, and highly business-oriented.

We also dug deep into the preparation process for a series of events in October. This month will be the most active in terms of pre-planned events and events we have been invited to. In total, we have four significant events in October with different types of participation. Some of them are huge requiring complex production work and significant content planning.

Fog World Congress

Sonm is a Gold partner here. We prepared a giant booth and a special presentation hosted by CTO Igor Lebedev, in addition to offering our branded materials and informational leaflets.

CloudExpo, Singapore

Even though we didn’t plan to build our classic booth at the event, we had two minor booths in different exhibition zones, and what made this conference even more unique and challenging was the five speaking events, consisting of four keynote presentations and one workshop.

YouCon, Russia

On Saturday, October 13, Sonm will be visiting the YouCon conference in Saratov, featuring a keynote speech by CTO Igor Lebedev, who will meet with developers and IT professionals in different fields to explain the latest fog computing trends and the concept of Sonm product.

Open Innovation

As stated on the event’s website: “The annual Open Innovations forum has been held in Moscow since 2012 under the aegis of the Government of the Russian Federation and is rightfully considered a unique discussion platform for participants in the formation of an innovative ecosystem.”
Indeed, it’s one of the biggest IT events in Russia, and Sonm will be taking part in a panel discussion entitled “Blockchain: Technology vs Implementation,” sharing the stage with some of the most influential decision-makers in the field, from established, successful businesses, federal banks, and telecom operators to high-level government execs.

Among the participants:

• Sebastian Vos — Covington, Partner, and Co-Chair Global Public Policy
• Grigoriy Ivliev — Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Head
• Sergey Gorkov — Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, Deputy Minister
• Yury Zubov — FIPS, Director
• Igor Lebedev — Sonm, CTO
• Andrey Krichevskiy — Association IPChain, President
• Oleg Ena — Federal Institute of Industrial Property, Director of the Project Office
• Moderator: Victor Dostov — Saint Petersburg State University, Senior Researcher

Featured article:

We shared with Russian tech media outlet Rusbase what we think about the current crypto-market situation and revealed the most recent news of the project.

#Sonm strong! We shared with Russian tech media outlet Rusbase what we think about the current crypto market situation and what are the most recent news of the project. Read more: https://t.co/M6cdU7O7Gb

— SONM (@sonmdevelopment) September 20, 2018

Social media

A week after our visit to SF, we had a new Q&A hosted by Andy Saks and Sonm CTO Igor Lebedev. We shared our impressions about the conference and answered all your questions transparently as usual. Here is the link, if you want to recheck how it was.

Are you ready for a Q&A with #SONM? Today, at 17:00 UTC we’ll be waiting for you to join us on YouTube, where Sonm CTO Igor Lebedev and Q&A host Andy Saks will discuss your most interesting questions. pic.twitter.com/3kOJO07Eon

— SONM (@sonmdevelopment) September 18, 2018

And all month, we shared with you our news on social media:
How we visited the TC Disrupt SF:

The 3rd day of the conference is going pretty well! On the pic: Product Owner Eugene Manaev explains the technology to our guests 💫#tcdisrupt2018 pic.twitter.com/lIFQKnAeoz

— SONM (@sonmdevelopment) September 7, 2018

How Sonm reached a new all-time high number of deals on the market:

New All Time High reached at #SONM: 101 ongoing deals at the same moment! An amazing increase +119.57% since last week 🍾🍾🍾 pic.twitter.com/77kBB0fAlG

— SONM (@sonmdevelopment) September 27, 2018

About the new Roadmap that was redesigned and introduced:

Find out what awaits the #SONM project ahead in the detailed explanation of the roadmap. https://t.co/TcDhtK77kb pic.twitter.com/54tqKmvIXx

— SONM (@sonmdevelopment) September 13, 2018

And more.

Thank you for being with us and for your support, advice, and feedback!

Originally published at sonm.com on October 12, 2018.