IExec RLC (RLC)

IExec RLC

Type	Blockchain Based Cloud Platform
Total supply	86,999,785 RLC

Basics

• Founded in: 2017
• Mainnet release:
• Based in:

• Not mineable
• Network Layer, one of the building blocks on top of the Ethereum blockchain.
• iExec is a decentralized cloud computing platform and data marketplace built on the Ethereum blockchain. It combines the ability to rent out excess computing power with a DApp and data marketplace for developers to monetize their products.
• On May 15th iExec released iExec V3, introducing a new Data Wallet that makes secure data renting possible. For the very first time, individuals can connect to iExec and contribute their computing power to earn money. iExec has also launched its Enterprise Edition for corporates wishing to do business with blockchain.

Audits & Exploits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here]. None according to Blockchain Security DB (29-6-2020), which does show 2 audits (latest in 5-2018).

Governance

DAO

• From their blog (22-4-2022):

"Since the launch of the iExec Portal, for the first time ever, a voting tool has been introduced to iExec. Now users can vote on community-related decisions and be more involved in the community activities. The iExec Portal is an ever-evolving product. Because it was created with community use in mind, it will be updated and optimized according to community feedback. We’re considering additional features such as better integration of community reward incentives, ambassador recognition, gamification, public worker pools integration, a ‘my earnings’ dashboards, and much more."

Token

Launch

• 1 round, on 19-4-2017 which collected 12.148.963USD. Or 10.000BTC in >3h. It was the 5th biggest ICO back then.

Token allocation

• From their Tokenomics blog (22-10-2019):

"All the 87 millions RLC that will ever be minted, were done so on the day of the crowd sale. And there will never be any more RLC tokens. There is no “admin access” to the RLC ERC20 smart contract, meaning the total supply is written in stone, and can never change. Apart from the contingency that is being locked indefinitely (less than 8%), all the other tokens are free to change hands. Even if you add to this the portion of tokens that the project holds, that’s still ~80% of “free to circulate” supply."

Utility

• iExec uses the RLC token, on the Ethereum blockchain for its consensus protocol for all transactions on the Marketplace. More on the technical details here.
• From their blog (22-4-2022):

"The iExec Portal is a major step in our ambitions to better value and support the committed iExec community. The Portal has been released in parallel with the Community Rewards Program. This new Rewards Program recognizes and rewards the most active and engaged community members for their contributions to the project. RLC prizes are distributed monthly for contributions ranging from content creation to tech expertise."

Coin Distribution

• From their Tokenomics blog (22-10-2019):

"The share held by holders is currently averaging around ~90%, which is very high. In reality, it is slightly lower as tokens on exchanges’ wallets are not represented on the chart (which explains why the total number of tokens appears to fluctuate). So if we consider that 50% of tokens on the exchanges are “on hold”, that would make the current total percentage of holders to ~75%. Still rather substantial."

Tech

• Whitepaper can be found here (2017-2018).
• Code can be viewed here.
• Built on: Ethereum, ERC20
• Programming language used (22-4-2022):\

"iExec SDK. This SDK is a CLI and a JavaScript library that allows easy interactions with iExec decentralized marketplace in order to run off-chain computations. In SDK v7.1.0, we’ve added TypeScript support, to improve the existing library."

How it works

• Their consensus system is called Proof-of-Contribution (PoCo).

Staking

• From their Tokenomics blog (22-10-2019):

"It is a requirement for any worker part of the public pool that wants to monetize its computing power. The stake is locked up as a type of ‘security deposit’ as an incentive as to prevent bad actors in the network. The stake contributes to reducing the circulating supply, yet it has been primarily designed to enhance the security of the platform.

Currently, the stake locked up during each contribution is equal to 30% of the computing cost (or worker’s reward for the task). That sets the minimum stake amount a worker should have. But if he wants to be able to cope with computation spikes, churn rate, payment lockups, there is a high level of chance that he decides to adopt a much higher stake. All in all, we estimate that this will represent around 5% of the total supply."

• They go more into detail on their staking decisions for PoCo in this blog post (8-12-2017).

Sidechain

• Has its own sidechain Bellecour (22-4-2022).
• From their Tokenomics blog (22-10-2019):

"The next iteration of the iExec platform: iExec V4, to be released around the end of the year, will include an initial implementation of a sidechain. Without going into the details of how this sidechain will function, here are the two key takeaways regarding its effect on the RLC tokenomics:

1. Any exchange of cloud resources happening on the sidechain will be settled in RLC. That is totally aligned with the current state on mainnet.
2. Transaction validators of the sidechain will have to stake RLC.

Without fundamentally changing them, the sidechain will improve the current tokenomics. The sidechain, however, is only an initial implementation and these mechanisms may not be the final version."

Other Details

• Uses Polkadot

Oracle Method

• From their blog (22-4-2022):

"Within the first weeks of the launch of the Oracle Factory, around 2000 oracles were created. We’ve also gathered 200+ pieces of feedback that we’ve used for R&D. The overall goal is to connect the Oracle Factory to the outside world. Currently, the Oracle Factory is only on testnet. This makes it completely isolated from the outside world. There’s no bridge, so even if people build oracles on our testnet, they can’t use these oracles for dAPPS. Our use cases are limited, and there’s no way to monetize oracles at present. We’re going to connect the Oracle Factory to the outside — to Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon. This way the oracles can be used and monetized. The iExec team is working on solving this cross-chain issue. We’re also looking at what it takes to send data to other chains. The way we’ll do this is by migrating the Oracle Factory to V7 (which means to update the SDK version to the latest) and also to migrate to our sidechain Bellecour." Has been talking (6-2019) about creating decentralized oracles.

• "iExec DOracle relies on the iExec cloud executing the off-chain logic before returning certified results to the blockchain. Certification is achieved using an on chain consensus (iExec’s PoCo consensus protocol) in order to ensure that the results of a DOracle execution can be trusted for the on-chain settlement of off-chain events."

• From this post:

"fetch the price of any crypto pair (ex: ETH/USD) from an API on the internet and put it back into a smart contract on the Ethereum Blockchain. Such a mechanism is called a price feed oracle and is one of the many use cases enabled by iExec’s decentralized cloud."

• They go further into their oracles in this article (24-9-2021):

"The market share iExec is pursuing is in exotic data (i.e. non-price data). If the iExec Oracle Factory manages to execute the way it’s intended to execute, it fills a need in the market. In addition, when it comes to off-chain computing and oracles, the most promising technological innovations are hardware enclaves. With iExec offering the ability to deploy ‘trusted’ oracles using TEE hardware enclave technology. iExec has a unique first-mover advantage. TEE is extremely important for owners of valuable APIs or data (potentially containing confidential data) who wish to monetize these resources through iExec. In the case of monetizing decentralized oracles, it is important the API key is not leaked. With the Oracle Factory, any oracle can be created from any API. Contrast that with that of our competition, which offers general oracles that are limited to popular data."

On the difference with Chainlink's doracles, from a iExec slack user:

• "One of the things i find that gives doracles a huge advantage is that its a lot more API provider friendly since providers can sell their api access directly to whitelisted workerpools via the encrypted dataset feature and actually get paid per request with no middleman. But with the other oracle project(link) each node needs a separate API key so in essence each node is just reselling private API data as a middleman. At first i was a fan of the separate api way as it seems more decentalized but after a dev explained how iexec can manage multiple different api keys and keep the keys encrypted via datasets i found the iexec way a lot more neater, "legal", and business friendly."

• Or as in iExec it's own words:

"Secure storage of API keys used to fetch data. Chances are that the API is protected by a key/token. You would not want to leak the key you paid for, right? We have you covered. Keys can be stored and encrypted, and you can even start earning RLC with your API key by listing it on the iExec’s Data Wallet (ensure reading the API TOS before)."

• Chainlink and iExec actually work together (31-1-2020). Their first use case that they aim to tackle will be decentralised car insurance.

Their Other Projects

iExec for Enterprise

• From their Tokenomics blog (22-10-2019):

"In parallel to building the infrastructure on the Ethereum public mainnet, we identified the need to bring the iExec stack into the hands of corporate users, which led to the creation of iExec for Enterprise. There have been open discussions about how this relates to the publicly deployed version. These both serve the same goal: the growth of the iExec platform. As it is likely that enterprise customers and consortium won’t directly transact on mainnet, one condition we envision in order to gain access to the iExec Enterprise edition would be to stake RLC tokens. That would be fundamental to ensure that each new customer on-boarded would contribute to the RLC tokenomics."

Roadmap

• As of 22-5-2022 it uses a Trello board for its roadmap.

As of 8-2019 the following is planned:

• 12-2019;

iExec 4.0 — High Performance Computing

This version allows miners to join the iExec market network providing true supercomputing capabilities.

• 31-5-2020;

iExec 5.0 — Beyond the Decentralized Cloud

The goal of this version is to allow new usages of iExec beyond the Decentralized Cloud. This will be a clear step further in blockchain computing, as dapps will be fully autonomous applications, able to provision resources, data, and applications directly from the blockchain in a fully decentralized way. This will open the market network to new applications specifically deployed to take advantage of IoT, Fog/Edge Computing, and Smart City technologies.

• It claims it has fulfilled its whitepaper and has a new (22-10-2020) 'adoption roadmap'

Usage

Projects that use or built on it

DApps on iExec

• On their website they have a blog called DApps of the week which showcases DApps built on iExec. So far (8-2019) there have been 9 editions.

Team, Funding, Partnerships, etc.

Team

• Full team can be found here.

• Fedak, Gilles; CEO & Co-founder “Dr. habil. Gilles FEDAK is a permanent INRIA research scientist since 2004 at ENS-Lyon, France. After receiving his Ph.D degree from University Paris Sud in 2003, he followed a postdoctoral fellowship at University California San Diego in 2003-2004. His research interests are in Parallel and Distributed Computing, with a particular emphasis on the problematic of using large and loosely coupled distributed computing infrastructures to support highly demanding computational and data-intensive Science. He produced pioneering software and algorithms in the field of Grid and Cloud Computing that allow people to easily harness large parallel systems consisting of thousands of machines distributed on the Internet (XtremWeb, MPICH-V, BitDew, SpeQulos, Xtrem-MapReduce, Active Data, …).  He co-authored about 90 peer-reviewed scientific papers and won two Best Paper awards. In 2012, G. Fedak co-edits with C. Cérin the Desktop Grid Computing Book, (CRC publication). In 2015, he receives the Chinese Academy of Sciences PIFI Award.”
• He, Haiwu; Chief scientist, co-founder “Pr Haiwu HE is a 100 Talent Professor at the CNIC (Computer Network Information Center), Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He is a Chunhui Scholar of Ministry of Education of China since 2013. Prof. Haiwu HE received his M. Sc. and Ph. D. degrees in computing from the University of Sciences and Technologies of Lille, France, respectively in 2002 and 2005. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Inria Saclay, France in 2007. He was a research engineer expert at Inria Rhone-Alpes in Lyon, France from 2008 to 2014. He has published about 30 refereed journal and conference papers. His research interest covers P2P distributed system, Cloud computing, BigData.“
• Jean-Charles Cabelguen; iExec’s Head of Innovation and Adoption
• Oleg Lodygensk; CTO

Partners 

• One of the sponsors (3-10-2019) of Hyperledger Avalon. (iExec is one of the main participants in this project and many of the bellow named organisations are also apart of Avalon)
• Partnered with Intel, Ubisoft and RSK.
• Released (2018) in collaboration with Intel: the easiest way to build a blockchain application with end-to-end data encryption within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)
• IBM Joins iExec as Cloud Resource Provider: allowing enterprises to run their most sensitive workloads on shared hardware. An IBM workerpool has been made available for customers to use on iExec’s decentralized cloud Marketplace.
• iExec has been a member of EEA and a chairman for the trusted compute group since 2017
• "The world’s fifth largest electrical company has announced a partnership with Ethereum app iExec that will involve the company utilizing the decentralized application (DApp) in a project test.

EDF, which operates a $33 billion market capitalization, has launched GPUSH on iExec, a visual simulator software that is now available through the DApp operator. EDF reports that launching there program through a DApp gives them access to the Ethereum Mainnet, which, among other things, will allow them to test the software in the context of a blockchain.

GPUSH involves a simulation software for modeling fluid behavior, which EDF plans to use to study and evaluate the effects of hydroelectric dams and other sources of liquid-based energy. In particular, the company is looking to Ethereum’s mainnet and the feature of blockchain to see if it is able to improve upon the simulator, compared to the standard GPU computing platform."

• This article lists the following partnerships (2-4-2020):

1. Chainlink (Source)
2. Genesis Cloud (Source)
3. IBM Cloud (Source)
4. H7 (Source)
5. Alibaba Cloud (Source)
6. BPI France (Source)
7. Scontain (Source)
8. Shift (Source)
9. Fortanix (Source)
10. TFCloud (Source)
11. Nerdalize (Source)
12. Intel (Source)
13. RSK (Source)
14. Ubisoft (Source)
15. Cloud & Heat (Source)
16. Stimergy (Source)
17. OpenFog (Source)
18. Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) (Source)

• Kaiko and iExec have partnered (7-4-2020) to launch a secure DeFi price feed that is ready for use today by any Ethereum smart contract. 
• Partnered with OntoChain (6-11-2020). "the EU project funding 4.3m euros for blockchain innovators. With OntoChain, iExec will be offering EU-funded grants for projects to build on iExec stack." <infobox>

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