Summary

NuNet is a computing framework that provides globally distributed and optimized computing power and storage for decentralized networks, by connecting the owners of data and computing resources with computational processes in demand of these resources. Furthermore, NuNet provides a layer of intelligent interoperability between computational processes and physical computing infrastructures. It is an ecosystem which intelligently harnesses latent computing resources of the community into the global network of computations. NuNet infrastructure enables to optimally position AI processes, interfaces and data within the global network and establish machine-to-machine payment and data streaming channels -- thus minimizing costs of global computing and enabling novel business processes for the Data Economy and Internet of Things.

NuNet platform is designed to be an extremely flexible network, encompassing mobile consumer devices, edge computing and IoT devices alongside with PCs, servers and data centers, allowing seamless interoperability among its components and intelligent automation of workflow design. NuNet leverages Web 3 technologies, serverless container execution, service mesh orchestration, crypto-economy, and more, toward the creation of the decentralized “world computer”.

NuNet is a spinoff of SingularityNET Global AI Marketplace, operating since 2017. NuNet has been incubated via SingularityNET X-Lab Accelerator programme since early 2018. The technology development and early use cases of the NuNet platform will be geared towards (but not limited to) supporting the computational infrastructure of decentralized AI agents of SingularityNET.

Global volumes of computing capacities, data and computer code are growing exponentially on a continuous basis. However, due to the historical circumstances surrounding the development of global computing infrastructures, computing, data and code are fragmented into silos with limited access available only for the richest economic and social actors. The enormous economic and social value locked between the boundaries of those silos and the potential of decentralized technologies for unlocking them is being increasingly clearly recognized and addressed. Using currently available computing resources for training state-of-the-art machine learning models is prohibitively expensive and can cost millions of dollars for a single training cycle. Therefore, cutting-edge AI and ML technology development and application is not affordable for most researchers, individuals, and SMEs.

NuNet aims at creating a framework for providing an interoperability and transactional layer connecting latent computing resources of privately and commercially owned devices, open source and proprietary code, data sources and storage into a single dynamically evolving Global Economy of Decentralized Computing. Through increased accessibility - of resources to process owners, and of processes to resource owners, data to processes and storage to data - NuNet will result in radically new capabilities of value creation and lower operating costs for the computational processes involved. In the fully functional NuNet framework:

• Computing resource owners (of home or office PCs and laptops, IoT and mobile devices, etc.) will express and publish their specialized capabilities and offer them to processes that need them across diverse ecosystems;

• Storage resource owners will express and publish their storage resource capabilities and offer them for data owners for free or in exchange for tokens depending on their individual preferences;

• Computational process owners will express and publish their specialized computational and data requirements and bid for resources and know-how, as well as offer and/or spot-sell their own functionalities and capacities across the ecosystem;

• Data owners will publish descriptions, access restrictions and privacy considerations of their data, allowing processes to utilize existing data and contribute to its refinement and growth;

• Each participant (e.g. individual users or owners of resources) will be able to express their preferences of how the network should guide the usage of their resources and/or charge convertible cryptographic tokens for the usage of each respective resource;

• Each participant (e.g. social and business enterprises) will be able to bid for free or paid usage of resources offered through the framework and to pay using native NuNet tokens.

NuNet will provide self-regulation of the interactions of three types of participants in the network: providers of data, compute & AI services, consumers of the data & compute (using AI, code and algorithms) and network operations agents. The latter will orchestrate creation, execution and verification of computational workflows connecting providers with consumers into ad-hoc service meshes, where each service is potentially provided by a different entity and compensated according to its preferences. Network operations agents will ensure correct and timely provisioning of services from decentralized peer-to-peer network, confirmation of executed processes, and correct compensation for services for each service provider according to its preferences and the work done.

In most simple cases, processes operating on NuNet may be simple, standalone computing processes intended to be executed in isolation, in which case NuNet would simply provide adequate computing power and data sources for these simple processes to be completed considering cost constraints. However, the processes themselves may also be participants in various different decentralized networks, having their own features and ecosystems. In the latter case, NuNet realizes what is called a meta marketplace economy (MME) - a modality of operation that will become increasingly valuable over the next few years, as the "network of networks" aspect of the emerging decentralized economy transitions from concept to reality with the increased adoption and interoperability of decentralized computing networks (e.g. SingularityNET, DAIA members and others).

In most advanced case, ultimately targeted by NuNet as a basis of the global economy of decentralized computing processes, network operation agents will relate data & compute providers from different decentralized (and possibly commercial) computing frameworks with AI, code and algorithms of diverse entities into service-mesh type ad-hoc workflows. NuNet governance and tokenomic framework will ensure that a contract for computational work demanded from a workflow by consumer is delivered and each component of the workflow is compensated according to work done, agreed prices and using cryptographic tokens of involved frameworks and computational engines.

The meta marketplace economy of NuNet will be supported by the network operations agents using, among other mechanisms:

1. A native token, interoperating and compliant with the tokens and other value exchange mechanisms already implemented within the ecosystems supported by the NuNet framework; and

2. A governance paradigm geared towards establishing rich collaborations among human as well as AI agents over an open-ended, heterogeneous globally connected infrastructure.

NuNet is designed to serve both commercial and social-impact ends, in a synergetic way. It will serve as a commercial ecosystem supporting a growing number of businesses in need of highly customizable and dynamically distributed computing as well as purpose-optimized workflow design for low-cost distributed computing behind their decentralized applications. It will also support the global benefit of society by introducing initiatives and projects where NuNet participants can donate resources and know-how towards solving critical global problems.