On December 21st, crypto startup RenderNetwork, which provides rendering tools for NFT and metaverse projects, completed a $30 million financing, led by Multicoin Capital, with Alameda Research, Solana Foundation, Sfermion, Vinny Lingham, and Bill Lee participating. It is reported that this round of financing was completed through the RNDR Token form, which is the first financing by the render network since its establishment in 2017. So, what is the uniqueness of RNDR as a web3.0 infrastructure that has gained the favor of capital?
01 Project Description
Render Network is a blockchain based distributed GPU rendering network platform under OTOY company, aimed at connecting more creators with idle GPUs, making rendering no longer limited to hardware conditions, requiring minimal time and cost, and providing digital rights management for creators to further promote the development of the metaverse.
OTOY was founded in 2008, and RNDR launched a token public offering in October 2017. The RNDR network was fully launched and put into use in April 2020. Currently, we have established two-way cooperation with major companies such as Apple, Microsoft Azure, Google, Disney, and Unity.
Official website： https://render.x.io/
Twitter (46900 followers)： https://twitter.com/RenderToken
Telegram (7428 members)： https://t.me/RenderTokenOfficial
Blog： https://medium.com/render-token
02 Project Interpretation
2.1 Project Background
Rendering is the final important process for creators to create 3D images, which is the process of generating images from models. With the rapid development of industries such as film, animation, and gaming, the demand for rendering is also increasing exponentially. According to a QYResearch research report, the global rendering and simulation software market is expected to reach $30.942 billion in 2025.
Rendering usually requires the use of rendering and simulation software, as well as hardware devices such as CPU and GPU. When rendering a single image, traditional CPU rendering often takes several minutes or even hours, and this speed obviously cannot meet the needs of creators. OTOY’s OctaneRender rendering software is a pioneer in the GPU rendering field, allowing creators to create Hollywood style works from home.
Although OceaneRender solves the problem of rendering speed, traditional rendering is done locally. If a creator performs a large-scale creation at home, rendering often takes days, weeks, or even months, making it impossible to synchronize with other work, which greatly reduces the number of creations created by the creator. On this basis, cloud rendering has become popular, utilizing remote rendering servers to distribute rendering workloads between multiple computers in the network.
RNDR was born on the basis of cloud rendering. As Ethereum and GPU mining mature, OTOY sees an opportunity to utilize millions of GPUs used for cryptocurrency mining to render next-generation media content. Compared to centralized cloud rendering, RNDR is an unlimited decentralized network that solves supply and demand issues, breaks down the limitations of centralized storage, gathers surplus GPUs, connects creators who require additional GPU computing power, and maximizes resource utilization. RNDR not only provides decentralized cloud rendering, but also solves the problem of digital copyright tracing for creators. Every work uploaded to the RNDR network undergoes blockchain verification and deep archiving of relay data.
2.2 Product composition
2.2 1 RNDR rendering network
The RNDR rendering network consists of two main roles: creator and node provider.
Creator: 3D image creator who requires additional GUP computing power
Node provider: Users with idle GPU computing power
Creators need to first subscribe to or purchase an Octanerender license on the OTOY official website, then export scene files to RNDR, set rendering parameters, select the required network nodes, evaluate rendering costs, keep sufficient RNDR points or RNDR tokens in their account, submit rendering, wait for the rendering results, and check if they are satisfied after rendering before downloading or sending an email.
Users with idle GPUs can apply to join as node operators. Node providers register their GPUs on the RNDR network and rent them out to creators who require additional computing power, in order to receive rewards for renting out RNDR tokens paid by creators.
The network nodes are divided into three layers in total:
Layer 1 (Trusted Partner Network): For example, enterprise level nodes provided by Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud A2, and others have very high reliability and closure. Currently, they are only open to studios and have not been disclosed to the public.
Layer 2 (priority level): More powerful than Layer 3, with faster average speed, able to handle larger and more complex scenes.
Layer 3 (Economy): The most economical rendering solution. The lowest cost but longer time consuming, recommended for work that is not sensitive to time.
RNDR points:
For the convenience of creators in non encrypted fields, PayPal and Stripe payments are currently supported and can only be used in RNDR networks. When the creator uses point based payment, the contract will select the corresponding amount of RNDR tokens from the repurchase pool for payment to the node provider.
2.2 2 Governance and Rewards
In order to facilitate better collaboration between creators and node providers, RNDR has a set of evaluation mechanisms, namely reputation scores. Reputation score is the core of the network resource allocation process, and creators with higher reputation scores can enter rendering work faster and access more nodes during rendering. Similarly, node providers with higher reputation scores will receive work assignments faster than mining nodes with lower reputation scores.
The reputation score of creators encourages them to carefully check rendering parameters when uploading tasks, reducing duplicate requests or cancellations during the rendering process and causing network congestion. The reputation score of node providers is determined by the success rate of rendering work. The higher the reputation score, the more opportunities one will have to enter the priority level node layer, receive higher-level work, and receive more token rewards.
2.2 3 rendering costs and mining rewards
The rendering pricing of RNDR networks requires OctaneBench (OB), a tool created by OTOY that evaluates GPU computing power scores based on the number of samples calculated per second.
The current benchmark for rating is based on RTX 2700, which has an OB of 200 for one hour of operation. On this basis, faster graphics cards have higher scores, while slower graphics cards have lower scores.
The positioning of the node provider hierarchy will be based on factors such as the total system OB, node history (percentage of successful work processed), the minimum value of VRAM and RAM that make up the composite node score, etc.
The RNDR network will charge a transaction fee of 0.5% to 5% as a handling fee, depending on the nature of the transaction. The handling fee is mainly used for storage and bandwidth costs.
Mining profit calculation: https://www.rendercalculator.com/
2.2 4. Proof of rendering
The RNDR network helps creators further trace the origin of their artwork, and the storage system is used to construct the hash values of all assets of the source rendering for the completed work. This raw data will provide great assistance to original creators.
2.3 Development Status
Currently using OTOY’s artist rendering tool OctaneRender, it supports all industry-leading 3D toolsets in VFX, gaming, animation design, architectural visualization, and analog fields, including native support for Unity3D and Unreal engines
Google shut down its cloud rendering platform Zync render in the past two years and joined the RNDR rendering network. Microsoft also joined the RNDR rendering network as an enterprise layer last year.
Completed the migration of Layer2, greatly reducing the interaction cost between creators and node providers.
RNDR archive release, including Alex Ross, Beeple, and Roddenberry archives. Beeple also joined the RNDR and OTOY advisory committees to help develop the first holographic NFT
We have established partnerships with many leading media and technology companies, from Apple, Nvidia, Epic Games, Unity to Disney, Discovery, and HBO.
Established partnerships with many memory blockchain projects such as Decentraland, Basic Attention Token, Sia, Algrand, etc
RNDR has utilized billions of dollars in arbitrage. By unlocking hundreds of millions of potential consumer grade GPUs, it significantly reduces GPU based computing costs, increases the total number of renderings, and reduces the time required to complete rendering work.
In November, it was announced that the core components of the rendering network infrastructure will be migrated to Solana and a partnership will be established with the Solana ecological NFT casting platform Metaplex.
In 2021, nearly 250000 rendering requests were processed on RNDR, and artists in the RNDR ecosystem generated over $5 billion in sales through NFTs.
Online DEX: Binance, Huobi, FTX, Kubi, etc
Launch CEX: Uniswap, Quickswap, etc
*The above information is sourced from Coinmarketcap Com
04 Founder
Jules Urban is the co-founder and CEO of OTOY, a globally renowned cloud rendering company, and also the founder of RNDR Network.
As a renowned pioneer and leader in the fields of computer graphics, streaming, and 3D rendering, Jules has over 25 years of profound experience in this field. He designed his first game at the age of 18 and subsequently developed the first 3D electronic gaming platform on the internet, licensing the software to several well-known companies, including Macromedia, Disney, Warner Bros., Nickeloden, Microsoft, Hasbro, and AT&A. Even before blockchain technology entered Fox’s vision in 2009, Jules had already obtained a patent for a token based server-side rendering billing model and gradually turned the idea into reality.
Jules is referred to by George Gilder, a legendary American economist, futurist, and one of the three great thinkers of the digital age, as the “most capable software developer he has ever seen.”. Forbes, CNN Money, and other international media outlets have reported on him.
05 Investment Institution
On December 21, 2021, a financing of $30 million was completed, led by Multicoin Capital, with Alameda Research, Solana Foundation, Infermion, Vinny Lingham, and Bill Lee participating. This is the first financing by the render network since its establishment in 2017.
06 Project Analysis
At the product level, with the emergence of 8K content, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and holographic displays, the demand for GPU computing power will reach unprecedented heights in the future. At present, the global chip supply is in a tense state, and the RNDR network has solved the problem of computing power shortage from another perspective.
According to official information, the registration volume of node providers reached 16000 in January 2021, and the latest information has not been found yet. One of the current drawbacks of RNDR networks is that data is not fully publicly available.
In terms of rendering technology, the official is also constantly updating. This year, OctaneX was launched in collaboration with Apple, and it may support mobile versions in the future. Imagine the future where people can create the metaverse they want anytime, anywhere, no longer limited to rendering versions or computing power.
More artists join the RNDR network, allowing them to simultaneously render more works and create more works than they could have created.
In terms of partners, the computing power layer has collaborated with large enterprise clouds such as Google and Microsoft, but it has not yet been developed for ordinary users and is only open to large studios. At the creator level, we collaborate with top NFT artists such as Beeple and PAK, as well as well-known film and television companies such as Disney and HBO.
At the token level, unlike Ethereum mining, RNDR mining generates output only when there is demand, and there will be no pure selling pressure. But there is a problem with the current economic model. When the price of RNDR tokens increases, the cost-effectiveness of rendering decreases synchronously. Once this budget is exceeded, demand will decrease. How to better maintain this balance? We look forward to receiving answers from the official soon to be updated new token model.
Overall, the RNDR network is undoubtedly the leader in the field of blockchain metaverse rendering, with abundant technology and resources. As an important link in the metaverse ecosystem, it is worth continuously tracking.
Author:BticoinKOL,Source:https://bitcoinkol.com/archives/153
