iExec Market Network has launched and we have a true utility token (RLC)
----

For those who have been following me for a while you know I was one of the first on Steem to introduce iExec. iExec at the time was seen as a competitor to Golem but as I said back then, the iExec team offers a better technology which most importantly has the best chance of reaching maturity (thus securing first mover advantage). This is because the iExec team already had the main part of the software written which allowed them to put most of their focus onto the "market network" component. 

> Berlin, Germany, May 29, 2018. iExec has released its blockchain-based decentralized cloud marketplace. For the first time ever, it is now possible to trade computing power on a dedicated market just like any other commodity. Four cloud providers, TFCloud, Stimergy, Cloud&Heat and Nerdalize have already announced their participation in this network. The marketplace allows application developers to access affordable, secure and scalable computing power on-demand. Each transaction between buyers and sellers is securely audited and certified by the Proof-of-Contribution algorithm, which verifies every off-chain computation executed.

Finally they released the market network component which in my opinion is a game changer for crypto. The idea being that with this technology it will be possible to have a decentralized cloud. This means you may in fact be able to mine various crypto currencies (any really) using iExec by simply buying RLC and paying for it. So when buying RLC I had in the back of my mind that I was actually buying hash power to mine any future crypto. For this reason RLC has the potential to become extremely valuable because why buy instances from Amazon or similar when you can cloud mine using something like iExec?

The other beautiful benefit of iExec is it creates the first crypto based market for beneficial computation. Those who are currently mining Ethereum and similar might find that they can make the same money or more by using their GPUs and CPUS for high utility beneficial purposes. This means iExec reduces the waste and immediately this makes RLC one of the first true utility tokens.

How long will it be before the iExec team sets up the software so that anyone can dedicate their mining rigs toward useful and beneficial computation? I'm not exactly sure. One estimate I saw was for autumn but another estimate was for sometime next year. In any case, I would hope they push these set of features up in priority to take advantage of the Ethereum switch to Casper. I also find that it could be quite interesting to see what happens to services like Genesis Mining if a dAPP can provide the same service decentralized.

**See fully operational marketplace:** https://market.iex.ec/
**Join a workerpool:** https://pools.iex.ec/
References
---
1. https://medium.com/iex-ec/iexec-releases-the-first-ever-blockchain-based-decentralized-cloud-marketplace-ba9da465607e