With this article we describe the mechanism by which the day to day business activities of the Neuromation artificial intelligence (AI) platform relates to the NTK token.
As readers who have been following Neuromation over time and who have read my previous articles will be aware, Neuromation recently launched its groundbreaking AI platform aimed specifically at the fast growing MLOps and Deep Learning sectors of the AI space.
The Neuromation platform is an AI ecosystem in its own right in which all services are ultimately paid for and settled in the NTK token.
The Neuromation platform has its own internal unit of accounting which for now we simply refer to as credits. Listed on the platform is an extensive list of compute options each one offering different levels of compute power and processing speed to the end user, each of these options are priced in credits. In order to start a project running on the Neuromation platform the user needs to have enough credits in their account to pay for the chosen package.
There are several options for the user to acquire the credits needed to run their projects on the system and these are described below:
- The user already owns NTK either on an exchange or in their own wallet. In this case the user will simply use the NTK to buy the desired number of credits on the platform and will then be able to immediately start work.
- The user buys NTK on one of the markets where the token is quoted, such as WhiteBIT and then uses the NTK to buy the required credits
- The user pays in fiat currency in an online transaction using a debit or credit card to buy the desired number of NTK needed to run their project on the Neuromation platform.
The first two options, above, are quite clear in their relationship to the NTK token as in each case the end user has bought NTK in order to start working on their project.
The third point, however, needs a bit of extra colour to explain how purchasing the NTK with a credit or debit card operates. While the entire Neuromation ecosystem runs on the NTK token as its effective currency of operation it makes absolute sense for the platform to also accept “cash” payments and payments in other cryptocurrencies to purchase the required credits purely on an ease of use basis.
Where payments are received by credit or debit card, Neuromation credits the client account with the requisite amount of “virtual NTK” ( this is NTK within the platform that can only be used for purchasing platform services and is not blockchain transferable) the fiat currency received is then used to buy NTK on the market thus closing the process. For large transactions this can be done over a number of days and for smaller transactions the sale of currency and purchase of on-market NTK can be carried out immediately.
To give an “old world” example, imagine, if you will, a purchaser of a product or service located in the USA wishes to fill his order with a Japanese supplier located in Japan. The US based purchaser will pay in US$ and Japanese supplier will receive the US$ at their bank at which point the supplier’s bank will sell the US$ and buy Japanese Yen, crediting the Yen to the supplier’s account. It goes without saying that if the Japanese supplier starts to receive an increase in orders from American clients then this will result in more US$ being sold and more Japanese Yen being bought, thus creating a real business based demand for Japanese Yen. Ultimately this increased demand for Japanese Yen will make the Yen appreciate against the US$ in effect creating wealth to the benefit of Japan.
Neuromation operates in exactly the same manner with the end currency always being the NTK token. Just like the Japanese supplier in the example above, if Neuromation is paid in a currency other than NTK then this currency will need to be sold and NTK bought to close the loop. You could thus liken the Neuromation ecosystem to a country whose currency is NTK and which uses NTK to settle all transactions.
While the Neuromation platform has a huge amount of compute power available for users, with more scheduled to come on stream later this month, there will come a time where the platform is close to fully loaded. At this point it will become necessary for Neuromation to either turn business away ( a very bad idea) or acquire and deploy more compute power in our data-centers ( a very good idea), as more compute power available means more end users.
Once The Neuromation platform begins to show signs of reaching the fully loaded status it will be necessary to acquire more data center compute power and in this case Neuromation will, over time, sell some of its treasury held NTK token and use the proceeds to expand the data-centers to meet increased client demand
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Once this new compute power starts to become fully loaded and the NTK treasury balance starts to increase again as payments come in, the whole process will simply repeat.
Neuromation is the only company offering an AI / MLOps / Deep Learning platform which runs on cryptocurrency, Here are some other utility crypto projects that are also becoming popular.
Company Token Circulating Supply Price Ecosystem Value
Golem GLM 1,000,000,000 $0.36 $360,000,000
Filecoin FIL 93,326,288 $53.70 $5,020,000,000
Neuromation NTK 78,906,617 $0.055 $4,339,863
Martin Birch
Kyiv, August 2021
About the author: Martin serves as the Non-Executive Chairman of The Neuromation Group and is the Managing Partner of Eastern Europe focused investment bank, Empire State Capital Group.
Previous articles about Neuromation by Martin can be viewed here:
