on the crypto
A joint data-center venture between ConsenSys and the chip maker AMD has so far raised over $ 20 million to triple its GPU capacity, but have not explained exactly how they plan to use them.
GPU number tripled
In the crypto world, the term "data center" is usually just another way of saying mining enterprise. But that's not what it means for W3BCLOUD, the venture between ConsenSys and AMD.
W3BCLOUD co-founders Wael Aburida and Sami Issa, who is also CEO, said they used $ 20,5 million in the first phase of a seed to increase GPU capacity in a data center in Washington State.
W3BCLOUD currently manages 6.000 GPUs, but the $ 20,5 million investment will allow it to triple that number to 20.000 units. W3BCLOUD, which was founded in early 2019, is based in Ireland and a branch in London.
Companies House, the UK business register, names ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin and his chief of staff, Jeremy Millar, as directors.
"We will build the IT infrastructure necessary for use cases of interest to the community"
Usually associated in blockchain space with cryptocurrency mining, GPUs are versatile and can perform a number of other functions, such as processing blockchain traffic, increasing network storage and improving latency.
They could also be put to work in the emerging Web3 and decentralized finance (DeFi) spaces. In principle, GPUs will form the backbone of a new decentralized IT infrastructure, said Aburida, and will initially be implemented on Ethereum - here the quotation.
But both co-founders refused to explain the details. "We will say more in the future," said Issa. "We have access to the best computers and the best blockchain minds, we will build the IT infrastructure necessary for use cases of interest to the community."
Support for new blockchains
W3BCLOUD is still active in its seed round and those involved are hoping to reach the $ 30 million funding target. So far, the company has attracted investments from its main supporters, ConsenSys and AMD, as well as from a handful of family offices in the United Arab Emirates.
Part of the funding will also go to a new data center in the European Union. They are also collecting interest from some sovereign wealth funds, according to Aburida. An institutional round is scheduled for 2021.
W3BCLOUD is also interested in working on other new proof-of-work blockchains. Many blockchains struggle to get feedback early on, Aburida said, and the company's data centers could perhaps act as a "white knight," providing processing power early on to give projects a crucial edge and protect them from 51% of attacks.
These can occur when someone with bad intentions takes on more than half the computing power of a network and is therefore able to rewrite transactions on the blockchain. Although the plans have not yet been fully defined, "the important point is that we will be an important player in terms of numbers for the GPUs," said Aburida.
