dom | icp
@dominic_w • 220,580 subscribers
Founder @dfinity @caffeineai. Internet cloud from network math, and the OS for agentic enterprises.
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Dear ICP community, the Internet Computer has now been running strong for 5 years 👏👏👏 Here is a celebratory preview of ICP "cloud engines," the sovereign frontier cloud technology the network shall soon provide from Main points: — Cloud engines enable anyone to spin up their own sovereign frontier cloud. The technology involves an extraordinary inventive step, in which cloud is created from a mathematically secure network of nodes. The nodes run as part of the Internet Computer network ( but are selected and configured by the cloud engine's owner. — The frontier cloud provided by engines is strongly focused on enabling AI agents to build and update online applications and services for us. The world is changing fast, and nearly all new online apps and services are already being built with the help of AI, and thus cloud engines target the future of cloud. — Software hosted on cloud engines is tamperproof, which means that it is immune to infrastructure hacks, because it runs inside a mathematically secure network protocol, rather than on computers directly. This means that AI agents, and those building with them, don't need to have a security team in the loop, or to trust someone else's security team. This is crucial, because in the future, non technical people will demand the freedom to build with full automation — where they just need to issue instructions to AI about what to build, and don't need to worry about anything or anyone else. Of course, apps and services running on engines are also vastly safer from the new breed of hacker being enabled by frontier AI. (The cloud engines themselves are also "tamperproof." Even if a hacker gains physical access to some portion of a cloud engine's nodes, and can make arbitrary changes, the computations and data of the hosted apps and services cannot be corrupted or interrupted so long as the network's fault bounds aren't exceeded. The recent hack of Vercel, a major cloud platform, which gave hackers access to the apps it hosted, provides additional perspective on the importance of this advantage.) — Software hosted on cloud engines is guaranteed to run, so long as a sufficient number of the engine's nodes are running. This means that AI can build applications and services without the need to have a human systems admin team constantly tinkering with the underlying platform to keep it running, which is again crucial, because in the future, non technical people will expect the freedom to use AI to build without the support of others. — New frontier programming language technology, in the form of the Motoko language developed by Caffeine Labs, leverages seminal "orthogonal persistence" technology that unifies program logic and data to deliver further unlocks for AI (Motoko is the first computer language being developed that targets agents that are writing software rather than humans engineers per se). Nowadays, AI can build and update production apps at a prodigious rate, even at the speed of conversation. But it can also make mistakes, and there's a risk that an update it creates might be "lossy" in the sense it causes some transformed data to be lost. Again, in this new world, it's both undesirable and impractical for everyone to have to have a systems admin team on-hand to detect lossy updates and roll them back, but Motoko provides a solution: it can detect new software updates are lossy before they are applied, reducing potentially catastrophic errors by AI to harmless coding retries. — Software hosted on cloud engines is "serverless" but unlike traditional serverless software, directly it directly incorporates data through "orthogonal persistence." Another key purpose is simplify backend software logic and fuel the modeling power of AI by increasing abstraction (sorry for the technical language!!!). Put simply, this enables AI to produce more sophisticated backends, faster, and at dramatically lower costs, as measured by the number AI API tokens consumed during coding. (Tip for the technical: orthogonal persistence is a new paradigm where "the program is the database," and data lives inside program variables, which is possible because it's as if hosted software runs forever in persistent memory). — An expanding database of skills at shall make it possible to develop and directly deploy apps and services to your cloud engines directly from Claude Code, Perplexity, Codex and other AI platforms. Further, your account on can be connected, so that new apps and updates created through conversation automatically appear hosted from your cloud engine. In the future, R&D is going to be very seamless. You converse with AI, and your secure and unstoppable apps or services are created or updated. Cloud engines are designed to directly support this "self-writing cloud" future where we can work hands-free. — Tech sovereignty is becoming a huge issue worldwide, with governments and corporations seeking to create sovereign tech stacks owing to geopolitical tensions. Increasingly, people are realizing that tech provided by foreign nations can come with hidden backdoors and kills switches, from the base platform, right up through hosted apps and services. ICP technology is open source, and those building on ICP using AI own their own source code. When you have the source code, you can verify that there are no backdoors, and when you own the source code thanks to AI, you can update it at will, freeing you from vendor lock-in. But cloud engines take sovereignty much further... — You create a cloud engine by selecting the nodes that will be combined. You can choose the class of nodes used, and their number, but more importantly, you can choose who operates the nodes, and where they are located. Almost any configuration is possible, because the Internet Computer scales the security privileges afforded to hosted software within the network according to configuration (software hosted on cloud engines can directly interoperate with software on other engines and traditional subnets, but base restrictions are applied according to security rules). A cloud engine can be created within a region such as Europe, to comply with regs such as GDPR, or completely within a sovereign state like Switzerland or Pakistan. But cloud engines go further still... — Sovereignty is also about freedom from vendor lock-in. Cloud engines are essentially ICP (Internet Computer Protocol) network configurations, and this means the underlying compute nodes they combine can be swapped out without interrupting their hosted apps and services. This is a big deal. In addition, cloud engines now support nodes that are instances running on Big Tech's clouds, in addition to nodes that are dedicated specialized hardware, as per the Gen I and Gen II nodes that dominate the Internet Computer today. For example, it is possible to have an engine running across different AWS data centers, say, and then reconfigure the engine to run across a mixture of AWS, Google, Azure and Hetzner for even more resilience, without the users of hosted apps and services noticing a thing. That's true freedom. — Sovereign AI is becoming increasingly important too, and cloud engines allow special "AI nodes" to be added to them, so that hosted software can perform inference on hardware provisioned by the owner from a location the owner has selected. Even though the AI nodes are only accessible within the cloud engine, they can still benefit from the forthcoming Internet Intelligence Gateway (IG), which will make it possible to validate inference performed on key frontier open weights LLMs, even when the inference is performed on completely independent AI clouds. When the results of inference are received, this technology can verify that neither the prompt+context (input) nor the inference result (output) have been modified, and that the results were produced by the precise LLM expected. This ensures that AI clouds don't cheat by running inference on cheaper models than are being paid for, and bad actors aren't modifying the inputs or outputs to surreptitiously insert advertising into results, say, or change facts, or insert malware when code is being generated. What's super cool about this technology is the cost of the verification is scalable. A very valuable additional security can be achieved with only 1-2% of extra cost. — Scaling apps and services when they hit capacity limits is another thorny problem that cloud engines help the world address. Engines make scaling possible without rewriting or reconfiguring software. The query workload capacity of hosted software can be horizontally scaled simply by adding new nodes to an engine, and nodes can also be added in geographical proximity to demand. Meanwhile, update workload capacity can first be scaled-up by swapping an engine's nodes out for the next class up, and then when no larger class of node is available, horizontally scaled-out by "splitting" the engine into two, which doubles available capacity. (Technical tip: horizontally scaling update capacity by splitting engines requires multi-canister architectures). — For those who have been following how Caffeine builds apps that can efficiently store large numbers of files, I should mention that apps built on cloud engines will also support the new ICP Blob Storage cloud network (since cloud engines currently have up to about 3 TB of memory, which apps storing large amounts of files can easily exceed). We are also working on allowing blob storage nodes to be added to cloud engines, to enable sovereign mass blob storage within an engine, similarly to how AI nodes can be added currently. — Lastly, but certainly not least, I should mention that cloud engines are multi-blockchain capable, and ready for digital assets, thanks to the clever math at their core. For example, an e-commerce service built on a cloud engine can securely accept and custody stablecoin payments, or a multi-chain DEX could be hosted. Further, engines can support software autonomy (software orchestrated and controlled by other autonomous software, in a decentralized way) and can themselves be orchestrated by SNS technology, and thus run autonomously too. Today, though, the focus is on *mainstream* cloud. This year, the cloud industry will generate approximately one trillion dollars in revenue. That number is already huge, but is expected to grow to two trillion dollars by 2030. After years of continuous development, which have seen more than $500m spent on R&D, the Internet Computer network is now tacking directly toward this mainstream cloud market with cloud engine technology. In their first version, cloud engines are not meant to be a cloud panacea. For example, currently they are not ideal for working with big data. You should use something like DataBricks for that. Cloud engines are carefully targeted at enabling AI to produce traditional online applications and services, including SaaS, in a safer and more productive way, which represents a new market segment with tremendous potential. Of course, DFINITY will continue to work relentlessly to push forward ICP's capabilities, so expect further developments. It's worth mentioning that this cloud segment isn't just about creating new apps and services using AI, it's also about replacing legacy systems and apps built on super expensive SaaS services. Caffeine Labs is working to produce technology (Caffeine Snorkel) that can study an enterprise's legacy systems and app built on SaaS, create replacement systems and apps, and migrate the data, while supporting key stakeholders through the process over email and chat, with full automation. Thus the legacy systems and SaaS markets shall also be addressed by cloud engines. Zooming out, and reasoning in a more metaphysical way, we believe, as we always have, that there is room for a new kind of cloud created by mathematical networks, that provides seminal advances in the fields of security and resilience, as well as true sovereignty and freedom from lock-in. That this same technology, with the help of additional technologies like orthogonal persistence and Motoko, enables AI to build for us without the need for so much oversight, and to create more backend sophistication while consuming fewer AI API tokens, enables ICP to bring game-changing advances to the world. Cloud engines will work synergistically with the Intelligence Gateway, which will enable apps and services running on engines to seamlessly leverage AI, wherever that AI is running, while providing verifiability at extremely low cost for open weights frontier models. We believe that cloud engines represent an inflection point in the storied history of the Internet Computer project, and I'm very proud to be sharing the details with you on the network's fifth birthday 💪 I'll be back with more news soon!!
dom | icp214,756 просмотров • 25 дней назад
Internet Computer Keep calm, BUIDL on #ICP #WEB3 meditation 🌐
dom | icp11,270,138 просмотров • 3 лет назад
A world first: a demonstration of AI running *on* blockchain as a smart contract 🧠⚡️ The Internet Computer is used – the world's first 3rd gen. blockchain #ICP. AI will become the beating heart of our web3, multi-chain world, and this is only my first demo. Code will follow shortly. This is running on DFINITY's Internet Computer testnet, but you'll be able to take the code and run it on the public network as the NNS is expected to up the per-transaction instruction limit in the coming days. Some important notes. The inference engine used has not been optimized, and we will show vastly greater efficiency in subsequent demos, where the AI runs even faster, and consumes less gas/cycles. We will also propose to the NNS that smart contracts have access to SIMD instructions – which we have determined are deterministic – unlocking vastly more speed and efficiency. Lastly, currently the actor smart contracts ICP hosts run inside a 32 bit environment, which limits their main memory to 4GB. Within the next couple of months, we expect the Internet Computer to move to a 64 bit environment, allowing smart contract memory limits to be raised much higher – allowing for models with far more parameters, and thus power, to be run. Those of you who have followed my posts know that hardware optimization support is planned. Firstly this will involve WASM smart contracts shipping out matrices for processing by the CPUs on existing node machines (another advantage of the Internet Computer running on sovereign node hardware). Secondly, we plan to propose a new public node machine specification, which node providers can build to, for use in subnets specialized for hosting AI smart contracts, in which each machine will incorporate several GPUs. Naturally, this will be packaged with other technological developments that ensure smart contract determinism. This is part of our mission to enable powerful LLMs to run as smart contracts on the Internet Computer – in a forms that are tamperproof, unstoppable, and optionally autonomous (including under the exclusive control of DAOs). Our vision: you will be able to have a chat with a smart contract. A smart contract will be able to coordinate your organization (see my earlier tweet about a "Delphi"). ICP smart contracts will be able to audit Ethereum smart contracts, kitemarking those without backdoors and reentrancy bugs. And smart contracts will be able to do KYC autonmously, matching faces to driving licenses, and more. We will deliver new SDK enhancements, and work with partners, to turbocharge crypto AI developers. Secure and unstoppable AI and third generation blockchain will be two sides of the same coin. Security and AI will be indivisible. AI models will be traded as NFTs. Thanks to Internet Computer's chain key (trustless multi-chain) capabilities, all blockchains will be able to leverage AI smart contracts. The future is beyond exciting. Thanks for watching. Can't wait to give you more demos!
dom | icp1,361,527 просмотров • 2 лет назад
Super excited, Swiss Subnet 1st national subnet launched @ WCD, Davos Deploy apps on sovereign Internet Computer/ICP territory keeping all data and computation in Switzerland, to meet emerging regulatory and sovereignty objectives, and more Next, Swiss Subnet cloud engines 💪🏼
dom | icp156,401 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
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Say hello to a massive acceleration of AI smart contracts 🧠 on the Internet Computer #ICP blockchain. Brilliant work by the DFINITY Foundation team has accelerated deterministic floating point instructions by 10X. We continue on our mission to run sophisticated LLMs as smart contracts 👊⚡️🔥 In the demo, image classification is now running 3X+ faster (across 3-4 blocks through consensus compared to 10-12 before). Naturally, the gas/cycles costs of AI inference has come down commensurately. The acceleration was achieved through broad low-level work, which includes commits to the public Wasmtime virtual machine implementation of WebAssembly. Coming optimizations will take us much further. The next optimization will include the integration of SIMD instructions into the smart contract execution environment, which will allow multiple floating point calculations to be performed in parallel through the execution of a single instruction. Something crucial: also in near sight, is the migration of the ICP smart contract environment from 32-bit Wasm to 64-bit Wasm, which will scale the number of AI model weights that can be loaded into contract memory from 2B to whatever is needed for sophisticated LLMs. Somewhat further away, is the provision of new APIs allowing canister smart contract code to export AI computations for accelerated processing on GPUs. This will require substantial work to address the challenges of achieving deterministic computation directly on the silicon, and for the community to agree a new public spec for node machines that pack GPUs, and to add compliant blockchain nodes to the network. Together, these improvements will unlock further orders of magnitude acceleration of AI smart contract inference (and potentially training). We believe that in the future vast numbers of AI models will run as smart contracts, which will prevent them being hacked (and thus the sensitive data they ingest being stolen), make them unstoppable, make them transparent, and where needed, allow them to run autonomously – for example for purposes such as KYC or EVM smart contract verification/certification. In the future, you will be able to have a conversation with a blockchain, and ask it to do reasoning for you. In this bright future, on-chain AI will be at the heart of Web3 – and to be clear, the Internet Computer's chain key technology will allow direct trustless integration with smart contracts on traditional chains such as Ethereum, Solana and NEAR. Join the #ICP mission to run the most impactful AI models on blockchain as smart contracts, and help make the Internet Computer the "everything computer." Join next week's Global R&D for details about the low-level deterministic floating point optimizations. Thanks for following 💪
dom | icp278,185 просмотров • 2 лет назад
ICP Cloud Engines — The Network is The Cloud — A fireside chat discussing one of the key technologies at the heart of ICP's push into the $1 trillion cloud market, which will work synergistically with platforms like and hackproof self-writing cloud💥
dom williams.icp ∞42,545 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
Lightning fast native Bitcoin DeFi 🎬🎯 #BTC x #ICP = only math TAP Protocol 🔥🔥🔥 🧵more video
dom | icp48,222 просмотров • 1 год назад
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