Flux, a Network of Limitless Scale and the Growth of Useful Work.

Being successful in the cloud computing market implies being able to scale your infrastructure to meet the demands of a future that only grows more hungry for processing power, RAM, and storage. Flux is a truly decentralized computational network with the upper hand in scaling. Let’s explore why decentralized scaling can outpace scaling in legacy Web2.

Flux is building the World’s most powerful decentralized computational network; it will run the next iteration of the Internet, Web3. Flux will always champion decentralization, we build decentralization, and we will always be ‘proof of work,’ fairly distributed, and community-driven.

And while Flux is all the better for being true to this decentralized ethos, there are other more tangible advantages to decentralization. Some that put Flux well ahead of the competition.

Have you ever wondered what the benefits of decentralization are from an operational perspective? From a scaling perspective?

The demand for cloud infrastructure is growing at a rapid rate. Currently, the future growth is forecast to be a compounded annual rate of around 17%. This logically makes the ability to scale an important business metric for centralized and decentralized cloud providers. So how do centralized and decentralized cloud providers rise to meet the demand, and who has the upper hand regarding network scaling?

We believe Flux will be able to scale more efficiently than any centralized providers due to the advantages of being truly decentralized. Read on to learn why Flux can scale better than legacy Web2 infrastructure.

Two ways of running infrastructure, Legacy Web2 in data centers and decentralized Web3 running on Flux.

Let’s consider two ways of running infrastructure for applications, servers, websites, etc. One way is the legacy way of running infrastructure in data centers; the other is the Flux decentralized infrastructure powered by blockchain. Both centralized and decentralized infrastructure has the same purpose; to provide a high uptime, efficient, secure, and performant environment to run applications, but they operate on very different terms.

First up, let’s look at how the legacy approach looks. Currently, most of the World’s internet infrastructure is hosted by Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. They build large data centers where they cluster their servers. The primary benefit of having large data centers is efficiency. Having fewer and larger sites allows for more cost-efficient operations, which is necessary to improve the bottom line and have a profitable business.

A data center is complicated and costly to build. You have to account for having the physical space, sufficient power and cooling capacity, network bandwidth, fire safety, physical security, areas for staff, parking, and the hardware itself. You also need to hire specialized staff to tend to the servers and do maintenance for the hardware and facility management. And you will most likely also have to manage various legal requirements and approvals from local authorities.

It’s safe to say that building a data center involves many complexities and has many important requirements that must be carefully managed.

Now, look at Flux, the World’s largest decentralized computational network. Flux runs infrastructure by organizing thousands of computational nodes in a network that spans the Globe. The Flux blockchain provides the required organization, network security, governance, and an economic model to tie everything together in one big ecosystem. Flux operates like a virtual data center where everything is under one blockchain ‘roof,’ even though the physical servers can be anywhere in the World.

The network participants, like GPU miners and Flux Node operators, have to provide and care for the hardware running the network, so the task of managing the Flux ‘data center’ is a shared one where thousands of people each do their part. The Flux blockchain organizes everything while the network participants ‘bring their hardware. No central entity owns the Flux network, and the individual network participants choose whether or not they want to participate by weighing their costs against the incentives provided by the Flux network. The complexities of running a large data center are dissolved through decentralization; big problems are reduced to small ones, each managed by thousands of individuals within the Flux community.

The benefit of this decentralized model is a very efficient and resilient network where a global community shares costs and risks. While the largest centralized cloud provider, Amazon Web Services, has 38 data centers worldwide, the Flux network has more than 13,000 computational nodes spread across more than 60 countries.

Do you even scale, Bro? Centralized vs. Decentralized scalability.

The ability to scale infrastructure is key to staying competitive in the cloud computing market. If you cannot scale with the demand, you lose out on market share, and if you scale out demand, you end up with costly infrastructure sitting idle.

So, if you have a centralized data center and want to scale it up, you need to account for many things. You need to source the new hardware needed; you also need to scale the surrounding infrastructure; you need more power, more cooling, and so on. You might need additional staff. If you’re limited in increasing your current site's infrastructure, you might need to build; maybe you even need an entirely new data center to scale.

Centralized scaling implies managing all the complexities of building a data center. Scaling also requires time as supply chains, construction, hiring staff, and installing hardware all impact the timeline of when new infrastructure can be implemented. There is also a planning overhead to centralized scaling. Having too much or too little infrastructure is costly to a centralized business, so forecasting the infrastructure demands and mitigating risks is paramount to scaling. Centralized cloud providers must carefully plan when scaling; they need to account for lead times to deploy new infrastructure and manage risks to their business.

To summarize, centralized scaling requires lead times to plan, deploy, and manage risks. It operates on terms where there can be many limiting factors to rapidly scaling.

Flux can scale in an entirely different way. Because Flux is decentralized and has a ‘virtual’ data center without the constraints of a legacy data center, it is capable of rapid and almost limitless scaling. Flux scales off the existing hardware that’s already available in the entire World, and anyone can provide infrastructure to the network at any given time.

In essence, Flux is almost infinitely scalable as it is only limited by whether people desire to participate in the network or not.

Flux scales the network by changing the dynamics of participation. Increasing incentivization or lowering the bar of entry are both ways of attracting more network participants. Flux can instantly scale by simply changing the parameters of the network in various ways:

• Changing the $Flux collaterals and/or hardware required to run nodes.
• Adding increased incentivization by distributing Flux revenue to miners and node operators.
• Adding new node tiers or ways to participate in the network.

Revenue streams will be created as more features and services are added to the Flux network. With increased demand, a bigger Flux inflow is available to distribute to network participants. When the revenue generated through more demand becomes more directly distributed to network participants, the network starts to scale organically using supply and demand. More demand means higher incentives, which attracts more network participants to provide hardware. Less demand might decrease incentives causing some network participants to leave.

By being decentralized, Flux will be able to outscore any centralized provider. Flux isn’t affected by the limitations that make scaling challenging and time-consuming for centralized providers- And Flux can scale from an almost limitless pool of hardware and network participants. The many are simply able to outpace the few.

So far, the appetite to participate in the Flux network has been large, and it is not slowing down. About a year ago, in September 2021, the Flux network had 2,000 computational nodes; now, it has more than 13,000. The network has scaled up more than 650% in several nodes, but the nodes also have higher hardware requirements now, with around 10x increases for CPUs, RAM, and storage. The Flux mining hashrate has also increased by 2,000%.

In one year, Flux has scaled the network more than tenfold. That is the power of decentralization and limitless scaling.

We invite you to learn more about Flux.

The community fuels flux, so we invite you to participate. All are welcome; it doesn’t matter if you’re interested in technology, an investor, a developer, or just like to make crypto memes all day. Flux needs all kinds of people to participate in the decentralized future.

Come check out the official Flux website hosted on the Flux decentralized network. Learn about the Flux ecosystem and see what’s on offer. Check out how to run Flux nodes or how to mine Flux.

If you want to witness what Flux has built so far, visit the Flux network dashboard and see how many nodes we’ve got online, check out the massive resources available to the network, see what decentralized apps are running and what the current rewards are for Flux node operators.

And also, please do stop by the Flux discord to meet the Flux team and community and discuss all things Flux; we’re always on the lookout for new community members or developers.