Need assistance?

So it seems you succeeded to get the client running, congrats! As a next step I would recommend doing some actual Blender rendering with it. For this, you will need some (very small) amount of money on your account. In BitWrk's user interface, you can switch to "Account" to learn how to transfer some mBTC onto BitWrk.

See the quickstart instructions for more info.

As a promotional offer, I am giving out starting credit of 20mBTC to the next five persons who post their BitWrk account IDs here!

Keep it coming 

Congrats! 20 mBTC just arrived on your account. Have fun 

By the way, I agree that uPNP would make selling easier.

So, did you have any success in the end? As a seller, you have to be very patient at the moment until BitWrk's eco system has grown bigger. We need buyers mostly, so this is a call to all the Blender enthusiasts who also happen to a have some (milli-)Bitcoins to spend.

I don't think there is a cheaper commercial rendering service for Blender at the moment.

How about setting up a firewall so that the workers can't initiate connections to other hosts (apart from the BitWrk service)?

It's a valid point. Python scripting is obviously disabled, but Blender is not engineered for security. I recommend running workers on dedicated hardware or in a VM. Additionally (or at least alternatively), create two dedicated user accounts: one for the BitWrk client, and one for the Blender slave.

Looking at how small BitWrk still is still in terms of user base, chances of being attacked are very small, though.

Congrats! Here is your 20 mBTC. Have fun  

Yes, please backup that file, or use it on two computers. You can have two or more BitWrk clients using the same account ID at the same time, but not too many. At some point, performance will degrade. Two is probably not a problem. Your mileage may vary. BitWrk has its own accounting/ledger system, that's why you don't see a transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain.


Correct, probably nobody is buying. At the moment, buyers are a rare species. Building a functioning eco-system seems to be the hardest part. That's why I'm advertising BitWrk mainly on Blender-related boards, where chances are higher meet potential buyers. By the way, BitWrk really needs all the publicity it can get (*cough*Twitter followers*cough*).

All bids time-out after 2 minutes if they're not matched. You can setup a mandate to automatically enter a new bid.

WRT to GPU, I actually don't have any experience in that area yet, my hardware is all AMD based which isn't yet supported by Blender on Mac OS X.

By the way, is your IP 95.90.xxx.xxx? Please make sure that port is really open. I recommend using http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/

Congrats, you just received 20 mBTC to your new BitWrk account!

Yes, that's your account ID. It doesn't only look like a Bitcoin address, it is one. BitWrk took a lot of inspiration from Bitcoin technology. If you want to, you can also import that key into your wallet: the WIF file is in /.bitwrk-client/privatekey.wif

Apart from that, there is no real need to worry about the Account ID. I recommend following the quickstart instructions!

I would like to announce the release of BitWrk 0.5.1 "Moon".

bitwrk.net | GitHub | Download | Quickstart Instructions

BitWrk is an open marketplace for computing power, fueled by Bitcoin. I've been working on it since 2013 (see the original announcement post). At Chaos Communication Conference, I even held a Lightning Talk. What makes BitWrk special is that participant can not only buy computing power, but also sell it for Bitcoin.

BitWrk is now running in BETA phase and its first use case, rendering 3d imagery with Blender, is working quite well. Accepting payments in Bitcoin has been implemented in August's 0.5.0 release. Withdrawals are not implemented yet.

The 0.5.1 release brings the following changes:

• Support for Blender 2.76
• Work data compression reduces uploads to BitWrk peers
• Transaction fee is now always 3% of price
• ... and a couple of small enhancements and bug fixes.

Both server and client are Open Source Software, released under the GPLv3. There are binaries for Windows and Mac OS X.

If you happen to be a Bitcoin fan and you use Blender for your projects, please try out BitWrk!

I'd love to hear your questions, experiences and criticism. I'll also grant 20 mBTC of BitWrk credit to the first five participants who post their BitWrk account IDs here.

Sowohl CPU, als auch GPU können benutzt werden. NVidia GPUs werden von Blender traditionell bevorzugt, seit Kurzem sollten aber auch AMD GPUs funktionieren. BitWrk hat da selber übrigens keine eigenen Aktien.

@voephilisI: Du meinst die klassischen Renderfarmen? Stimmt, die gibt es, aber das Alleinstellungsmerkmal von BitWrk ist, dass es sich um ein verteiltes System handelt. Zudem hat es ein paar Tricks von Bitcoin abgekupfert: keine Registrierung, Mikrotransaktionen...

Hallo zusammen!

Anlässlich der heutigen Freigabe von Version 0.5.1 "Moon" möchte ich hier ein Bisschen Werbung machen für ein Bitcoin-Projekt, das mir schon seit zweieinhalb Jahren die Freizeit raubt...

BitWrk ist ein offener Marktplatz für Rechenpower, der auf Bitcoin basiert. Jeder kann hier als Marktteilnehmer Rechenleistung kaufen und verkaufen. Wer kauft, zahlt dafür, innerhalb einer bestimmten Zeit für einen bestimmten Preis eine "Rechenaufgabe" gelöst zu bekommen. Wer verkauft, bekommt Geld dafür, solche Rechenaufgaben zu bearbeiten. Wie bei einer Aktienbörse bestimmen Angebot und Nachfrage den Preis. Solche Rechenaufgaben können sehr unterschiedliche Ausprägungen annehmen, und Anwendungen gibt es viele. Meine Entwicklungs-Resourcen konzentriere ich jedoch auf die Berechnung (Rendering) von 3D-Bildern mit der Software Blender.

Mein ursprünglicher Gedanke war der, dass es für Computer sinnvollere Aufgaben gibt, als für eine Blockchain Hashsummen im Akkord zu berechnen. Aufgaben, für die Andere sogar etwas zahlen würden. Und so entstand die Idee zu BitWrk. Das Konzept habe ich damals bereits hier vorgestellt.

Also, wenn hier Blender-Begeisterte am Start sind, würde es mich freuen, euch für BitWrk zu gewinnen! Die Software ist Gratis (und sogar Open Source!) und für Windows, Mac und Linux verfügbar (Linuxer müssen allerdings selber kompilieren, was kein großes Problem darstellen sollte).

>>>    http://bitwrk.net    <<<

Die ersten 5 Teilnehmer, die mir ihre BitWrk-Account-ID als PM schicken, erhalten eine Gutschrift über 20 mBTC auf ihren Account!

Frohes BitWrken!
Jonas

Mindestens mich gibt es noch, und die Jungs vom OpenLab! https://openlab-augsburg.de/

The next step will be actual Bitcoin integration finally.   

If that's done, I'd like to do another test run, maybe for a couple of days this time. The last one was very promising. Please tell me if you'd like to participate, so I can add you to the list!

BitWrk 0.4.1 has been released today.

The new version concentrates mainly on users of Blender, the free 3D graphics software, featuring enhanced usability, an optimal tiling algorithm and support for the recently released Blender 2.72.

BitWrk is becoming an open marketplace for computing power using Bitcoin as currency. It has been mentioned... several... times... on this board. Blender rendering is BitWrk's first use case.

BitWrk homepage: http://bitwrk.net/
BitWrk 0.4.1 release: https://github.com/indyjo/bitwrk/releases/tag/v0.4.1
BitWrk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bitwrk (please subscribe to be informed of new releases)
BitWrk on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BitWrk (please follow to be informed of new releases)
BitWrk on Tip4Commit: http://tip4commit.com/projects/541 (donations are distributed as rewards for development)

Cheers, and have fun!

Another suggestion: BitWrk is looking for volunteers! It's a Bitcoin-driven, open marketplace for computing power, where everybody can be a buyer and a seller. BitWrk has its roots in this forum. It is currently in development, but it is definitely not vaporware, as proved by yesterday's test.

There are a lot of opportunities to contibute to BitWrk:

• Development work on the main software. Like to try developing in Go?
• Setting up a good-looking, extensible and maintainable home page.
• Enhancing the integration of Blender.
• Integrating more compute-intensive software products. E.g., there are lots and lots of ray-tracers around! There is an opportunity to share revenue.
• Providing tutorial videos.
• Providing the community with news and support.
• Last but not least: Just setup your server to do Blender rendering for others will make the BitWrk service more useful for users, right now!

That's just what comes to my mind.

Disclosure: I am the founding developer of BitWrk.

No problem! BitWrk is currently open for testing, both buying and selling, without connection to the Bitcoin system (i.e., for free). There are always a couple of sellers available, and I encourage everybody to use them for rendering. You might want to gain some experience for the next test.

With regard to GPU rendering, I have no experience with that yet. Please try, the potential is huge!

Here is the pay-out transaction: https://blockchain.info/tx/0e3d0af3189ef2a8c051a1579fe180e00d53210e3a0baaa3853107b10acc305f

Ok, folks, it's over! Thanks for your participation!

Unfortunately, not every participant was lucky in getting the software to do Blender rendering correctly, so a few people might not be listed. That's not to say that their contribution didn't count! Getting to know failure situations was a main motivation for the test.

Here are the final results for accounts that did have some success:

Account	Final balance	Comment
1MwvTNehPz7U5XYn3h1G7LVPANv3GFq6JR	mBTC 965.88084 + mBTC 1.6406 blocked in ongoing transactions	That's my account
143TMvtqCwaiCj4HcLry94bq8MzSgH7Nru	mBTC 14.23
1149qGAWUau1P9qf61Nnyu62m5pJXDXT4x	mBTC 12.402
1FZc8afGhbZ9R6muNwbrQUTapoFkswBy26	mBTC 5.4189
18wvyrNnzwqdFCErA2ncuime8Nw3R2VCwo	uBTC 150
Fees collected	uBTC 277.66

Hope you had as much fun doing this as I had. Maybe for the next time, the test should be 24h long. What do you think?

Are you sure that port forwarding works? I get "connection refused" on port 2300. You might want to double-check with http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/

And yes, it's absolutely ok to just switch everything off!

Hi Samperio, thanks for your efforts! Yes, you need to install Blender and have a port open. What kind of system are you running (Mac, Linux, Windows?).
Any questions, I'll talk you through.