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Placeholders is creating a Decentralized Marketplace for Distributed Computing Resources to serve as an alternative to Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.

Overview

Placeholders blockchain utilizes "artifacts" as placeholders, which is custom data stored in the blockchain to enable complex computing operations. These complex computing operations will be provided by Placeholders wallet users who rent their local computing resources (CPU/Hard-drive/RAM) to buyers who are willing to pay in PHL for the resources to be utilized as a virtual private server (VPS) in the cloud.

While current efforts are focused on the decentralized VPS feature, there are virtually limitless additional possibilities beyond that, including renting storage, contract management or creating a decentralized "Nicehash" for cloud mining.

Artifacts Defined

An artifact is a static or dynamic piece of data with trackable transit and/or history including macro changes to the data. Artifacts are stored on a node to which the author can be proven via private key hash cryptography.

An artifact, in terms of being used in the Placeholders environment, is simply defined as a package of electronic documents (metaphorically speaking like a zip file) that can have more documents added and changes tracked. This is why the blockchain is named "Placeholders", as the artifact acts as a placeholder for documents and future changes of those documents. This is useful when multiple parties each need to add their own documents in a specific order and the other parties need to verify that these were added properly.

Use-Case Implementation Overview:

Placeholders blockchain can store a link in the blockchain (this is an example of an "artifact") which points at a standard torrent file (copies of a file that are held by various people across the internet, commonly known as "seeders").

A torrent is a directory file, which holds information on where to find pieces of another file. Lets take an example of a normal file (can be any file like a movie or software): This file can be split up into 20 or more different pieces (the torrent file holds this information). Not every person needs to hold all 20 pieces as long as when someone wants the file, they download all 20 pieces onto their computer. When the file is requested by a person, the seeders will upload pieces of the file to the requester until the requester has all of the pieces and thus the full file. This ensures availability and redundancy for the data while reducing risk of losing data.

Most people use torrents for sharing large files (i.e. movies and software). In Placeholders case, the torrent file will be a file similar to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). VDIs are commonly used for storing an image of an operating system (windows/linux/mac) in a single file. Meaning, if you have access to this file, you can run software (e.g., VirtualBox or VMwares workstation) to interact with the virtual operating system. This would be similar to running a completely different computer, where the software is isolated to that virtual machine. This concept is typically referred to as running a "virtual machine".

Virtual machines are an instance of an operating system inside another operating system. For example, you may be running Windows right now, and if you wanted a virtual Windows pc (to test out software), you could run the VirtualBox software with a VDI image file to create a virtual PC that has no effect on your current Windows environment. Placeh takes this a step further and consolidates resources from different PHL wallet users and combines those resources to create an instance of a virtual private server in the cloud, which is then available to the buyer.

In essence, Placeholders is creating an ecosystem to compete with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

There are two parts to this ecosystem, suppliers and buyers.

Suppliers (i.e. people who offer their computing resources and will be paid for it):

For example, a Placeholders wallet user will be able to rent part of their hard-drive space out to store portions of a VDI file, or rent out part of their CPU for distributed computing, or part of their RAM. These will all have various rates based upon the supply/demand and marketplace prices.

Buyers (people that want to launch a decentralized virtual server/pc):

Currently, if a person wanted to launch a VPS (virtual private server), they would normally need to sign up and pay for a centralized provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud. These providers have established rates to launch a server, based upon the configuration of the server (number of cpus, amount of hard-drive space, and amount of RAM (memory)). An hourly rate is computed for the amount of resources desired, and the buyer is billed by the provider for launching and running that server instance.

Placeh is creating this same service but utilizing excess computing resources from PHL wallet owners. Most people are not using 100% of their cpu/hard-drive/ram at all times. These are under-utilized computing resources that can be used to earn the owner money. Portions of these computing resources (the virtual CPUs, Hard Drive, and RAM) can be rented out to others who want to run a virtual private server.

All of these resources do not need to be provided by just one Placeholders wallet user. Instead, it can be a combination of many different PHL wallet users and the blockchain will automatically consolidate the resources into the "cloud" and combine it to act like one server instance for the buyer. The Placeholders blockchain will also automatically handle the payments from the buyers wallet (ensures the buyer has enough PHL in their wallet prior to buying resources) and will automatically split payments out to the PHL wallet users based upon the market rates and how many resources they have committed toward the virtual private server instance.

Since wallet users have already paid off their hardware, their cost to rent out their CPU/Hard Drive space/RAM will be significantly less than a centralized company such as Amazon or Google. Thus, providing buyers of virtual private servers a cheaper option than existing options and also allowing users of Placeholders to earn additional money from hardware that is otherwise losing value over time (via depreciation).

This is a win-win benefit for both providers of resources (they earn money from renting their computing resources now) as well as buyers of those resources (who now have a cheaper option to obtain computing resources).

Key Takeaway: Placeholders is a blockchain that utilizes artifacts through a distributed ledger with an end goal of creating a decentralized competitor to Amazon Web Services (AWS)/Google Cloud.

Project FAQ

Q: How will people ultimately be creating and managing their artifacts?

A: Artifacts will be deployed (created) and managed (updated) through users wallets. When the artifact is deployed it should be signed on the spot. The deploy button would create the checksum, and it would automatically insert their signature via the private key of the address they're deploying to. Just like you need private keys to "deploy" a valid unspent output TX onto the network you would need private keys to "deploy" a valid artifact onto the network.

Q: What is the financial motivation for a decentralized AWS?

A: Amazon market cap is $1 trillion. Our goal is to capture a small percentage of this. Back of the napkin calculation - thats still a huge number!

Q: How long will this take to build?

A: This is an ambitious project with ambitious goals. Rather than commit to a timeline and have constant delays/excuses, we are gladly admitting that this will be an iterative process. Rest assured the team is working diligently.

Q: This sounds so cool! Can I help?

A: Of course! The core developer, Xagau would gladly accept a lending hand. Anyone can make contributions to this project, and assuming there is consensus, pull requests will be accepted after a review.

Q: What is the current state of an artifact?

A: An artifact can currently hold up to 65KB of data. and can be signed and validated. At the moment, there is no ability to route and there is no network of nodes replicating beyond a very experimental cluster.

Q: How will I access my artifact without an IP address?

A: You will access your artifact entry point at the protocol level, using placeh://F9ddp3zXbNd5zwxBngvRBe4zQgmoViNuma

Q: What will be used to run a VDI (assuming you can replicate an entire VDI using torrent style data transfer) ?

A: Future versions of the node replicator will include an open, forked version of Virtual Box that will host the guest VDI

Q: What happens if the host running a VDI goes offline, will my running VDI lose its state?

A: We hope to solve this during testing, but hypothesize that the answer lies in clustering software

Q: What incentive do hosts have to host a VDI and give up bandwidth and hard drive space for a guest VDI?

A: Guests should pay a fee payable in PHL, determined by the host as an accepted offer to host.

Q: Where would computing resources be bought and sold?

A: Our vision is to have a live marketplace that will match VDI buyers and sellers with one another

Q: If a VDI changes its size between start-up and stop, won't its checksum size change and invalidate the signing?

A: Yes it will change and invalidate the signing. So all VDI artifacts will have to be signed again on shutdown or startup.

Q: What guarantee do I have that a VDI has not been taken hostage by a third party, and wouldn't that potentially invalidate the signing?

A: Yes, it would invalidate the signing and owners of their VDI should secure their VDI accordingly.

Links

Website: http://www.placeh.io/

Explorer: http://explore.placeh.io:8080/

GitHub: https://github.com/xagau/Placeholders-X16R

WhitePaper: Coming Soon!

Pools:

blockify.xyz
gos.cx
GpuHash.org
Icemining.ca
minerscore.com
marspool.org

Mining Software:

Same algorithm as Raven, so use whichever mining software you use to mine Raven to mine Placeh

Nvidia Miner - Nevermore https://github.com/brian112358/nevermore-miner/releases/
Nvidia Miner - T-Rex https://github.com/trexminer/T-Rex/releases

AMD Miner - Wildrig https://github.com/andru-kun/wildrig-multi/releases/
CPU Miner

Wallets

Windows Wallet: https://www.placeh.io/files/setup-placeh-rc2.0.28.1.exe

Mac Wallet: http://www.placeh.io/files/setup-placeh-rc2.0.28.1.dmg.zip

Linux Wallet: http://www.placeh.io/files/setup-placeh-rc2.0.28.1.tar.gz

Paper Wallet: http://www.placeh.io/bitaddress.org-3.3.0/bitaddress.org.html

Specifications and Distribution

Consensus:	Proof-of-Work (POW)
Algorithm:	x16r (Raven Fork)
Block Time:	~60 seconds
Block Reward:	5 PHL, decreasing emission over time to limit inflation
	Approximately 90 days from the beginning of the x16r blockchain the rewards will halve from 5PHL to 2.5PHL. After which the emissions will be reduced every 90 days at decreasing rate throughout the future of the blockchain.
Coin Symbol:	PHL
Max Supply:	10,500,000 PHL
Fair Launch:	No Premine, No ICO, No Dev-fee per block, All coins were fairly mined

Exchanges

List will be updated as Placeholders is made available on more exchanges and services.

Community

Please join us on discord and see what PHL is all about!