People laughed at us at first

An association based in Zug is developing a new type of data centre. It requires neither much space nor large amounts of electricity or water for cooling.
 

Every message we send via WhatsApp, every video we watch and every transaction we initiate through e-banking involves processes that are handled by data centres. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the demand for computing power is increasing rapidly, and the number of large, unattractive data centres is growing: there are already around 120 in Switzerland. But there is an alternative that promises to be more sustainable and efficient – while having no impact whatsoever on the landscape.

The Acurast Association in Zug uses the computing power of unused smartphones as a de-centralised data centre. “At first, people laughed at us when we talked about using the computing power of smartphones,” says Alessandro De Carli, president of Acurast and CEO of the Zug-based Papers AG. Google recently announced that it also plans to launch a similar initiative, and has been in discussions with the Zug-based Acurast association.

Closing security gaps with Acurast
Acurast began four years ago as a community project on Discord, a free communications platform, as well as on YouTube and X. It was initially a publicly accessible software experiment, and the Acurast Association was subsequently founded to develop the protocol further. Alessandro De Carli established the digital network. “We have no influence over the network. Our job is simply to initiate it, provide technical support and foster the community,” says De Carli. His own company, Papers AG, also uses this type of application.

Papers AG is a software company from Zug specialising in digital security technology. The company recently launched a product called Obsidio, which makes use of the Acurast infrastructure. With the help of the de-centralised network, now consisting of more than 285,000 smartphones, the software simulates realistic overload attacks, known as DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service). In an attack of this kind, a massive number of requests causes the system to become overloaded, and thereby brought to a standstill. Obsidio is already being used by several well-known Swiss banks, and Papers AG is just one of many service providers using the Acurast network.

The network initially primarily grew through collaborations with IT influencers, whereby the United States is by far the largest user base in North America. Usage In Europe is mainly concentrated in the UK and Germany, while Taiwan and the Philippines are the main markets in Asia.

“These countries are at the forefront because of a combination of cultural factors, the regulatory environment and our marketing activities,” says Acurast marketing manager Nicky van der Eem.
 

 Various types of smartphone farms are provided for the Acurast network
Alessandro De Carli, President of the Acurast Association and CEO of Papers AG.
The Acurast network is operated, among other things, using such smartphone farms.
Photos supplied
 

Smartphones solve problems faster
The data centre has steadily grown to 285,000 devices, providing a total of 180 terabytes of RAM. “We don't have many smartphones connected in Switzerland yet, but these devices would be very interesting for us,” says Luca De Carli, interim head of marketing at Acurast.

Initially, the project was simply an idea among technology enthusiasts, but the network has now become so large that it affects the wider public as well. “Our target is two million smartphones,” says Luca De Carli.

Together, all these phones would have the same computing power as 2,340 servers housed in conventional data centres. The benchmark used for this comparison is the RS720A-E11, a high-end rack server from Asus that is used in data centres.

A server in a data centre has a huge number of processor cores. Taking the comparison of a bus against a car: it may not be the fastest, but it can transport hundreds of tasks simultaneously. Its overall performance is thereby unrivalled. A smartphone has less overall capacity, but its individual processor cores are extremely fast.

When it comes to solving a single task as quickly as possible, a smartphone can outperform a server. This is known as “single-thread performance”. Put simply, a phone can solve an individual computing problem in its memory faster than a server core can. But the server has the advantage when dealing with large quantities of data.

According to industry sources, a smartphone network such as the one used by Acurast can therefore only be compared to highly available cloud services in conventional data centres to a limited extent.

Less electricity and no cooling
“Smartphones are highly optimised and have low energy consumption,” says Alessandro De Carli. As a result, the smartphones collectively consume less electricity – specifically, 34% less – than a comparable number of servers in a data centre.

What’s more, the smartphones require no cooling water. A data centre of a comparable scale would require millions of litres of water. “The biggest advantage is that smartphones do not require the additional cooling that servers need. I'm not sure, however, whether the performance can be compared with that of conventional data centres. But the idea is certainly interesting,” says data-centre expert Frits van der Graaff in response to an enquiry.

There are also ecological projects in conventional data centres. Frits Van der Graaff cites  underground data-centre project of EWL (Energy-Water Lucerne) as an example. But the development of data centres is still in its early stages, and is expected to accelerate in the coming years as a result of AI.

Earning money overnight
A smartphone can be made available to the Acurast network via an app. For example, the device can be plugged in in the evening and the app activated overnight. The following morning, the user will receive a payment in the form of tokens, a digital unit of value. The value of a token fluctuates depending on market conditions. If more people make their smartphones available to the network, for example, each person would receive fewer tokens per smartphone. These digital rewards can be converted into Swiss francs via crypto-currency exchanges. Alongside the financial incentive, the environmental aspect and the technological innovation also play a role for users.

On Reddit, various users say that it does not make them a great deal of money. “Our aim isn't for users to earn a lot of money: the technology and the environmental benefits should be the focus,” says Alessandro De Carli.

One user says that he earns around 8 dollars a month with nine devices running around the clock. As stated above, this amount varies depending on the smartphone, market conditions and the size of the smartphone farm.

More information about Acurast, and the links for adding your phone to the network can be found, in English, on:
www.acurast.com