TL;DR: There isn’t enough demand for outsourced GPU rendering at this time
I recently tried to spin up a Render Node, and only then was I able to see underneath the hood of what’s going on.
I realize that Render ($RENDER) is a darling project for most communities, with a fantastic concept and super strong hype driven by good marketing and even better influencers (such as the Banter fam).
But this is where our community shines its greatest strengths as a decentralized, independent hub of contributors with a wide range of resources who all have different data points… let’s take a step outside this massive echo chamber.
Ever wonder why such a strong project topped out at just over $13, and seems to be treading water between $9-$11 since forever?
Answer: there just isn’t enough demand for outsourced GPU rendering at the this time, compared to the overwhelming amount of GPU resources available in the network.
If you’ve entered into the Render website with serious intent to participate (I meant business) you find that you have two ways to get involved - either: A) as an artist (demand side), or B) as a compute resource provider (supply side)
I realized that the the balance is heavily skewed towards the supply side. It is quite competitive to run a node, and there are different tiers of participation which amount to greatly differing profitability. Core network contributors seem to have a lucrative deal going on, but new node operators have to apply and don’t seem to have the same level of returns. It would seem that it pays to have been early, but to learn the discrepancy between the two took some real digging into. Turns out, actual load utilization is under 10%.
Also, the present on-chain metrics show that Render is currently processing about 34M frames, resulting in the latest node operator reward for the epoch at approx. 48K $RENDER and the latest burn at 450 $RENDER. That’s less than 1%, and extremely inflationary. The source for this can be found directly on their website here: https://stats.renderfoundation.com/
A bunch of people are counting on nVIDIA being undervalued and nVIDIA announcements as a major factor for justifying the potential upside. That's not what we like to see in crypto... you don't just count on the NASDAQ to pump $BTC do you?
Food for thought. Love to hear some yummy thoughts on this take! Show Less
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