Muriel Medard@MurielMedard
The value of the work we're doing at @get_optimum is encapsulated quite well by the phrase "speed is money". In modern markets there are real economic advantages to latency reduction.
This is nothing new. Wall Street firms have long been optimizing on latency, primarily through colocation and top of the line hardware. However, when it comes to decentralized systems, expensive hardware and geographic concentration are antithetical to their purpose. Therefore we should optimize decentralized network latency through software, which I'm thrilled about because it's exactly what I've spent the better part of the past 2 decades working on with Random Linear Network Coding.
Now let’s talk about networking economics, the relationship between speed and money.
First, it's important to note that users will only pay for low latency if it can be consistently guaranteed.
Second, you can only make that latency guarantee for a certain number of users. This is a universal law of networking. We can model this relationship on a delay curve, shown below.
The delay curve is determined by the utilization rate of the network, meaning how much traffic is flowing through the network divided by the network's throughput. As you approach a level of traffic equal to the available throughput, latency trends infinitely higher.
On this delay curve we can impose some utility thresholds. These thresholds are the levels of latency which are important to different groups of users because of how that latency guarantee improves their economic outcomes. Finding the point on the curve where each threshold intersects will tell us what level of traffic we can guarantee that level of latency for.
Essentially, there exists a finite supply of speed on a network and the highest utility users of that speed are willing to pay more for it. I like to think of this similarly to expedited shipping options on Amazon. This is why we say speed is money, and why we can create a Latency Marketplace.
The only way to increase the supply of speed is to fundamentally increase network throughput. This is what we work on at Optimum by using Random Linear Network Coding. The same relationship between traffic and throughput still applies, but now the delay curve is shifted out further to the right. Now more traffic can be processed at the same latency, or the same traffic can be processed at a lower latency. More speed available to the network. More value unlocked for the network’s users.
Crucially, that value is no longer only reserved for those who can afford to sit closest to the machine. Expanding the supply of speed widens who can reach each latency threshold, keeping the network's advantage decentralized rather than concentrated in the hands of a few. When nodes join Optimum and participate, they reap the benefits, but they also add to the capacity. Rather than vying against each other in a zero-sum game, nodes help themselves and others.
