Re:Show HN: Rentaflop – Render your Blender projects without...
by dasokol112358 on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @03:06PM
(#32841786)
Ah, I understand now. I believe there are enough private GPU owners around to sustain and scale rentaflop for many years to come. For instance, did you know there were around 10 million GPUs mining the Ethereum cryptocurrency at its peak? Our current prices allow our hosts to earn ~10x what crypto mining pays whenever they're processing rendering tasks for rentaflop. There are millions more GPUs owned by gamers, AI hobbyists, businesses, etc. that we hope to leverage to make 3D rendering more accessible to artists. If we manage to attract even a tiny fraction of these, we stand a chance at becoming the fastest and most affordable render farm on the planet.
Recruiting spare gamers' GPUs is one thing - those people bought the GPU anyway, so as long as you pay more than they pay for power, they're happy - but I imagine that's a relatively small pool of GPUs.
At some point, you'll run out of those people, so I guess what I'm asking is whether the price you charge now is high enough that investors could profitably build and run their own "mining" hardware , while you still get enough of a cut to run your service.