Compute firm Nexus’ in-development decentralized supercomputer attracted over 1.5 million nodes from 187 countries during a recent five-day testnet period.

Nexus has been working on building a supercomputer designed to aggregate computing power from computers and mobile devices all over the world to achieve a “Verifiable internet,” raising $25 million in Series A funding in June this year.

It’s among a growing group of protocols and companies looking to tap into distributed computing power from around the globe to achieve a common goal.

The testnet saw around 800,000 web nodes and 700,000 command-line interface nodes come online, with more than 100,000 concurrent nodes at full capacity. Nexus said the testnet results show “early excitement” for a shared supercomputer. 

The Nexus zkVM testnet, which ran from Dec. 9 to 13, “validates the global demand for trust-driven innovations in blockchain and AI,”  the firm’s CEO Daniel Marin told Cointelegraph, adding that there’s still more work to do to scale the network globally. 

The testnet also showed that around 37% of the network traffic in the testnet came from mobile devices.

Interaction from mobile devices even outpaced desktops in countries like Ethiopia and Poland.

“We knew we had to lower the barrier of entry to scale this global distributed prover network, so we made it easy for anyone to connect to the network with any device.”

However, despite the nodes being decentralized, Nexus said they still hold tight control over where the supercomputer is aimed.

Marin said Nexus selects the programs to be provided with the network but will also accept submissions for programs to be proven after a careful review process.

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Marin also acknowledged his company isn’t the first to harness distributed computing power. SETI@home was a scientific experiment at UC Berkeley that used Internet-connected computers to search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which ended in 2020.

In more recent years, Internet Computer has been developing similar infrastructure in the decentralized compute space, as is the Golem Network and the Zennet.

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