SONM is a global operating system that is also a decentralized worldwide fog supercomputer. With SONM, users have access to general-purpose computing services of a cloud-like nature, including IaaS and PaaS, all of which have fog computing as the backend. Hosts around the world can contribute computing power as part of the SONM marketplace. The leaders of SONM are co-founder Sergey Ponomarev and CTO Igor Lebedev. SONM uses the agile development framework with a self-organizing cross-functional team. The Product Management Board defines the market needs to confirm that products meet business requirements. These include Node (Core), Smart Contracts, Wallet (Client), and Distributed Entity and Integration. Each of these teams has multiple developers, including a lead. Other teams include the Product & Analytics and QA teams.SONM always makes customer satisfaction its top priority. SONM studies the rental resource market to figure out exactly what customers need, delivering the advantages like scalability already mentioned. Additionally, customers will benefit from the Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform that supports all types of hardware resources, making it possible to find the exact resource you need. With SONM, consumers can instantly release and grow resources within the computing fog. In addition, security is always maintained regarding the supplier’s reputation. For added security, SONM is working toward hardware-enforced security, as well. Finally, consumers benefit from high market liquidity in purchasing resources and the ability to scale out their application. SONM’s ICO was held on June 15, 2017 and successfully raised $42,000,000. Paolo Tasca, a digital economist and blockchain expert, joined the SONM Advisory Board. Tasca is the Executive Director of the Centre for Blockchain Technologies at University College London, as well as a blockchain consultant to the United Nations and EU Parliament, and the co-editor of “Banking Beyond Banks and Money: A Guide to Banking Services in the Twenty-First Century.”'
The Raiden Network is an off-chain scaling solution, enabling near-instant, low-fee and scalable payments. It’s complementary to the Ethereum blockchain and works with any ERC20 compatible token. The Raiden project is work in progress. Its goal is to research state channel technology, define protocols and develop reference implementations. The introduction of payment channels, specifically the type first described by the Lightning Whitepaper (which introduced the Lightning Network), seeks to fix the scalability and congestion issues that currently plague blockchain technology. While the Lightning Network operates on the Bitcoin blockchain, Raiden introduces a comparable solution for the Ethereum network. There are several key features of the Raiden Network Token. Expedited transfer confirmations (<1 second ). Current transfers on the Ethereum blockchain can take a few seconds to minutes. Private transfers that are not viewable on the global ledger. Solve scalability issues so that Ethereum can create mass adoption, allowing Ethereum to become the peer-to-peer, global payments infrastructure with electronic cash that it was initially designed for. Low fee transactions. Micropayment capability that works in union with any ERC-20 token. The Raiden Network project is being developed by Germany’s Brainbot Technologies AG, a software company devoted to blockchain protocol development. Founded in the year 2000 by Heiko Hees, it currently has between 11 to 50 employees in offices among Berlin, Mainz, and Copenhagen. Also the founder of PediaPress, Hees has been a core developer of Ethereum since March 2014. Being a core developer for Ethereum, it is evident on how the founder sees the flaws in the current its present protocol with ways to improve it. Interestingly enough, the website does not include RDN as one of their main blockchain developments, which could be attributed to the difficulty of highlighting a wide variety of projects they are currently undertaking on one page. However, there are no updates on the status of the Raiden Network Project on either Twitter nor Medium since December 1st, 2017. Raiden can be used for a wide variety of applications and purposes such as Micropayments For Content Distribution, Decentralized M2M Markets, API Access and Fast Decentralized Exchanges.'