All the relevant information about RNDR in an easy to access post (original: RNDR Medium blog)

Since launching in 2017, RNDR has been proud to grow alongside our passionate community of GPU hardware enthusiasts, computer graphics experts and OctaneRender artists. In recent weeks, RNDR has been scaling, from launching out of Closed Beta earlier in the year to most recently being named as one of the projects that Coinbase is exploring.

We want to take a moment to thank everyone who has joined RNDR during these past 2.5 years, especially to those that participated in our beta testing community. This group of true pioneers has helped us through countless jobs, frames, and bugs, all of which has given us tremendous feedback and input that we’ve since flowed back into the network. It wouldn’t be possible to build our distributed network without the relentless help of our node operators and artists, and for that we are very grateful.

With many new eyes on RNDR, we wanted to take this opportunity to briefly introduce ourselves, our mission, and provide you with metrics surrounding the token and system so that you can better understand RNDR and how it all works.

Welcome to the world of RNDR!

RNDR is an ERC-20 compatible utility token used to pay for animation, motion graphics and VFX rendering on the distributed RNDR Network. Using the power of OTOY’s OctaneRender, the RNDR Network is capable of producing cinema quality renders in a fraction of the time of traditional studio + artist timelines.

Users can register their workstations on the network, where they will earn RNDR tokens for completing jobs. Rendering work is distributed across multiple computers running a simple client application, similar to Folding at Home and SETI; this process is currently done exclusively on Nvidia GPUs. These earned tokens can be spent later to fund rendering projects, all of which are encrypted on the network. Studios also have the option to use our Tier 1 nodes on the highly secure infrastructure of Microsoft Azure for their projects on the network.

A few select excerpts from the RNDR Roadmap for the rest of 2020 include:

• Expanding rendering to AMD graphics cards, which will be possible this year starting on macOS.

• Adding Autodesk‘s Arnold Renderer to the network in the coming year, with plans for additional partnerships in the future.

Our Vision: A Photon Driven Economy

As the Internet has evolved, it’s become almost impossible for independent artists or studios to track the media they’ve created. Protecting assets has become a retroactive process of going through copyright and trademark law after something has already been stolen. The current business of rendering is too slow in comparison to the world’s rapidly growing digital landscape.

Blockchain technology (and thus RNDR) promises a three point solution for content creators:

• 1) Rights protection

• 2) Monetization

• 3) Bringing power back to individuals.

RNDR’s vision is to transform distributed GPU compute power into a decentralized economy of connected 3D assets, where any object or environment can be authored, shared, remixed and monetized through the blockchain. One of RNDR’s advisors, Brendan Eich (JavaScript creator, co-founder of Mozilla and founder of Brave and the BAT token) stated:

“This project will revolutionize the way that 3D assets and their respective digital rights are transferred and distributed across people and entities. OTOY is transforming their state-of-the-art expertise for rendering into a decentralized network that will cater to a wider audience”.

For creators, RNDR is unlocking pathways for creative production that have never been used before in the industry. RNDR is also having an immediate real-world impact on industries across the media landscape. Ari Emanuel, Co-CEO of Endeavor and RNDR Advisor, commented that:

“Entertainment, news, media, platforms and payments will be revolutionized by the blockchain”, adding that he has a goal to drive “media to go through the RNDR Network”.

As of May 27th the RNDR Network has fully launched its platform and is available to join at rndr.otoy.com.

Our Partners

RNDR Token Supply & Allocation

A total of 117,843,239 RNDR out of 536,870,912 RNDR have been allocated since the public token sale in October 2017. These numbers will be fully updated via our official Etherscan link — we are currently in the process of verifying everything with them to provide clarity to our users.

• Circulating Supply: 123m RNDR*

• Total Supply: 536m RNDR**

• Max Supply: 536m RNDR***

* A total of 6m RNDR from the RNDR Reserve (“RR”), see below, have been set aside for user acquisition.

** As the network scales, we will need to flow more tokens into the ecosystem. These tokens will either come through the Render Reserve as user acquisitions, bonuses for node operators, airdrops, or other future token allocation methods. In the meantime, these tokens are sitting in an third-party custody and escrow account.

*** The oversupply on the old contract of 1,610,612,736 (1.61bn) RNDR will be burned — more on the details in a later blog post. For final allocations, see Token Migration below.

RNDR Token Allocation:

• 25% sold

• 10% in the RNDR Reserve (“RR”)

• 65% in escrow* (for supply/demand flowback to the network)

*The escrow tokens will sit in a third-party custody account.

A significant number of tokens were not issued to the company or the team during the initial public sale or the follow on private sale. The addresses for the RNDR Reserve as well as the Escrow will be made public once the tokens are migrated (see below) and the addresses are set up.

The costs to run and maintain the RNDR Network will be covered by a variable network transaction fee on every job ranging from 0.5–5% of the total RNDR needed to process the job (adjusted against GPU supply and Artist demand).

Background on RNDR Token Sales & Bonus

The sale took place in two phases. The project kicked off with a public sale on the Ethereum blockchain followed by a private sale phase in the months after. All tokens sold have been issued on the old Ethereum contract.

Public Sale: Oct 2017

• Public Sale Price: 1 RNDR = $0.25 USD equivalent of token*

• Public Sale Bonus: 20% Genesis Bonus (Dec 5, 2018)

• Public Sale Vesting: none

*The ETH/RNDR exchange rate was 1150 RNDR per 1 ETH for the token sale. This was decided by taking a 30-day weighted average of the price of ETH when the sale started.

Private Sale: Jan 2018 — May 2018

• Private Sale Price: 1 RNDR = $0.25 USD equivalent of token*

• Private Sale Bonus: 2.5% to 30% Bonus

• Private Sale Vesting: none

*Converted to ETH at time of purchase

RNDR Token Migration

RNDR Token’s migration updates the ERC-20 tokens distributed to token holders to include additional escrow smart-contract functionality. In March 2018, we announced that the total minted tokens in the RNDR ecosystem would be 536,870,912 RNDR, (or 2^29). This number was derived from our analysis on the supply/demand for rendering over the next 10–12 years.

• Migration ratio: 1 RNDR old => 1 RNDR new

• New contract: 0x6de037ef9ad2725eb40118bb1702ebb27e4aeb24

• Currently migrated: 91.8m RNDR

• Migration end: Migration stays open indefinitely

• Migration supply limit: 536,870,912 RNDR*

* The oversupply on the old contract of 1,610,612,736 (1.61bn) RNDR will be burned by July 2020. More on how this process will occur will be announced before the actual burn date.

RNDR Purchasing Plan (March 2020)

As announced on March 16th, the RNDR network planned to purchase up to 4.5 million RNDR tokens on the Probit exchange. These tokens will flow back to artists and new users on the RNDR ecosystem in order to provide an easier way to get started using RNDR, ultimately helping scale the network for both artists and node operators. Although the initial timeline for token purchasing has completed, we will continue to purchase tokens on the open market as needed for user growth + user acquisition efforts.

We have since made an ETH address to track these tokens — link is here.

There is a limit on how much we can withdraw on ProBit on a daily basis, and we will continue to flow tokens into the address. The plan is to continue to transfer previously purchased RNDR to this address and use this wallet as a way to increase user acquisition over the coming months.

To date, we have acquired 3.2m tokens from ProBit at an average price of about $0.042. We will continue to purchase tokens from time to time in order to support faster network growth and initiatives like the RNDR Credit system.

Exchanges

The RNDR token information is available from Coinmarketcap and CoinGecko, and tokens are available for purchase on ProBit.

Coinbase recently announced that they are exploring the addition of a range of new assets. RNDR was listed as one of the 18 projects:

https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-continues-to-explore-support-for-new-digital-assets-2c5b84813fcf

The RNDR team is constantly exploring ways to make a more sustainable ecosystem for users, including working with partners who align with RNDR’s mission to provide easy and secure access to the network for all node operators and artists. Due to the current nature of exchange news and listings, we can only announce developments when confirmed by our exchange partners. Please turn on Telegram/Twitter notifications, as well as Medium reminders in order to stay up to date on any updates that may occur over the coming weeks and months.

The network also introduced RNDR Credits, an easy artist friendly way to purchase rendering power on the network using PayPal and Stripe. These Credits are non-exchangeable and only usable on the network. The RNDR Network uses tokens purchased on the open market to support this RNDR Credit system. As new payment options are created we will release information on the RNDR Medium channel.

We’re excited to be with you on this next step in the RNDR Network — stay tuned for future updates! We’ll be back soon.

— The RNDR Team