BitWrk introduces a new kind of cloud computing, in which resources are shared in a peer-to-peer fashion.
This is interesting for two groups of people:
- The buyers: Users who require lots of computing power at their finger tips. For example, artists using rendering software such as Blender to create impressive movies.
- The sellers: Hardware owners who have computing power to spare and would like to monetize that resource in times of low workload.
BitWrk provides a service to both groups by connecting them in an easy-to-use way.
Users of BitWrk can even be a buyer and a seller at the same time, enabling them to compensate for bursts of high need for computing power by continuously providing some computing power to others, at virtually no cost.
Keep in touch with this project and be informed about news and updates:
Website: http://bitwrk.net/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bitwrk Twitter: https://twitter.com/BitWrk
tip4commit: 
- Visit BitWrk's website at http://bitwrk.net
- For the impatient: Following the Quick Start Instructions gets you started in 5 minutes.
- About BitWrk explains what BitWrk is and what it is meant to become.
- Compiling BitWrk Yourself caters to developers and Linux users.
- Read more about the Concepts Behind BitWrk.
- Consult this file about the license under which BitWrk is distributed (GPLV3).
- 2015-11-01: Release of BitWrk 0.5.1 "Moon": Support for Blender 2.76, compressed data transmission, revised transaction logic and lots of bugs fixed
- 2015-08-10: Release of BitWrk 0.5.0: Bitcoin integration is finally here, allowing users to pay in Bitcoin
- 2015-01-15: News have moved to BitWrk's website: http://bitwrk.net
- 2014-12-30: BitWrk was featured in a Lightning Talk by the lead developer on the 31st Chaos Communication Congress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHBe5g5KKiw
- 2014-12-05: New participants now start with a zero balance as preparations for an upcoming beta test have started. The test will include real Bitcoin transactions processed by the payment system.
- 2014-11-11: Payment system integration is progressing. Required refactoring BitWrk into separate projects:
- bitwrk now contains code specific to client and server and may be refactored further at a later time.
- bitwrk-common contains code that is shared amongst client, server, and payment processor.
- cafs, the Content-Addressable File System, has been extracted for use in third-party projects.
- More news...
As of version 0.5.1:
- BitWrk is now integrated with a Bitcoin payment processing system, allowing users to pay for compute power, in Bitcoin. For this, the user has to request a deposit address, which will be provided after a couple of seconds by the payment processor. Bitcoin transactions need at least 6 confirmations, i.e. depositing on BitWrk takes one hour on average. Withdrawals aren't enabled yet for security reasons. Users are advised to keep the amount of money stored on BitWrk as small as possible (deposits can be as small as 0.001 BTC!). Of course, a pay-out can be triggered manually by the developer. Ask him!
- BitWrk includes "bitwrk-blender", an add-on for Blender, the free rendering software. bitwrk-blender consists of render_bitwrk.py, a Python addon which registers a new rendering engine, and blender-slave.py, a script for sellers. Renderings using Cycles (Blender's modern rendering engine) have been successfully accelerated at a small scale. While some features may be missing or not work as expected, BitWrk has shown to work very well with projects of small to medium size and high rendering complexity. With support for linked resources and scripted drivers, bitwrk-blender is approaching a state where it can be used for larger projects, too.
- A central server, written in Go (http://golang.org/), is deployed on Google App Engine. It exports an API for entering bids and updating transactions. Every transaction's lifecycle can be traced, and all communication is secured with Elliptic-Curve cryptographic signatures. These are of the same kind than those that can be generated using the original Bitcoin client, so it is very easy to test for correctness.
- A client (also called the "daemon"), written in Go, provides a browser-based user interface to everything related to BitWrk. The daemon enables control of ongoing trades, registered workers and automatic trading mandates. It also provides access to BitWrk's Bitcoin-based payment system.
- The client acts as a proxy, taking tasks from local programs and dispatching them to the BitWrk service. For sellers, it provides the service to offer local worker programs to the BitWrk exchange and to keep them busy.
Have fun! 2015-11-01, Jonas Eschenburg