Hi,
Is it possible to use the “left-over” CPU power of smartphones to do Dfinity hosting? You know, people have their phones on, and wander around with them in their pocket, so… - it would be really awesome, no? 
(we’ll need some way not to hog the entire CPU of the phone, needless to say…)
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So, there’s actually a hardware requirement for replicas to be allowed on the network, currently this bar is high to ensure good performance. So smartphones won’t be running replicas, but they will be able to edge compute a little per app if the developer wants to utilise some wasm in their front end code.
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Woah! You just said a lot of stuff I don’t understand! - what’s a “replica”? I’m not exactly sure what Edge Computing is, either! Why will smartphones be able to do it only “a little per app”?
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A replica is essential a node in the DFINITY network (just a different name). For DFINTY every node has to meet a certain hardware standard which is initially set by the foundation, this standard is way above of what a high-end smartphone could provide. Apparently you won’t be rewarded for your computation on the network (or even punished) if your performance statistically deviates from the other devices in the network (which would be the case if you would use a smartphone as a node).
Afaik what Ori is trying to say with edge computing is, that you take the computation to the “edge” of a network. So instead of calculating some stuff on a server and then sending it back to your smartphone, some of the computation could happen right on your smartphone directly.
To quote Andreas Rossberg (Co-Founder of Wasm):
Wasm (yes, correctly spelled without all caps). As you may be aware, Wasm is a newish low-level code format that aims to be portable, safe, and efficient.
It is currently supported by all major browser (yes also on your mobile) and you can also use it in your frontend code that is hosted on the Internet Computer, thus being able to “edge compute a little per app”.
Hope this helps!
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Brilliant explanation. Thanks Moritz!
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Thanks schindler!
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