Introduction

(Document status: draft)

Apocryph is a decentralized network for verifiable, confidential, general compute. This network powers its unique ecosystem visualised in the diagram below:

The ecosystem consists of autonomous parties exchanging value under the governance of blockchain technology. There are three fundamental groups os parties: Hardware Providers, End Users and Application Publishers (Developers); and one group intrinsic to the network: Autonomous Applications;

Hardware Providers

They provide confidential computing services to the ecosystem and receive payment for their services. The value chain of these confidential computing services is targeted towards the End User as the final destination.

End Users

They consume software in a private / confidential way based on SaaS model and pay for the computing service consumed by them. End Users are the final destination within the ecosystem, but upon the explicit decision by the End User potentially there could be other end users outside of the ecosystem that are using the Private SaaS if it supports some form of built-in multi-tenancy / multi-user capabilities (light blue bubble). Based on this, the Private SaaS itself can trigger its own market powered by Apocryph ecosystem (a very basic example is when the End User is a Company that runs a service for its employees).

Application Publishers (Developers)

They provide cloud software in the ecosystem, essentially enriching the number of use cases that the End User can fulfill by using the ecosystem. It is important to note that the Application Publisher role can be shared with the End User essentially the End User can bring a use case (cloud software) in the ecosystem, pay for its execution and consume it. In a similar way the Application Publisher role can be shared with the Hardware Provider role where the Hardware Provider also brings in the use case / application service.

Autonomous Applications

They provide end-user or platform services in the ecosystem, the services are metered and they get paid by the end-users or by other applications using the services. They have their own wallet and associated DAO governing their updates. They are typically packaged and launched in the network by Application Publishers, who typically is representing their governing DAO. After the initial launch they are no longer dependent on the Application Publishers as they can perform self-updates based on governing DAO decisions.