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Marketplace

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How does the Marketplace work?

The Nexqloud Marketplace revolves around Deployments, which fully describe the resources that a tenant is requesting from the network. Deployments contain Groups, which is a grouping of resources that are meant to be leased together from a single provider.

Deploying applications onto Nexqloud involves two types of users:

  1. The Tenant: the entity that deploys the application.

  2. The Provider: the entity that hosts the application.

What is a Reverse Auction?

Nexqloud uses a reverse auction. Tenants set the price and terms of their deployment, and the Cloud providers bid on the deployments.

In a very simple reverse auction:

  1. A tenant creates orders.

  2. Providers bid on orders.

  3. Tenants choose winning bids and create leases.

A typical application deployment on Nexqloud will follow this flow:

  1. The tenant describes their desired deployment in [SDL], called a deployment.

  2. The tenant submits that definition to the blockchain.

  3. Their submission generates an order on the marketplace.

  4. Providers that would like to fulfill that order bid on it.

  5. After some period of time, a winning bid for the order is chosen, and a lease is created.

  6. Once a lease has been created, the tenant submits a manifest to the provider.

  7. The provider executes workloads as instructed by the manifest.

  8. The workload is running - if it is a web application it can be visited

  9. The provider or tenant eventually closes the lease, shutting down the workload.

The general workflow is:

  1. A tenant creates orders.

  2. Providers bid on orders.

  3. Tenants choose winning bids and create leases.

Lifecycle of a Deployment

The lifecycle of a typical application deployment is as follows:

  1. The tenant describes their desired deployment in [SDL], called a deployment.

  2. The tenant submits that definition to the blockchain.

  3. Their submission generates an order on the marketplace.

  4. Providers that would like to fulfill that order bid on it.

  5. After some period of time, a winning bid for the order is chosen, and a lease is created.

  6. Once a lease has been created, the tenant submits a manifest to the provider.

  7. The provider executes workloads as instructed by the manifest.

  8. The workload is running - if it is a web application it can be visited

  9. The provider or tenant eventually closes the lease, shutting down the workload.

Payments

Leases are paid from deployment owner (tenant) to the provider through a deposit & withdraw mechanism.

Tenants are required to submit a deposit when creating a deployment. Leases will be paid passively from the balance of this deposit. At any time, a lease provider may withdraw the balance owed to them from this deposit.

If the available funds in the deposit ever reaches zero, a provider may close the lease. A tenant can add funds to their deposit at any time. When a deployment is closed, the unspent portion of the balance will be returned to the tenant.

Escrow Accounts

Escrow accounts are a mechanism that allow for time-based payments from one account to another without block-by-block micropayments. They also support holding funds for an account until an arbitrary event occurs.

Escrow accounts are necessary in nexqloud for two primary reasons:

  1. Leases in Nexqloud are priced in blocks - every new block, a payment from the tenant (deployment owner) to the provider (lease holder) is due. Performance and security considerations prohibit the naive approach of transferring tokens on every block.

  2. Bidding on an order should not be free (for various reasons, including performance and security). Nexqloud requires a deposit for every bid. The deposit is returned to the bidder when the bid is closed.

Bid Deposits

Bidding on an order requires a deposit to be made. The deposit will be returned to the provider account when the bid transitions to state CLOSED.

Bid deposits are implemented with an escrow account module. See here for more information.

Audited Attributes

Audited attributes allow users deploying applications to be more selective about which providers can run their apps. Anyone on the Nexqloud Network can assign these attributes to Providers via an on-chain transaction.

On-Chain Parameters

Name
Initial Value
Description

deployment_min_deposit

5nxq

Minimum deposit to make deployments

bid_min_deposit

5nxq

Deposit amount required to bid

Transactions

DeploymentCreate

Creates a deployment, and open groups and orders for it.

Parameters

Name
Description

DeploymentID

ID of Deployment.

DepositAmount

Deposit amount. Must be greater than deployment_min_deposit.

Version

Hash of the manifest that is sent to the providers.

Groups

A list of group descriptons.

DeploymentDeposit

Add funds to a deployment's balance.

Parameters

Name
Description

DeploymentID

ID of Deployment.

DepositAmount

Deposit amount. Must be greater than deployment_min_deposit

GroupClose

Closes a group and any orders for it. Sent by the tenant.

Parameters

Name
Description

ID

ID of Group.

GroupPause

Puts a PAUSED state, and closes any and orders for it. Sent by the tenant.

Parameters

Name
Description

ID

ID of Group.

GroupStart

Transitions a group from state PAUSED to state OPEN. Sent by the tenant.

Parameters

Name
Description

ID

ID of Group.

BidCreate

Sent by a provider to bid on an open order. The required deposit will be returned when the bid transitions to state CLOSED.

Parameters

name
description

OrderID

ID of Order

TTL

Number of blocks this bid is valid for

Deposit

Deposit amount. bid_min_deposit if empty.

BidClose

Sent by provider to close a bid or a lease from an existing bid.

When closing a lease, the bid's group will be put in state PAUSED.

Parameters

name
description

BidID

ID of Bid

State Transitions

Object
Previous State
New State

Bid

ACTIVE

CLOSED

Lease

ACTIVE

CLOSED

Order

ACTIVE

CLOSED

Group

OPEN

PAUSED

LeaseCreate

Sent by tenant to create a lease.

  1. Creates a Lease from the given bid.

  2. Sets all non-winning bids to state CLOSED (deposit returned).

Parameters

name
description

BidID

Bid to create a lease from

MarketWithdraw

This withdraws balances earned by providing for leases and deposits of bids that have expired.

Parameters

name
description

Owner

Provider ID to withdraw funds for.

Models

Deployment

Name
Description

ID.Owner

account addres of tenant

ID.DSeq

Arbitrary sequence number that identifies the deployment. Defaults to block height.

State

State of the deployment.

Version

Hash of the manifest that is sent to the providers.

State

Name
Description

OPEN

Orders may be created.

CLOSED

All groups are closed. Terminal.

Group

Name
Description

ID.DeploymentID

Deployment ID of group.

ID.GSeq

Arbitrary sequence number. Internally incremented, starting at 1.

State

State of the group.

State

Name
Description

OPEN

Has an open or active order.

PAUSED

Bid closed by provider. May be restarted.

CLOSED

No open or active orders. Terminal.

Order

Name
Description

ID.GroupID

Group ID of group.

ID.OSeq

Arbitrary sequence number. Internally incremented, starting at 1.

State

State of the order.

State

Name
Description

OPEN

Accepting bids.

ACTIVE

Open lease has been created.

CLOSED

No active leases and not accepting bids. Terminal.

Bid

Name
Description

ID.OrderID

Group ID of group.

ID.Provider

Account address of provider.

State

State of the bid.

EndsOn

Height at which the bid ends if it is not already matched.

Price

Bid price - amount to be paid on every block.

State

Name
Description

OPEN

Awaiting matching.

ACTIVE

Bid for an active lease (winner).

CLOSED

No active leases for this bid. Terminal.

Lease

Name
Description

ID

The same as the bid ID for the lease.

State

State of the bid.

State

Name
Description

ACTIVE

Active lease - tenant is paying provider on every block.

CLOSED

No payments being made. Terminal.

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