CLOUD ENGINES on ICP: What to expect today?

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:05]Hello guys. Welcome to Zero to Hero and happy birthday Definity and ICP. This is the fifth anniversary of the Internet Computer and today Dominic Williams will present a demo regarding Cloud Engines.

[00:00:18]Can we expect some additional announcements today and what we can expect from Cloud Engines moving forward in terms of usage, adoption and cycle burn rate? In this video, I will break this down for you and I will share also some interesting data, charts, metrics and indicators. So, stay tuned and let's dig deep into the rabbit hole.

[00:00:38]Okay-dokey guys, welcome back to the channel. First thing first, coinhero.trading is now live, my project built on ICP.

[00:00:47]Now, also the store is live as well, herocashback.com.

[00:00:51]So, if you want to participate, you can buy a t-shirt or some other merch to support this channel and you get a 10% cashback in Hero. Thank you very much for your attention. Now, regarding the content of this video, today Dominic will demo Cloud Engines. This is the start of a new era for ICP. 20% burn is coming. My understanding is that today we are going to witness two separate events. The first is the demo regarding Cloud Engines in which Dominic Williams will show us how does this work and this is particularly interesting for me to display how these governments are going to pay for the service and how much ICP they're going to burn as the result of this activity. On top of that, we are going to get an additional event today, which is the event with the folks in Pakistan, which is something that Peer has mentioned on social media here.

[00:01:53]So, tune in tomorrow. The Pakistan Digital Authority has stated that ICP is the future of Pakistan. So, Pakistan digital future is entering a new era with ICP.

[00:02:07]So, in this live session, we are going to see how ICP is going to be used in Pakistan in universities, schools, on a sub-government level, how Caffeine AI is going to be adopted on a sub-government level as well. So, very very good to see overall. Stay tuned for this event. As I did mention, those are two separate events. You should check Dominic's X profile today to see an announcement regarding the demo and this separate event also is going to be hosted um later on today regarding a Pakistan.

[00:02:44]Very very good to see overall and just a few months ago really, if I check my profile here and if we go back here, you will see that in Davos, Dominic Williams has mentioned that sovereign cloud infrastructure is and will be the top narrative for ICP in 2026 and just a few months later, we are witnessing this playing in real time and we're witnessing some results for ICP, big results in terms of usage and adoption.

[00:03:14]So, this is very very good to see.

[00:03:16]Let's continue. What is the value proposition and what to expect?

[00:03:19]Everything is mentioned really in this short text. So, cloud engines are for everyone and represent the Internet Computer transitioning from a niche platform for Web3 apps to a mainstream cloud solution with unique advantages.

[00:03:33]Did you notice how in mass media, Dfinity and ICP are now described as a cloud provider, not anymore as a Web3 blockchain, not anymore as a cryptocurrency, but as a cloud provider.

[00:03:46]So, the transition is smooth and very positive for ICP because as I did mention the target audience before 2 to 3 years ago when I first invested was that ICP was offering a service to perhaps 50, 100,000 developers across the globe in web 3 that are looking for niche solutions. Currently, the value proposition is much broader, governments, large institutions, but also entrepreneurs and small businesses like mine that are going to tokenize their business and launch services on the blockchain. So, this is very good to see plus retail, all the people that pay a subscription to Caffeine AI, to Caffeine Labs to build and deploy some applications for their family or also perhaps for their businesses, as a hobby or whatever they really wish.

[00:04:38]Now, what really we can expect? They address a horizontal market spanning sole entrepreneurs, startups, SMEs, corporates, NGOs, governments.

[00:04:50]This is what we didn't have 2 to 3 years ago. Essentially, Cloud Engine is a private subnet that the controller/owner, which can be a person, it can be on or an org or an SNS, can orchestrate and configure in various ways using a control panel. Within the rules of the network, owners can configure different replication factors and select nodes in a single geographical region if they wish, which is very important because of geopolitical tension and because of regulatory clarity of certain jurisdictions worldwide, specifically Switzerland. And many people are going to deploy this in Switzerland perhaps for the future and for future reference when Hero grows. I'm also going to deploy this directly in Switzerland and for legal or performance purposes as well.

[00:05:40]They host apps that are immune to traditional cyber attacks. I did mention already Amazon Web Services being down.

[00:05:47]And really, uh services that are using Amazon Web Services like Coinbase are down as well.

[00:05:53]Canvas is down. And every day there is a hack exploit, especially in crypto. AI is not helpful for crypto. So, ICP is currently immune to traditional cyber attacks, guaranteed to run with fault bounds, can simplify scaling, and can natively custody and process digital assets and payments. Now, in terms of uh processing uh natively digital assets and payments, this is a big thing. If you think, for example, uh OpenChat as a service, you you you can there transact directly, natively, on chain.

[00:06:28]On OpenChat, it's a a chat platform, and on top of that, there are many other functionalities, and everything is on chain, and your data is stored in canister smart contracts. If you just think about this whole infrastructure, this is a revolutionary idea for a social media platform. And there are going to be many more similar ideas now with Caffeine AI because OpenChat was built with the efforts of three to four developers that constantly working full-time on this idea. With uh Caffeine AI, you will be able on your own with a minimal cost of 29 bucks per month build and deploy your own applications for your businesses or for your hobbies. So, it's very cost-efficient, it's cheap, and it is secure on top of that. So, overall, the value proposition is there for hundreds of thousands of people.

[00:07:20]So, they offer a unique form of of sovereignty where the underlying computer resources are switchable. For example, a cloud engine could be created, cloud on cloud, which you're going to see in a second, across Amazon data centers, then switch to Google or a mix, then onto traditional node providers hardware of the kind that powers shared subnets today, all without interrupting hosted apps, which equals flexibility as well and attracting many big institutions and governments worldwide. And if you think about how governments or big institutions operate, they don't really care about the technicalities. They care that their data is secure and that everything is running smoothly in the back end. So, ICP can offer this. Actually, when you you open coinhero.trading, if if you are not familiar with with hero, if you're not familiar with ICP, you will not perhaps even know that that was built on the ICP blockchain. There is nothing telling you there directly when you when you check the domain that this is ICP, but this is running on ICP.

[00:08:31]There are canister smart contracts in the back end. So, this is a big value proposition because many people will not even know in a future that they're interacting directly with ICP, but they will benefit from the higher standard of security that is running in the back end because of the architecture of canister smart contracts, which is a huge and large value proposition in my book. So, by providing a control panel past experience cloud engines will begin to bridge the gap to mainstream cloud expectations where customers log into websites like Amazon web services and see controls that allow them to orchestrate cloud resources while maintaining decentralization. Nodes available to cloud engines do not receive any fixed payment from the network, but the nodes in an engine receive 80% of the revenue generated, while 20% are used to burn ICP in a 100% deflationary model. So, let's read this again carefully.

[00:09:34]The nodes in an engine receive 80% of the revenues generated. What does this mean and why does this sentence tell me that this is a revolution compared to what we had so far?

[00:09:48]Many people complained in the past about node providers and that many node providers are zombies. They're getting payments for not being active really and many people were bothered by that because of the inflation.

[00:10:00]Which is absolutely understandable in my book.

[00:10:04]Currently the system has totally changed towards incentives for usage, which is something I'm doing with here as well.

[00:10:12]It's all about incentives. The more you use, the more revenue you generate, the more money you generate and on top of that 20% of that will be burned. So there is an incentive, a huge incentive for the burn, an indirect incentive because you want to increase your 80%. You want to make sure that your that your revenue is as high as possible and by doing that, the burn is going to be as high as possible as well in a fully 100% deflationary model. In the past, node providers were getting ICP to be not not not everyone idle, but some of them were really idle and basically they were getting up to 5x of what they would spend. So it was a very profitable business with not so much incentive for activity.

[00:11:04]Currently the amount of money or rather ICP that they're getting has been reduced with mission 70 and we have provided them incentives. So the system shifted completely in my book towards an incentive for usage, an incentive for burn, which is going to then show on the money metrics for ICP in the long term.

[00:11:26]In the next following months until the end of the year, we we see a clear effect on the burn rate as well. So, associations of node providers will be able to market cloud engines based on their nodes benefiting from selling the Internet Computer in a similar way that internet services providers ISPs benefit by creating their own internet subnets and selling the internet access unlocking decentralized incentives and growth dynamics. So, it's all about incentives and the system is smart. It's smart. It's about incentives. So, it about time to change the system and shift towards an incentive-based system.

[00:12:07]Very, very good to see in the big picture and this text that I did show you is very important overall.

[00:12:13]Um now, Dominic Williams, what did he mention in April? ICP cloud engines demos to me today. So, a month ago this was demoed already to Dominic Williams and today he will demo this to us, to the public. So, why create hack-proof apps that survive the com- coming AI security apocalypse? Dominic was right multiple times claiming that outages, hacks, and exploits will overall in the next months and weeks and years just get worse and worse and worse due to AI. Agents create better apps {slash} services. So, once again, uh businesses will use Cafe and AI to deploy their own business and the cost is a fraction of what you would pay on web two, especially if you want to develop a platform and that's value proposition because the entry barrier is so much lower, so many more people can try without risking a large part of their capital, which means more entrepreneurs, more solutions, and perhaps a small percentage of those will be really successful on ICP having deployed their application on the Internet computer and this will be then showing to others, to other entrepreneurs, hey, I can build also something very meaningful at a very low cost and be profitable on the internet computer. That's once again the whole idea of hero as well. So, pure AI no security or SYS admin teams, sovereign no vendor lock-in. Very good to see once again. Um just a month ago um the first cloud engine was born, the test cloud engine and now we are already deploying this or rather we have already deployed the first official cloud engine and now we are getting a very nice demo.

[00:14:07]And uh last post here that I want to show you or rather there will be a couple more things that I want to show you but in terms of post on X, traditional tech security is cooked with AI.

[00:14:18]Now, look at this. So, this is what I mentioned cloud on cloud. So, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and others.

[00:14:26]So, this is going to be a system that is going to incentivize usage and is going to be very flexible and is going to provide really a higher security standard compared to those. So, you can run cloud on cloud now and on top of that ICP as a decentralized blockchain is secure not only but very fast and cost-efficient as well. So, overall the value proposition in my in my book with cloud engines is 10 to 50x higher compared to the before and the pool of customers now has not 100x but thousands of x increased in terms of potential customers that we can capture. So, uh the Swiss subnet is playing a big role here. Pakistan, I believe, is only the first uh government that is going to adopt this technology. I believe um ICP and Dfinity are talking with other governments in the Middle East as well because of the geopolitical tension, because of the value proposition, because of the opportunity, because of the concentration of 70% of the cloud market in the hands of few companies only, and because once again, it provides more flexibility, more tailored solutions. For example, for Pakistan, currently, they have a chatting app. And I I didn't mention why what OpenChat has been doing can be used on a sub-government level. And why they want that versus a Slack or a Microsoft Teams. Simply because the data, the communications are now stored in Canister smart contracts. So, it can be a niche.

[00:16:01]Something will run on Amazon Web Services, but those type of communications, they want them to run in or rather be stored in Canister smart contracts. So, they're 100% sure that nobody has access to that because when you're using um Teams or or whatever, how can you know 100% that one, your your data is not going to be stolen or hacked, which for a government or a large institution is extremely important, and two, if someone is not going to use those data for XYZ purposes or sell, even worse, sell your personal information and personal data to someone else.

[00:16:39]And I did mention I spoke with people working for VPN companies, and they told me horrors, really horror stories on Web 2. So, and those large institutions are aware. So, this is one more value proposition, not only Caffeine AI to build application for children, for uh teenagers, and for students in schools.

[00:17:01]And we have seen them once again, schools with Canvas, what happened due to a outage, that data from 200-plus million people or students were stolen worldwide. And now, who knows what these hackers do with all these data. So, the value proposition is very large if you look at the writings on the wall and the current outages, recent outages in the last couple of days.

[00:17:25]Now, before ending this video, I want to once again mention Hero is fully live. You can now get 10% cashback at the very very interesting market cap of only 200,000 dollars fully diluted. So, I'm basically distributing 20,000 dollars worth of Hero to the community at a discount market capitalization.

[00:17:53]The market cap for the IPO will be higher after that, and overall, you can compare as I did mention already multiple projects here in the ICP ecosystem in terms of market cap, and you can see that there are a lot of meme coins with higher market capitalization, while this is not a meme coin. This is a new utility token with a lot of utility.

[00:18:14]Now, also, I got some multiple orders already. So, thank you very much if you ordered this already. A way to contact me for the cashback is write me a message on OC.

[00:18:24]That's the easiest thing to do, and I will send you directly the tokens within 24 hours to OC.

[00:18:30]If you don't use OC, it is possible to transfer on the NNS or OZY. You will need to import the canister there. I can send you instructions how to do that, and then you can get your tokens directly on your NNS or OZY as well. I will tell you also in a separate video what I think about on-chain payments for ICP, why, and this is a general video, it's not related to my project, why on-chain payments are currently possible on the Internet Computer, but not for everything, and I will explain what is currently not I would say the limitation because there is no limitation in terms of infrastructure. There is more a practical limitation because of how this world is currently operating and everything is operating on web two. So, I will explain you this in a second how it is very possible to migrate also the store on web three. The blog is fully on web three. So, you could ask me, "Hey, if you have fully on chain payments for the blog, why is that not the case for the store?" And there is a very good explanation for that, which is not only meaningful for Hero, but is very meaningful for other entrepreneurs that are launching their projects on the internet computer. Just to explain you how does the system work, what are the hurdles not in terms of infrastructure once again because this is flawless, but in terms of payments.

[00:19:56]Just as as as a little teaser, you know, if you want to pay me in ICP and I have to cover the cost of my merch in dollars, you know, and if I have to give you 24 hours to cancel your order because the merch is on demand. If you pay me today and the price of ICP is 3.5 bucks and then in reality you pay me in 24 hours because you have this time, but you have already inserted your order and the price of ICP drops 10% then I'm in trouble because perhaps I don't have enough money to even cover the cost of of the merch. Let's imagine this scenario. And this is why payments in in ICP can be tricky. You could tell me also stable coins are a solution. Well, we will discuss about that in a video and I will explain what are the problems with that and how to solve these problems moving forward when more people will start using ICP as a solution tailored for their business and offering payments natively in crypto, which with interoperability on ICP is a very very possible and the value proposition is very very high. But we are going to discuss about this in a separate video.

[00:21:03]For now, thank you very much for your participation. If you have any other questions, let me know. And by the way, if you want to use this, this is completely free to use. For example, you can interact with with this website. You can check, for example, the Fear & Greed Index for Hero or for ICP, and you can cast your vote here. So, for example, here, a Fear & Greed Index for ICP, you can I have already voted today, but you can cast manually your vote, and this is going to be impacting directly the indicator. So, you have a way also to let me know what you think about ICP today. We are going to discuss about all these other metrics in terms of price, in terms of volatility, volume in a separate video. Today, I will probably have more videos to come due to the fact that there are many news regarding ICP.

[00:21:51]So, stay safe, stay humble, and I will see you very soon in the next one.