Golem, popularly called the "airbnb for computing", is an absolutely revolutionary idea. It's hard to really put it in perspective and it takes a couple of times of going over the concept before you can really appreciate what the potential of this application of blockchain technology is.

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In order to provide security for most cryptocurrencies, computationally-intense math problems, which humongous processing power is required to solve, are created. While these computers are solving these problems to get the coins, they aren't doing humanity any type of service. Golem's idea is to use these processing power efficiently by renting excess computing power. This would mean anybody could rent a supercomputer and then be able to do big data analytics, storm analytics, computer-generated image (CGI) rendering. In short they could do pretty much anything you would need Amazon, Microsoft or IBM cloud computing services to do right now.

Golem aims to create a global market for computation through its peer-to-peer network that sources computing insfrasture in a decentralized manner. The Golem ecosystem comprises of three user groups:

1. Requesters - Those demanding computing resources
2. Providers - Individual users renting hardware infrastructure
3. Software Developers - Those creating applications which enable utilization of network resources.

Source: Golem Whitepaper

A direct and transparent payment system between these user groups is facilitated by the Golem Network secured by the Ethereum blockchain.

Another thing I find interesting about the Golem Network is its so-called "probabilistic payment scheme". This lottery approach of rewarding hardware infrastructure providers, though it may seem unfair at a glance, is a brilliant way to ensure the requester doesn't pay more in transaction fees than he is for the computing power itself because paying each and every contributor their dividend would mean that the net transaction fee is proportional to the number of participants. Therefore, as the network grows, its use becomes increasingly expensive due to transaction fees. To better understand this, let's take a look at the mechanics of the Golem Network.
The basic working concept of Golem is to split computational tasks into fragments and send it into the network. This means that in the case of Brass Golem (their first release used exclusively for computer-generated image rendering) for instance, the image to be rendered will be split into frames and sent to the network for processing. The task-maker then issues a lottery ticket through an ethereum smart contract by funding it with the Golem Network Token (GNT). Whoever wins it gets the full payment for the service.
You may think it's unfair that only one participant gets the reward for a combined effort but if you take into account the fact that numerous computing tasks will be undertaken by a contributor during the time they are part of the network, it means that they will be entered into numerous different lotteries. Probabilistically, they are almost guaranteed to win at some point.

The Downside

While this technology is really promising, one of the potential concerns is about security. Providers are going to be taking the risk of running someone else's code on their computer which could easily be malicious considering that unlike some other cryptocurrencies- ethereum for instance- Golem doesn't have a structure that provides a certain number of expected results on the network since it doesn't have its own programming language . The developers have been working on solutions to this challenge and have proposed ways to create a sandbox to ensure the new applications behave the way they're supposed to on the Golem Network before they're released.

CONCLUSION

Golem, if successful, promises an inexpensively efficient future for cloud computing. It would create a very accessible, distributed, global supercomputer which would be made possible by a global pool of computing resources whose computational power will be unparalleled especially when compared with what is available today.