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As in many areas of emerging tech, the unsung heroes of XR are tech enablers that sit behind the scenes and optimize its creation or delivery. These are the proverbial picks and shovels of the gold rush, with ample upside when and if the industry enters boom times.
Mawari is one such company. It has a range of technologies that optimize XR content and lay the tracks for the technology’s delivery infrastructure. Among other things, this includes a rendering pipeline to ensure that XR experiences can be reliably streamed to devices.
Stepping back for context, some XR content will be downloaded and run solely on-device. But for other experiences that need to be quickly experienced – such as the world-annotated visions of all-day AR glasses – they need to be streamed, rendered, and experienced rapidly.
Due to XR’s early and unproven state, users won’t have the patience to wait for things like downloads, so it has to happen quickly. Furthermore, we’re all spoiled from 2D streaming, to the point that we expect things like Netflix to “just work.” XR will inherit that expectation.
Attack from Several Angles
But the issue with all the above is that the current streaming infrastructure is built for 2D content like Netflix. So it won’t work for XR, given bit rates, graphical processing needs, and low-latency needs. This is the issue that Mawari is tackling. And it’s attacking from several angles.
These include Mawari’s XR compression technologies (think: the MP3 of XR) and its pipeline that optimises split processing to render some elements on-device and some via streaming. But the next big area of development is a delivery network that unlocks processing a the edge.
Enter Mawari’s decentralized infrastructure network. Because the AWS and Google Clouds of the world don’t have enough GPU capacity at the edge (One reason Google Stadia failed), Mawari is undertaking the ambitious goal of constructing a network that’s purpose-built for XR.
But rather than the capital-intensive process of physically building an owned network, it’s taking the streamlined approach of crowdsourcing the network. This involves enlisting individuals to offer some of their idle computing power to the network in exchange for financial compensation.
Working so Far
That last part involves users who buy one of Mawari’s Guardian Nodes. Once purchased through a decentralized infrastructure offering (DIO), they can monetize their idle compute resources. This builds on the principle of decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN).
That last part is inherited from the Web3 realm. Though much of Web3 has been shrugged off as metaverse-era hype, DePIN is something that analysts are predicting could be the most redeemable and practical byproduct of the movement. And that’s what Mawari is jumping on.
This approach is working so far if you consider that season 1 of Mawari’s DIO achieved 180,000 servers reserved. This exceeded the company’s expectations and is a key demand signal. The market has spoken, and Mawari will now push forward with greater confidence behind its vision.
There’s of course a lot more to it, which we recently broke down in a conversation with Mawari founder & CEO Luis Ramirez. Check out the full interview below and stay tuned for more coverage as we continue to track the company’s ambitious endeavor to unlock XR’s infrastructure.