Forward-looking: The cloud-based game streaming market is heating up and is poised to take off for the mainstream. A lot of big players like Google, Microsoft, and Sony are all working on their own game streaming service. However, Vectordash is a newer startup that wants to entice miners to rent out their GPUs to make up the cloud infrastructure.

After the cryptomining bubble burst awhile back, the mining landscape has been noticeably quiet. There are rumblings of a bitcoin resurgence, but a lot of mining rigs are sitting idle, with untapped GPU power. Vectordash, a game streaming service emerging from a recent Y Combinator batch, aims to put those machines back to work.

As TechCrunch reports, the idea behind Vectordash is something akin to an Airbnb for GPUs; renting out graphics cards that aren't being used, or that are otherwise underutilized. Those GPUs will then be used to power Vectordash's cloud-based rendering engine. Users willing to do so can expect anywhere from $65 - $105 per month for the use of their GPUs. Vectordash plans to charge $28/month for the service, and it is aimed firmly at lightweight laptops, like those of Apple's. Of course, anyone with an under powered machine could use the service, but there is a caveat.

The service will initially be limited to the San Francisco Bay Area, with a focus on the East and West Coasts. This is primarily to maximize performance and reduce latency, keeping it preferably to 20 - 30ms or less.

Vectordash claims to allow access to "terabytes of games with out having to install them locally" and that these titles can be played in 4K at 60 FPS. Co-founder Sharif Shameem demonstrated Apex Legends being played on a 13" MacBook with Vectordash.


The idea of cloud gaming service that uses cryptomining machines is certainly interesting, but we have to wonder how dependent its success will be on the crytocurrency market being in a "crypto winter" state. If another cryptocurrency makes a comeback, it could make Vectordash's business model less viable.