Render (RENDER)

Render (RENDER) is the token of the Render Network, a marketplace where artists, studios and AI developers rent spare graphics processing power from people who own powerful graphics cards, or GPUs. Creators pay for 3D rendering and other computing jobs in RENDER, and the node operators who do the work are rewarded in it. The project was started by Jules Urbach, founder of the graphics software company OTOY, and first issued its token in 2017 as RNDR.

RNDR began as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum Blockchain. In November 2023 the network moved its payments and rewards to Solana (SOL) and upgraded the token to a Solana version called RENDER, and exchanges switched to the new ticker during 2024. Render has no blockchain of its own. It is overseen by the Render Network Foundation through community proposals, and is often grouped with other AI and computing tokens such as Bittensor (TAO).

Think of a ride-hailing app, but for computer power. Many people own expensive graphics cards that sit idle for much of the day, while film studios, designers and AI developers sometimes need far more computing power than they own. The Render Network matches the two. A designer sends a scene to be turned into finished images or video, the network splits the job among available machines, and the owners of those machines are paid for the time their cards spend working.

RENDER is the currency of that marketplace. The creator pays for each job with the token, and the people supplying the computers earn it. The arrangement resembles the wider gig economy, where idle cars or spare rooms are rented out through an app, except that the spare resource here is processing power and the settlement happens on a blockchain.

OTOY, known for its Octane rendering software, sold RNDR in a token sale in October 2017 and opened the network to the public in 2020. Most early jobs came from 3D artists using OTOY's own tools. In 2023 holders approved a new payment model, burn and mint equilibrium, and then proposal RNP-006, which moved the network from Ethereum to Solana with about 99.8 percent of the vote in favour. The Solana version went live in November 2023, and holders upgraded RNDR to RENDER through an official portal. In July 2024 large exchanges, Binance among them, converted holders' RNDR to RENDER at one to one and changed the ticker; Coinbase later delisted the old RNDR token in May 2025. Since then the network has added machine-learning and other AI workloads alongside rendering.

Under this model, job prices can be set in ordinary currency. The creator buys the matching amount of RENDER, which is burned as the work is completed. Separately, new tokens are minted under a fixed, declining emission schedule and paid to node operators and other contributors at the end of each epoch, which usually lasts about a week. The change in supply over a period is:

• $\Delta S$ is the change in the number of RENDER tokens over the period.
• $M$ is the number of tokens minted as rewards under the emission schedule.
• $B$ is the number of tokens burned to pay for jobs.

The first year's emissions under RNP-006 were 9,126,804 RENDER, and the second year's, set by RNP-018, were 5,905,580. Suppose that in the first year users had burned 6,000,000 RENDER to pay for jobs. Then $\Delta S = 9{,}126{,}804 - 6{,}000{,}000 = 3{,}126{,}804$, so supply grew by just over 3.1 million tokens. If burns exceed emissions, supply falls. These emissions are added on top of the original supply of about 536.9 million tokens, so tokenomics trackers now show a larger maximum.

• Paying for jobs. Artists, studios and developers spend RENDER, directly or through a fiat payment converted for them, to have scenes rendered or models processed.
• Node rewards. GPU owners earn RENDER for completed work, with rewards tied to reliability and output.
• Governance. Holders vote on Render Network Proposals that set emissions, pricing and network rules; see governance.
• Trading. RENDER trades on major centralized exchanges and on Solana decentralized exchanges.

The network has long depended on OTOY, which supplies the main rendering software and, in the early Solana period, sold the tokens that were burned for jobs, so it is less decentralized than its marketing suggests. Job matching and quality checks are coordinated off-chain rather than by smart contracts. Render competes with large cloud providers that offer GPU capacity with service guarantees, and demand for its token has at times moved more with enthusiasm for AI than with the volume of paid work. The move to Solana also created confusion, with old RNDR tokens left on Ethereum for holders who did not upgrade.

• Render Network
• Render Network knowledge base