# How does Joule enable Kinesis Network? **Global, Pay-per-the-Second Billing** First, our platform provides a fully-managed, serverless compute cloud, with billing based on highly granular metering—down to the millisecond. For instance, if a customer’s workload runs for 2.32 seconds on a crowdsourced hardware and 4.19 seconds on a datacenter hardware, we meter usage down to the millisecond and compensate suppliers precisely for the time their hardware is utilized. Given the scale of some workloads, this often involves thousands of globally distributed machines. The coin’s primary utility is to facilitate these global micropayments instantly and frictionlessly. **Fungible Nature** Our product architecture is fully serverless, meaning applications run across a dynamic "cloud" rather than on specific, dedicated machines (as some other adjacent projects require). If a hardware instance goes down, our managed services detect the issue and immediately failover the workload to a healthy machine (that’s already warmed up and ready to go), ensuring seamless continuity of service from customers' POV. This fungible nature of underlying hardware (where any machine can replace another) makes the coin essential for compensating the owners of this continuously shifting, diverse hardware network. **Tight Integration with the Protocol** Furthermore, the coin is tightly coupled with the Kinesis protocol. At its core, the protocol enables the exchange of CPU/GPU time for JOULE coins in a trustless environment. All of our managed services (such as heartbeat monitoring, failover, capacity management, conversion of customer payments from USD to JOULE, load balancing, etc.) are built on top of this protocol. While managed services building on the protocol could theoretically operate without a coin, the protocol itself cannot, as the coin underpins its functionality. **Staking** A global trustless ecosystem requires financially motivated actors. Staking requirements work as security deposits, ensuring that all actors bring their A game or else they pay fines with their staked Joule coins. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.kinesis.network/understanding-how/how-does-joule-enable-kinesis-network.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.