the normie equivalent of the dev tool itself is my previous start-up: sauce labs

but from a distibuted computing point of view, the closest old world equivalent might be boinc/seti-at-home... but those were volunteer efforts. I think actually paying people is an unlock. and *not* getting distracted rolling my own token (e.g. gridcoin).

nostr+lightning (via cash app or primal on-ramps to get normies to convert a few bucks to sats) is perfect for bootstrapping the network. especially if it's meant to be global on day 1. (bitcoin as global money ftw.)