Decentralizing the Frontend: Why It’s a Necessity

Introduction

The rise of Web3 projects has significantly improved the operations of online businesses. However, these projects often face frontend issues, jeopardizing security, availability, and user experience. In this article, we will explore real-world instances that highlight the importance of a decentralized frontend, moving beyond it being an option to becoming a necessity.

Recaps

Historically, centralized frontend systems have time and again faltered under various crises:

1. December 7th, 2021: The AWS outage brought the DYDX project to a standstill, impacting not only DYDX but also other well-known websites like Binance.us and Coinbase. The DYDX token experienced a 10% drop within 24 hours.
2. February 3rd, 2022: Hackers tampered with a third-party JSON link in the KLAYswap frontend, redirecting users to poisoned pages that authorized assets to be sent to the hackers’ wallet addresses.
3. June 24th, 2022: The Convex project experienced a DNS attack, leading users to unknowingly approve malicious contracts.
4. August 10th, 2022: Curve suffered from malicious code injection attacks, redirecting unknown users or their transactions to malicious destinations.
5. August 18th, 2022: Celer’s frontend interface experienced a disruption due to a DNS cache poisoning attack, targeting a third-party DNS provider. Curve and Loopring were also affected.
6. November 5th, 2022: Loopring faced DDoS attacks, causing 11 hours of downtime.
7. November 18th, 2022: Technical issues with Cloudflare’s routing services caused blank pages on Uniswap for many users. Decentralized networks like IPFS were implemented as a solution.
8. April 11th, 2023: Syncswap encountered a DDoS attack, causing some users to experience service unavailability.
9. September 20th, 2023: The Balancer project’s frontend was hijacked through a BGP hijacking attack, injecting malicious JavaScript code into their frontend. Users connecting their wallets to the compromised Balancer website could suffer asset losses.

Notably, as I write this article, THORSwap has temporarily transitioned its interface to maintenance mode due to illegal activities, without specifying a recovery time. Undoubtedly, this situation affects the user experience of THORSwap’s widespread user base.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

This series of events highlights the urgent need for a decentralized frontend. But what exactly is a decentralized frontend, and why do we need to implement it? As Howard Stanley Marks once said, “You should always hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”

Decentralized frontend hosting is a method of deploying the frontend of an application on multiple decentralized nodes. Its purpose is to achieve high availability, prevent single points of failure, enhance security, and embrace decentralization.

Here are the steps to achieve decentralized frontend hosting:

1. Store frontend code: Upload the frontend code of your application to a decentralized storage system, such as IPFS (InterPlanetary File System). IPFS utilizes distributed technology to store files across multiple nodes, ensuring high availability and data redundancy.
2. Configure domain resolution: Resolve your domain to a decentralized frontend hosting service. You can use decentralized domain resolution systems like ENS (Ethereum Name Service) or similar systems to map your domain to IPFS content addresses.
3. Set up gateways: Configure gateways for accessing IPFS content. Gateways serve as the connection between users and the content stored on IPFS. Setting up multiple gateways increases reliability and availability.

By following these steps, you can achieve decentralized frontend hosting, deploying the frontend of your application on multiple nodes to enhance availability, security, and decentralization. Several infrastructure service providers offer effective solutions for the market, such as 4EVERLAND. They provide an all-in-one service, including DWeb Hosting for quick setup, decentralized gateways with secure and encrypted services, global network acceleration for efficient WEB 3.0 access, and developer-friendly data storage tools.

If you are interested in these services, please visit the official website for more information.

Conclusion

Based on the incidents mentioned above, it is evident that decentralizing the frontend is crucial in mitigating risks and fully leveraging the capabilities of Web3. Decentralized frontend hosting provides a solution to the vulnerabilities of centralized systems. By embracing decentralized frontend solutions, we can ensure better security, availability, and user experience. The market already offers effective solutions through infrastructure service providers like 4EVERLAND.