“Why Initia?” A Beginner’s Guide, 4/n
(Part 3, “layers, layers, layers”, click here)
Okay, we are very close to being able to talk about Initia, with all the basic points we touched upon, in the previous articles. But before we dive in, let me share you some stories, and global trends.
More appchains are coming
Spinning up a new blockchain is not the easiest for developers of apps and services. But still, once their service grows to a certain point, dev teams are motivated more and more to launch their own chains that underline their apps and services.
I’ll give you an example. Recently a known project called Worldcoin (known for their eyeball scanning device that catches people’s attention) by Sam Altman made an interesting announcement. Their first product called World App is a dApp living on Optimism, which is an Ethereum L2. Going forward it will launch an OP Stack based L2 chain, meaning they will still be an Ethereum based OP Stack technology.
The difference? Because they will have a new dedicated chain to themselves, and with more control, they can customize better, attuned to their vision and direction. Purportedly this gives them the optionality to provide cheaper gas fees to real human users (as supposed to bots) by honoring their use. Since they know which accounts are real users, and they will build their own L2 chain based on the open source OP Stack, they’ll be able to implement this without being bound to other existing chains. They probably have the resources to pull this off as well; but not all the other dApp makers will have the same type of liberty that this whale of a project does.
Not just Worldcoin but there have been numerous cases of other types of apps and services in the Web3 world declaring they want their own appchain. This obviously gives them the customizability (or the freedom to choose the type of right underlying blockchain technology and components early on, weighing all pros and cons).
If Web3 is to be the future of the Web, we (the members of this industry) need to ensure that appchains need to be feature-complete, quick and easy to launch, and reliable. But the thing is, just like there are limited supply of any type of resource, there are limited supply of great talent in the blockchain core developer side of the world. Arguably then the teams will have a hard time hiring the right people with the right experience to have a blockchain backend properly set up and maintained for their live services.
So maybe in the longer term, we need to plan for and expect more appchains to arrive and thrive, meaning we need to provide to toolings and facilitate the creation of new appchains, so that scale and maturity can follow. Just like companies like Apple or Google have honed and perfected their offerings to mobile app developers to nurture the mobile app ecosystem, and grew it for years, resulting in billions of users heavily reliant on mobile apps, every single day.
The possibility of this type of future happening is high, we think.
Let me give you an analogy. When Bill Gates was growing up and was attending schools (presumably in the early ’70s), he mentions in his first biography that everyone had to share the school computer by taking turns. It was a time share concept so you could only sit in front of the computer for a limited time, and then have to give up the seat to someone else. Yes, apparently that was the way. Fast forward to now though. We have all types of PCs that serve every owner and user, with each models from makers conceived and serving different needs. Entry level Chromebooks for kids. Suped up desktops with fans, water cooling system and state-of-the-art graphics hardware. Thin and durable work laptops for businesspeople. Macs for artists and programmers. Fastest network connection and multiple screens for trading professionals. Depending on the need and scenario, individuals now work with their “dedicated, custom(ized/izable)” machines and the world is now a different place. Computing power, in different form and function, galore. We think that this type of future could happen also if the so-called appchain thesis proves to be true.
The electric car platform analogy
If you have been following the history of electric cars, or have ever gotten on the back seats of one, then you may know what I am talking about. For ordinary cars (technically called ICE, or Internal Combustion Engine, cars that run on gasoline or diesel) the middle back seat is the most uncomfortable seat. Why? Leg room. Why is there less leg room? Well, because, unless we are talking about sports cars such as a Ferrari, the engine sits in the front part of the car, and the rear wheels need to be connected to the moving parts of the front to be able to rotate. The driving shaft needs to go through the cabin. Therefore that uncomfortable hump.
And now think about adding “more stuff” like battery to make the car turn into a hybrid, or, a full-on electric vehicle. There’s even less room and the parts have to jostle more. That’s why either the battery capacity is low for hybrids, thus shorter distance can be covered only by battery power.
If you are a car manufacturer and want to design a new electric car that is most optimized for best in everything — performance, rider experience, and manufacturing cost — perhaps it’s better to start with a newly imagined, dedicated, electric car base platform that doesn’t have anything unnecessary. (Supposedly a fully electric car has 60% less parts compared to conventional ones. Meaning there’s a lot of dead space potentially if you re-use an existing car platform.)
Taking it one step further like the Canoo platform as seen in the video above would give flexibility and versatility to the users later on. The sense of freedom to modify or custom fit different parts that are interchangeable and works well with the rest of the system would be something totally new and awesome.
This is true for smartphones, computers, most of other complex systems, and also for blockchains. Especially when it comes to L1 chains, we think that there is going to be a bigger need in the future for a dedicated, newly imagined and crafted, L1 just for appchains. With everything necessary for the sake of builders that want to build their apps, and everything working seamless.
This also sounds good in your head too right?
The UX problem
Here’s a fun April 2024 article I stumbled upon. Try reading through it.
Web3 is still notoriously complex and arcane and detached from the real world for many, many real life people. But even if some of us end up wrapping our heads around it, the user experience is still nowhere near the smoothest of the smooth ones out there, such as unboxing a new iPhone, or gliding through a 5-star luxury hotel with best class service.
The web apps as well as explanations in the form of documents are sometimes uncanny, and not friendly enough. There is no tutorial that I have encountered that is reminiscent of a new Web2 service or a game that a user steps into for the first time ever, and immediately feels that they are taken care of, because the guided steps ensure you understand each and every corner or the product, and the way to use them. (Yes, I know, sometimes they can be a bit overbearing, and you just want to skip through it as fast as you can. But it’s better than nothing for a lot of people, they are there for a reason.)
Let’s look at some of the good looking examples.
The screenshots represent the crème de la crème, in terms of traction and product solid-ness. One thing to note, however, is that even though I have literally opened up those pages for the first time ever, there is no walkthrough type of a guide for any of these “services” that live on blockchain. This implies that when users approach and engage these products, even if you’re a new user, you have to do your own research, learn what those features mean and the consequences of your actions. No guardrails, no explainers. (I mean, they might have separate pages that may be very helpful, but my point is that these web apps are built different, with different expectations, from those from the Web2 side.)
(I am not trying to bash on any of these successful protocols by any means. It was a mere exercise to point out the differences in the base assumptions on which operators and users tread on, in the land of Web3.)
Another fundamental problem is that, since blockchain space is open, diverse, and permissionless, first time users and novices are left behind with their own mental tools and devices and deduce everything to get their bearings. This includes on where to begin learning and experimenting, all the way to understanding how different projects distinguish themselves, and eventually connect the dots to try new stuff based on their existing knowledge and digital assets they got their hands on.
Let’s say there is a new project that is supposedly novel and highly talked about, and it is only available through some community exposure. And the new project is working on releasing new tokens but the way (new) users can get their hands on is through convoluted steps of bridging, converting, waiting, experimenting, risking, trusting, and finding out empirically if they have gotten to the successful finish line to fully interact with it.
In the example above — when you look at a new token called stTIA, what goes through your mind? First of all, coin/token symbols are all capitalized, kinda like stock ticker symbols. But what is the lowercase “st” in front of it? Now you’re probably thinking it means something, so you may have to Google the meaning of the prefix. And afterwards, ‘TIA?’, ‘Stride?’ And also ‘Osmosis? How do I trade on here?’ & ‘Where do I get OSMO?’ are the questions that needs to be answered in order to fully comprehend how to go about it.
It’s like taking multiple leaps of faiths through many warp portals to enter a different universe or planar systems, like we often see in Sci-Fi movies.
It is generally believed that everything in the blockchain world moves multiple times faster than Web2 and the rest of the world. I believe it is true. By the time you end up stumbling upon this series, much of the content could be outdated.
This notwithstanding, I have tried my best in terms of bringing up all of you to where we could comfortably start exploring Initia from the highest level. These bits of info I’ve dropped over the course the series are all relevant and are merited because when our team and all the contributors started working on Initia, they were baked into the collective minds.
I hope for you reading the four articles so far was worth it. Even if it wasn’t immediately beneficial, but some time in the future you might hit a bulb go off in your head and magically think about coming back to this series and pick it back up, I think the series has done it’s job.
That’s it for today! Stay tuned for more.
Please send in any feedback on the article to me@inbae.io. Thank you! 🙏🏻
Disclaimer
- This article series is not intended as a learning material so you could trade better; and for sure an investment advice of any sort
- Also not targeted for specific audience from any specific country or demographic
- Please keep an eye out for our latest updates on our website, and cool announcements on our official account on X/Twitter, as well as our official Medium blog.
