Project Review: Phantasma (a Neo dApp)

Athena was born out of Zeus’ head… so to is Phantasma born of Neo (so to speak)

What is Phantasma

Phantasma attempts to enable decentralized application (dApp) development by addressing the issues of data management and content-sharing. It will try to do so with a content distribution system with an emphasis on privacy and security.

One of the most challenging development areas for decentralized applications is how to manage data — how to store it, access it, and manage it.

~B. Kramer, 1997

The quote above was written in 1997, twelve years before Bitcoin was launched. DApps have gained little traction in the mainstream due to challenges in data management and content sharing. Similar to cloud based apps (websites, mobile apps), dApps have many of the same computing requirements but are bogged down by costly decentralized infrastructures and architectural complexity. For example, storing three photos on the Ethereum blockchain was recently estimated to cost $78,000. No developer in their right mind would launch their business on such costly infrastructure. Solutions need to be found.

Several projects attempt to bring down costs and increase file sharing capabilities such as Sia and Filecoin (data storage) and Golem (CPU). Rather than relying…