Building a complete website on the blockchain? Not such a crazy thought with The Internet Computer

ICP is a full-stack crypto cloud (back/ frontend, data storage). It allows completely reimagining a decentralized Internet.

If you have ever built a website as a business, blogger, publisher, photographer or for any other purpose, by now you know the drill i.e. register a url, use one of the website building tools like Wordpress, buy hosting space on a cloud based service like Bluehost & then put it all together & publish. It’s quite intuitive to the way we work today. However, you must have also faced issues like — hosting service going down & all your data being lost, risk of user data getting hacked or leaked & more. These are some real challenges that need to be resolved.

To add to this, with the evolution of Web3, it is becoming essential to add features like NFT’s & DeFi to a website. The current practice in Web3 is an amalgamation of Web2 tools with Web3 features. To say the least this is a compromise — of privacy, safety & security of user data, ownership, user experience & more.

Until now, building the front end of websites has not been possible on blockchains and most Web3.0 dapps use the standard Web2.0 stack to build & host their websites. The key reasons for this are Cost, Speed & Scalability of operating on the blockchain. As a result Web3.0 Dapps are resorting to

• centralized cloud services like AWS or Google Cloud to host their sites,
• a service like GoDaddy to buy a url ,
• a platform like Wordpress to design & build the CMS

The revolutionary new blockchain stack of The Internet Computer makes it possible for the first time to unshackle these practices & make the internet truly decentralized by taking the entire stack — frontend & backend to the blockchain.

Before getting into how, let’s quickly go through the advantages of building a website on-chain.

1. Ownership — The entire site & content is 100% yours. You don’t give up anything to a third party like AWS and are not limited by their restrictions.
2. No platform risk — Since the assets are hosted on the blockchain, they don’t have a risk of being corrupted or lost due to policies or disasters of the central cloud provider.
3. Deep integration of Web3 features. If the website is built natively on the blockchain, it eliminates the need to use API’s & bridges to integrate Smart Contracts & wallets. It’s much easier & safer.
4. Privacy. With decentralization comes high levels of privacy. When you build on blockchain, your data is secure by default & no builder platform like Wordpress can view your data.
5. Respect for Users. Websites built on the Internet Computer can let their users log in without gathering confidential information — not even user names and passwords. This is made possible by using Internet Identity.

All this sounds good, however the key questions of Cost, Speed & Scale need to be addressed. The Internet Computer is the only blockchain that is doing it :

1. Low Cost: With affordable on-chain storage at $5/GB annually, moving your site to web3 is affordable for the first time ever. This has been made possible by using the unique Canister infrastructure.
2. WebSpeed: The Internet Computer is the fastest blockchain which promises performance equal to the speed of the internet, which means websites will never lag when loading while still being on-chain.
3. Infinite Scalability: Websites like social media, gaming etc. need to be scaled up to provide a good customer experience. The Internet Computer is an infinitely scalable blockchain is one where network traffic doesn’t hamper overall performance.

To top it up, it’s easy to build websites on The Internet Computer

As the ecosystem is growing there are new no-code tools similar to Web2.0 that are making it easy to build 100% on chain websites on The Internet Computer. A few such services are :

ICME

ICME is a no-code development platform that allows users to build customizable websites, NFTs, and DAOs. It’s great for people who are not comfortable with coding. It’s simple drag and drop format makes designing websites super easy, and it’s all in one place — design, CMS, smart-contracts & storage

BLOCKS

Blocks is a drag-and-drop visual smart contract editor that makes developing dapps on the Internet Computer more approachable. Blocks is compatible with ordinary web browsers and mobile devices, and offers several unique features that support accessible Web3 dapp development.

ICNS

ICNS (Internet Computer Naming Service) maps human-readable names to machine-readable crypto addresses, which will greatly lower the barrier for the general user to enter the Web3 ecosystem as crypto addresses are hard to remember. So instead of confusing crypto addresses, it assigns an on-chain easy to remember name (URL), which directs the to the on-chain website. An ICNS URL will look something like letsbuildonweb3.icp. It’s the same auction system as in the Web2.0 world.

So if you are building any Web3.0 application, please do not compromise by using Web2.0 platforms to build your front-end & backend. Make it truly Web3.0 native on the Internet Computer. It is the fastest general-purpose blockchain for Web3 dapps, DeFi, games, NFTs, social media, and metaverse projects.

For more Web3.0 & ICP news & opinions follow me on Twitter

References :

The Internet Computer Solves Web3’s Reliance on Web2 Tech

ICME and Blocks: No-Code Development on the Internet Computer