ICP makes building 100% decentralised applications possible & affordable.
Building applications & webservices on the internet is nothing new and has been around for decades, however there is one big problem with the technology stack which hasn’t seen any innovation — centralisation. Centralisation that brings autonomy and power into the hands of the Big Tech leading to huge platform risks. In the Web2 world, there are enough examples, like Facebook de-platforming Zynga’s top performing game Zynga from its platform , Twitter de-platforming Donald Trump and 70000 other accounts, and eventually AWS followed by Apple & Google App stores removing the service Parler from their platforms.
One might say that in the Web3 world we have seen many DApps (decentralised applications) come up in the last few years which claim to be decentralised. These are usually using Ethereum or similar chains, however, what sometimes goes un-noticed is that usually it’s just the backend code that is running on a decentralised peer-to-peer network. It is far from full independence from Big Tech stacks for these Dapps front-ends currently mostly live on AWS, Google Cloud, or similar, and if one of them goes down so do these apps as is the case with OpenSea, the most popular NFT platform which has had huge consistency issues. What is shocking is that 70% of Ethereum Nodes themselves Are Hosted on Centralized Services, which theoretically means that popular DApps on the network could theoretically be shut down if AWS were to be shut off.
With the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) , the technology stack has completely been redesigned to solve these issues. Without getting into technical terms, it basically means that with ICP you can:
- Build everything on the Blockchain — front-end and back-end : Using the unique Canister system, ICP makes this possible. A canister is where an application runs on a subnet (or group of nodes). This means the canister is the code, state, memory, and storage for Internet Computer applications.
- Develop a Downtime proof webservice — your application will be running simultaneously in 13 different places around the world and would only get taken down if multiple data centers all went down at the exact same time
- Build Community-based ownership & voting systems : With DApps running on the Internet Computer, decisions can be made by the community. Governance of the Internet Computer happens through the Network Nervous System (NNS).
- Build it affordably : IC storage costs are fairly cheap in absolute terms (~$5 USD per year per gigabyte). Building apps is possible now fairly affordable, along with all the benefits of blockchain security.
There are 100’s of Dapps already running in the IC — Wallets (Plug Wallet), Hosting services (Fleek), Messaging services (Openchat) , NFT Marketplaces (Entrepot) and more. The comprehensive list of Dapps that are being built on IC are a proof of what all can be made possible with this technology.
Dominic Williams, the founder of the DFINITY foundation, refers to a blockchain singularity, meaning all internet apps and services will be rewritten using smart contracts on the blockchain.
So, go ahead and explore this revolutionary project and be ready for the future which is already here.
