Computable ⟶ Kindred
We’re sunsetting Computable protocol development.
Earlier this year, we decided to discontinue development of the Computable protocol. After a few months of exploration, the team is incredibly excited about what’s next for us. We’re eager to say more about that in the coming weeks, but I also thought it might help the broader community to share a retrospective of what went into our decision.
Why we’re sunsetting Computable.
It wasn’t an easy call. The conviction that people deserve more ownership and control of their data still burns brightly, but a combination of technical and market realities overcame Computable’s approach to that problem.
UX: We could not deliver a blockchain-based user experience that meets mainstream user requirements.
While the Ethereum technology ecosystem is constantly improving, a chasm still exists between what it can do and what mainstream markets need it to do. Namely, key management and transaction times (latency more so than throughput) consistently led to an unrecoverable drop-off in user engagement. Basically, it’s still way too hard for users who are not crypto savvy to regularly use a truly decentralized application.
User privacy: We were unwilling to compromise it.
The kind of data that attracted the most commercial interest also tended to be the kind of data that most egregiously violated user privacy, which is unfortunately a testament to the state of surveillance capitalism that we live in today. While we successfully formed data cooperatives and validated that public communities crave greater financial ownership of their data, we also failed to fulfill the promise of privacy and control that they expected. We’re excited about advances like differential privacy and homomorphic encryption, but privacy technology still isn’t where it needs to be to establish a strong enough privacy layer that protects users while helping them share and monetize their data. It’s still far too easy to replicate, expose, and abuse personal data on the Internet, and building a business that reinforces that dynamic is far too antithetical to our values as a company.
Then 2020 happened.
While the challenges above drove us to reevaluate the future of Computable, I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that the events of 2020 influenced the direction of our company. The world turned upside down, and with that many opportunities closed, while new ones opened.
What happens now to the Computable protocol.
Though we are no longer developing the Computable protocol, it has been and will continue to be an open resource for anyone to use. While this is a sunset post, we still hope that the foundation we created will rise again in the future under the right timing and circumstances. Until then, we’re keeping our lines open to anyone who is inspired by our work, interested in building on it, or just wants to learn from our experiences. To get in touch, you can email me anytime at roger@computable.io.
What’s next: Computable ⟶ Kindred.
We’re still here. Starting today, we’re publicly rebranding the company as Kindred. To get an early sense of what we’re up to next, be sure to check out the hello world introduction that we published earlier today. While we’re taking on a new challenge, the spirit of empowering community ownership on the Internet very much stays core to our mission. It’s still the crack of dawn, and we can’t wait to get back to work.
Learn more about Kindred
- Visit the Kindred website.
- Join the waitlist.
- Read the Kindred blog.
- Follow @withkindred on Twitter.
