Fleek Makes It Easy to Build and Deploy Websites on the Internet Computer
Fleek’s hosting solution is like Netlify for the open web, enabling developers to deploy websites to the Internet Computer in mere minutes.
The growth of the Internet Computer developer ecosystem is helping to shape a new phase of decentralized development of the open web. Fleek — which is just one of the various innovative dapps, tooling, and infrastructure projects being built on the Internet Computer blockchain — supports this growth by making it easy for anyone in the world to begin building websites and dapps on the Internet Computer.
Within two weeks of launching their hosting product for the Internet Computer, there were already more than 700 website deployments on the Internet Computer via Fleek!
Fleek’s frictionless hosting solution is a decentralized version of Netlify for the open web, enabling developers to deploy websites to the Internet Computer in mere minutes. Fleek lets you seamlessly host static front ends on the Internet Computer, providing an accessible interface that minimizes the complexity of creating canister smart contracts and updating content.
Fleek has also created an alternative open-source gateway into the Internet Computer, which means that anyone can access canisters and their data freely via HTTP on ‘canister-id’.ic.fleek.co, whether the canister was deployed through Fleek or any other tool or interface on the Internet Computer.
Fleek has added support for Internet Computer deployments on Fleek’s CLI, enabling the use of GitHub actions as well as the ability to deploy from environments other than GitHub, such as your local machine.
In addition to the Internet Computer hosting solution, Fleek has also recently released various other products for the Internet Computer ecosystem:
- Plug Wallet — A user-friendly browser extension that allows you to access your ICP utility tokens and cycles as well as other tokens. It also enables you to log into Internet Computer dapps with one click.
- Dank — A canister-based service running on the Internet Computer that enables users to hold a balance of cycles associated with their principal identifier.
- Cycles Faucet — Launched in partnership with the DFINITY Foundation, the Cycles Faucet offers $100 worth of free cycles to qualified developers to help them get started building and deploying canisters on the Internet Computer.
We asked the team behind Fleek some questions to share the vision behind their project:
How would you describe Fleek?
Fleek is an open web venture studio and creator of the Fleek.co developer platform, which provides web services (e.g., hosting, storage, gateways, domains, and more) to developers that are built with the technologies that form the foundation for the open web (such as the Internet Computer, Ethereum, IPFS, Filecoin, ENS, HNS, and more).
What does your technology do? What problems does it aim to solve?
Fleek looks to abstract all the potential of the Web3 technologies it leverages to provide a seamless way for any developer to build, host, store, and power sites, applications, or infrastructure built on the open web.
It aims to eliminate the friction of building with these new technologies so that anyone, anywhere, can easily adopt and transition to the open web, without the technical complexities or friction points that developers would normally expect.
Who are your target users?
Our target users are any end user, developer, or company looking to build web/online-based experiences in the open web, with an interest in decentralization, transparency, and a user-owned approach in data handling, storage, and hosting.
Where is your team based?
Our team is all over the world! From the United States, Iran, Puerto Rico, India, Chile, Nigeria, Argentina, the Czech Republic.
What motivated you to develop your service using blockchain technology?
The last several years have been key in the transition from Web2 to Web3. But despite the amazing progress, such as decentralizing application logic on Ethereum dapps, one problem always remained unsolved: the base layer of the web, its core infrastructure, was still being hosted and stored in a Web2 centralized infrastructure.
To truly build the open web, we still needed new, open, permissionless, and decentralized infrastructure to power it, which is now available through platforms such as the Internet Computer.
Why did you choose to develop on the Internet Computer instead of other platforms (either blockchain networks or centralized solutions)?
The Internet Computer was the final piece in achieving what we explained above. The missing link in the development of the open web, or Web3, was a scalable and autonomous blockchain network capable of powering the base layer of the web (e.g., storage, hosting, services, etc.) in a decentralized, trustless, permissionless, and efficient manner.
What surprised you most about building on the Internet Computer?
The core technology behind it has been amazing to work with, and we could immediately execute proof of concepts to verify web services could be rebuilt, ditching the Web2 infrastructure entirely.
What benchmarks for success are you aiming for?
Our benchmarks are very similar to normal web company benchmarks: users, usage, growth, retention, engagement, etc.
How do you anticipate developing and evolving your product or service in the future?
Our roadmap for building on the Internet Computer is focused on taking the current web’s core services (hosting, storage, etc.) and rebuilding them as open internet services. Turning the core layer of the internet into an autonomous, transparent, and fully universally accessible set of services that users own and control. We began with hosting and development, and we’ll continue to launch other core services essential to both web development and development on the Internet Computer in general (e.g., canister and charging stations development, cycles management, etc.).
What other Internet Computer ecosystem projects are you excited about?
OpenChat, DSCVR, and Bunchd are the ones we are most excited about at the moment. Definitely social use cases seem to be the ones attracting the most attention/developer interest at this early stage of the ecosystem, and we think that just speaks to how well suited the Internet Computer is for use cases like that.
What new decentralized service or app would you like to see developed within the Internet Computer ecosystem?
We would love to see a bridge to Ethereum. We think that will unlock tremendous potential and capabilities that will greatly enhance both protocols. One thing in particular we are excited about is having addresses or smart contracts/DAOs on Ethereum control canisters on the Internet Computer and pay for computation directly from Ethereum.
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Interested in using Fleek to deploy websites to the Internet Computer? Check out Fleek’s documentation and join the conversation on the Internet Computer Developer Forum.
