Early Adopters Describe Launching Dapps on the Internet Computer
For Shanghai International Blockchain Week, a panel of IC developers discussed building tokenized open web services that run on-chain.
The launch of the Internet Computer blockchain earlier this year has empowered developers and entrepreneurs to use canister smart contracts to build dapps, DeFi platforms, NFTs, websites, and services that run directly on the open internet, unlocking a wave of new possibilities that will remake the web as we know it. To highlight projects that are pioneering this space, a panel of developers who are each building breakthrough tokenized open web services that run entirely on-chain was recently convened for Shanghai International Blockchain Week, one of the world’s largest blockchain conferences.
Participating in the panel were Andra Georgescu of distrikt, a decentralized social media network for professionals; Matt Grogan of OpenChat, a messaging dapp that expands on the model of WhatsApp and Signal; Harrison Hines of Fleek, the open web venture studio behind the Fleek.co developer platform, Plug wallet, and other products and services built for the Internet Computer; David Phan of ORIGYN, a not-for-profit foundation that uses NFTs to authenticate and manage luxury goods, fine art, and media; and Rick Porter of DSCVR, a decentralized content platform built on a novel protocol called “social fabric.”
Each of these participants are early adopters of the Internet Computer. “From back in 2019 to now it has changed a lot,” said Phan, noting the rapid growth of the developer forum, Discord channel, and support documentation. “It’s getting better and better.”
“At distrikt, we actually started building the platform in early March,” noted Georgescu. “We had a pretty smooth experience since Day 1. And having tools like Internet Identity [blockchain authentication system] and BigMap, for instance, has made it possible for us to launch a complex social media platform in just a few months — which is pretty impressive even for Web2 standards of startups in tech, let alone for a social media platform that is blockchain native.”
“I think that shows exactly how ready the Internet Computer is to onboard developers that want to move fast and compete with traditional platforms,” she added. “Right now we’re at more than 50,000 accounts.”
Speaking generally of his experience bootstrapping OpenChat, Grogan described how the Internet Computer “provides an opportunity for developers to build dapps that compete with traditional IT in terms of performance and capability, but with the positive characteristics of a decentralized system, such as transparency, decentralized governance, and security by default. This represents a new market opportunity, and the earlier you can be involved, the more likely you are to take a leading position.”
Grogan explained that OpenChat, which currently stands at 70,000 users who have sent 400,000 messages, is preparing to use decentralized technology to build beyond the model of a standard messaging app. “In the first version of OpenChat, we focused on building a functional and web-speed chat app resembling WhatsApp,” he said. “But looking forward a little bit, there are some exciting things coming.”
Canisters are about to be able to send ICP utility tokens very soon, and OpenChat users will be able to do so via chat messages within the dapp. Proposed roadmap projects like the Bitcoin and Ethereum integrations will further compound OpenChat’s feature possibilities. “The upcoming SNS [Service Nervous System] will just revolutionize dapps,” Grogan remarked, referring to a feature that will allow developers to easily tokenize the governance of their dapps.
“We’re very excited about the SNS here at distrikt,” added Georgescu. “I think it will pretty much be a kickstarter for more and more decentralized autonomous organizations on the Internet Computer, which is a very interesting space that’s growing very rapidly right now. This is what we’re aiming to do with distrikt. In its final version, this product will be a community-building tool that will allow communities to build their own distrikt that’s governed by their own community and can be tokenized.”
Hines, whose team at Fleek is experienced in building on other tech stacks, spoke of some of the unique features that have helped spur early opportunities in building products on the Internet Computer. “The low-hanging fruit ones that stood out were just the ability to host front ends basically natively in smart contracts, or canisters,” he said. “We finally could offer a fully trustless hosting product to users.”
“We also power a lot of existing NFT platforms in the Ethereum ecosystem,” Hines continued. “We’re basically storing a lot of the metadata for NFTs that exist on these other platforms. So it’s very interesting to us that on the Internet Computer you can store not only the token ID, but all the accompanying metadata associated with an NFT. And now just seeing the crazy types of NFTs that are made possible by the Internet Computer, whether it be 3D NFTs or AI-enabled NFTs, we’re super excited about that.”
The Fleek team is also looking forward to the roadmap integrations with Bitcoin and Ethereum. “We’re most excited about what’s going to happen once these native integrations with other chains happen, and what that might enable,” Hines noted. “We think that might be a major inflection point for the whole Web3 ecosystem.”
Hines pointed out that Ethereum dapps today are largely centralized. “You have some smart contracts on Ethereum, and then basically you use a ton of centralized infrastructure to actually make the dapp,” he said. “Once this native integration with Ethereum happens, someone eventually is going to create an open internet service that’s just something like what Infura or Alchemy provides, of just a database of Ethereum data on the Internet Computer. Once you have these signing capabilities natively from the Internet Computer, and you have access to the data you need from these networks native to the Internet Computer, you will start to actually be able to create these full dapps that essentially live on the IC and can call out to these networks.”
Porter also noted the importance of cross-product collaborations and integrations enabled by the Internet Computer, describing how they are already allowing users to be bridged into DSCVR. The platform has seen a remarkable growth in users and engagement since launching in June. “We’re up to like 52,000 users, 450,000 posts and comments, and I think about 3.2 million total upvotes on the platform,” Porter said. “We’re probably going to see a lot of the comments and content and upvotes double over the next month and a half.”
“Integrations are going to be key to our success,” he went on, pointing to such successful initiatives as coordinating a drop of Starverse NFTs from Toniq Labs to DSCVR users. “Once it became evident how simply these canisters actually work together, and how a lot of these integrations actually don’t have to take place on the back end, some of them can take place on the front end. You see that paradigm within the Ethereum community quite a bit. That kind of architectural thinking was already in place.”
“Integration has been super key,” he continued, pointing out DSCVR’s integrations with Fleek’s Plug wallet and Toniq Labs’ Stoic wallet. “We’re currently using an analytics service like Google Analytics built completely on the Internet Computer called Usergeek. If you’re looking for DAU, WAU, or MAU stats on your users, Usergeek is completely decentralized, built on the IC. It’s been very interesting to see those numbers and watch them grow.”
Activity within the Internet Computer developer community is demonstrating the vision of blockchain singularity that will allow systems and services to migrate on-chain and run within a seamless universe for software, providing unparalleled interoperability and composability. Much of the excitement of being an early adopter in this space is seeing this ecosystem quickly grow and evolve.
“A year from now, the idea of integration is just going to be completely ingrained into the thinking of a typical IC developer,” Porter declared. “It’s easy to facilitate these things over the Internet Computer. And the community definitely has the right mindset to make these things happen.”
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