Octopus Network and the Future of Crypto:
Appchains Are Here To Stay
As the crypto-verse continues to develop and evolve, users and developers alike are bringing decentralized applications to new frontiers across industries. As token-based applications become more mainstream, further development and experimentation into the core infrastructure and technology of blockchain ecosystems has led to new insights into the nature of security, usability, and scalability.
Perhaps no single person is more qualified to discuss the emergence of Appchains, as Louis Liu — the CEO of Octopus Network, and a crypto veteran with close to ten years of experience in the industry. Louis, who recently closed a $3 million dollar fundraise for the Octopus Network is building one of the world’s most affordable and scalable Appchain networks on NEAR Protocol.
While Louis has already discussed the nature of appchains and the technical design of Octopus Network, he is especially insightful when it comes to explaining the context for the development of Appchains, and why they are positioned to blossom in the crypto space in the near future.
Why Appchains? Web3.0 is Here
Projects in crypto can be loaded up with complex jargon like Aggregators, Motherchains, Oracles, and mutli-verses. Appchains are another such concept that, although complicated, can be easily understood. As explained previously:
“An appchain refers to a separate blockchain designed for a specific application (or set of applications). Unlike a smart contract (that usually runs on a public or private blockchain), appchains allow developers to customize their application in terms of governance structure, crypto-economic design, even its underlying consensus algorithm.”
Understanding the value proposition behind appchains, begins by first understanding the importance of user experience as it relates to ushering in a new paradigm of Web3.0 innovation from the existing paradigm of Web2.0.
As Louis Liu explains:
Thus, the first piece of the puzzle is recognizing that Web3.0 is valuable insofar as it provides a channel for applications to tokenize, financialize, monetize, and partition value amongst users and developers. You may then wonder, what role do Appchains play in all of this compared to traditional applications on a blockchain? Louis Liu goes on to explain:
“How is UX related to appchains? Appchain technology provides a big design space for UX improvement to developers. Let’s say that you don’t want users to rely on browser extension wallets? Sure, you can decide that for yourself on the appchain how the application is accessible. Let’s say you want to omit gas fees for certain types of transactions, or you want users to have a choice on the type of tokens to pay gas fees in — maybe for instance, in stable coins? Sure, you can decide that as well on an appchain.
In this sense, the value proposition of appchains on Octopus Network is built around providing developers with an incredible amount of flexibility as it relates to how their applications are deployed, what tokens are used to support those applications, and what security model is required for verifying transactions. This is the first major value proposition of an appchain: It provides an extremely customizable and low cost infrastructure for deploying user-friendly applications, with little overhead and full control.
Appchains in relation to Smart Contracts: What Is the Difference?
Second, an Appchain is fundamentally valuable because of its capacity to evolve over time as new factors and market conditions affect the development of a specific industry or Dapp. When compared to smart contracts, Appchains, in large part due to Substrate, are more flexible in providing on-chain governance and the capacity to evolve. As Louis explains:
“Appchain’s have a second benefit over smart contracts. And in the long run, this factor matters the most: An Appchain can evolve quickly with maintained legitimacy. For each Appchain, there is a native token and, thanks to Substrate, on-chain governance utilities ready to use. According to Darwin’s Origin of the Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. And crypto protocols should be seen as digital institutional species where evolutionary laws apply.
While Substate and other blockchain frameworks have decreased the cost of appchain development to a comparable level of smart contracts, Octopus Network will decrease the cost of launching an Appchain, from several million dollars to tens of thousands dollars. This is our mission.”
In short, Octopus Network provides the infrastructure for rapid Appchain deployment. Appchains are advantageous over smart contracts due to their capacity to quickly evolve with flexible parameters governed on-chain. Octopus is a pioneer of the future of appchains as they seek to make the deployment cost affordable for just about any interested startup or team!
The Extremely Bullish Future for Octopus Network:
Building the right product, with the right team, at the right time is an extremely encouraging pathway to success. Octopus Network is a giant in its own right, only just getting started. Built on NEAR Protocol, Louis was quite specific about his confidence in the project as well as the future of app-chains in Crypto:
“Why are we confident in the future of Octopus Network? Because there is no other crypto network that is designed to serve appchains. Although Polkadot is the natural choice for Substrate base appchains to join, its architecture and economic model actually does not accommodate appchains very well: A Polkadot parachain must afford the security cost of one shard, aka slot, of the whole network. Under the current model, that is to say millions of dollars a year, paid via dilution of locked DOT. While a parachain could host thousands of applications to share this cost, it does not make sense for an application-specific parachain to bear on itself, let alone grow and evolve over time. Polygon may seem like another option, but in fact it is not, since it is in a heavy tech debt that it inherited from Eth1,. This leaves it with little room to improve on its UX.”
Thus, unlike expensive parachains, or non-user friendly platforms, Octopus fixes both problems by offering affordable, scalable, interoperable, and user-friendly appchains on NEAR Protocol. As Louis concludes:
“Most importantly, Octopus Network’s success will not rely on failures of other multi-chain networks. There may exist many stratifications and niches in the multi-chain future. For example, it does not make sense for a generic smart contract blockchain to run as an Octopus appchain. And I think smart contracts is a better form for defi applications, rather than Apchain. Octopus will help boost a prosperous DeFi Ecosystem on Near Protocol. I don’t see Polkadot, Polygon, Skale or Cosmos as competitors either. We’re just trying different ways to enable Web3.0. And these diversified networks, including ours, will ultimately accelerate the mass adoption and integration of Web3.0. Again, based upon the laws of evolution, natural selection needs to be fed by mutations. So our team’s focus is and will always be how to create and deploy appchains, and help those appchains succeed — not to worry about competition.”
It is an exciting time to be following Octopus Network, especially in its early days. To join the community, jump onto their discord channel or follow them on Twitter!
