Immortal dApp Series: Part 1 — The Decentralized Web
TL;DR
- To establish a decentralized future, Web 3.0 requires establishing multiple layers of technology such as Edge computing, decentralized data networks, and artificial intelligence.
- The DAPP Network could revolutionize the way developers and users experience the web, introducing the concept of ‘Immortal dApps’ that are decentralized across their entire tech stack and can never be taken down.
- Immortal Wayback Machine, Uncensorable Websites, Decentralized Social Media Protocol, and Open Source Decentralized Search Engines are all examples of potential Immortal dApps.
At the end of the millennium, Web 2.0 moved the world from static desktop web pages designed for information consumption and served from expensive servers to interactive experiences and user-generated content that brought us Uber, AirBnB, Facebook and Instagram. The rise of Web 2.0 was largely driven by three core layers of innovation: Mobile, Social & Cloud.
Web 3.0 is a vision of how the online world could function in a decentralized future, built largely on three new layers of technological innovation: Edge Computing, Decentralized Data Networks, & Artificial Intelligence.
One of the most challenging aspects of the shift from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 is the transition from building applications the traditional way to building components of them on open, trustless, and permissionless networks. These components can now be combined to create a stack that becomes secure, decentralized, and potentially immortal.
“Blockchain and bitcoin point to a future, and point to a world, where content exists forever, where it’s permanent, where it doesn’t go away, where it exists forever on every single node that’s connected to it.” — Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, at Oslo Freedom Forum
The DAPP Network vision and infrastructure revolutionizes the way developers and users experience the web, introducing the concept of ‘Immortal dApps’ — unhackable, ungameable applications, decentralized across their entire tech stack, that can never be taken down.
Taking Back the Internet
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, on the 50th anniversary of the Internet, expressed concerns for its future. He raised many different issues such as increasing centralization and power imbalances that run contrary to the original design principles, which sought to fully decentralize information.
Over the last two decades, giant tech conglomerates like Facebook and Google have turned this concept on its head by limiting access to their proprietary platforms, forming virtual data and attention oligopolies.
The entire value of the Web 2.0 ecosystem has been built on the companies and platforms that build on top of open protocols, not the protocols themselves. Decentralizing data and information is one of the core tenets behind the Web 3.0 movement, which seeks to take the Internet back towards its original vision.
The Web 3.0 vision calls for a decentralized Internet where content can potentially exist forever and 404 errors are relics of the past. This could become a reality if data is successfully decentralized away from big tech monopolies whose corporate interests do not necessarily prioritize the dissemination of factual information or preserving humanity’s history online.
Why Immortal dApps? Why now?
The dreaded ‘404 Error’ or ‘HTTP 404 Page Not Found’ occurs when a webpage, for example, on an old blog or even an entire platform such as MySpace is deleted, and with that, so is access to it. The problem may have happened because the application went out of business or whoever was paying for the web hosting has ceased to continue doing so — then the content disappears, forever.
This is usually just an annoying issue that causes temporary frustration, but what if the information that you’re trying to access is a national archive or something like your Google account that contains all of your logins, passwords, history, contacts, photos, and your entire digital life? Try having a trusted friend change your online passwords for a week to see just how dependent we all are on our social media accounts and the corporations who own them.
Or consider the situation of a Turkish citizen in 2017, when the government restricted citizens from accessing online services such as Wikipedia, Twitter, and Facebook in order to “protect national security” after a disagreement with Wikipedia over an unfavorable page. The Internet today makes it possible for kill switches to exist that allow for corporations, governments and others to potentially restrict or deny access to information based on various considerations. The only way to change this is to fundamentally change how data on the Internet is handled and stored.
Democratizing Data and Services
Under a decentralized Web 3.0 system, the responsibility for maintaining an online application would not rest solely on the original publisher or developer, but would enable anyone who has an interest in that information being accessible to be able to preserve it. Regardless of the actions or inactions of the original publisher, once the data is part of the public record, the network of users on this new, more trusted version of the Internet can continue allowing anyone to access it.
As Jack Dorsey recently envisioned, video footage of world events could not be lost or manipulated, and the memories of humanity could persist, as long as their interested parties are willing to preserve it.
The DAPP Network’s Role in Web 3.0
Inspired by the decentralized movement and concerned by the fragility of the Internet we use today, the DAPP Network aims to provide solutions and infrastructure to bring the decentralized web to reality. Developers are able to utilize the DAPP Network to create immortal dApps with decentralized data storage and retrieval, giving software developers a clearer path to realizing Web 3.0.
Examples of Potential Use Cases for Immortal dApps — #YouCanBuildIt
- Immortal Wayback Machine; All web page caches retrieved and stored to IPFS using edge nodes that could potentially be the end-users themselves. Users interested in viewing stored data in their browser fetch and cache data from other parts of the web in the background of their web browser. All web caches have a unique hash that could prove that no data was ever removed or manipulated.
- Uncensorable Websites; Information can be incentivized and shared using a decentralized file system.
- Decentralized Social Media Protocol; All data is owned by its users and multiple clients can be built on top to create a race to the top competition. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are all just clients that sit on top of the same protocol, with equal and shared access to the underlying data.
- Open Source Decentralized Search Engine; No central server and the algorithms, crawling logic, and data storage are all transparent and distributed across networks of decentralized nodes. This could prevent censorship of results or bias towards specific subjects or ideas. Incentive models allow anyone to improve components that make up the entire system so search engines constantly evolve. End users can select from list of choices for open source community driven modules that impact the client or specific results algorithms and more.
In the next chapter of this series on Web 3.0 and Immortal dApps, we will discuss how the various layers of blockchain components and services like the DAPP Network can help realize the vision of a decentralized Internet for everyone, everywhere.
To be continued…
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