Speech: Dominic Williams, founder and chief scientist of DFINITY
On the evening of December 23, 2020, DFINITY hosted the DFINITY China Ecological Meeting·Shanghai Station Christmas Meet-Up. At the meeting, DFINITY founder and chief scientist Dominic Williams shared with you the principles and advantages of Internet computers and the one created by DFINITY. CanCan is a template application for an Internet computer, and it is proposed that developers will join the public network early next year.
The following is a wonderful sharing by Dominic Williams that night.
Hello everyone, I am the founder and chief scientist of the DFINITY Foundation. thank you all. I am very pleased to introduce Internet computers from a broad perspective.
Today, we are at the beginning of a huge “open Internet boom” wave. The explosive development of blockchain and DeFi is a good example.
If you are a developer, entrepreneur or investor, or even a traditional enterprise looking for a better way to build, this will be an unprecedented opportunity.
I will give you a grand introduction to how the next-generation blockchain Layer 1 foundation, Internet computers, will specifically capture this opportunity.
All of these possibilities are due to the continuous expansion of the Internet’s functions, and the world is about to change. Until now, the Internet was only a global network. But the Internet computer is expanding its functions, making the Internet a public computing platform.
Internet computers allow you to build directly on the Internet ontology, without the need for traditional technologies such as cloud services, databases, or payment interfaces, and to re-change the way and content of building services. This is a paradigm shift that will change everything.
I work for the DFINITY Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Switzerland that is leading the development of the aforementioned available technologies. The foundation has research funds worth more than 1 billion U.S. dollars and attracts the brightest and most capable R&D teams in all technical fields. More non-profit organizations, such as the Internet Computer Association, have now entered the ranks of collaboration and co-construction of the ecosystem. Internet computers are the third great innovation of the blockchain.
The first innovation was Bitcoin, which introduced the concept of currency and is now playing the role of digital gold.
The second innovation is Ethereum, which introduces smart contracts and also promotes the revolution of decentralized financial DeFi.
This third major innovation is the Internet computer. This is the first true and universal blockchain computer. It allows us to reimagine the way we build everything, a seamless and unlimited performance block. chain. The “Internet computer” was created by the ICP protocol. It runs through IP and weaves the computing power of special machines running in independent data centers around the world.
Internet computers carry the “WebAssembly container”, which is an evolution of smart contracts. Essentially, a “container” is a secure code unit that packs WebAssembly bytecode and its dependent memory pages.
The power is that Internet computers can carry any number of containers as needed, without limitation. You can build scalable systems and services directly on the public Internet, even on ultra-large scales. The container itself is never downtime and cannot be tampered with. Just as the Internet was originally designed to withstand single-point nuclear strikes, Internet computers are similar. More interestingly, firewalls are no longer necessary in Internet computers, because this platform is completely tamper-proof.
The container can be directly from the Internet computer, giving users a good enough experience without any middleware. Users do not need to hold tokens to interact with systems and services built on Internet computers. In fact, such systems and services can be very standardized by designers and can interact with other things.
Many things can be better constructed on Internet computers, such as websites, enterprise systems, open ultra-large-scale Internet services, large platforms, and DeFi. The establishment of new systems is no longer dependent on traditional IT technology stacks, such as proprietary cloud services, server hosts or database systems
Future developers only need to write abstract logic into the cyberspace and use DFINITY’s revolutionary new capabilities to build. Ten years later, the public cyberspace will host a considerable part of human backend software and data. On the blockchain network, developers and users regain their freedom. Friends with a blockchain background may be curious about the token economics that drives the network. Internet computers use a “reverse gas model”.
This means that the containerized software installed on the Internet computer is pre-filled with cycles tokens as fuel to power calculations. Since the software pays for its own calculations, end users do not need to pay for the calculations performed by the system and services like on Ethereum.
The cycles token has a complete economic design. The ICP protocol rewards data centers with ICP governance tokens. The data center can sell the ICP to the container operator, who then converts these ICPs into cycles, uses cycles to charge the containers, and is finally consumed by calculations
Let’s talk about the entrepreneurial opportunities brought by Internet computers. For entrepreneurs and investors, the biggest opportunity may be related to the construction of “open Internet services.” As part of the Internet structure, open Internet services are run by autonomously controlled codes. They are controlled by a transparent and open tokenized governance system. This is a bit like applying open source ideas to running services
If you want to start an open Internet service, you can sell governance tokens to raise funds, you can sell directly to investors, or you can use the mechanism of Internet computers to raise funds automatically. Today, 99% of the world’s talents live outside of Silicon Valley, and it is almost impossible to receive any venture capital. Token-based fundraising will release the creative potential of these global talents, and open Internet services can also provide large technology companies with open alternatives with special advantages.
Take cloud photo albums as an example. At first you can sync your photos to your hard drive, but once the credit card in it expires, or whatever, everything in it is locked, your photos will disappear.
On the Internet computer, you can create an “open cloud photo album”, through the idea of DeFi, let users deposit once, no longer need to pay, this service will also provide other advantages.
Because this platform is tamper-proof, users can rest assured that hackers will never see their photos – as you may know, there was a news a few weeks ago that someone discovered that they could hack into iCloud and see all the information above.
At the same time, another huge advantage of open Internet services is that they can share functions and data with other services. As long as APIs are reserved, these access interfaces cannot be revoked or downgraded in the future, so services can depend on each other. There is no need to trust each other, this provides a truly programmable network, which will bring incredible network effects.
This means that users of “Open Cloud Album” will benefit from expanding third-party applications, or exciting new possibilities, to process their photos. To take another Uber example, you can create an “open Uber” to motivate early passengers and drivers to participate by granting governance tokens. Lower costs will mean that drivers can retain more income. “Open Uber” can enter many regions. In these regions, the taxi monopoly in the past launched legal attacks on Uber because you cannot attack the structure of the Internet. , The Internet does not belong to anyone in the traditional sense.
The opportunities are endless, but more importantly, Internet computers make it easier to build such advanced services. Imagine that with just 1,000 lines of code, you can build a very large-scale Internet service.
CanCan is a template application for Internet computers that we have created. It is continuing to expand and will be released in the New Year. It works the same as TikTok. Disseminate short videos of users. It can also use tokens for incentives.
Tokenization is full of infinite possibilities, because open Internet services are as autonomous as blockchain. On CanCan, users have 10 “super likes” every 24 hours. When the video is disseminated, CanCan will check the order of “Super Likes”, and those early “Super Likes” users will participate in the “Point Reward Rain”.
The coolest thing is that there are regular “airdrop days” where users can exchange reward points for CanCan’s governance tokens, or for prizes provided by sponsors, and sponsors can use points to pay for advertising.
What’s even better is that users can use red letters with bonus points to motivate video producers from their rewards to show their gratitude and encourage them to do more. There are so many potential possibilities. We recommend entrepreneurs to become ” Entrepreneurs of “Open Internet” have seized the wave of opportunities embodied by the blockchain model and added top-level venture funds. They have allocated billions of dollars in special funds to invest in open Internet and encryption projects.
In addition, the founders of tokenized open Internet services can use the decentralized Internet to raise funds anywhere. So, if you are an entrepreneur outside of Silicon Valley, this is your opportunity. A good way to get started is to download an SDK and build something for Internet computers. We have an application portal on SDK.dfinity.org. Finally, you can also participate in the governance of Internet computers to help ensure its independence and security. Internet computers are managed by a tokenized governance system called the network nervous system within a protocol.
The ICP governance token (previously known as DFN) is locked in the “voting neuron”, and governance can be performed. By voting on the proposal submitted to the network nervous system, you can get the voting reward, which is calculated by some configuration parameters from
The good news is that voting can run semi-automatically because neurons can follow each other. So even if you are busy, you can create neurons and participate in earning rewards.
For this reason, the Internet Computer Project provides a historic opportunity for everyone and anyone who wants to help build an open Internet and create an impact. Of course, this is also an opportunity for the data center. If you are a data center interested in supporting Internet computer networks, or an investor interested in helping to fund data center investment in hardware to obtain a portion of the income, or a manufacturer interested in making node machines, please contact the DFINITY Foundation Or the Internet Computer Association.
Finally, I am happy to mention that, as I am speaking, as part of the DFINITY Foundation’s “Mercury” milestone, the main Internet computer network is being launched on hundreds of nodes around the world in a decentralized manner.
At the beginning of next year, we will start to let developers join the public network, because we are about to usher in the final “Genesis” conference, which is expected to be held in February or March.
R&D personnel from many countries, who have worked hard for several years, have allowed us to reach this point. I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have contributed to the project. Thank you again for your participation and hope you can join the Internet computer as soon as possible.
