We're moving towards a new decentralised future

in #blockchain6 years ago (edited)

Into a world that's running on decentralised applications (dApps)…

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Imagine having your car working away, transporting passengers while you're at work. Imagine having your computer utilising its spare capacity to serve businesses and people across the globe. Imagine being paid for browsing the web and taking ownership of your, arguably invaluable, attention. Imagine the world like that. That world is not far away.

So, what's the big deal about dApp?

dApps are not necessarily laptop or mobile applications, as some might think.

They live on blockchains and have the following traits:

  • Open Source. Ideally, they should be autonomous and all changes must be decided by a consensus algorithm, and cannot be controlled by any one entity.

  • Decentralised. All data and record must be cryptographically stored in a public blockchain to avoid pitfalls of centralisation.

  • Incentivised. There must be a cryptographic token that's generated and used to access the application and provide incentives to its users for maintaining the network.

These distributed, resilient, transparent and incentivised applications will reshape the technological landscape because they create value by:

  • Disrupting a number of industries (e.g. retail, banking, insurance, financial exchange, marketplaces)
  • Doing things that bitcoin is not capable of
  • Operating exclusively with a specific network's coin/token
  • Substituting an untrustworthy centralised consensus

In short, DDOS. They're the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) to current world of centralised applications.

Rule of Three

In this new world, we classify dApp into three types:

  • Type I decentralised applications have their own blockchain, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Neo, Achain, Quarkchain.
  • Type II decentralised applications use the blockchain of a Type I decentralised application but are "protocols and have tokens that are necessary for their function" like the Lympo, Blocksquare and Omni Protocol.
  • Type III decentralised applications use the protocol of a Type II decentralised application and "are protocols and have tokens that are necessary for their function," such as the SAFE Network that uses the Omni Protocol to issue "safecoins".

If you haven't already noticed, the market valuations for Type I decentralised applications are generally much higher, followed by Type II and then Type III.

Alright! How to join the dApp party?

If you're really interested to be part of the new decentralised revolution, you can start developing your own dApp by following these steps:

  • Release a white paper that describes its features, goals, mechanism for establishing consensus, and plans for tokenisation.
  • Gain a following. Discuss your plan, and form a community to get feedback and make revisions.
  • Have a date for when your community can contribute to token sale. Remember to do KYC for potential investors.
  • Distribute the tokens.
  • Start executing your idea while still developing your plans.

But as with any startup, you need to recruit your management and development team. Be honest with any technical difficulties you foresee and always state your technical requirements clearly.

Is the future anywhere near?

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” — Abraham Lincoln

As a techie and a huge advocate of blockchain in general, I'm quite excited by the research and development happening in the space. Every day, we're seeing new blockchains coming up that offer so much more, making developers move to using these newer blockchains for building their decentralised apps. We had Ethereum, Neo and Achain. Recently, we have Hero Node, QuarkChain and Squeezer's coming up.

Every day, we're one step closer to the new decentralised future — A world that's running on decentralised applications (dApps).

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Do you think a non-tech savvy crypto enthusiast could write a white paper, and then attract back-end developers to it based on the strength of concept?

Decentralization definitely seems to be on the horizon. Whether that's a good thing or not, I'm not entirely sure yet.

Yes @boldgrgunok, definitely! As long as you believe in your idea, do some preliminary research on the market and tech. If you're not sure how the tech can help, try make some techie friends and share your idea with them. After a few rounds of discussion, you'll probably see if it can be something that's achievable.

The reason why many projects have co-founders is that they usually complement each other. You'll have someone with the idea, someone with the tech skills, someone who's good at pitching/marketing, someone who has great connections in the industry. Something like that, as long as you got something to contribute, it'll be good :) There're always tech savvy people who're damn good at technology but not that creative in ideation. You'll find a good match, I hope :)

The way I see decentralisation is that when the regulations on cryptocurrency finally come in, that's when mainstream adoption kicks off. Recently, there's news that China is adopting blockchain. If this is coming from a country that's highly cracking down crypto activities, I believe change is coming soon because the benefits are too valuable.

I like decentralization. But the key challenge I see in dApps is how do you continue to incentivize developers to work on the dApp after their ICO and vesting period. Maybe a second ICO perhaps? I'm unsure.

Thanks for your comment @culgin! I agree employee retention is always a challenge to companies, especially within a startup. There're indeed cases whereby developers exit the company after the vesting period and use the earnings to start another project.

As a developer myself, I'd say it depends on whether the startup is worth investing my time and effort, or will it be better if I form my own team and branch off into another project. Because developing new technologies takes time, especially in such a complicated and ever-changing field with uncertain regulations. To be honest, this ICO process is riddled with basic incentive issues —these startups get so much funds but have no legal obligation to deliver on their promises. The very reason why they forgo traditional IPO and chose ICO instead. Having said that, what reason do companies have to work hard and create good products?

That's why it's important to assess the founders' commitments, whether they're focused more on making money or generating attention than on developing working products. If they belong to the former, as a developer, I see no value in staying after vesting period. If they're really tech focus, good. I'll probably stay if the management is awesome in delivering success. Because I'll have something nice to add to my career portfolio.

As for second ICO, I believe any projects after raising funds for ICO, should at least deliver a working product. The next phase would be for them to get customers buy-in. If they need additional funds, they should be reaching out to VC or participate in more pitches to sell their projects. Nevertheless, there're also projects like Blocksquare that plan for multiple series fundings via token sale. It depends on how the project allocates their token model.

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