March 7, 2018 by Hitesh Malviya
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When you look at the top billion dollar companies that have come from silicon valley over the last decade, it has been dominated by centralized SaaS products. Airbnb is a centralized aggregator of properties; Uber centrally aggregates independent taxis. All transactions between the supply and demand end occur on a centrally controlled platform. While both companies may have exceptional corporate governance policies, it places undue power over people’s information in their hands. Furthermore, it also has singular points of system and data vulnerabilities.
With the advent of dApps, we now have the chance to decentralise this kind of large-scale applications, and Dfinity aims to provide a platform to do just that. The company calls themselves a public network of client computers providing a “decentralized world compute cloud” where software can be installed and run with all the usual benefits expected of smart contract systems hosted on a traditional blockchain. Their aim is to decentralise large-scale applications like Gmail and web search. Their FAQ document sheds some light on their approach. They say, “the Dfinity protocol research began with the assumption that the network must contain a million or more mining computers, and that together these will be required to provide a massive virtual compute capacity.”
An Ethereum competitor? Not quite
Second generation blockchain projects like the Ethereum platform were perhaps the first attempts towards building a platform to build dApps. Dfinity isn’t much different from Ethereum in what it wants to achieve, so it can be thought of as a competitor to it. However, their similarities end there. Ethereum’s core principle is that everything is governed by code or what’s commonly known as “Code is Law.”
Dfinity, on the other hand, calls their approach “AI is Law” and they think of it as an extension of the Ethereum Blockchain – a sister world computer network that prioritizes performance and scalability and where smart contracts are subject to a decentralized intelligence. They believe that this would, if anything, strengthen the Ethereum ecosystem.
Go to market and Upcoming Token Sale
According to the company communication channels, a beta network created using the “Copper Release” client software is expected towards the end of Q1 2018. The expectation is that the Copper network will launch end Q2 2018. A supporting foundation, Dfinity Stiftung, has been created in Zug, and will assist with work.”
Details about the token sale have not been released yet, but the Dfinity is doing the rounds in the crypto community and their Telegram channel has over 24k followers.
Our Take
If the company achieves what they intend to do, Dfinity has the potential to be the next Ethereum. A lot of this can be attributed to the following –
- A tremendously talented team of silicon valley engineers who are also from the cypherpunks school of thought
- A working product with a clear development roadmap
- An audacious vision, with an actual plan to achieve it
Follow them today and be the first to know how to participate in the upcoming token sale – https://dfinity.org/
