When asked for his thoughts on the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain, which he has been working on for almost a decade, Dominic Williams of the Dfinity Foundation had no answer.
“IIt's gotten to the point where people are actually investing in snake oil. For example, “Who has the best snake oil? I'm going to invest in that because their marketing is good,'' Williams recently told The Block. And I think that's the biggest challenge facing the industry today. ”
Williams is the principal scientist and founder of the Dfinity Foundation, the architect and major contributor to Internet computer protocols. A few years ago, this project was one of the most hyped projects in the blockchain space after Dfinity. It has raised a total of $195 million from major backers including Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital. Dfinity is officially a non-profit organization based in Zurich.
It's clear that Williams has high praise for the team at Dfinity Foundation, which he says boasts “1,000 years of” research and development expertise and the Internet computer blockchain it launched. . He's not as tolerant of other industries.
“handFrankly, there's a lot of junk here. “95% of blockchains out there are just junk, selling snake oil,” he said in a recent interview. It's about who can tell the best story and make it the most convincing, as we pretend to have done it and done things that we haven't done yet.”
“Third generation blockchain only”
Although Williams recognizes the utility of blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche, he believes that blockchain I don't feel like I truly understand the limitations of. However, he claims that his protocol is the “only third generation” blockchain, and believes that the internet can propel a new era of interaction entirely on-chain online.
Williams says some popular blockchains work well for processing transactions, but whether they can form the basis of an entirely new decentralized internet that mainstream users will adopt en masse. He says he doesn't really believe in it.
”Blockchain is a type of computing platform, whether it's traditional blockchains like Ethereum or Solana that compute sequentially, or third-generation blockchains that can scale and compute more efficiently. It will be. He said he will build a Web3 platform like an on-chain social network.
In trying to make his point, Williams pointed out how inefficient Web3 currently is. “Take a picture with your phone. It's 3 megabytes. It will cost him $110,000 to put it on Ethereum. [would] It also costs about a week to upload. Solana is about $400,” he said.
Solving the blockchain “trilemma”
Already in 2021, the people behind Internet Computer felt they had something different.
“Essentially, the Internet of Computers is the world’s first blockchain running at web speeds with unlimited capacity. Solving the ‘blockchain trilemma’ by creating a decentralized, secure and scalable blockchain network. ,” the Dfinity Foundation said at the time. .
While the Internet Computer may claim technological superiority over competing blockchains, the protocol is not without its problems, at least when it comes to maintaining timelines. After the Dfinity Foundation delayed the launch of his Internet Computer Protocol in late 2018, it was finally launched about two and a half years later.
“Within 10 years, the broader technology community will realize that the Internet computer is on track to one day become humanity's primary computing platform for building software and the open Internet,” Williams said. I mentioned this at the time of launch.
Messerli's research points out that the public release not only “released the source code of the Internet computer,” but also “transaction and governance features of the ICP utility token.” After initially starting at more than $400 and skyrocketing to a market cap of more than $18 billion in May 2021, ICP's value plummeted, according to CoinGecko. ICP prices have since recovered slightly and started to rebound significantly late last year.
According to The Block Price Page, the token was trading at more than $13 at the time of publication.
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