Modern humanity, for the most part, is a strong advocate for equality and egalitarianism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the worldwide upsurge of democracy over the last century. The Blockchain technology can be said to be a spirit animal to that call for equality. Bitcoin, its first major use case, brought about the ‘democratization’ of money allowing ordinary players and I daresay, the average person to play a role in its monetary policy by running nodes that confirm and validate transactions on the chain. Ethereum, with its innovative smart contracts, first applied that same technology to internet applications providing the users of such applications (or dApps) the opportunity to have a say in its governance and operation. Recently, we’ve seen an increased interest in the development of Web 3, a free and open internet, where not only are the dApps owned by their users but the internet infrastructure is decentralized with its ownership in the hands of its users and not Big Tech (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Services, etc).

The Internet Computer is the fastest and most scalable general purpose blockchain today and a complete alternative to the $3.9T legacy IT stack on which the internet is built on today. Said to be the industry’s largest R&D project which began in 2016 (called Dfinity at the time) and saw the recruitment of over 200 cryptographers and computer scientists headed by Dominic Williams as part of The Dfinity Foundation. The network first went live for public use in May 2021 and has seen a significant rise in developer activity since then reaching second position over the last six months.

The IC is made up of nodes located in independent data centers around the globe. Nodes are organized into subnets with the subnets in turn connected to each other using the innovative Chainkey Cryptography. A subnet is essentially a blockchain of its own and the IC can be thought of as a network of blockchains. Key milestones in the project roadmap are the integration of Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains into the network with the goal of solving their scalability problems. dApps on the IC are composed of one or more smart contracts that scale (called Canisters).

The Internet Computer’s native token, ICP, exists to serve two functions on the network. Governance, in which ICP can be staked in the Network Nervous System* *dApp to create a *neuron *which would participate in a liquid democracy with other neurons on how the network is run by voting to adopt or reject proposals, not unlike an actual parliament.

ICP can also be burnt to create cycles, the gas of the IC. Developers create canisters and then load them with cycles. Thus, the IC employs a reverse gas model where end users of dApps do not have to pay for gas thereby solving the cost issues seen in earlier blockchains.

In just over a year post launch, the IC now hosts over 127k canisters and has generated over 1B blocks. From social networks like Openchat, Dscvr, Distrikt to Defi Apps like InfinitySwap, Sonic to play-to-earn games like Cubetopia, Cosmicrafts and much more there are more than 300 dApps and projects fully on-chain.

With tremendously low costs of storage (compared to other blockchains), ease of development, and delivering content at web speed, the internet computer heralds in a Web 3 that is a developer’s dream and also provides end users an experience that is indistinguishable from the one they are used to. Only now, we the people own the internet.

Modern humanity, for the most part, is a strong advocate for equality and egalitarianism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the worldwide upsurge of democracy over the last century. The Blockchain technology can be said to be a spirit animal to that call for equality. Bitcoin, its first major use case, brought about the ‘democratization’ of money allowing ordinary players and I daresay, the average person to play a role in its monetary policy by running nodes that confirm and validate transactions on the chain. Ethereum, with its innovative smart contracts, first applied that same technology to internet applications providing the users of such applications (or dApps) the opportunity to have a say in its governance and operation. Recently, we’ve seen an increased interest in the development of Web 3, a free and open internet, where not only are the dApps owned by their users but the internet infrastructure is decentralized with its ownership in the hands of its users and not Big Tech (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Services, etc).

The Internet Computer is the fastest and most scalable general purpose blockchain today and a complete alternative to the $3.9T legacy IT stack on which the internet is built on today. Said to be the industry’s largest R&D project which began in 2016 (called Dfinity at the time) and saw the recruitment of over 200 cryptographers and computer scientists headed by Dominic Williams as part of The Dfinity Foundation. The network first went live for public use in May 2021 and has seen a significant rise in developer activity since then reaching second position over the last six months.

The IC is made up of nodes located in independent data centers around the globe. Nodes are organized into subnets with the subnets in turn connected to each other using the innovative Chainkey Cryptography. A subnet is essentially a blockchain of its own and the IC can be thought of as a network of blockchains. Key milestones in the project roadmap are the integration of Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains into the network with the goal of solving their scalability problems. dApps on the IC are composed of one or more smart contracts that scale (called Canisters).

The Internet Computer’s native token, ICP, exists to serve two functions on the network. Governance, in which ICP can be staked in the Network Nervous System* *dApp to create a *neuron *which would participate in a liquid democracy with other neurons on how the network is run by voting to adopt or reject proposals, not unlike an actual parliament.

ICP can also be burnt to create cycles, the gas of the IC. Developers create canisters and then load them with cycles. Thus, the IC employs a reverse gas model where end users of dApps do not have to pay for gas thereby solving the cost issues seen in earlier blockchains.

In just over a year post launch, the IC now hosts over 127k canisters and has generated over 1B blocks. From social networks like Openchat, Dscvr, Distrikt to Defi Apps like InfinitySwap, Sonic to play-to-earn games like Cubetopia, Cosmicrafts and much more there are more than 300 dApps and projects fully on-chain.

With tremendously low costs of storage (compared to other blockchains), ease of development, and delivering content at web speed, the internet computer heralds in a Web 3 that is a developer’s dream and also provides end users an experience that is indistinguishable from the one they are used to. Only now, we the people own the internet.