How does Blockless enable users to power applications just by using them? The answer is in our Uber-esque matchmaking of community devices with computational tasks.

A couple of weeks ago, we announced that Blockless would be the first network enabling users to contribute compute resources to applications just by using them.

For decentralized applications (dApps) across every vertical, this bridges the gap between decentralization as a marketable concept and decentralization as a reality, with everyday users powering and receiving rewards from their favorite everyday applications.

We’ve been working on this for over two years, having recognized that recent industry efforts to replace Amazon Web Services and other centralized cloud-computing providers had created networks that are just as inaccessible, confusing and in many cases downright exploitative for your average person.

Once our engineers had worked out how our network could take and use compute resources from a user’s internet browser tab without them needing to download a single thing, the key challenge we faced was simple…

If current networks rely upon huge professional-grade servers, maintained round-the-clock by professionals, how could our network match, or even outperform them with nodes run on a 2007 Dell XPS? Or a 2017 Chromebook? Or your dad’s iPhone 6? Or was it a 5s…

Ahhhh I’m orchestrating

The answer is orchestration — deciding which nodes go where. We call it “Dynamic Resource Matching” (DRM) which is a fancy way of explaining how different workloads across different applications will make use of different nodes, depending upon 1. the demands of that particular workload and 2. the capacity of the node device.

This differs from other networks that only permit nodes that can run every type of workload, with system requirements out of reach for the majority of people. Blockchain networks such as Solana and SUI, for example, require network nodes to have at least 128 GB of RAM, which isn’t just inefficient, but also makes participation impossible for most of the community.

DRM works like this. Imagine an application has 10,000 different nodes across the blockless network that opted-in to help with its computations. For each type of workload, these 10,000 nodes are evaluated, taking into account the following:

1. Hardware Specification: The processing power, memory, storage, and network capabilities of each node device.

2. Geolocation: Nodes distance to the data source and/or the end-user for reduced latency.

3. Existing Workloads: The existing load on a node device to avoid overworking any single device.

4. Computation Type: The specific requirements of the computational task, such as the need for GPU processing or large memory space.

5. Node Performance History: Reliability and efficiency score in task execution, with specific scores for different types of workloads.

Let’s look at a simple betting system as an example. For webpage hosting (which is what lets a website respond to you once you’ve clicked something) tab nodes on devices like your home PC would suffice. For processing arbitrary data (i.e. determining the roll of a dice, or the random draw of a set of cards) in a verifiable manner using ZK Proofs, the computation involved would be heavier, requiring computers with high-end GPUs (i.e. RTX 4090) or a cluster of GPUs for proof generation.

A Step-by-Step Breakdown of Blockless’s Resource Matching Process

1. Task Initiation and Categorization.

Someone, somewhere, pressed a button on an application. Oops. That means they’re expecting something to happen, so it’s time to sort the task based on its specific requirements, such as the necessary processing power, memory, storage capacity, and any special hardware needs (like GPU for machine learning tasks).

2. Node Capability Assessment.

U up? Our DRM system assesses the capacity and suitability of all available node devices in the network. This includes evaluating their hardware specifications, such as CPU/GPU performance, RAM, storage, and network bandwidth, and what those devices are currently busy with.

3. Performance History Assessment.

Time to check the receipts. The system reviews the historical performance data of nodes, including their reliability, efficiency in executing previous tasks, and any reported failures or issues.

4. Geolocation Assessment.

WYA? Time to dig into the location of each node in relation to the data source and/or end-user. Nodes that are geographically closer to the data source or the end-user are identified, as they’re often able to offer lower latency and faster data transmission.

5. Resource Matching and Task Allocation.

It’s time for a marriage of convenience. Using the collected data, the DRM mechanism matches the task with a pool of the most suitable nodes in the network. The task is then allocated to some of these nodes at random, whilst ensuring that the task is distributed in a way that optimally uses the network’s resources.

6. Task Execution Monitoring.

Just checking in… Once the task is allocated, the system continuously monitors its execution, tracks the performance of each node, and makes adjustments if necessary — such as reallocating parts of the task if a node becomes unavailable or is underperforming.

7. Result Compilation and Verification.

Ahhhhhh I’m verifying. Upon task completion, the results from various nodes are compiled. The system then verifies the results (using the app’s preferred verification algorithm) for accuracy and integrity, ensuring that the output meets the required standards and specifications of the task.

8. Feedback and Optimization.

If you were happy with our service today… The node performance data is recorded for future assessments. This feedback is used to continuously optimize the DRM algorithm, improving the efficiency and reliability of future task allocations.

9. Rewards and Incentives.

We’re sure you’re in it for the tech too, but it’s worth noting that participating nodes can receive rewards from both the application and the Blockless Network based on their contribution to the task, encouraging continued participation and investment in the network.

A perfect match? xoxo

By breaking down applications into tasks, we’re not only able to leverage the devices of those who use these applications, but we’re also able to optimize every single click, tap and swipe of a button. From ensuring low latency (less lag) with our geolocation assessment, to selecting the most efficient consensus and verification algorithms for workloads that need unique or additional forms of security, we’re laser-focused on matching the best operators with each and every task.

And since we’re so keen on matchmaking — we’ll see you here on Valentines Day…

And how we’re making key web infrastructure Network Neutral

Decentralized applications, or dApps, have been useful in our transition away from centralized infrastructure, towards a decentralized, stable, and secure digital experience. However, these applications remain limited by and through the many decentralized networks they are built on. Heavy computations (or workloads) aren’t suitable for blockchain technology, meaning that dApps simply cannot cater to vast amounts of people processing vast amounts of data — and the data that can be processed has to be done through the method prescribed by the network.

We’re looking to change that with Network Neutral applications.

Network Neutral applications (nnApps) hold onto the ‘decentralized’ part of dApps — the key difference is that our modular application architecture enables applications to operate beyond the rules and constraints of the network(s) they live on, from Layer 1 blockchains to L2 rollups.

This means that applications are able to carry out heavy computations that aren’t otherwise possible on the blockchain, whilst retaining the security provided by those blockchain networks. These applications are ‘network neutral’ because their performance isn’t impacted by the network they’re operating on, allowing applications to live on Solana, Ethereum, and any other network you’d like, leveraging them only for the things they’re good at — namely, providing security and a large pool of potential users, allowing Blockless to handle the rest.

nnApp Architecture

At the heart of each nnApp is what we call a dream network. This is an app-specific network of nodes dedicated to running all the things that can’t run on blockchain networks. Each nnApp has its own dream network, which is responsible for executing the code that you’ve loaded onto the Blockless platform. The nodes forming part of each dream network are selected (in a pseudo-random fashion) based on their suitability for each workload. Our platform then allows you to select which consensus or verification algorithms you use to verify and validate the execution of your application’s workloads.

Here are the four essential parts for building a nnApp:

1. Your code

2. Nodes that execute your code

3. Automated workload orchestration

4. Dynamic consensus & verification methods

With a modular application architecture, we’re able to look at and optimize each individual workload within an application, instead of seeing an application as a singular utility. This allows multiple workloads to interlink to fulfill the application’s overarching objectives. This collaborative framework means that a single nnApp could be serviced by several node groups, consisting of entirely different nodes in each. The same logic applies to how we secure our nnApps — different consensus mechanisms may be deployed in tandem to ensure the robustness and security of any single nnApp.

How do these mechanisms work in reality?

For our orchestration mechanism, we’ve fine-tuned a ranking system to ensure that every single workload has the most suitable nodes processing it, ensuring optimal performance and security. For example, the nodes used to carry out workloads for a large language model (LLM) will differ from the nodes used for a simple data feed function. Our orchestration mechanism also features execution failover, meaning that if a node falls offline, another one is brought up to replace it immediately.

We take the application apart further, with our dynamic consensus mechanism, allowing for every workload to be verified with the most suitable consensus and/or verification algorithm. For example, if your application requires majority consensus on execution results, you might want to use pBFT or RAFT. But for privacy-preserving user verification, you might want to use ZK proofs. You can see how these workflows look below.

Each dream network is an application-specific network, spawned by the builder (you!) that offers a trustless and decentralized environment for executing tasks beyond the scope of smart contracts. These networks enhance the versatility and functionality of smart-contract-based applications, all while preserving their inherent trust and verifiability.

By providing a platform to build applications, and a tailor-made network for running each of these applications, Blockless facilitates the next transition, from a focus on networks to a focus on applications, where performance and scalability don’t come at the expense of decentralization. With our nnApp architecture, we enable fully decentralized, web3 applications to run stable diffusion models, process arbitrary real-world data, execute complex financial models, and offer a service experience just as good as any application you enjoy today.

If you’d like to be a part of our network, as a builder or as a node-runner, you can join the community and speak with the team through the link here.

About Blockless

Blockless is the platform to launch, integrate, and secure Network Neutral Applications (nnApps) at unprecedented speed.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Linkedin

We are thrilled to introduce Blockless ZK — a zk-SNARK “prover as a service” feature for WASM executions deployed on Blockless.

The vision for Blockless is to create a future where developers can easily build and ship performant and trustless applications on a decentralized global network. With this goal in mind, the team and the community have constantly researched and thought about ways to accelerate the trajectory toward this future.

While Blockless Functions was announced in October 2022 and continues to be perfected, the general-purpose execution platform has allowed us to introduce solution products that directly address developers’ needs.

Among the requested features from the developer community, a better way to generate zk-SNARK proofs is at the top of the list.

Currently, in the industry, there are two major pain points that developers are facing that need to be addressed:

1. Building a zero-knowledge service or application today requires extensive manual labor and domain expertise. As a builder, you have to convert legacy business logic and code bases into ZK circuits in languages such as Circom, Halo2, and Cario.

2. zk-SNARK proofs are computation-intensive and often require special and expensive hardware for execution. Managing such specialized hardware is distracting teams from focusing on their core business logic.

Today, we are thrilled to introduce Blockless ZK — a zk-SNARK “prover as a service” feature for WASM executions deployed on Blockless, that solves the aforementioned hurdles for all builders building on top of Blockless.

As a developer, you can now create zk-powered services and applications in your favorite languages just as you normally would via Blockless Functions. Simply turn-on ZK prover feature via Blockless Dashboard or Blockless CLI while you deploy your WASM function binary. When your function receives requests, while the function executes, Blockless workers will simulate the function with the associated input and generate a zk-SNARK proof that guarantees the execution correctness. The zk-SNARK proof can then be aggregated and sent to any destination L1 or data availability layer for verification.

In the background, Blockless ZK leverages zkWASM, a zk-SNARK circuit/proof generator, to allow developers to create ZK-enabled dApps whose execution can be verified on demand. Your WASM execution can still be written in multiple languages, and while the function executes on Blockless, a ZK proof will automatically be generated. This powerful zero knowledge circuit generation engine can translate your WASM bytecode in any WASM-compatible language and generate ZK circuits with CPU or GPU. In the future, performance enhancement SDK will also be released to better assist builders to develop and ship verifiable dApps with optimized proof-generating performance and minimal cost of operation.

We are extremely excited to bring the Blockless ZK feature to our developer community with the exclusive partnership between Blockless and Delphinus Lab, the creator of zkWASM. To find out more about this collaboration, see this post.

Blockless and Delphinus Lab are excited to first present a zkWASM playground by the end of Q4 2022. A public version of Blockless ZK will be released in Q1 2023. The teams believe Blockless ZK brings a world of opportunities for the Web3 community. At the same time, the wider WASM and Web2 developer community can also use Blockless ZK as an entry point to directly participate in the zk-powered Web3 movement.

Join us and be a part of the journey.

About Blockless

Blockless is a WASM-based, customizable execution layer that powers decentralized serverless applications.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute a variety of hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers. Developers can build on Blockless with unparalleled scale, reliability, and security.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror | Linkedin

About Delphinus Lab

Delphinus Lab is an Australian research and development team focusing on zk-SNARK technologies. Delphinus is the creator of the zkWASM repository.

Github | Website | zkWASM

Blockless and Delphinus Lab are joining to create Blockless ZK, a zkWASM Prover as a Service solution product.

We are thrilled to announce an exclusive partnership with Delphinus Lab, the team behind zkWASM: a virtual machine that executes WASM files and provides a zk-SNARK proof of correct execution.

Both teams believe in WASM as a general execution framework and ZKP as a fundamental pillar for a performant yet trustless web. We thus are excited to together build out Blockless ZK, a zkWASM Prover as a Service (PaaS) solution product.

With Blockless ZK, developers can now create zk-powered services and applications in their favorite languages just as they normally would via Blockless Functions. The functions will be precompiled into WASI binary bundles and executed by nodes within the Blockless network. When the nodes are executing the WASM files, a zk-SNARK proof of the execution will be generated and uploaded to any DA layer for public verification.

With this collaboration, Blockless will become the exclusive PaaS provider using Delphinus Lab’s generic zkWASM runtime. The teams will also work together to publish specialized circuits via the Blockless Marketplace. Blockless will donate a portion of the revenue from Blockless ZK to Delphinus Lab going forward to promote future research and educational initiatives.

About Delphinus Lab

Delphinus Lab is an Australian research and development team focusing on zk-SNARK technologies. Delphinus is the creator of the zkWASM repository.

Github | Website | zkWASM

About Blockless

Blockless is a WASM-based, customizable execution layer that powers decentralized serverless applications.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers. Developers can build on Blockless with unparalleled scale, reliability, and security.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror | Linkedin

Blockless Functions is our first step to creating a decentralized serverless platform for fully trustless executions. With Blockless Functions, teams can focus on building the core business logic instead of getting distracted by maintaining and operating a community-based infrastructure.

The vision for Blockless is to create a future where anyone can create trustless yet performant applications with ease. The scope of these applications is not limited to the on-chain realm as of today. Here at Blockless, we ask ourselves: what does it take for web3 to grow into something that can fully replace web2?

To offer the services we enjoy today in a trustless way, using blockchains is not enough. Though blockchains are fantastic consensus engines, they are not optimized for supporting every service we need in the real world. For instance, for machine learning, web hosting, VPN, content streaming, messaging, etc., blockchains are not the most suitable infrastructure.

Instead, we need specialized solutions for trustless storage, communication, and execution. An existing example would be IPFS, which occupies the trustless storage segment.

Blockless, on the other hand, is addressing the trustless execution segment. Blockless Functions is our first step towards a trustless future, and in the following sections we will talk about:

A. Design logic and key features

B. How to navigate through Private Alpha

C. What to expect going forward

A. Design logic and key features

Before we go into the actual design of Blockless Functions, here is some context:

The initial and most basic motivation for creating Blockless was to lower the entry barrier for developers and entrepreneurs to create complex P2P and trustless applications. The crypto industry often refers to these as “decentralized off-chain applications.” We believe the functionalities and services these off-chain applications offer are the keys to creating a trustless yet user-friendly future.

Right now, these trustless applications rely on P2P, decentralized node networks operated by their communities. A few examples could be LBRY, Deeper Network, Render Network, The Graph, and Threshold.

The wish was to have a global pool of nodes for off-chain applications to directly pick and use (finding the most suitable devices/nodes and deploying functions/services on top of them for trustless execution). This way, teams can focus on building the core business logic instead of getting distracted by maintaining and operating a community-based infrastructure.

Blockless Functions is our first step in productizing this idea. To make this a reality, we created a framework that allows uber-like automated match-making between developers and suitable node resources, as well as for nodes to safely execute any arbitrary program.

Blockless Functions has a few key and fundamental characteristics:

1. Serverless user experience

As a platform built for developers, we aim to make the development experience as easy as possible. When a developer comes to Blockless Functions, he/she will only do the following:

• Upload the code he wishes to deploy

• Upload a manifest file that defines the minimum node count, hardware resource requirements, geolocation, node interaction scheme, etc.

• Make a deposit in the Blockless token (BLS) for payments

The match-making is done automatically by our orchestration layer — a Cosmos chain that keeps all Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and serves as a consensus engine for trustless task scheduling and load balancing.

For the developer, he/she will never have to manually interact with individual devices.

2. Multi-language support

To allow devices under the Blockless platform to execute any code safely, we’ve engineered a WASM runtime environment based on Tokio and Wasmtime.

The runtime environment can run WASI bytecode bundles compiled from Rust, AssemblyScript, TinyGo, and C/C++. This means the developer can build in his/her favorite languages and won’t need to learn anything new.

3. Pay as you go

This implies multiple features. One is hands-free horizontal scaling. If a function you deploy is getting more requests (from user growth), the platform automatically finds more nodes for you.

The other implication is that nodes under the Blockless platform are being used very efficiently. The timeout for any function is set to 10 minutes, and the runtime will be shut down once the request is completed. This means a device in the Blockless network will likely contribute to tens if not hundreds of applications per day, instead of getting locked up on one application even if there is no incoming request.

4. Secure

The WASM-based runtime environment is a secure sandbox that isolates the deployed program from the host machine environment. The software being executed within the sandbox won’t be able to interact with the wider host machine, and the node runner also has no knowledge of what happens in this sandbox.

5. Convenient SDK

For each supported programming language, we provide an SDK to enhance the development experience. Currently, APIs in the Blockless SDK include:

• HTTP

• Blockless Functions (allowing developers to invoke other Functions without having to send HTTP requests with authentication credentials over the internet)

• AWS S3

• IPFS

• Ethereum

B. How to navigate through Private Alpha

Deploying Function with Blockless Console

If you are not yet whitelisted, please reach out via our Telegram and Discord channel. If you already have Private Alpha access, go to the Blockless Console and log in using your registered Web3 address. We currently support Keplr Wallet (Cosmos), MetaMask, and Martian Wallet (Aptos).

Blockless Console Wallet Connect Page

Select the Functions Tab on the left and click the + Create function button on the top right corner. This will take you to the Function Creation page, where you can connect your GitHub account and deploy the function by choosing a repository or selecting one of the starter templates and deploying directly.

Blockless Functions Overview

For the quick start guide, we will use the Hello World template button on the bottom and deploy a function that will return a JSON file with a “Hello World” message.

Function Creation Page

After clicking, when the loading is complete, your first function is deployed to the Blockless network and is running on the decentralized node network. Congratulations on deploying your first decentralized function! You should see your deployed function on the Functions Overview page.

Functions Overview Page with the newly deployed function

By clicking the function, you will jump to the Function Details page where you can view the function status and change the function settings.

Function Details Page

You can invoke your function with the invocation URL. Here, the function returns a “Hello World” message in JSON format.

Returned Hello World Message

Going back to the Functions Detail page, you can go to the function’s settings and change the function name. Alternatively, you can choose to either stop or delete the function. Here, we changed the automatically generated function name from electric_cyan_cuckoo_1cc1 to my-first-function.

Changing the Function Name

You can see the reflected name change on the Functions Detail page.

Finally, let’s go back to the function’s settings and delete this function. You can also choose to stop the deployment, where the function will still show up in your console but will be removed from the Blockless Workers.

Going back to the Functions Overview page, we indeed confirm that our my-first-function is deleted.

In the above, we illustrate a guideline for testing Blockless Functions with our developer Console. Alternatively, you can also use our CLI to play with it.

C. What to expect going forward

The end goal for Blockless is to create a general purpose and trustless execution platform. Below are some of the features and products we will push out in the coming months.

zkWASM

One upcoming feature for Blockless Functions is verifiable execution. In a trustless environment, typically we can’t really know what the nodes are doing. Instead, we only see the execution results. This is why in many cases we need nodes to aggregate the results and conduct consensus. In Blockless, this changes with zkWASM.

The implementation of zkWASM is a collaborative effort between the Blockless team and a (yet-to-be-announced) strategic partner. zkWASM allows nodes in the Blockless network to generate a zk-SNARK proof of them executing a “.wasm” file. This proof can be uploaded to any data availability layer for public verification.

More details will be announced soon.

Blockless Site

This is a web development framework that we are creating based on Blockless Functions. With Blockless Site, developers can achieve trustless dynamic web hosting with ease. At Blockless we feel obligated to make this feature available to everyone as soon as possible, as censorship-resistant web hosting is such an invaluable piece toward a free web.

See here for a Demo.

GPU Support

As of now, nodes in the Blockless network can only contribute CPU and RAM resources. However, the team is working hard to launch GPU support before mainnet release.

Blockless App Engine

As we keep perfecting Blockless Functions to lower the entry barrier for teams to create a trustless future, we also realize not all applications are suitable for serverless functions.

For instance, it would be rather difficult for one to migrate an existing full-scale application onto Blockless via Blockless Functions, as she will have to reorganize everything into a number of functions. Also, as mentioned, all functions have a timeout limit of 10 mins, which would create problems for long-running processes. For a holistic analysis, Cloudflare does a great job of describing who should and who shouldn’t adapt serverless functions.

Blockless App Engine is engineered to address the need of this group of developers. It is an x86 machine emulation with Alpine Linux OS within our WASM runtime environment, allowing developers to throw in any program that they can normally run on a server and have that executed in a trustless way.

Public Beta

Blockless will launch the Public Beta early next year. Before that, we will introduce useful features and continue to improve our core products.

Thanks for staying with us and investing your time in reading this long article. We are so glad to have you here on this road toward a trustless future. See you on the other side.

About Blockless

Blockless is a WASM-based, customizable execution layer that powers decentralized serverless applications.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers. Developers can build on Blockless with unparalleled scale, reliability, and security.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror | Linkedin

To prevent centralization and blockchain’s infamous “single point of failure,” decentralized infrastructure providers are gaining significant traction. This bodes well for the likelihood that Web3 ecosystems will stay robust and decentralized.

The first iteration of the World Wide Web comprised web pages that were static. Academics and internet critics refer to this period, which included the majority of the 1990s, as Web1. Web2, in the early 2000s, enabled interactive websites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia, where users could post, edit, and share content. Typically, these websites rely on logins, profiles, and embedded content. Significantly, they fostered the emergence of user-generated content and provided individual content providers with leverage and income sources.

Web3 envisions the hardware and software of the internet transferring from the corporate campuses of tech corporations to distributed computer networks owned and controlled by no single organization.

According to a widely shared article by cryptographer Matthew Rosenfeld, often known as Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of the encrypted messaging software Signal, there is a weak link in the concept of Web3. Numerous activities that make blockchain-based online activity feasible rely on a small number of private organizations.

The concept of decentralization is trendy these days, but it’s vital to realize that web3 is built on top of centralized cloud infrastructure. Therefore, Web3 can only be as decentralized as its supporting infrastructure. Currently, most cloud computing and data storage infrastructures are largely centralized, which implies that web3 applications are likewise susceptible to these centralized control points.

All DApps must connect to blockchains, and every day, billions of requests from DApps to read and write data to chains get processed. We need a massive node infrastructure to keep up with the rapid expansion of DApp ecosystems and fulfill all requests. However, operating nodes is very time and cost-intensive; therefore, DApp developers want remote access to nodes from providers. Infrastructure providers have a substantial financial incentive to power the Web3 ecosystem.

The centralization problem

The quickest option for centralized enterprises to provide reliable infrastructure to fuel DApp ecosystems is to build several blockchain nodes in AWS data centers and enable developers to use them from anywhere for a fee. A few participants in the market accomplished just that, albeit at the cost of centralization. This has left the ecosystem susceptible to threats and at the mercy of a few strong entities.

Contrary to Satoshi Nakamoto’s initial Bitcoin whitepaper, modern blockchains are far more centralized than desired. If collusion of major node providers happens, Web3 will lose all of its merits over Web2, including censorship resistance and trustworthiness. It would be left with just its shortcomings, including comparatively expensive fees and poor transactional throughput.

In addition, relying on centralized suppliers opens the prospect of service interruptions. For instance, an Infura outage caused Coinbase Wallet and Binance to cease ETH and ERC20 token withdrawals since they could not rely on their nodes. Notably, Amazon has had several failures in the past, providing an additional layer of vulnerability.

Decentralization is a fundamental principle of the Web3 economy, and centralized blockchain technology threatens its viability. Solana, for instance, has had several failures owing to an insufficient number of autonomous nodes capable of handling traffic spikes. This is a prevalent issue for blockchain technologies attempting to grow.

This historical concentration is due to the excessive dependence on Web2 cloud providers, such as AWS and Infura, who have been the dominant infrastructure suppliers for the Web3 economy so far. To prevent centralization and blockchain’s infamous “single point of failure,” decentralized infrastructure providers are gaining significant traction. This bodes well for the likelihood that Web3 ecosystems will stay robust and decentralized.

About Blockless

Blockless is a WASM-based, customizable execution layer that powers decentralized serverless applications.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers. Developers can build on Blockless with unparalleled scale, reliability, and security.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror | Linkedin

Blockless and Stratos are joining to become strategic infrastructure partners. The teams will be a part of each other’s infrastructure, collaborate on go-to-market strategies, and conduct Web3 educational & research initiatives together.

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Stratos!

Blockless is a WASM-based, customizable execution layer that powers decentralized serverless applications. Stratos, on the other hand, has been building a full Web3 infrastructure suite, with an initial focus on decentralized storage.

We have found a couple of avenues to synergize each other’s product offerings:

1. Blockless will add support for Stratos as a storage option for the Blockless network.

2. Blockless will **support **the Stratos testnet as a provider of storage nodes.

3. Stratos to leverage Blockless Site for decentralized and dynamic web hosting of its frontend.

4. The teams have agreed to participate in future **go-to-market **collaborations and client sharing.

5. Both projects will soon launch collaborations on web3 infrastructure research and educational initiatives.

About Stratos

Stratos is redefining the decentralized data infrastructure by tapping into the most innovative solutions designed to help the blockchain industry get rid of its dependency on centralized infrastructure. With the goal of providing users and developers with a reliable storage architecture, Stratos offers one-of-a-kind features, such as high availability, self-balanced storage, high-performance database, trusted computation, and more, for a solid foundation for data adoption.

Stratos is best positioned to support data storage and adoption in this ever-expanding digital economy. Stratos takes the complicated technical science of blockchain and makes it easy for projects, developers, and users to access and leverage.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Reddit

About Blockless

Blockless is a WASM-based, customizable execution layer that powers decentralized serverless applications.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers. Developers can build on Blockless with unparalleled scale, reliability, and security.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror | Linkedin

Blockless Functions is our first step to creating a decentralized serverless platform for fully trustless executions. With Blockless Functions, teams can focus on building the core business logic instead of getting distracted by maintaining and operating a community-based infrastructure.

The vision for Blockless is to create a future where anyone can create trustless yet performant applications with ease. The scope of these applications is not limited to the on-chain realm as of today. Here at Blockless, we ask ourselves: what does it take for web3 to grow into something that can fully replace web2?

To offer the services we enjoy today in a trustless way, using blockchains is not enough. Though blockchains are fantastic consensus engines, they are not optimized for supporting every service we need in the real world. For instance, for machine learning, web hosting, VPN, content streaming, messaging, etc., blockchains are not the most suitable infrastructure.

Instead, we need specialized solutions for trustless storage, communication, and execution. An existing example would be IPFS, which occupies the trustless storage segment.

Blockless, on the other hand, is addressing the trustless execution segment. Blockless Functions is our first step towards a trustless future, and in the following sections we will talk about:

A. Design logic and key features

B. How to navigate through Private Alpha

C. What to expect going forward

A. Design logic and key features

Before we go into the actual design of Blockless Functions, here is some context:

The initial and most basic motivation for creating Blockless was to lower the entry barrier for developers and entrepreneurs to create complex P2P and trustless applications. The crypto industry often refers to these as “decentralized off-chain applications.” We believe the functionalities and services these off-chain applications offer are the keys to creating a trustless yet user-friendly future.

Right now, these trustless applications rely on P2P, decentralized node networks operated by their communities. A few examples could be LBRY, Deeper Network, Render Network, The Graph, and Threshold.

The wish was to have a global pool of nodes for off-chain applications to directly pick and use (finding the most suitable devices/nodes and deploying functions/services on top of them for trustless execution). This way, teams can focus on building the core business logic instead of getting distracted by maintaining and operating a community-based infrastructure.

Blockless Functions is our first step in productizing this idea. To make this a reality, we created a framework that allows uber-like automated match-making between developers and suitable node resources, as well as for nodes to safely execute any arbitrary program.

Blockless Functions has a few key and fundamental characteristics:

1. Serverless user experience

As a platform built for developers, we aim to make the development experience as easy as possible. When a developer comes to Blockless Functions, he/she will only do the following:

• Upload the code he wishes to deploy

• Upload a manifest file that defines the minimum node count, hardware resource requirements, geolocation, node interaction scheme, etc.

• Make a deposit in the Blockless token (BLS) for payments

The match-making is done automatically by our orchestration layer — a Cosmos chain that keeps all Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and serves as a consensus engine for trustless task scheduling and load balancing.

For the developer, he/she will never have to manually interact with individual devices.

2. Multi-language support

To allow devices under the Blockless platform to execute any code safely, we’ve engineered a WASM runtime environment based on Tokio and Wasmtime.

The runtime environment can run WASI bytecode bundles compiled from Rust, AssemblyScript, TinyGo, and C/C++. This means the developer can build in his/her favorite languages and won’t need to learn anything new.

3. Pay as you go

This implies multiple features. One is hands-free horizontal scaling. If a function you deploy is getting more requests (from user growth), the platform automatically finds more nodes for you.

The other implication is that nodes under the Blockless platform are being used very efficiently. The timeout for any function is set to 10 minutes, and the runtime will be shut down once the request is completed. This means a device in the Blockless network will likely contribute to tens if not hundreds of applications per day, instead of getting locked up on one application even if there is no incoming request.

4. Secure

The WASM-based runtime environment is a secure sandbox that isolates the deployed program from the host machine environment. The software being executed within the sandbox won’t be able to interact with the wider host machine, and the node runner also has no knowledge of what happens in this sandbox.

5. Convenient SDK

For each supported programming language, we provide an SDK to enhance the development experience. Currently, APIs in the Blockless SDK include:

• HTTP

• Blockless Functions (allowing developers to invoke other Functions without having to send HTTP requests with authentication credentials over the internet)

• AWS S3

• IPFS

• Ethereum

B. How to navigate through Private Alpha

Deploying Function with Blockless Console

If you are not yet whitelisted, please reach out via our Telegram and Discord channel. If you already have Private Alpha access, go to the Blockless Console and log in using your registered Web3 address. We currently support Keplr Wallet (Cosmos), MetaMask, and Martian Wallet (Aptos).

Blockless Console Wallet Connect Page

Select the Functions Tab on the left and click the + Create function button on the top right corner. This will take you to the Function Creation page, where you can connect your GitHub account and deploy the function by choosing a repository or selecting one of the starter templates and deploying directly.

Blockless Functions Overview

For the quick start guide, we will use the Hello World template button on the bottom and deploy a function that will return a JSON file with a “Hello World” message.

Function Creation Page

After clicking, when the loading is complete, your first function is deployed to the Blockless network and is running on the decentralized node network. Congratulations on deploying your first decentralized function! You should see your deployed function on the Functions Overview page.

Functions Overview Page with the newly deployed function

By clicking the function, you will jump to the Function Details page where you can view the function status and change the function settings.

Function Details Page

You can invoke your function with the invocation URL. Here, the function returns a “Hello World” message in JSON format.

Returned Hello World Message

Going back to the Functions Detail page, you can go to the function’s settings and change the function name. Alternatively, you can choose to either stop or delete the function. Here, we changed the automatically generated function name from electric_cyan_cuckoo_1cc1 to my-first-function.

Changing the Function Name

You can see the reflected name change on the Functions Detail page.

Finally, let’s go back to the function’s settings and delete this function. You can also choose to stop the deployment, where the function will still show up in your console but will be removed from the Blockless Workers.

Going back to the Functions Overview page, we indeed confirm that our my-first-function is deleted.

In the above, we illustrate a guideline for testing Blockless Functions with our developer Console. Alternatively, you can also use our CLI to play with it.

C. What to expect going forward

The end goal for Blockless is to create a general purpose and trustless execution platform. Below are some of the features and products we will push out in the coming months.

zkWASM

One upcoming feature for Blockless Functions is verifiable execution. In a trustless environment, typically we can’t really know what the nodes are doing. Instead, we only see the execution results. This is why in many cases we need nodes to aggregate the results and conduct consensus. In Blockless, this changes with zkWASM.

The implementation of zkWASM is a collaborative effort between the Blockless team and a (yet-to-be-announced) strategic partner. zkWASM allows nodes in the Blockless network to generate a zk-SNARK proof of them executing a “.wasm” file. This proof can be uploaded to any data availability layer for public verification.

More details will be announced soon.

Blockless Site

This is a web development framework that we are creating based on Blockless Functions. With Blockless Site, developers can achieve trustless dynamic web hosting with ease. At Blockless we feel obligated to make this feature available to everyone as soon as possible, as censorship-resistant web hosting is such an invaluable piece toward a free web.

See here for a Demo.

GPU Support

As of now, nodes in the Blockless network can only contribute CPU and RAM resources. However, the team is working hard to launch GPU support before mainnet release.

Blockless App Engine

As we keep perfecting Blockless Functions to lower the entry barrier for teams to create a trustless future, we also realize not all applications are suitable for serverless functions.

For instance, it would be rather difficult for one to migrate an existing full-scale application onto Blockless via Blockless Functions, as she will have to reorganize everything into a number of functions. Also, as mentioned, all functions have a timeout limit of 10 mins, which would create problems for long-running processes. For a holistic analysis, Cloudflare does a great job of describing who should and who shouldn’t adapt serverless functions.

Blockless App Engine is engineered to address the need of this group of developers. It is an x86 machine emulation with Alpine Linux OS within our WASM runtime environment, allowing developers to throw in any program that they can normally run on a server and have that executed in a trustless way.

Public Beta

Blockless will launch the Public Beta early next year. Before that, we will introduce useful features and continue to improve our core products.

Thanks for staying with us and investing your time in reading this long article. We are so glad to have you here on this road toward a trustless future. See you on the other side.

About Blockless

Blockless is a WASM-based, customizable execution layer that powers decentralized serverless applications.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers. Developers can build on Blockless with unparalleled scale, reliability, and security.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror | Linkedin

Blockless is joining 0xScope as a strategic partner to participate in co-go-to-market activities and client sharing along with collaboration on future web3 infrastructure research and educational initiatives.

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with 0xScope!

0xScope is creating a Web3 knowledge graph protocol that analyzes both on-chain and off-chain identity information to create holistic identity profiles.

As both teams are striving to create a more user-friendly Web3, we have decided to reach a strategic ecosystem partnership. In particular, we have agreed to participate in future go-to-market collaborations and client sharing.

The teams also propose collaborations on web3 infrastructure research and educational initiatives.

Last but not least, 0xScope will integrate with Blockless Site, a web development framework based on Blockless Functions that allows for decentralized and dynamic web hosting. At Blockless, we are very excited to make this solution available to more teams going forward.

Together, we create a trustless future.

About 0xScope

0xScope is the first Web3 knowledge graph protocol. It solves the problem that Web3 data analyzes addresses instead of real users by establishing a new identity standard — — the new Scope Entity from the data layer. And it unifies the standards of different types of web2 data and Web3 data by using knowledge mapping capability, which greatly reduces the difficulty of data acquisition and improves the data penetration ability.

0xScope has built a solid and growing data source. As for now, 0xScope has identified over 84 million entities, and has more than 1.4 million identity tags and over 5 million behavior tags. At the same time, 0xScope fully analyzed over 640 thousand tokens, 11 thousand protocols, and 51 million smart contracts.

At present, 0xScope has launched Watchers, a B2B data service and developer platform, providing entity-based transaction tracking, risk scoring, and portrait identification capabilities, which can be integrated into partners’ businesses in a variety of flexible ways through APIs, data collaboration, custom data analysis reports, etc.

Website | Linktree | Twitter | Medium

About Blockless

Blockless is a WASM-based, customizable execution layer that powers decentralized serverless applications.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers. Developers can build on Blockless with unparalleled scale, reliability, and security.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror

The decentralization and democratization of information was the distinguishing feature of the internet and Web1, while Web2 corporations wanted to create walled gardens to retain consumers within their ecosystems.

The internet was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, at the peak of the Cold War. The US created a decentralized network of numerous computers spread out across the nation so that its defense system would continue to function even after a nuclear assault by the Soviet Union. Tim Berners-Lee later developed the World Wide Web, one of the first internet applications, in the 1990s. Users could easily “surf” the internet and browse material with browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer. It was decentralized (run by standard computers), open-source (anyone could build on it without restriction), and read-only (very few people had the technical skill to publish on it).

Web2 started in the middle of the 2000s when websites like Facebook and YouTube first appeared. Regardless of technological ability, anyone could publish content online using these platforms. The decentralization and democratization of information were the distinguishing features of the internet and Web1, while Web2 corporations wanted to create walled gardens to retain consumers within their ecosystems. In fact, with Web2, information is being more compartmentalized and controlled by a small number of powerful technology firms.

The centralized control of data and power has been a major component of the Web2 era. Virtually all web programs, including Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and others, are centralized on servers owned by a select few big businesses. Companies keep users’ data in their control so that users don’t have to, and their terms of service govern how data is handled. For instance, a small number of businesses dominate a disproportionate amount of the global market for cloud infrastructure, with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google holding over 65% of the market. In terms of online traffic rather than data storage, Facebook had 2.9 billion monthly active users in 2021, or more than 60% of active internet users worldwide. Simply put, a small number of powerful technological businesses effectively dictate what users see and do online. As a result, rather than becoming a democracy (where users own and control their data), the internet has changed into something more akin to an oligopoly (where a few firms possess and manage user data).

The quickest option for centralized enterprises to provide reliable infrastructure to fuel Web3’s dApp ecosystems is to build several blockchain nodes in AWS data centers and enable developers to use them from anywhere for a fee. A few participants in the market accomplished just that, albeit at the cost of decentralization. This has left the ecosystem susceptible to threats and at the mercy of a few strong entities.

For users and creators, this centralization causes problems, including:

Economic problems

In contrast to users and creators, value accrues to intermediaries and, consequently, a select group of people (i.e., founders, employees, and investors). Because platform advertising regulations and algorithms are subject to change, this presents difficulties for creators whose advertising revenue may be drastically affected. Numerous major platforms impose hefty take rates (20%+) on their creators, which reduces their profitability.

Source: Lillian Chen

Social problems

Web2 companies frequently retain, use, and sell user data. Data privacy and user sovereignty issues may result from this. For instance, Facebook has come under fire for allegedly prioritizing engagement on its platform over a few ethical considerations. It experienced a hack in October 2018 that compromised the data of more than 50 million members. Additionally, 91% of American people, according to Pew Research, concur that consumers no longer have any control over how businesses gather and utilize their personal information.

Distributive problems

Platforms govern how users connect with their peers and how content is distributed on Web2. This may have important ramifications for creators whose companies rely on these sites. For instance, because it competes with Periscope, similar software that Twitter just bought, the mobile video streaming app Meerkat was essentially banned from Twitter.

Political problems

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have emerged as key players in the presidential election results and have been charged with spreading false information. Additionally, these businesses have been compelled to weigh in on political discussions. For instance, in January 2021, Twitter famously suspended President Donald Trump’s account. Governments can easily censor access to centralized servers, as was the case when Turkey stopped access to Wikipedia.

Simply said, the current web has a number of issues. With the goal of regaining user and creator sovereignty, Web3 aims to address these problems. The switch to Web3 has a number of possible advantages, including:

Economic

Web3 fully supports open economies in which everyone benefits. Web3 includes new digital primitives, including fungible and non-fungible tokens, which users can utilize to participate in growth where centralized Web2 platforms did not allow for this. These assets give users ownership of their project contributions.

Social

Users can choose which data and information they will share through Web3 projects. The decentralized web aims to separate itself from businesses that control the flow of information on the internet and gather, store, and sell user data.

Source: Naval Ravikant

Distribution

With Web3, users can turn the tables on platforms. Applications can be developed on top of one another using Web3 composability and data transparency, which goes beyond the traditional perception of platforms as walled gardens. Due to this, tech and product distribution are fundamentally transformed, and open social networks are made possible.

Source: Pim de Witte

Political

Web2 gave centralized organizations command over distribution. Web3 aims to decentralize this decision-making process by giving project communities control over governance. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), which are owned and operated by tokens, are emerging from these online communities. Decisions in DAOs are made by the members. Thus, formerly centralized decisions on revenue, censorship and other matters are now decentralized among DAO members.

Blockless thinks that the shift from Web2 to Web3 is already happening. Nevertheless, this process will take some time and will call for creative solutions. Numerous innovative decentralized applications are now being created. However, we are as enthusiastic and confident about the initiatives to rebuild the systems that underpin these applications as we delve deeper and deeper into Web3’s infrastructure layer.

About Blockless

Blockless is a WASM-based, customizable execution layer that powers decentralized serverless applications.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers. Developers can build on Blockless with unparalleled scale, reliability, and security.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror | Linkedin

Learn more about how Blockless builds a decentralized web service platform

Just in case you are not familiar with Blockless, check out our website, Twitter, and previous updates first!

Now let’s discuss our accomplishments in August 2022. This was a highly productive month for Blockless!

Product:

1. The Blockless Marketplace design is 80% ready. Once completed, we will start building and preparing for its delivery by Q4. With Blockless Marketplace, users will be able to share/distribute functions in a modular and composable manner with the entire community. “Build once for all”.

2. A teaser of Blockless Site Builder, which enables decentralized frontend, has been released. With our execution layer that allows Blockless to support decentralized dynamic content, we will decentralize all Web3 frontend one at a time. Starting with our own website in the coming weeks.

3. The team has been working on the first release of our developer documentation. This will be your best source to learn how to build fully decentralized and game-changing dApps on Blockless. The product team has been allocating considerable energy to creating better documentation to provide the best-in-class UX and DX (developer experience).

Engineering:

1. Last month the team reorganized our backend codebase (orchestration chain, networking + runtime environment integration). This month we focused on frontend integration for both Blockless Developer Console and Blockless CLI.

2. All network components (workers, orchestrators) have been dockerized so that we provide an additional way for installing/joining the network. Docker install is by far the best way for community engagement as it is super easy. Now, people can either become a network contributor via installing the bare metal network contributor executable for near-native performance, through a virtual machine for best multi-tenancy capabilities, or a Linux container (docker) for ease of installation.

Social Media:

We hosted four Twitter spaces in August.

Aug 3rd: Blockless knowledge sharing — Play Recording

Aug 18th: What can Web3 achieve that Web2 can’t — Play Recording

Aug 24th: Marketing in #web3 (Web 3.0 tools & DeFi) — Play Recording

Aug 31st: What is Blockless — Play Recording

Partnership:

1. We’ve announced a strategic partnership with Atlas.

Atlas is a leading Web3 infrastructure provider. While being one of the largest high-performance computing companies, Atlas’ products range from blockchain API services to bare metal node resource provision.

Atlas is joining Blockless as a node resource and API service provider, as well as an infrastructure education and research partner. The teams are working together to empower the next-gen dApps and builders.

1. Blockless also announced a partnership with Chainbase.

   Chainbase is a leading Web3 interaction layer infrastructure that provides developers with data composability through open, cloud-based API services.

   Blockless is partnering with Chainbase to further democratize Web3 infrastructure. We will work together on research, education, integration, and much more! Stay tuned!

Ecosystem:

1. We’ve attended OKC’s first community demo day in San Jose, California. Our product and BD lead, Liam and Butian, shared with the local crypto community a demo of the Blockless CLI and Developer Portal. See here for more details!

2. Our website has been refreshed, now with new content that features Blockless as a decentralized web service platform.

3. Our ecosystem lead, Michael, did an interview with Errance from KNN3 on Web3 Ownership Economy.

4. The team has also made good progress on SEO this month. Now on Google, we come first when you search “Blockless”. (there was a VPN called Blockless as well. Don’t get confused!)

Hiring:

1. As our products evolve so does our company’s headcount. We have made some key hires that will help us in expanding the Blockless ecosystem at a much faster rate.

   Here are our hires for August:

   • David Freeman — Sr. Software Engineer

   • Hongchao Cao — UX/UI Designer

   We are also hiring for several key positions:

   • Applied Research Mathematician

   • Product Designer

   • Site Reliability Engineer

   • Full Stack Engineer

   • Distributed Systems Engineer

   • Runtime Systems Engineer

   • Developer Relations Manager

   To become a part of our team, see here.

   For August, we’ve focused on building and perfecting our product. We are excited to build a decentralized Web3 ecosystem with you.

   Want to get the latest updates on our roadmap? Have other ideas for Blockless? We want you to be a part of the community and would love to collaborate!

About Blockless

Blockless is a WASM-based, decentralized web service platform that serves as a customizable execution layer for Web3.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of computational hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers. For developers, Blockless makes it easier and faster to build oracles, indexers, NFT platforms, or any dApps that cannot run on a blockchain alone.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium | Mirror

Errance, the product lead at KNN3 Network joins us today to share his thoughts on Web3 communities and ownership economy.

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Moderator: Hey guys glad to have you here! Errance, could you give us a brief intro about KNN3? And Michael about Blockless?

Errance: Of course! KNN3 Network is a multi-chain relationship aggregator, empowering web3 social discovery. KNN3 provides graph solutions for web3 multiverse relational aggregation to empower Social dApp and AI analytics. We aim to become a community-driven data curation protocol to enable on-chain data collaboration.

Michael: Haha thanks Errance for sharing. Blockless is a WASM-based decentralized web service platform that serves as a customizable execution layer in Web3. Whether you’re building blockchain oracles, Web3 indexers, NFT platforms, or any dApps that cannot be built on a blockchain alone, Blockless has the services to help you build decentralized applications with flexibility and reliability. Been a pleasure working with Errance and the broader KNN3 team on supporting their Verifiable Dynamic Credential Service (VDCS) with the Blockless network!

Moderator: Fantastic! So following today’s topic, what is ownership economy in Web3 for both of you?

Errance: A lot of people say that the economy of ownership is web3, but I think it’s only a small part of web3. In web3, users have sovereignty over their accounts, assets, and data, and will no longer be blocked by a single “central party” without authorization, and their assets will no longer be frozen (except maybe Tornador Cash? rofl), user data will no longer be sold. Users can truly enjoy “ownership” of personal information (including assets and information) to a certain extent.

Michael: In crypto, it really starts from how the Bitcoin network marks contributions from node runners. These miners maintain the ledger and in return receive BTC in their accounts. The more you contribute to the network by offering computation resources and preventing sybil attacks, the more BTC you will have.

But still, in this setting, one’s power is only associated with how much hardware and electric resources he contributes. Later on, as we have various layer-1s and fungible tokens, projects start to represent stake in the project in the form of tokens. One prime example of ownership economy is DeFi. These projects were able to quickly gather traction and utility compared to 2017 ICO projects. The main differentiator is that DeFi projects are offering token stake to those who are actually providing service to the platform (say, LP token holders).

Moderator: How is KNN3 and Blockless involved in the ownership economy of Web3?

Errance: KNN3 Network does not directly involve “ownership economy”, we focus more on the aggregation of users’ multi-chain relationships in web3. That is to say, KNN3 is actually one of the enabling factors of it. Through multi-dimensional relationships, behavior traceability, and AI analysis, we help the entire ecosystem to better confirm the “ownership” of users.

Michael: The way Blockless functions is similar to a layer-1 blockchain. Retail users can contribute their hardware resources to the network and earn token rewards. Developers can build on Blockless which consumes our BLS token. The BLS token is also required when a node joins the network to prevent sybil attacks. Token holders are the ones that govern and run the blockless network.

The end goal for blockless is to free Web3 from centralized web service providers such as AWS. Solutions like these are not censorship-resistant. If collusion of major providers happens, Web3 will lose all of its merits over Web2, including censorship resistance and trustworthiness. It would be left with just its shortcomings, including comparatively expensive fees and poor transactional throughput.

Moderator: Do you feel token is an intrinsic part of Web3 user loyalty？

Errance: User loyalty is reflected in the user’s stickiness to the product, the sense of community belonging, and the synchronization of ideas.

Sadly, most of the current tokens cannot carry the above narratives well. It is true that through sunk costs and speculative properties, users will generate temporary loyalty to a product or project by holding tokens, but once they get enough profits, most users will sell their tokens and move on to the next product. or community.

But yes, tokens have a positive effect on user loyalty, but only if this token can bring two benefits or potential benefits (especially economic benefits) to users.

Michael: Generally I think yes. However, I do agree with Errance that currently many tokens have no use case. A great product can cultivate great user loyalty without a token. But I think the interesting part is how a well-designed token system can make things far more engaging for users. For instance, when the token is used actively in platform-native utilities and governance, the type of things loyal users are contributing to the product would be very different compared to if the project has no token.

Moderator: What’s your view on DAOs?

Errance: The DAO has been an area of both anticipation and despair for me from start to finish.

The expectation is that when users have voting rights, can non-elite consensus lead a project to the right path? After a broad consensus is reached, can capital and power still control the direction of the group through proxies? I was looking forward to these things happening, and in fact, they have happened, and the results are really hopeless.

The essence of the DAO is still meritocracy, and it is still the template for the bicameral governance of the Roman Republic that has survived for more than 2,000 years. At the time, the decision-making system had absolute boundaries — how fast could your messenger run? Now, information is basically transmitted on the Internet at the speed of light. Can you spot the difference? The efficiency of information and communication has increased thousands of times, and our decision-making chain is still stuck in an unknown corner of the Mesopotamian plains 2,000 years ago.

Michael: I think a major issue DAOs face now is scaling. How do you coordinate efficiently within a loosely coupled group of more than 200? This can be incredibly difficult and necessarily introduces information friction within the group. Hierarchy will likely also emerge.

A contributing factor to this is that DAO tooling is having a hard time capitalizing. Some are reluctant to pay for DAO tooling, and there are simply so many of them to choose from.

But I do think DAOs are the future. It means that through some automation mechanism, contributions from more people can be taken into initiative. In other words, DAOs are a necessary product of automation (technological advances) and a higher rate of information flow in general. You can’t imagine groups of people achieving what they are doing via DAOs today 100 years ago, right?

Moderator: Which Web3 project is the best in community engagement?

Errance: To be honest, in the DeFi space, APY, token prices, and scams are discussed in most communities. In the community of public chains, it is mainly based on technical discussions. I happened to find a bunch of interesting people in a community called “memeland”. Although there are still administrators and community members, the relationship between everyone is very harmonious (of course, there is no shortage of GM every day!)

This is an NFT community, and the main force of precipitating users comes from 9GAGS (a Hong Kong-based meme website). Everyone’s favorite and the happiest thing every day is to share all kinds of self-governing emoticons — basically they are very funny and creative works. You can see ideas and words that make you laugh everywhere in the community, you will feel very happy.

Just like the question answered before, there is no token, the community is united by its own cohesion, and new social relationships are formed between users, which are deposited in the platform.

Michael: I personally feel Polygon has one of the strongest communities out there. Of course, there are ones like dogecoin that have great communities, but those ones are rather united by a meme. Instead of conscious efforts from a team.

The interesting part is that the project was able to attract sustained attention without major team/founder PR moves. Rather, many community members have no idea who the leadership team members are. Their key to success was really all about constant and transparent communications with the community, as well as making products easy to use. Think I will have to invite Polygon’s community team members for future episodes haha.

Moderator: Nice looking forward to that! This is about it for today’s sharing session. Thanks, Errance and Michael for coming, and I will see you guys next time!

Blockless is a WASM-based decentralized web service platform that serves as a customizable execution layer for Web3.

As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of computational hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers.

For developers, Blockless makes it easier and faster to build oracles, indexers, NFT platforms, or any dApps that cannot run on a blockchain alone.

Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | Medium

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