Recently, DFINITY officially hosted a Twitter Space event with a focus on multi-chain, featuring DFINITY Foundation founder Dominic Williams sharing his understanding of multi-chain, Web3, and the recent progress of Internet Computer's multi-chain strategy. Dominic is a serial entrepreneur and an early contributor to the Ethereum community. He founded the DFINITY Foundation with the aim of making Internet Computer a leader in the decentralized cloud computing field.

Below is a condensed version of the Space content. For detailed content, please listen to the recap. (https://twitter.com/dfinity/status/1721533253134242203)

Host: In the early days of Ethereum, there was a concept of the "world computer." DFINITY has taken a different development path compared to Ethereum. Can you describe what "world computer" means to us?

Dom: Everyone may have different interpretations, but my understanding is that currently, most business logic, data, and user experiences run on the blockchain. However, the challenge is that current blockchains can only store a small amount of data, and their ability to compute and execute is limited.

Host: Yes, it's clear that Ethereum is heading in a direction that is not scalable, making it difficult to achieve this vision. Will Internet Computer be the solution for the "world computer"?

Dom: I hope so, and now we have built it. Let's go back to 2014, 2015, when the term smart contracts first appeared. It was clear to everyone that being able to host smart contracts would be a great achievement for Ethereum.

You know, blockchain started with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a form of value token, the first digital gold. However, in its original design, the scripting capabilities were very limited. You could only add access control scripts to the token balance. But when you moved this Bitcoin from one address to another, the script disappeared.

One of Ethereum's highlights is that scripts can run on the chain, it has its own address, and you can do more complex things in your code. In fact, DeFi has already achieved the goal of the "world computer" for Ethereum.

But you know, my interest in the idea of the "world computer" was a bit different at the time. I wasn't particularly focused on DeFi; I preferred the idea of "replacing traditional IT with blockchain," such as creating decentralized social networks. I became more and more focused on how to create a scalable blockchain, essentially a cloud that can host smart contracts. But to achieve this idea would involve a lot of R&D work, and the time required for complete delivery would be much longer than expected.

This is what we launched with Internet Computer. 1000 staff members have worked hard for this.

Internet Computer is completely different from Ethereum, it is a completely reimagined, rebuilt blockchain that conveys my vision of the "world computer." Internet Computer is not just a blockchain that can store large amounts of data and execute a large number of computations, it also involves a new technology—Chainkey, which can seamlessly integrate other blockchains without the need for bridges.

Earlier this year, Chainkey Bitcoin (ckBTC) was first launched on Internet Computer. Now we are working to integrate Ethereum into Internet Computer. This integration does not mean building cross-chain bridges, but rather allowing Internet Computer nodes to communicate and integrate with Ethereum nodes. It is at the code level, at the smart contract level. It is decentralized, trustless, and based on cryptography, rather than passing messages or similar things like some cross-chain bridges.

Host: I like your understanding of the "world computer," reconstructing the IT technology stack but with blockchain at its core. When you talk about Internet Computer, you are very clear that it will be diversified. The vision of the "world computer" is not just one blockchain, but many different blockchains that can seamlessly communicate with each other. Purpose-specific blockchains can be optimized for use cases or functions, and then Internet Computer can act as a gateway for communication between them.

Dom: I think over time, the crypto industry will see the most consolidation. I don't think there will be thousands of public chains, but I do think there will be more application-specific chains. Over time, enterprises may also operate their own private chains and then integrate them with public chains.

So how will these different blockchains work together?

We created the "twin" of Bitcoin, ckBTC. Essentially, you can send BTC from the Bitcoin mainnet to a ckBTC address, and you get a ckBTC. Once you have ckBTC, you can send it to another ckBTC address. In fact, the cost of sending ckBTC is almost zero. You can also use it within the use cases you know, for example, on the 100% on-chain chat service OpenChat, you can send ckBTC red packets to friends.

Furthermore, the integration of Internet Computer with Ethereum has even more potential.

Ethereum is on the global DeFi track, the infrastructure is already very mature, and it has a huge community, but you know, Ethereum's limitations will continue to exist.

If you want to store a 3.3 MB photo on Ethereum, it would cost $110,000 in just 21 months. Many people are not aware of this limitation. Even storing a photo on Solana costs about $420 per year.

So, traditional public chains can only store tokens, NFTs, and the actual content behind NFTs is not on the blockchain, it's just a link to the content, which is actually stored on Amazon Web Services. But developers have usernames and passwords for Amazon Web Services, they can log in, maybe arbitrarily change the rules, maybe arbitrarily change the content of your account.

You know, Bitcoin gives you ownership of value, that's Satoshi Nakamoto's innovation. You can directly own the digital value of Bitcoin, no one can take it away from you unless they steal your private key, right? Whether it's Bitcoin or Ethereum, as long as you have the private key, they are yours. What I mean is that DeFi products like Uniswap can also be truly decentralized, people have governance tokens, they have direct ownership of the product. Social networks, games, and the metaverse can also be built on the blockchain, enabling community governance.

But the products I'm talking about here are not like the DApps we use today, everything is built on Amazon Web Services, you only have tokens and data fragments. True ownership should come from everything being completely built on the blockchain, under the control of DAO.

Internet Computer has an infrastructure, called the Service Nervous System (SNS), that allows DApps to directly engage in decentralized governance. As a governance token holder, you can submit software update proposals to the SNS, and if the community needs it, it will be pushed, everything is transparent. There are no backdoors for developers, regulators, hackers, or anyone else. I think this is the future of Web3. Web3 is about giving people direct ownership of DApps on the blockchain.

Host: That's an amazing answer, Dom. Another thing I'm particularly focused on is user experience, which is clearly a barrier to mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. The current crypto industry, and Web3, both require newcomers to spend time learning how to use DApps, and the user experience is not good. You mentioned ckBTC, and how you can send it to a Bitcoin wallet, and it will automatically convert for you. I don't have to tell my mom how to convert BTC to ckBTC and then back to BTC. She just needs to use an app and naturally experience ckBTC.

Dom: Yes. User experience is also part of my vision for the "world computer." It's important to remove barriers, just like how Gmail removed the pain of making phone calls.

But can you imagine having to approve transactions in MetaMask every time you want to send an email?

If you open the MetaMask app on your phone, you have to open a sub-browser to go to a DeFi website and connect your wallet. On the computer, you need to first open the DeFi website and then open a MetaMask sub-window to connect your wallet. This kind of user experience is too dreadful.

Internet Computer is a walletless architecture, and other chains can benefit from integration and receive the same benefits.

Firstly, Internet Computer has a mechanism called the Reverse Gas Model.

Every time you interact with chains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, etc., you have to manually approve transactions in a wallet and specify how much gas to pay for the transaction to be executed. The gas rate is like a fee market.

However, on Internet Computer, the way gas works is a bit different. Smart contracts on Internet Computer, called Canisters, are fundamentally different from traditional smart contracts. They pay for their own computation. So they are more like an electric car, developers charge them, and they can run, run out of charge, and they stop. Charge them again, and they resume. That's how Canisters work, and the "electricity" here, or gas, is called cycles. When a Canister performs computation, it consumes the cycles reserved by the developer. This structure is crucial because in reality, people don't need to pay for cycles to interact directly with Canisters, which means people don't even need a wallet.

Typically, Internet Computer users don't need a wallet to interact with DApps unless they want to manage tokens. For example, as mentioned earlier, OpenChat. Users don't even need a wallet, just a few seconds to create an Internet Identity, then create an account in OpenChat, and they can start chatting on the frontend. Internet Identity usually uses Face ID or fingerprint for authentication, very convenient. And more importantly, based on the Reverse Gas Model mechanism, users don't need to pay gas to send messages. In traditional blockchains, you would need to open MetaMask every time to pay gas for each chat message. Pressing "approve" in the wallet to send a message would be unbearable. However, on Internet Computer, everything is hidden. Ethereum can also benefit from this, just by integrating with Internet Computer first.

In fact, to prove this point, we created a wallet called Oisy Wallet. It runs on Internet Computer but handles Ethereum ERC-20 tokens. The wallet is a web page, already released, you can visit oisy.com to experience it.

It has improved the interaction process, for example, using MetaMask on your phone, you have to open a sub-browser, go to a DeFi website, and then connect your wallet. But with Oisy Wallet, just enter oisy.com on your phone browser, then open another tab to go to Uniswap. Click "connect wallet" and copy the ID provided back into it, the wallet will connect, and then you can start trading on Uniswap.

The ability to download wallet applications now is thanks to the grace of large tech companies, MetaMask has been banned from the Chrome Web Store multiple times in the past, and there's no guarantee that large tech companies won't ban Web3 services in the future. But Oisy Wallet is delivered to the browser through smart contracts. (Internet Computer's smart contracts Canister can handle HTTP)

So the advantage of Internet Computer is not only user experience but also more decentralization.

Host: Yes, Oisy Wallet is a great example where you can use it just by opening a browser without delving deep into cryptocurrencies and trying to understand the actual meaning of the product. You mentioned the Reverse Gas Model mechanism, and I've been thinking about this issue recently. From the perspective of market efficiency, no one would be angry at someone for overusing Google, but you might be angry at someone using an NFT project on one chain instead of another, seemingly due to "tribalism" and "extremism," but perhaps it's just because of the nature of gas? In fact, you need to hold the native token of a chain to use any applications on that chain, which lowers the user experience because you have to be fully committed to that chain.

Dom: You know, the main business models involved in blockchain right now are actually not very related to decentralization, it's often about what you create. You have to create compelling use cases, then get the community excited about your project, preferably getting them into the ecosystem and making some contributions. Then, the token price goes up, and some foundations or investment firms contact you for more investment. Keeping users "locked" in wallets has always been an important part of the "flywheel."

If there wasn't tribalism and extremism in the early stages of Bitcoin, then Bitcoin would never have taken off, and we wouldn't have Ethereum, Internet Computer, or anything else. I think this kind of tribalism has a certain positive meaning.

But at the same time, I think when you're thinking about the issue of gas, you should consider "how Web3 can attract billions of people," not just attracting the precise few million people in the crypto ecosystem.

Ultimately, Web3 is about transcending simple things like NFTs, providing true decentralization, and making people the true owners of everything on the chain. Many people have said that some parts of certain blockchains are based on Amazon Web Services, it's okay, they don't care. I actually disagree with this, I think the reason they don't care is that they don't understand what's happening. Just like mainstream media journalists, when they build blogs or media websites on a blockchain, they would think they are becoming decentralized. But they wouldn't know that there's a group of "insiders" on this blockchain who have the Amazon Web Services password and hold the real ownership. But I believe that over time, people will be more and more educated, more insightful, and will realize this.

Web3 wants to develop from its current position to attract billions of users, and we will have to do more creative things, NFTs can only keep us at today's level.

Imagine what the future of Web3 will be like? On the chain, social media, games, and the metaverse will all be tokenized. Internet Computer has a decentralized short video platform called Hot or Not, more like a Web3 version of TikTok. It also has an ambitious token economic model. Creators of videos will be rewarded, and any user can bet on "whether the video is hot."

Web3 cannot be achieved through traditional wallets because there are too many token-related events, just like you can't approve cumbersome transactions and specify gas fees every time you send a message on OpenChat.

Now, the Oyis Wallet we developed can act as an Ethereum DeFi wallet, but users are unaware of the wallet's existence. Leveraging this walletless feature, developers can create better games, social media without involving wallets, and users can interact with Web3 imperceptibly.

Host: Hot or Not is a great example, it's a decentralized alternative to TikTok, combined with tokenization. Can blockchain solve some problems that the current traditional tech stack cannot solve?

Dom: I think any online service, web application can be tokenized.

Of course, you can create tokenized applications using Amazon Web Services, even just using tools like MySQL databases to maintain token balances. But you know the problem with Amazon Web Services. Whether it's Amazon Web Services staff or developers who know the username and password, they can access the account. Not to mention if hackers steal it. These all threaten users' assets.

Web3 is about giving individuals and communities ownership through blockchain. Just like the total of 21 million bitcoins, you know that the 1 BTC in your wallet is yours, and you directly own and control it through the private key. But the uses of Web3 go far beyond this. Web3 will ultimately provide communities with ownership and control of on-chain things like social media, games, and the metaverse.

If a web application becomes a Web3 protocol, because there are no backdoors, this means the community has true ownership, the protocol is driven by DAO, and code updates can be automatically completed through proposals. This has already been achieved on Internet Computer, where you can use SNS to launch your protocol.

Host: Tokenization gives me hope for the entire crypto industry. What product or feature that the crypto industry will offer to the 95% of the world that has not yet used cryptocurrency excites you the most?

Dom: If you go completely decentralized and all the code is fully on-chain, then you eliminate the need for trust, which will truly help people around the world contribute to the internet and create the next generation of internet services.

But, no VCs? They can also raise funds through crowdfunding.

I've been an engineer for thirty years, initially living in London and then spending ten years in Silicon Valley. I went to Silicon Valley not only because there's a great network effect, but it's also easier to get venture capital. The problem is, with so many similar products, how do you stand out and get venture capital?

But what if you build your product on Internet Computer? People can access your product and evaluate it, interact with you on social media. If people are interested in your product, then you can create a Swap for governance tokens on SNS, and people can use ICP to purchase governance tokens. Subsequently, the product and the Swap treasury will be controlled by the governance token holders.

This not only eliminates the need for trust but is also not limited by geographical location. Even if you are in a developing country, as long as you have an excellent product, you can raise funds as well.

So, this is my ideal Web3, I want to democratize behavior, and I hope to see democratized access to the tech ecosystem. Ultimately, this will drive a lot of innovation and creativity into Web3.

Note:

Due to the revision of the official account, articles will no longer be published regularly.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。