Transcription
Foreign. I'm aiming to provide an internet computer primer in around five minutes, so let's go.
The purpose of the internet computer project is to extend the internet and make it far more powerful. Today, the internet is a network that connects everybody and everything, but systems and services currently run from private infrastructure, with the exception of D-file and Ethereum. The internet computer blockchain shall enable the public internet to host smart contracts that run at web speed without any limitations on capacity, so that it can host a broad range of systems and services. The internet computer extends the public internet so that it can also be the world's compute platform. Clearly, this is a paradigm shift that will change everything.
So, a little bit about the team behind this. The Divinity Foundation is a not-for-profit organization headquartered in Switzerland, which runs research and development centers from Zurich, Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Tokyo, together with remote teams in places like Germany and the UK. We're almost 200 strong and hire the best from academia, crypto, and the world's leading technology organizations. New organizations are also joining the fray. For example, the Internet Computer Association was recently formed in Geneva to represent the interests of ecosystem participants.
The internet computer is the third great innovation in blockchain. First, Bitcoin introduced traditional cryptocurrency, which plays the role of digital gold in 2009. Second, Ethereum added smart contracts, so that digital gold could be used in decentralized financial systems. Now, the internet computer introduces infinite blockchain with the speed, capacity, and usability required to reimagine everything on-chain. It's a blockchain that provides seamless, limitless capacity for hosted smart contracts and their data.
The internet computer is created by the ICP protocol, which stands for Internet Computer Protocol, from where its master governance token gets its name. ICP creates the world's first web-speed, web-serving public blockchain network, which can grow its capacity with demand and is self-governing. It combines special load machines run on mass by independent parties in independent data centers around the world. Like all blockchains, it is unstoppable, and the code it hosts is tamper-proof.
The internet computer hosts special smart contracts called canisters. A canister is a bundle of WebAssembly bytecode logic, which you can create from any high-level programming language such as Rust or Motoko, and memory pages that the code runs inside. Key breakthrough is that the internet computer can host any number of canister smart contracts, and therefore any amount of data, fully on-chain. Moreover, it can run them concurrently, which means that it can process any amount of computation. What this means is that you can create dApps that scale. For example, you might create a tokenized social media service, but the advantages of smart contracts remain. Canisters are unstoppable, are tamper-proof. The internet was designed to withstand a nuclear strike, and so is the internet computer. You don't even need firewalls to protect hosted canister systems because smart contracts are tamper-proof thanks to blockchain mathematics.
Many other breakthroughs are present too. Canisters can serve web content directly to end-users, and users can interact with blockchain services without having to hold tokens. It's user-friendly, and users can seamlessly authenticate themselves cryptographically using their devices, such as the fingerprint scanner on a Macbook, so that systems and services benefit from end-to-end blockchain security for the first time.
The internet computer can be used to build many things better. For example, this platform can be used to build tokenized internet services, pan-industry platforms, centralized financial systems, and even additional enterprise systems and websites. What is absolutely incredible is that the internet computer elevates blockchain to become a complete alternative to the traditional IT stack. Whereas today most apps are made from a combination of smart contracts and insecure websites running in the cloud, so users can never be sure they're even interacting with smart contracts. On the internet computer, entire systems and services can be built on-chain, and it has the speed, capacity, and usability to support building nearly anything.
For developers, this represents a revolution because they will be able to write canister code on their laptops or even in a web browser and then upload it into cyberspace to create new systems and services from smart contracts, all without the complexity of traditional IT. Of course, they might also apply blockchain tokenization in the design of internet services or leverage other blockchain features.
The internet computer's purpose is to host humanity's logic and data. If that goal is achieved, it will create a blockchain singularity in which blockchain becomes the internet and the platform upon which everything is built. This will be a wild ride, and we hope you come along.
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