It’s a rainy weekend…
The bicycles tracks are muddy and the bees are locked inside and probably eating all the honey they gathered 🙁
Perfect weather to learn something new… and it has been on my bucket list for a while. Developing dapps on the computer network. In case you don’t know about ICP yet, It’s a project lead by the “dfinity foundation” to develop a decentralized network computer, basically cloud services+blockchain. 3 years back, I was a bit skeptical about the technical challenges… they have come a long way.
In simple terms, ICP is a decentralized cloud using “canisters” to host dapps, “cycles” as units of compute and ICP tokens to monetize the service. If you host canisters, you get paid with ICP tokens. That brings TaaS (Transaction as a Service) as a natural evolution to SaaS. This means every dapp visitor/user will consume cycles and you are motivated to create economically viable content and services.
The question of Compliance and Legal Jurisdiction remains open… Although in theory the canister can run anywhere, and scale… certain laws will apply sooner or later and probably it will be the law of the mighty.
| ICP Terminology | Real World equivalent |
| Canister | Kubernetes?Docker? |
| Cycle | Compute |
| Identity | Active Directory |
| Motoko | any programming language |
| nns | neural network (just a fancy name for network) |
| ICP | the token that can be staked like ETH |
| Voting | like proof of stake in ETH, your tokens allow you to vote on the maintenance and evolution of the network |
| Dfinity | the foundation that is promoting and governing ICP |
As a first step, I indulged in the developer journey tutorials. Requested free cycles, created wallet, downloaded extensions,… and as a result, published my first static website on the network here. How do you like it?
