Dfinity Foundation’s Dominic Williams pulls no punches when asked for his thoughts on the world of crypto and blockchain, a field he’s been working in for about a decade.
“IWe’ve gotten to a point where people are actually investing in snake oil. For example, “whoever has the best snake oil, I’m going to invest in that because their marketing is better,” Williams recently told The Block. “Today there’s a lot of confusion and people just buy into these narratives. And I think that’s the biggest challenge the industry faces today.
Williams is chief scientist and founder of the Dfinity Foundation, the builder and principal contributor to the Internet computer protocol. Years ago, the project was one of the most high-profile in the blockchain space after Dfinity. has raised a total of $195 million from major backers like Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital. Dfinity is officially a non-profit organization based in Zurich.
It’s clear that Williams cares deeply about his team at the Dfinity Foundation, which he says has “1,000 years” of research and development expertise and the Internet Computer blockchain it launched. He’s not that generous to the rest of the industry.
“Tthere’s a lot of smut, frankly. Like, 95% of blockchains are just garbage, and they’re just selling snake oil,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not about technology anymore. It’s often a question of who can tell the best story and make it the most compelling, with websites claiming the product is finished or does something it isn’t. »
“Only a third generation blockchain”
Although Williams sees the utility of blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche, he doesn’t think people really understand their limitations in terms of building a scalable internet that operates cost and time efficiently. . He believes, however, that the Internet Computer Protocol, as the “only third-generation blockchain,” can power a new era of fully on-chain online interactions.
Williams says some popular blockchains work well for processing transactions, but he doesn’t really believe they can form the basis of a completely new, decentralized internet that mainstream users would adopt en masse.
“A blockchain is a kind of computing platform, and it can be either like a traditional blockchain that calculates sequentially, like Ethereum, Solana, or like a third generation blockchain that can scale and calculate more efficiently, allowing to build Web3 platforms like on-chain social networks, he said.
To illustrate his point, Williams highlighted how inefficient Web3 currently is: “Take a picture with your phone, three megabytes. It would cost you $110,000 to put it on Ethereum. [would] it also costs you a week or something to download it; on Solana about $400,” he said.
Solving the blockchain “trilemma”
Already in 2021, the creators of Internet Computer felt like they had something different.
“At its core, Internet Computer is the world’s first blockchain that runs at web speed with unlimited capacity – solving the ‘blockchain trilemma’ by producing a decentralized, secure and scalable blockchain network,” said the Dfinity Foundation. at the time. .
Although Internet Computer can claim technical superiority over rival blockchains, the protocol has not been without its problems, at least in terms of sticking to a schedule. After the Dfinity Foundation delayed the launch of the Internet Computer Protocol in late 2018, it finally launched about two and a half years later.
“In 10 years, the broader technology community will realize that the Internet Computer is poised to one day become humanity’s primary computing platform for software creation and the open Internet,” he said. Williams said at the time of the launch.
Messari’s research highlights that the public launch not only “marked the release of the Internet Computer’s source code” but also “the transaction and governance features of the ICP utility token.” After initially reaching a price above $400 and a market cap of over $18 billion in May 2021, according to CoinGecko, ICP’s value has plummeted. The price of ICP has since recovered slightly, beginning to rebound substantially late last year.
The token was changing hands at over $13 at press time, according to The Block Price Page.
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