Dfinity
Dfinity founder takes aim at Ethereum’s complex layer-two solutions
Dfinity founder Dominic Williams has criticized Ethereum’s emerging ecosystem of layer-two solutions for exposing users to counterparty security risks.
Dominic Williams, the founder of Dfinity and its Internet Computer, has slammed the scaling solutions put forward by Polkadot and Ethereum for offering a disjointed user experience.
The self-described “blockchain maximalist” criticized Ethereum’s burgeoning ecosystem of second-layer scaling solutions, describing Ethereum as starting to resembling a ridiculously elaborate “Rube Goldberg machine” of “layer-two cloud applications.”
Williams asserted layer-twos cause points of friction for Ethereum users and exposes them to counterparty security vulnerabilities, emphasizing that more than half of Ethereum’s nodes are hosted by Amazon Web Services:
“A lot of these Proof of Stake networks today that people invest in are really just layer-two applications of cloud — we find that pretty disappointing. Blockchain shouldn’t be running on Amazon Web Services where they can steal the validator keys and do all sorts of bad stuff.”
Williams asserts that when a user accesses a blockchain through the cloud, “they have to download MetaMask from Amazon or something that lets them be tracked.”
He sought to contrast this with Dfinity’s Internet Identity protocol that he claims “can’t track you” unlike MetaMask and many other services downloaded from an app store.
Dfinity’s founder emphasized the numerous friction-points and steep learning curve impacting the user experience on Ethereum, stating: “If you want mass adoption of blockchain, you can’t require people to install MetaMask and then have to buy some Ether from Coinbase — that’s ridiculous. People need to interact with blockchain without having tokens — tokens come later. That’s a really big problem.”
“On a traditional blockchain, you’re sort of fiddling around creating these transactions through MetaMask or something like that — that’s just not a good user experience."
Williams also took aim at Polkadot’s forthcoming sharded parachain ecosystem, likening its relay chain to a “centralized toll-fee hub” mediating between disparate blockchains. He also criticized its vision for sharding as failing to ensure “fungibility between smart contracts.”
“DeFi is so successful on Ethereum [...] because these smart contracts exist in a seamless universe and they can all plug into each other — everybody can extend everybody else’s system,” he added.
Since its discreet mainnet launch in December 2020, Williams claims Dfinity has been poorly understood by the broader crypto community and the subject of rampant FUD on social media, lamenting that poor marketing from the project has done little to fix the situation.
Despite the purported FUD-storm, Williams asserts “the Internet Computer will have more users than all other blockchains combined by December of this year.”
Dfinity responds to Internet Computer decentralization and privacy concerns
Dfinity has sought to quell criticism over the decentralization and privacy of its Internet Computer protocol.
Dfinity, the team behind the Internet Computer protocol, or ICP, has fired back at critics of its decentralization and privacy features in an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit yesterday.
The team sought to assure that the project’s foundation does not have control over the majority of voting power, emphasizing that decentralization is a priority for the network as it moves forward.
The project aims to replace the public internet with a distributed network of data centers, nodes, subnets and users coordinated through the Network Nervous System, or NNS. The NNS decides which nodes can join Dfinity’s network, disciplines misbehaving nodes, and facilitates communications between the ICP’s various components and participants.
However, the NNS has been the subject of criticism, with users expressing concerns regarding the centralization of voting power, the closed-course and patented code underpinning the protocol, a lack of transparency regarding data collection, and the single point of failure created by the NNS’ design.
Some have expressed qualms about NNS voting rights accruing over time, fearing that the system guarantees Dfinity’s foundation and its early backers will maintain centralized control over the network in the future.
Responding to concerns about the project’s lack of decentralization, Dfinity researcher, Jens Camenisch, said: “The end goal is that the Internet Computer is fully decentralized and not controlled by DFINITY or anybody else.”
Dfinity’s director of product, Diego Prats, added that “the Foundation does not have control of the NNS's majority power,” adding:
“‘With great power comes great responsibility,’ the community needs to step up to that responsibility. I personally believe the community will step up to that role, but it is early and we have many challenges ahead of us.”
Responding to user concerns around being forced to have a singular Internet Identity to use the network, Diego said:
“Internet Identity is not meant to be the exclusive way of having Authentication for apps/canisters on the IC. We built it as a service for app developers so they can use an auth based on open standards [...] Developers can use or roll out any they wish or none at all. This is entirely optional for using of the IC.”
Jens notes that while direct connections to the Internet Computer will allow nodes to identify a user’s IP address and see the data that is trying to be sent, connecting to the IC using The Onion Router, or TOR, will enable “TOR level anonymity on the IC.”
Jens later clarified that he was unable to access the IC while using TOR unless using TOR through a private window in the Brave browser.
Critics have also estimated that as much as 74% of the ICP token’s supply could be centralized among “private interests” including the project’s team, investors, and advisors. Nick from the Dfinity Foundation countered the claim, asserting that only 24.72% of supply is held by seed donors.
On May 28, Dfinity founder Dominic Williams posted a blog post outlining the roadmap for the project’s Ethereum integration, noting the project’s intention to work symbiotically with Ethereum rather than to directly compete with it.
Dfinity’s ICP token sees violent first day of trade on major exchanges
Dfinity’s “Internet Computer” tokens are finally tradable after five years in the making.
The launch of the Internet Computer utility token has seen a wild first day of trading after its long-awaited debut on exchanges.
The ICP token from Dfinity was listed on Coinbase Pro and several leading exchanges including Binance, Huobi Global, and OKEx on May 11.
Over four hours, prices for the newly launched token have swung from an early intraday high of $700 down to $250, before recovering 70% over 10 hours to trade for $425 at the time of writing. Coingecko estimates $1.8 billion worth of ICP tokens have traded just 14 hours since trade commenced.
The Internet Computer is a decentralized blockchain project by the Dfinity Foundation. Dfinity describes the protocol’s mission as expanding the functionality of the public internet from a network that connects billions of people through standard protocols to a publicly accessible global supercomputer based on its own ICP protocol.
It has the lofty ambition of replacing the trillion-dollar legacy internet and IT industry by allowing developers to install their code directly on the public internet — dispensing with hosting companies, servers, commercial cloud services, and tech monopolies.
Like Ethereum, the platform would allow developers to run computing applications on decentralized infrastructure. However, Dfinity claims superior scalability over Ethereum’s Layer 1 mainnet.
While Dfinity has been focused on building this Internet Computer since 2016, much of the project’s inner workings have been shrouded in mystery due to its policy of closed-source development. The platform’s Mercury genesis launch event took place on May 7, marking the public launch of the platform after its completed mainnet initialization in December 2020.
ICP tokens can be staked into its governance system to earn “voting rewards” or be converted into “cycles” that can be used to power smart contract computation. The Internet Computer platform runs on a Network Nervous System (NNS), which is an open algorithmic governance system that oversees the network and the token economics.
The system is broken down into several subsections which include the ICP tokens in addition to “neurons” and “canisters” which govern the network autonomously and are explained in much more detail on the Dfinity blog.
The project started fundraising before the 2017 ICO boom under the DFN ticker but has since rebranded to ICP.