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Introduction to Web 3.0 Application Development
Public Cloud and Beyond
Today, the go-to platform for application development is cloud, thanks to the ubiquitous nature of the public cloud, easy access and faster time to market. The public clouds have taken the world by the storm. There is nothing wrong with the public cloud or the way we deploy application and data as far as the enterprise applications are considered. In most of the case, the applications are thoroughly secured, and data is completely protected with-in the enterprises as the stake in data breach or security vulnerabilities is very high. But what about other software as service applications on the internet like social media sites, communication applications, personal data storage. In this social world, privacy breach, personal data theft, and fake identities are so common that it needs greater attention. The entire internet is still a big centralized place dominated by a few companies. Here is an excellent report on the current state of internet traffic https://www.sandvine.com/hubfs/downloads/phenomena/2018-phenomena-report.pdf. The core of the centralization issue is data. And there is no clear answer as to who owns your data? Apparently, this data is used for many activities with questionable intentions. Here come the decentralized platforms to address the privacy and personal data protection. Decentralized platforms are aiming to solve this problem of data ownership. The objective is to gain control of your own data and establish a secured and sometimes anonymous access to applications over the internet.
Decentralized platforms are not new. We all grown up with peer-to-peer applications. Who doesn’t remember BitTorrent platform that really revolutionized file sharing and is still one of the dominant traffic over the internet? The popularity of BitTorrent can be attributed to a robust network, outstanding performance, and anonymity. BitTorrent is an excellent platform for file sharing but not good or even feasible for application development. Also, it is not immune to viruses, internet worms disguising as legit files. Let’s have a look at the other emerging decentralized platforms beyond just file sharing.
Decentralized Platforms
Blockchain has revived the decentralized application development space as it offers collaboration in a trust-less environment with its strong cryptography foundation. Today’s decentralized platforms have taken advantage of the blockchain revolution and made it core to the implementation. There are many decentralized platforms on the horizon but in this article, we will discuss a few of them that are fast gaining popularity. Here is the list of platforms that we will cover:
- Blockstack.org
- eos.io
- tron.network
You can find more details on these platforms and related decentralized application on https://www.dapp.com/
Blockstack
Blockstack is blockchain-based decentralized computing network and application ecosystem. Following are the key highlights of Blockstack:
- Develop decentralized applications with popular programming languages like JavaScript and iOS Swift
- Keep authentication on blockchain
- Keep application user data off the blockchain
- Cryptocurrency associated with Blockstack is STX
- Total number of apps is around 250
You can get started developing applications for Blockstack at https://docs.blockstack.org/develop/zero_to_dapp_1.html
EOS
EOS is a platform to develop blockchain-based applications through an operating system-like construct. Following are the key highlights of EOS:
- Provide authentication, databases, asynchronous communication
- Use C++ as a smart contract programming language
- WebAssembly virtual machine executes a smart contract
- Cryptocurrency is EOS
- Total number of apps is around 462
You can get started with application development with EOS at https://developers.eos.io/eosio-home/docs
TRON
TRON is a decentralized technology-based reliable smart contract platform. Following are the key highlights of TRON:
- Use solidity programming language for smart contract
- Use distributed storage protocol and GRPC
- Web technologies like JavaScript to interact with smart contract
- Cryptocurrency associated with TRON is TRX
- Total number of apps around 459
You can get started with application development with TRON at https://github.com/TRON-US/eCommerce-hello-world
Final Thought
Decentralized application development is still a new field with lots of dynamics. This article discussed a few of the popular platforms but there are many more on in the making. The adoption of the platform will eventually depend on the popularity of the applications, ease of development and monetization of the application.
