In a compelling conversation in Paris Blockchain Week, Pierre Samations, the Chief Business Officer of the DFINITY Foundation, the Bold Vision behind the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) – shares an infinitely scalable, fully decentralized infrastructure to provide the next generation of web3 applications with power.
From a breakthrough AI project that is called ‘self-writing internet’ to protocol level integrations with Bitcoin, Ethereum and soon Solana, DFINITY, pushes the limits of what is possible in web3. Samations offers exclusive insights into how users can build live, on-chain apps with nothing more than natural language prompts.
Samations on the internet computer protocol
Dfinity Foundation makes the most important contribution to the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). I take care of everything that is businesslike, commercially related and product -related at Dfinity.
The internet computer community is growing considerably because this is the only real world computer infrastructure where you can actually build a complete end-to-end world computer pile, which means that you have front-end, back-end, data and everything in the chains. This is very attractive for many developers. If you read last year’s electric capital report, you will see that ICP is the second fastest growing ecosystem of the developer, directly behind Solana.
The self -writing internet
We are working on something that our founder and chief scientist, Dominic Williams, devised the ‘self -writing internet’. This enables everyone on this planet to use an AI interface, such as a Chatgpt interface, where you ask in natural language what kind of application you want to have built and implemented.
The AI not only returns the codes, but it also returns a URL with the implemented application live on the internet computer in a matter of one to two minutes. And we work clearly to make this speed speed. Not only that, you can actually update the application through promptly. That is a very big thing, because this is another use case, finally, after Defi.
A web3 infrastructure is superior to a web2 infrastructure, but you don’t have to tell anyone about it. People will just realize that this is great. I can make my own app. If I am a person, a company or a startup, I can just get started with natural language. So this is a very big thing.
Users would not notice the difference between web2 and web3 because every application on the internet computer is accessible via a web browser. So for you it would just feel a normal web application, which should actually be the real goal of Web3. I think the problem with Web3 we have today is that it always has its own extra thing about how to access, and some onion problems. The key to adoption is really to make it as seamless as possible. And this is what that product is.
About the integration of ICP in important block chains
Another important characteristic of the internet computer is that it has an integration at the protocol level with Bitcoin, with Ethereum, and in a few weeks with Solana, and others follow. On Bitcoin it specifically enables everyone who builds up on the internet computer to communicate, read and write on Bitcoin. That is very interesting for Bitcoin builders. Bitcoin is a single blockchain, which is fantastic for what it does, but it is very difficult to build logic on top.
Given that we have this chain key bitcoin integration, many builders use -and we have more than 40 different projects of the Bitcoin -community -ICP Tech use to build True Bitcoin Defi and Bitcoin Web3 applications. You can use the main chain with the most liquidity, with the best assumption we have for Web3 and Defi applications.
There is a ‘bus’, which is our period for smart contracts on Twitter. It is a full-stack bus that can read and write Bitcoin. This means that you can build logic in everything you want to do in ICP, smart contracts and stiffer applications, but you immediately communicate with Bitcoin.
The other important key element is that we have a digital twin of Bitcoin that is cryptographically protected on the Bitcoin Minetette, which lives on the internet computer. It is called CKBTC and it makes Bitcoin transactions possible with a second finality, plus only 10 sets of transaction costs. This makes projects such as Odin.Fun, which aim to create a centralized exchange feeling on a decentralized infrastructure with Bitcoin.
When you convert a Mainnet Bitcoin to a CK Bitcoin, it automatically locks the Bitcoin on the Mairet. And there is no central bridge that can be affected or hacked or operated, making CKBTC the most safe way to have Bitcoin outside the mainnet.
ICPs scalable infrastructure deflationary model
ICP is probably one of the most ambitious projects in the entire web3 industry. This is also the reason why Dfinity has one of the largest R&D teams in web3, and we spend most of our funds on R&D. But what our team actually created is something very great. It is a well -configured infrastructure that is already infinitely scalable because it scales horizontally.
The Mainstet has been live since 2021. We already have around 500+ applications on the internet computer, including entire social media platforms. There is a WhatsApp Telegram clone called OpenChat with around 20,000 users already. And scalability is no problem. The system is designed for scalability. Think about it: if you have a company to make a real world computer, you make very intelligent choices about scalability.
Like I said, it’s horizontal scalability. We do not have a gas model but a reverse gas model. Now we all feel the pain of block chains of the second generation that have this gas model, where you must always top up to carry out transactions. The internet computer has to rebuild all the time on a first principle approach.
This is what we call a reverse gas model. As a user you will not be obliged to pay gas costs because we think the adoption is killing. Instead, we have a model that is almost the same as we have in Web2 today. If you host your application on Amazon, you would pay Amazon for your cloud computing room. This is exactly the same logic on the internet computer.
If you are a developer, you pay for calculation cycles and you pay for these calculation cycles in ICP and this ICP is burned. This also means that the more computing takes place on the internet computer, the deflatoire the tokenomics are.
ICPs defalating model
I cannot comment on the prices, but we had a few days in the past six months, where the network became deflationary due to an important network activity of some projects that have been used. This brings us to believe that we can achieve a sustainable deflatory state, long before we initially predicted it.
But again, the time will learn, and the self -running internet will also be an important catalyst, because every application that you can implement is clearly performed on ICP. It will have to pay for his calculation cycles, which is very cheap, probably the cheapest in the industry. This will also contribute to some type of deflatory elements.
About Developing on ICP
As long as the self -writing internet is not off, you will not be able to use AI for prototyping. But once that is out, maybe relatively fast, you can just prototype with that. If you are a project and you have already discovered the architecture and your idea, you can simply contact our dedicated growth team, which is led by my colleague Lomesh.
The Groeipeam will help you with everything, from you to the internet computer, to assess your projects and possibly also support me with a number of subsidies.
Expectations in Paris Blockchain Week
For me, the real advantage of these conferences is to have face-to-face discussions. As always we have many online meetings and so on. But I think the value of this is really to have many people here, in particular every European leader of the industry.
So we can just have good discussions, and we can just get things done. Yet we are in a certain sense a confidential industry, we want to be confidant, but face-to-face discussion is still very important to build trust. That’s what I try to achieve here.