A Brief Introduction to ICP Dapps
A brief intro to Internet Computer Applications
ICP is the world’s most powerful ‘General-Purpose’ blockchain that runs at web speed and can scale infinitely.
I have no intention of shilling ICP to anyone here. Let’s dive in.
You can build almost any imaginable piece of software or store digital artifact/data directly on the IC blockchain.
Examples of what you can build on Internet Computer
NFTs
DAOs
Social Media
Enterprise Software
Industry Software
On-chain Games
etc... it's literally the next version of the Internet.
All you need to start building on IC is an Internet Connection and a Computer. In my last thread, I talked about terminologies and how ICP removes limitations for smart contracts. In my last thread, I talked about terminologies and how ICP removes limitations for smart contracts.
So Is Internet Computer a Computer on the Internet? Yes.
Internet computer Protocol creates a very powerful blockchain-powered virtual machine called the Internet Computer or IC, that hosts internet scale web-serving distributed Web Assembly software as Canister Smart Contracts.
In ICP the smart contract software storing data or processing update transactions require the consensus of the subnet, which happens asynchronously at a blazing speed leveraging chain key cryptography, where the whole IC has a single public key and private keys are shared among nodes.
Canister smart contracts can declare variables as certified. Whenever set, these variables will automatically get a Merkle tree certificate, signed by the Internet Computer blockchain. This allows anyone to verify the authenticity of this type of data using the Internet Computer's public key.
IC is not just a crypto ledger, IC is a crytpo cloud computer
Internet computer aims to replace the traditional web2 internet by becoming the compute layer of web3. ICP nodes are standardized hardware machines hosted by ‘node providers’ in data centers owned and operated by independent parties around the world.
Currently - 518 nodes, can scale to millions on demand.
Smart Contracts of ICP, called Canisters, serve the web directly through HTTP Calls.
A user can interact with ICP dapps directly from their web browser without having to hold any tokens or download extra wallets/apps. It's practically gas free to end-users.
The current Block Speed of #ICP is approximately 35 Blocks Per Second and It has processed 902 Million Blocks. Check the dashboard.internetcomputer.org
Smart Contracts just require tokens to execute a pre-written immutable code on the blockchain, that can build up like lego blocks to create powerful trustless transactions.
"The use of WebAssembly as the execution layer[2] of the Internet Computer gives canisters (dapps/smart contracts) an execution environment that allows for very powerful smart contracts." — ICWikia
Developers can deploy directly on the blockchain using cycles. Cycles are computation gas that power the canisters.
Cycles can be obtained by burning #ICP. 1 Trillion cycles are always pegged to 1 XDR ( 1.33961 USD).
On-Chain data storage costs 👇
Ethereum - USD 52.05 Million for 1 GB
Solana - 0.5 - 1 Million USD for 1 GB
IPFS/Filecoin - $0.0000025 USD for 1 GB/ Year
ICP - 5$ for 1 GB/Year - Doesn't fluctuate, fees are stable.
ICP has next-generation smart contracts also known as - Canisters. Every smart contract txn consumes cycles, including hosting and storing data. Since these are smart contracts, they inherently have to reach a consensus to update the state of the canisters and create a block to store data messages
After the developers deploy the smart contract directly onto the chain, it goes global instantly.
Crypto breaks borders.
Twitter UX experienced by USA users is not the same as the UX experienced by users of other countries. But on ICP, whatever public software is deployed, can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world, provided they have an uncensored Internet Connection.
However, If they are censored, the users just need to access them through different front-ends or routing strategies.
Blockchains are meant to be Tamper-proof and unstoppable.
Dapps on ICP are distributed applications until they are decentralized, either by making them immutable or assigning them to an on-chain governance DAO. This is due to the flexible mutability of the Canisters i.e. they are mutable by default until blackholed.
Storing and reading data from IC blockchain means storing and reading data from the Canister Smart Contracts. So a IC lets you build almost any software as a smart contract, hosted entirely on-chain.
You can literally host the web3 version of the current Internet entirely on the IC blockchain.
Right now, thousands of developers are building on the Internet Computer Protocol.
Any opinions and discussions are welcome. Please feel free to correct me if i wrote something wrong.