{"id":13590,"date":"2024-05-17T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/internet-computer-the-swiss-army-knife-for-cloud-computing\/"},"modified":"2024-05-17T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T08:00:00","slug":"internet-computer-the-swiss-army-knife-for-cloud-computing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/internet-computer-the-swiss-army-knife-for-cloud-computing\/","title":{"rendered":"Internet Computer: the Swiss army knife for cloud computing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rising demand for decentralisation is spawning supply across many fronts. In cloud computing and data storage, decentralised physical infrastructure networks (DePIN<\/a>) have emerged as the answer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the bigger projects in this segment is Internet Computer (IC), built by the DFINITY Foundation and its founder, Dominic Williams. Sergey Golubenko explains this inventive ecosystem for ForkLog readers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

History<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Dominic Williams is a King\u2019s College London graduate with interests in distributed computing and the cypherpunk movement. From a young age he had a passion for building simple games in Basic, and gained wider recognition in 2010 after the release of the MMO<\/span> Fight My Monster<\/a>. For it, Williams developed a unique server technology for elastic scaling.<\/p>\n

In 2013 Williams became interested in blockchain. He was inspired by the \u201cworld computer\u201d model backed by the Ethereum community, first described in John Perry Barlow\u2019s \u201cDeclaration of the Independence of Cyberspace<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

In October 2016 a non-profit with a research centre, the DFINITY Foundation, was registered in Zug, Switzerland to develop an \u201cinternet computer\u201d. Its designers based it on threshold cryptography with random-number generation. The technology was named DFINITY (from decentralised infinity<\/em>).<\/p>\n

In 2018 the project raised $61m from venture funds Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital, and on May 7th 2021 the IC mainnet went live. Today the DFINITY team numbers more than 270 people working across the globe.<\/p>\n

What are Internet Computer and ICP?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Internet Computer is a layer-1 blockchain with a set of protocols that allow independent nodes to operate as one system in pursuit of a \u201cfree internet\u201d.<\/p>\n

IC is an ecosystem of many Web3 applications with multichain functionality and its own user-identification system. It is run by a DAO\u2014whose mechanics it also offers as a service.<\/p>\n

To understand the ICP protocol, start with the approach used on the traditional internet. Information and software are stored on specific computers: servers and personal devices. When you use an application, the software running on servers sends data to your device and requests a response. This traffic is governed by TCP\/IP. DFINITY proposed an alternative.<\/p>\n

ICP is a protocol that lets developers store and move data together with software in a decentralised environment instead of renting costly cloud space. Program code, therefore, has no fixed physical address and is hosted across distributed data centres.<\/p>\n

IC aims to extend the public internet. The project could become a global compute platform on a blockchain.<\/p>\n

How it works<\/h2>\n

IC runs on an innovative four-tier consensus mechanism:<\/p>\n