The train doesn’t stop at DeFi or NFTs. We’re headed for destination dWeb. That’s kind of awesome to think about.
As the decentralized ecosystem continues to grow and attract a diverse set of developers, we see the increasing need for simplicity, speed, and flexibility that serverless computing brings and a decentralized infrastructure that supports a future for decentralized web, also known as dWeb.
To discuss the transformational potential of a truly decentralized web and what that world would look like, we connected with Chjango Unchained, former VP of Ecosystem Development at Tendermint for the Cosmos Network, Director of the dWeb Foundation, and host of the Interchain podcast.
Diving into Crypto and Blockchain Technology
When the end of the bull market in mid-2018 came around, it was then while things quieted down when I could hear again. Handshake was being developed. I was close to the team as it was being built, and that became my gateway drug into dWeb.
Chjango graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of California, San Diego where she credits her university experience and mathematical background with the capacity to understand abstract concepts in crypto.
Chjango first got involved in Bitcoin and started seriously researching its capabilities and potential in 2014, which inevitably led her to the blockchain. In 2017, the ICO era, she realized there wasn’t just a Cambrian explosion of dApps, but of narratives. There were decentralized gaming, collectibles, IoT, GPS, exchanges, identity, storage, VMs, and more. By present-day, most of those narratives had lost steam, and the projects that pushed those narratives died along with the end of the bull market.
At that point, Handshake was being developed and she got close to the team as it was being built, which reeled her into the potential for dWeb. Chjango is currently a Director of the dWeb Foundation and advises cryptocurrency projects focused on solving some of the biggest problems in centralized technology.
Bullish on the Possibilities of Decentralized Web
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The reason I’m so bullish about dWeb is because the very projects that are needed to enable this vision to come to life are the ones that subsisted through the 2018-2019 bear market.
Chjango believes decentralizing every piece of Internet infrastructure from top to bottom will be essential to the growth of Web 2.0 and dWeb.
We have Handshake as the uncensorable identity layer (i.e. your domain name as your online identity or social handle), Akash for decentralized cloud, Orchid and Sentinel for decentralized bandwidth, Sia, IPFS, and Footnote for every flavor of decentralized storage you can imagine, and what you get as a result of leveraging those components is a website or application that is censorship-resistant at every layer of Web 3.0.
Akash is the first and only project in the Cosmos ecosystem that is solving decentralized cloud computing. I only came around to seeing this as an important problem to solve when I watched what happened with Parler, where the Big 5 tech oligopoly fell like dominos to shut down Parler from its social media handle on Twitter and Facebook, to the Apple and Google app stores, and even down to its servers on AWS. That was the wake-up moment for me, which instructed me to pay closer attention to projects like Akash.
On top of that are integrations for cryptocurrency payments and DeFi—enabling a new yet familiar Internet with its own “unbanking” system. The next generation of Internet users may never even need a bank account.
Imagine browsing the dWeb with the same experience you have going online today, doing some grocery shopping, paying in crypto, and receiving your groceries without ever having to cash out in fiat and never needing a credit card and being part of a credit system again. That’s the evolution of blockchain technology and where this is all going.
The train doesn’t stop at DeFi or NFTs. We’re headed for destination dWeb. That’s kind of awesome to think about.
When asked how she thinks Stargate and IBC will accelerate the decentralized ecosystem, Chjango reinforced that with IBC, builders finally have a good solution for composing their appchains in a manner that’s more secure and censorship-resistant. The fact that IBC will ultimately accelerate blockchain interoperability standardization makes her bullish about seeing the different ways of allowing chains to talk to one another, converging on a single, standardized, and elegant design.
Highlighting Emerging and Anti-Censorship Technologies
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As the host of Interchain, Chjango covers cutting edge, emerging tech and more specifically, anti-censorship technologies. Every episode and guest offers each of their unique insights from vastly different worldviews, and she finds that each episode offers distinctive value, which is precisely the goal for her podcast.
She enjoys sourcing guests who are hidden gems in the cryptosphere, or projects that haven’t become too mainstream yet. Helping people discover these projects before they get priced in by the market, is where most of the fun is for her.
As she gears up to interview our CEO, Greg Osuri today, April 8th at noon PST, she notes that Greg demonstrated himself as a thought leader speaking on behalf of the decentralized web, by speaking at Handycon, a Handshake conference the dWeb Foundation and Sky Include hosted together (see the full talk, here) and when he tweeted about the Pancake Swap and Cream Finance DNS hacks.
What people who are currently bullish about DeFi and NFTs are missing is that last connecting dot about dWeb. dWeb is the clear next iteration where blockchain tech is heading in the next 36 months, and it’s not that it’ll be mutually exclusive, but rather, it’ll be additive.
Just as after 2017, when the ICO narrative fizzled out, Chjango noticed in its wake, interoperability, DeFi and NFT narratives emerging to take center stage.
The same shift will happen as the market moves to realize the not-yet-obvious next step. And if you take nothing else away from this interview with Greg on April 8th, my hope is that you take away the realization that dWeb is the next narrative. And if it’s not obvious, it will become obvious within the next 18 months.
Tune in today Thursday, April 8th at noon PST to hear more from Chjango Unchained and our CEO, Greg Osuri, as they discuss the future of dWeb and how Akash Network fulfills a foundational aspect of the complete decentralized stack.
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