Dfinity is trying to disrupt the global cloud computing industry with a blockchain-based solution. If successful, it could similarly upend the crypto market.

The emergence of cryptocurrencies is often seen as a direct response to the global financial system. In the first block created on the Bitcoin network, Satoshi Nakamoto embedded the message "Chancellor of the Exchequer on the brink of a second bailout for banks." This passage is taken from a story in the London newspaper The Times about how the British government is bailing out major banks.

While Satoshi never said much more about what or why this passage was embedded in what is now known as the "genesis block," many have interpreted it as why Satoshi developed Bitcoin: , to remove banks and middlemen to create a currency that is more driven by the people.

But as the technology that powered bitcoin matured, so did the digital currency's purpose. Cryptocurrencies are now about to disrupt not only financial markets, but industries as diverse as art, fashion, and charity.

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What are TICs?

TIC is built on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), an advanced blockchain protocol that runs on a network of independent data centers around the world. It uses canisters, an evolution of smart contracts with higher scalability and additional functionality, to create interoperable computing units designed for internet-scale services. The platform provides a user experience directly through web browsers and smartphones, extending the capabilities of the global Internet to host software locally, turning it into a public computing platform.

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Significance of TIC to the crypto market

While TIC has a mission to help web2 companies ditch legacy systems, many blockchains need the same help.

Many of the nodes that help keep the network diverse, like Ethereum, EOS, and Tron, run on centralized servers owned by companies like Amazon, Alibaba, and Google.

This means that the CEOs of these companies, Jeff Bezos, Daniel Zhang, or Sundar Pichai technically determine the fate of Ethereum, not the people, and they have the right to shut down access to Ethereum nodes that rely on cloud services.

While this is unlikely to happen in practice, governments may have little choice if they pressure them to crack down on cryptocurrencies that are supposed to be censorship-resistant. This sort of thing has happened before, and in 2019, it was revealed that Amazon had banned Iranian developers from using Amazon Web Services (AWS) following U.S. government sanctions.

Another powerful example is the decentralization of Parler, the Twitter alternative in Amazon Web Services, illustrating how decentralized projects are only as decentralized as the infrastructure they build.

Dominic Williams, TIC's chief scientist for the project, told a recent conference that only 99 percent of participants used interfaces hosted by cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft. , DeFi applications are vulnerable. You are not actually interacting with the blockchain. Instead, interact with a website that is interacting with the blockchain. You are only interacting with the Amazon Web Services platform.

But Dfinity isn’t the only company trying to provide decentralized and tamper-proof custody for projects.

IPFS has quickly become a de facto "terminal" for storing data that enables companies to conduct business on the blockchain. While it functions differently than Dfinity, it has quickly become a place for decentralized data storage, as opposed to Dfinity's model, which relies on hand-picking data centers around the world as part of its network.