Three Things Holding Decentralized Development Back
By: Crowd Machine
Tags: Distributed Ledgers, App Development, Software Development, Blockchain, Decentralized Apps

Three Things Holding Decentralized Development Back

BLOG: The Big Issues: Monetization for Developers, Low Code Resources for Developers and Device Computer Power

Craig Sproule — 7 November 2017

Crowd Machine CEO & Founder

As interest in cryptocurrencies increases, so does the interest in the distributed ledger that they operate on. Everyone from curious software developers through to large enterprises is starting to take their first steps into the world of app development on blockchain technology, creating the services that many believe will form the basis of an updated internet.

As this occurs, the technology stack that developers have to work with has improved. While in 2014 there was only really Bitcoin for a payments solution and no scalable computation, file storage, external data and monetization solutions, things have improved across all these areas.

However, as an industry we need to recognise the obstacles that could halt or slow further improvement. The parallel developments fields of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will bring with them demand side pressure for developers that could have a detrimental effect on our industry’s development. To ensure that progress isn’t halted, there are three key issues that need to be addressed.

A monetization model that incentivises the best developers

Currently, there’s a small pool of skilled developers that are able to create market-ready applications. The solutions that they can rely on to help them develop these are improving but there’s still a long way to go. Significantly, these developers do not have a simple way of monetizing their work. They may be employed to write code that improves a specific blockchain project but this code could almost certainly be used by other developers in their applications.

These skilled developers might be willing and able to release this code as open source for the good of others. However, they would be far more likely to release and, importantly, maintain their code if they were able to monetize their efforts. A code repository that could let other developers access this foundation code while rewarding the original developer for their work would solve this problem

A low code resource that would make app development easier

Another useful outcome of this code repository would be that it could form the basis for easier and quicker app creation by less skilled developers. After all, if skilled developers have already solved a problem, it’s much more efficient for less skilled ones to use the solution that has already been created, or tweak it to suit their needs.

Low code and no code solutions have become very popular over recent years for this reason but there’s no clear successor for the decentralized internet. Such a solution, which enabled users to create an end-to-end app and deploy it onto any chain, would also mean less reliance on a small pool of developers and more likelihood of creating the large number of apps required.

Access to underutilized compute power

For these potential new apps to become available, the final key issue to be solved is the underutilization of compute power. The current options available to app developers are through the three large public cloud providers, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

These dominant players are more like siloed, centralized data storage providers, who are only able to offer what they do because of their huge infrastructure. There’s a huge amount of underutilized compute power on devices owned by individuals and if these could be unified, they would provide a large base of compute power for app developers. Not only that, these device owners could be paid for making surplus processing power available.

Solving these big issues in order to fuel the creation of many more decentralized apps is what Crowd Machine is all about. The platform is the only distributed network technology that enables the creation and management of decentralized apps for anyone from startups to enterprises. Through the combination of our App Studio, Crowd Computer and Crowd Share, we aim to usher in market ready apps that will disrupt the dominance of centralized infrastructure companies and accelerate the adoption of blockchain networks.