Internet Computer founder says cryptocurrencies have a ‘snake oil’ problem.

Dfinity Foundation’s Dominic Williams pulled no punches when asked to give his thoughts on the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain, a field he has been working in for roughly a decade.

“meIt’s gotten to the point where people are actually investing in snake oil. ‘Whoever has the best snake oil will invest in it because their marketing is better,’ Williams said in a recent interview with The Block. “There’s a lot of confusion today and people are buying into this narrative, and I think that’s the biggest challenge facing the industry today.”

Williams is the chief scientist and founder of the Dfinity Foundation. internet computer ICP

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code. A few years ago, this project was one of the most hyped projects in the blockchain space since Dfinity. It has raised a total of $195 million from large backers such as Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital. Dfinity is a non-profit organization officially based in Zurich.

It’s clear that Williams speaks highly of the team at the Dfinity Foundation, which boasts “1,000 years” of research and development expertise and the internet computer blockchain it launched. He’s not very tolerant of the rest of the industry.

“teaHonestly, there is a lot of trash here. “It’s like 95% of the blockchains out there are just junk and they’re just selling snake oil,” he said in a recent interview. “This is no longer about technology. “With a website, it’s about who can create the best narrative and make it sound the most compelling, whether it’s pretending the product is finished or doing something that isn’t finished.”

‘The only 3rd generation blockchain’

Williams sees utility in blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche, but doesn’t think people truly understand their limitations in terms of building a scalable internet that operates in a cost- and time-efficient manner. But he believes that the Internet Computer Protocol, which he claims is the “only third generation” blockchain, could usher in a new era of fully chained online interaction.

Williams says that while some popular blockchains are suitable for transaction processing, he has little faith that they can form the basis of an entirely new, decentralized internet that mainstream users will embrace en masse.

“Blockchain is a type of computing platform. It may be a traditional blockchain that computes sequentially, such as Ethereum or Solana, or it may be a third-generation blockchain that can scale and compute more efficiently. He said he is building a web3 platform like an on-chain social network.

To illustrate his point, Williams pointed out how inefficient web3 is currently. “Take a picture with your phone that’s 3MB. It costs $110,000 to upload it to Ethereum. It takes about a week to upload it too. On Solana, it costs about $400,” he said.

Solving the ‘trilemma’ of blockchain

Already in 2021, those behind the Internet computers felt there was something different.

“At its core, the Internet Computer is the world’s first blockchain that runs at web speeds and with unlimited capacity, solving the ‘blockchain trilemma’ by creating a decentralized, secure, and scalable blockchain network,” the Dfinity Foundation said at the time. .

The Internet Computer may claim technological superiority over competing blockchains, but the protocol has not had issues, at least in terms of maintaining schedules. After the Dfinity Foundation delayed the release of the Internet Computer Protocol to late 2018, it was eventually released about two and a half years later.

“Within 10 years, the broader technology community will realize that the Internet Computer is on a trajectory to one day become humanity’s primary computing platform for building software and the open Internet,” Williams said at the launch.

According to Messari’s research, the public launch “implies not only the release of the source code of the Internet Computer,” but also “the trading and governance capabilities of the ICP utility token.” ICP’s value initially soared to over $400 and a market cap of over $18 billion in May 2021, before plummeting in ICP’s value, according to CoinGecko. Afterwards, ICP prices showed a slight recovery, but began to rebound in earnest at the end of last year.

According to The Block Price Page, the token was trading for over $13 at the time of issuance.

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