Dominic Williams of the Dfinity Foundation said 95% of blockchain is “garbage” and that the industry seems more concerned with narrative than substance;
Williams considers the Internet Computer Protocol to be the only “third generation” blockchain.
When Dominic Williams of the Dfinity Foundation is asked about his views on the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain, he doesn’t hesitate, having been working in the space for about a decade.
“People are really investing in snake oil now, like whoever has the best snake oil, I’m going to invest in it because they have better marketing,” Williams recently told The Block. “There’s a lot of confusion out there and people just believe the claims, and I think that’s the biggest challenge facing the industry today.”
Williams is the chief scientist and founder of the Dfinity Foundation, a builder and major contributor to the Internet Computer Protocol.
Years ago, Dfinity became one of the most hyped projects in the blockchain space after it raised a total of $195 million from large backers such as Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital. Dfinity is officially a non-profit organization based in Zurich.
While Williams clearly spoke highly of his team at the Dfinity Foundation, which he said had “1,000 years” of R&D expertise and the Internet Computer blockchain it launched, he was less generous with others in the industry.
“Frankly, there’s a lot of garbage out there, like 95% of blockchain is garbage and they’re just selling snake oil,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s no longer about the technology, it’s often about who can come up with the best narrative and make it sound the most convincing, and the sites pretending that the product has been done or does something that hasn’t been done.”
The only third generation blockchain
While Williams sees utility in blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche, he believes people don’t really understand their limitations in building a scalable internet that operates in a cost- and time-efficient manner.
However, he believes that the Internet Computer Protocol, what he calls the “only third-generation” blockchain, can drive a new era of fully on-chain online interactions.
Williams said some popular blockchains are great for processing transactions, but he’s less confident they can form the basis of a new, decentralized internet that’s widely accepted by mainstream users.
“Blockchain is a computing platform that can compute sequentially like traditional blockchains, like Ethereum, Solana, or it can be a third-generation blockchain that can scale and compute more efficiently,” making it possible to build web3 platforms like on-chain social networks, he said.
To illustrate his point, Williams pointed out how inefficient web3 is currently: “Take a picture with your phone, three megabytes, and putting it on Ethereum will cost you $110,000, and uploading it will take you a week or more, and about $400 on Solana,” he said.
Solving the blockchain trilemma
Back in 2021, the folks behind the Internet Computer felt like they had something different.
“Essentially, the Internet Computer is the world’s first blockchain that runs at web speeds and has unlimited capacity, solving the blockchain trilemma by creating a decentralized, secure, and scalable blockchain network,” the Dfinity Foundation said at the time.
While the Internet Computer may claim technological advantages over rival blockchains, the protocol is not without its issues, at least when it comes to maintenance schedules. The Dfinity Foundation delayed the launch of the Internet Computer protocol in late 2018, ultimately launching about two and a half years later.
"Ten years from now, the broader technical community will realize that the Internet Computer will one day become the primary computing platform for humanity to build software and the open Internet," Williams said in the release.
Messari’s research noted that the public launch not only “marks the release of the Internet Computer’s source code,” but also “signals the transaction and governance functionality of the ICP utility token.”
According to CoinGecko data, in May 2021, the price of ICP initially soared to more than $400, with a market value of more than $18 billion. Subsequently, its value plummeted. After that, the price of ICP recovered slightly and began to rebound sharply at the end of last year.
According to data from The Block Price Page, the token is changing hands for over $13 at the time of this article’s publication.
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