ISSUE 299: From the Editor’s Desk: Blockchain Infrastructure

“Setting individual OKRs generally leads to goals that are either not true indications of meaningful progress or that are easily gameable.”

Want an easy way to get started in Web3? Download a desktop copy of IPFS (Interplanetary File System) and install it on your computer, advises Dietrich Ayala, IPFS Ecosystem Growth Engineer, Protocol Labs, in our most recent edition of The New Stack Makers podcast.

We’ve been hearing a lot of hype about Web3 and its promise of decentralization — how it will bring the power of the web back to the people through the use of a blockchain. So what’s up with that? How do you build a Web3 stack? What can you build with a Web3 stack? How far along is the community with tooling and ease of use?

This virtual panel podcast sets out to answer all these questions.

In addition to speaking to Ayala, we spoke with Rowland Graus, Product Manager for Agoric, and Marko Baricevic, software engineer for The Interchain Foundation, which manages Cosmos Network, an open source technology to help blockchains interoperate. Each participant describes the role in the Web3 ecosystem where their respective technologies play. These technologies are often used together, so they represent an emerging blockchain stack of sorts.

TNS Editor-in-Chief Joab Jackson hosted the discussion.

From the Editor’s Desk: Blockchain Infrastructure

You might have noted some extra Web3 stories on The New Stack site this week. We’re diving in headfirst.

For a while, we largely avoided blockchain, except as an occasional story about distributed data management. We didn’t want to add to the already-considerable hype around cryptocurrency, NFTs and the like. The many outstanding technical shortcomings around the emerging technology stack also left us dubious.

But early this year it became apparent that — ethical and feasibility issues around the use of blockchain aside — there is a lot of developer energy in this space. It’s where the money is, as Willie Sutton once observed. It reminds us of the early days of the commercial internet, which also was lousy with hucksterism at the time.

We won’t make any promises that we can make you rich. But we can bring to the table what we brought to containers, Kubernetes and other emerging technologies: in-depth analysis and explanation of the technology itself, and how it can be scaled to large-scale operations. If you want to mine some cryptocurrency, well, we will help you choose some fine shovels and picks, and offer a few pointers on how to wield them properly.

While decentralized operations may or may not be here to stay, many of the technologies and concepts now being discussed will spill over to the world at large. And there will be a small army of developers who will know how to use them for all sorts of useful projects we can’t even imagine yet.

Mind you, we are not stepping back from cloud native computing whatsoever. There will just be more TNS goodness to enjoy in the months to come. Check it out.

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