Camp Day Two July 19 Lightning Talk Multiple Transport Layers For The Decentralized Web By Rodney Witcher
VP Product, Wolk
The decentralized web is nothing without decentralized storage. That
being said, developers and users of the decentralized web are often then
burdened with deciding which decentralized storage provider(s) they
should work with. Well, in decentralized fashion, the likely answer is
not one single provider or even a predetermined set of providers, but
rather ANY provider. The decentralized web will be powered by multiple
transport layers, and that decision should be left up to the user.
The
Safaris and Chromes of the world were built for and currently dominate
the centralized web. These centralized apps, however, yield total
autonomy of how and where data is stored and retrieved to developers
instead of users. The decentralized web, however, must adopt browsers
and apps that return this control back to the user. Therefore,
developers must be given tools and standards that enable the development
of apps that direct the transport (i.e. storage and retrieval) of data
without being able to control this data.
I believe this must be
achieved through development of a multiple transport layer that has open
and transparent standards. The basic concept underlying this idea is
already present and being demonstrated in the Internet Archive
dweb.archive.org internals. At Wolk we implemented the Internet
Archive's transport layer API so that we could be included and
incorporated into it's multi-transport vision.
What will You learn?
We
would like to share our learnings in wiring Wolk's decentralized
blockchain to the Internet Archive's Multiple Transports Layer, to see
how we can extend this important idea with other active participants
(multiple browser/extension devs, decentralized storage providers, and
application devs)
Over the past two years, Rodney Witcher has worked at Wolk focusing on designing and building a protocol that will enable a world where users wrest control of their data away from the big corporations and regain autonomy over their online presence and activity. Rodney's background lies in building large scale applications, honing his skills as an engineer, product designer and dot connector most recently as a co-founder of CrossChannel, a mobile and social advertising company, and previously at a number of companies as a software engineer. Rodney lives in the Bay Area and enjoys spending quality time with his wife Courtney and son Shaw.