Before your mind blows up with the concept on what the heck a "new internet on decentralized apps" even means, it did take me a while to fully grasp it as well.
This project is fairly ambitious on what it is trying to do. Right now most apps as you and I know exist on a store either that is powered by Android or the App store controlled by either Google or Apple. There are also desktop powered apps that is predominantly controlled by Microsoft. What Blockstack is attempting to do is basically taking out the middleman so think of it as an app store without Apple, Microsoft, or Google.
You can probably imagine the cost that goes into building something like this. Yes, astronomical as one might have imagined. To top everything off, remember that app that you are trying to build? Yes, all that storage and centralized data has now the option to get outsource to the likes of Amazon S3 or Dropbox. What Blockstack is trying to do is to give power to the app developers.
To top everything off, there's no pre-ICO sale for you and I before Blockstack launches because of their moto of "no decentralization" and how that translates is no selling of coins before launch. WTF? Yes, that's exactly what's on my mind when I saw it as well. But don't worry, they've got a few big VC's behind them so they've got some funding to kick-start this project initially.
YAY decentralized all the way, good idea isn't it? Personally I see a lot of challenges in their business model. Let me first point out a few potential issues:
Imagine an unethical hacker that wants to steal your personal data. Without a central figure to cyber police it, how does an user know what to trust or even look out for? Better yet, how would he or she know a trusted app from another? After all, everything is stored elsewhere and it is almost worry free from the app maker's perspective it seems likely that the users are the ones who brunt most of the risks here.
Are small developers ready to take on all the responsibilities a centralized and governed app store entails? Better yet, do they even have the funds to do that? How will they do that even if they want to but lack the experience on doing so? As a small app developer, you are strapped on funds. Wouldn't it be to your best interest to let someone else handle this part of the headache instead of you trying to do everything all at once?
The issue with the ICO itself:
If there is no ICO pre-sale how is the hype created? Purely on the word of mouth? Boy, are you on the wrong side of the train. There are a ton of new ICO's coming out everyday, believe me if there's no hype to start you are on a slow path to irrelevancy.
How is the ICO priced judged or based upon? Just cause the company says so? Who will by into the ICO price that is being set? Who knows??? A great way for companies to gauge popularity and acceptance of their ICO is based on the pre-sale. This way a new ICO can see if the price they set is too high? Too low? Or just right. Without it, unless there's continuous hype; the ideal just doesn't seen plausible.
Blockstack definitely has an ambitious project that aims for the moon, how that is going to be realized is a whole separate story. In business, how ideology of how the web or decentralization should be viewed should be in line with the business objective. Being too far away from reality will often hinder a success of a company. Who knows, maybe I'm wrong about Blockstack since VC's are throwing in millions at them. However with all the data that's been provided to the public, this definitely doesn't seem like a good start for Blockstack. What are your thoughts?
Your fellow Cryptodude,
- mastaz -