Early this morning while doing my daily coffee & surf I ran across this little comeptiton that has already started. For those of you don't want to click the link, it's a competition called Decentralize It! It's calling for teams of devs to create apps that can be self hosted on a small single board computer. Their target is the Zima Board but any machine such as a RaspberryPi that can be run as a personal server is accepted. My first thought was of @bambukah and his suite of apps at HiveLive. Because Hive could be on two of the teams in that competition. There is a Web3 & Easy Nodes teams. With the grand prize of the competition being a Zima Board 832 & $800 USD.
But then I got to thinking as the coffee started kicking in.
What if we were able to attain real Web3 in real life?
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto: Pexels
Imagine this if you will
While I don't think it would be feasible or even possible to run a personal Hive node from a Raspberry Pi 4 or even a powerful Zima Board. This could be so much bigger than that. Just imagine having your own personal server in your home that you could hold in your hand.
What would you have on that personal server? We are talking about Hive here so what can you do with Hive at home? Pretty much anything you do now! But only it's actually decentralized. Your personal server is in your control. You own it, the access to it and what it can access outside. You can interact with it physically, you can touch it, online and off, in real life. You leave it at home and can access it from your phone or laptop from another city or country.
Now lets take a quick look at what is hosted on your HiveBox.
- You could host your own SuperHive.
- Host your own Nitrous Condenser
- Host your own block explorer like @ausbitbank
- Host your own Ecency
Obviously you would need to fork those apps and give them a different personalized name. But there are a plethora of other things that I can think of to put on personal server that arent just on Hive. There are several self hosting operating systems out there that can be adapted by adding Hive into them. There is CasaOS (what I am currently running at home), UmbrelOS - focused on Bitcoin, Tipi and many, many more. Most of them are based on or use docker for the apps. One click installs for the user. Imagine how it much on boarding could happen to Hive when they find the one blockchain that actually works in Web3 has apps that are 1 click installs in a admin dashboard.
I can think of a thousand different apps that can be hosted on your own personal server that are outside of Hive. I'm also sure that once people catch on and realize what Web3 is there will be other blockchains and protocols you will want to interact with. And those apps could be self hosted on your personal server as well.
Photo by Alessandro Oliverio: Pexels
Dont forget the foundations
But the thoughts are intriguing to say the least. Because when it comes to Web3 two things that the "industry" has forgotten about is that two of the core things that defines Web3 is ownership & decentralization. That includes the user and the way they access their chosen Web3 platforms. No matter what the blockchain or protocol. The user must not only be decentralized online but in real life as well.
Sure creating web apps are great and awesome. The devs can and have created some beautiful web apps. To that we are eternally grateful for.
But, lets be honest here. Those web apps are hosted on the internet, the cloud, whatever you choose to call it. It's still someone else's computer. That means that the user is required to put some level of trust into someone else to secure and maintain the server that it resides on. Whether it's a power outage or bad actors. Things happen and the only way for a user to be secure is to do it themselves. We've seen our fair share of issues with front ends on Hive. Whether it's images not showing correctly, videos that dont play, or just flat out shutting down.
But a portable, hand held computer to host your own personal Web3 apps that you own & control? You just cant get more decentralized than that.
Now imagine that personal Web3 server that has it's own built in internet connection and you can take it with you when you leave the house.
That, my friends, is true Web3. And Hive is the only blockchain that can make that happen.