Introduction
Centered around user ownership, Web3 builds on the previous paradigms of Internet and Web technologies.
Web1 was about disseminating information (read) and making it available to all. In the early days, the internet grew out of the West Coast's counterculture. In spirit, they wanted to unlock information and remove the gatekeepers, extractors and manipulators.
Web2 developed as we discovered how quickly information and content could be provided by humans (read/write). By simply adding the ability for people to contribute information it opened the web to social media, restaurant reviews, daily feeds, and much much more.
Web3 builds on these previous paradigms, with blockchains and the ability to transfer ownership between tokens and protocols (read/write/own). Blockchains established a new ownership layer to the internet. Users can now own tokens and NFTs, transact with decentralized finance (DeFi) and participate in protocol governance.
By combining digital property rights with open protocols and business models, Web3 fundamentally changesi how we interact with software and networks. Whereas before, these networks were owned by large tech companies, we as users of the platform now have the option, and more importantly the incentive, to own a piece of technology.
As we move further into the Web3 paradigm, where data, apps and tokens merge on chain, user ownership becomes front and center.
In a Web3 model, users own their data. Online profiles, billing information, income and assets statements, browsing history and health data are all examples of user-owned data.
The Akord Protocol provides developers with a secure vault that they can deploy and share access to. The vaults live on chain and provide properties around three themes:
- Privacy with technologies such as end-to-end encryption, zero knowledge encryption and homomorphic encryption, each vault functions as a secure space for its members.
- Permanence supported by an auditable, immutable, durable and perpetual blockchain storage network. We are building on Arweave as a permanent blockchain.
- Composability from a modular design that promotes the encapsulation of cryptographic primitives to build dynamic proof systems. Vaults are flexible and can be customized for your proof system.
A Proof System is a protocol between a prover and verifier.
The prover holds a secret, say a birthdate, blood test results or net worth. The secret is encrypted.
The verifier would like to verify a statement about the secret with a high degree of conviction. For example, 'Are you at least 21?', 'Do you have at least $2m in assets?'
Using various encryption algorithms, developers can deploy proof chains to enable zero knowledge proofs between provers and verifiers.
Developers can integrate vaults in to their apps providing users and customers with these features and abilities.
Akord provides open source tooling, APIs and documentation to help get developers up and running.
Vaults can be created per project, per customer, per group, per organization and mapped to any business process or workflow.
Inside the vault, data objects can be arranged in hierarchies like folders and groups. Data objects and be audited against previous versions.
Data objects in the vault are abstracted as nodes that enable developers to implement their own objects for a high level of composability.
With a growing and active community, Arweave is breaking new ground with permanent storage.
Arweave brings a 'pay once, store forever' storage model to Web3. User's pay for storage, paying into a crypto endowment. Over time, as the endowment increases in value and the cost of storage decreases, the spread is used to incentivize miners to maintain copies of the data.
Akord protocol is implemented as a set of contracts in the SmartWeave contract system. This allows developers to contribute to the protocol on chain.
Building on the Arweave blockchain's permanent storage network, we can now merge data, apps and tokens onto the same chain. This squarely opens the Web3 space to new development and advancements.
Akord protocol is designed to bring private, on-chain composable vaults to Web3 applications and decentralized organizations.
Feeling eager? Jump in to the quick start docs and launch your own vault:
Dive a little deeper and start exploring our Command Line Interface and API reference to get an idea of everything that's possible with the Akord Protocol:
Last modified 7mo ago