The commercial value of Web3 technology may not be visible to the naked eye, but it definitely exists and is expanding daily. Though Web3 hasn’t fully sketched out how people should extricate themselves (and their data) from the walled-garden Web2 platforms they’ve become dependent on for their most basic activities, Octopus Network believes Web3 just needs more time to develop.

Where did Web3 come from, and why?

Web3 was born from Bitcoin — and Bitcoin was born from humanity’s eternal push for sovereignty, privacy, and freedom. The ability to move value without an intermediary in a peer-to-peer fashion on a distributed ledger broke open developers’ imaginations worldwide, resulting in the eventual birth of the Ethereum virtual machine and the development of application-layer networks. People realized that if they could transfer value online directly, they could perform other functions without interference from third parties. And the idea of Web3 (coined by Ethereum Co-Founder, Dr. Gavin Wood) was born. 

DeFi is an alternative financial system.

DeFi was clearly the first kind of application-layer network to really grab peoples’ attention. But DeFi in a vacuum isn’t sustainable. The assets being traded in DeFi networks must have some other purpose than solely to be traded — this became painfully clear to many during Q2 2022. By itself, DeFi is just an alternative financial system existing on-chain. Financial systems are pointless if they don’t distribute capital for production and economic growth.

The crypto asset marketplace is massive, with billions in trading volume. 

This is the foundation that web3 is sitting on. The crypto asset marketplace is massive, with billions in trading volume  — ripe for innovation. But many have argued that current market conditions make innovation too capital-intensive and complex for startup teams and entrepreneurs. They aren’t wrong. 

It’s much more straightforward to launch a project in favorable markets when investors are searching rather than buckling down — considering the cost of launching a blockchain or an application chain can reach hundreds of millions. So, what are the options for innovators to keep developing during a bull market? 

Octopus Network is a Web3 breeding ground.

Octopus Network is a NEAR-based, multichain, Interoperable Network designed to launch and run Substrate-based appchains (with EVM compatibility). Substrate was designed by Polkadot developers as a tool for providing blockchain functionality out of the box. While Octopus has synergy with Polkadot, its market is different. Polkadot parachain auction slots are financially out of reach for most.

Octopus Network seeks to serve the broader global markets by exposing developers worldwide to Substrate. Few appchain infrastructure projects offer this range of comprehensive support from the ground up — scaffolding developers by providing them with tools and opportunities that allow ideas to breed, ferment, and bubble up to the surface as Web3 solutions.

Octopus Network offers three tiers of technical support.

Octopus Network offers Web3 teams support at several levels of the development phase. For example, for appchain candidates building to launch on the Octopus Network, teams are guided by the Octopus Task Force through a local development environment before entering the Octopus Network testnet for auditing. 

The Octopus Foundation grants 100k in $OCT tokens to its first 100 appchains. $OCT, the native token for Octopus, plays a primary role in its Leased Proof of Stake (LPoS) security leasing market. Appchains that launch in the Octopus Network can lease the amount of security they need and scale as they go.

Some appchains will inevitably fail, paying out the cost of innovation, but others will succeed, continually enlarging their economic scale. 

Another area where Octopus Network is actively breeding Web3 business is its Accelerator Program. Octopus runs an open and free quarterly program for young web3 teams serious about learning all facets of Web3 business beyond technology, e.g., branding, tokenomics, network effects, marketing, etc. Each two-month course ends in a competition for five 50k grants. 

Finally, recognizing that there are far more Solidity developers than Substrate Developers, Octopus Network has decided to turn the world’s developers into Substrate developers. Starting in China and progressing through Malaysia, Vietnam, Nigeria, India, and Mexico, Octopus Network has been training instructors across the globe to run Substrate Developer Training courses in all regions and languages. 

Even projects at more mature stages that may be struggling during development can benefit by migrating to the Octopus Network. The Octopus Network Technical Support Team is well-rehearsed in cross-chaining and interoperability. They are also developing Substrate IBC to connect to chains like Cosmos, Polkadot, and other IBC-enabled blockchains. Octopus Network even provides tools to support appchains that choose to leave the network to transform into independent blockchains, so their existing cross-chain assets aren’t affected.

Many web3 startups will fail, but not all.

Octopus Network acknowledges that some appchains will inevitably fail, paying out the cost of innovation — but others will succeed, continually enlarging their economic scale. According to Octopus Network, any Web3 team can apply to start their application chain. Still, it’s ultimately up to the community to decide whether a project launches as an appchain and succeeds. 

This appears to be baked into Octopus Network’s security leasing design and governance. In fact, the entire structure of Octopus Network seems like a community-fueled appchain factory — spitting out customized application-specific blockchains in the form of whatever business idea survives the community voting queue to surf the waves of market competition. 

But in crypto, all projects are subject to the laws of the “network effect.” The value of a network increases as the number of users increases. The more users that come, the higher the network’s business value, increasing the token value, drawing more users, etc. The difficulty for young Web3 teams is attracting users, to begin with. As a part of the NEAR and Octopus Network Ecosystems, appchains that launch in the Octopus Network have the advantage of a ready-made audience waiting to be convinced. 

Octopus Network recognizes that it’s ultimately up to the users to determine the business value of a Web3 application. Therefore, it reasons the more Web3 proposals users are exposed to, the higher the chance of novel Web3 solutions gaining traction and increasing the business value of Web3. Octopus Network is optimistic that community-supported applications will rise to the surface because of the solutions, services, and value they offer users — if Web3 is given the opportunity to develop.

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The quest of the Octopus Network has been described as “ushering in Web3.0.” What is Web3.0 and why is it important?

This is a long story, which I could talk about for at least an entire hour. But, in a nutshell, Web3 is a vision for a freer, more open, more secure, and more equitable next-generation Internet. 

The general public may not be aware of this, but even though the evolution of Web3.0 depends on the successful implementation of cutting-edge innovation, its roots stretch back long before the Internet existed. 

I’ll spare you a novel, but you can trace the philosophy behind Web3.0 from Karl Popper’s ideas of 1945 in his The Open Society and its Enemies, primarily because of the parallels of its tenets with the ideals of the Cypherpunk Movement — a group of active IT geeks that aimed to defend personal privacy, the cornerstone of an open society, in the Internet age.

It was the Cypherpunk movement that led to the birth of Bitcoin, which is undoubtedly the forerunner and guiding light of Web3. When you consider the timeline stretching from Popper’s ideas of The Open Society to the Cypherpunk Movement, through to Bitcoin to Ether to Polkadot — the foundations of Web3 development are clearly discernible.

Presently, Web2.0 platforms are owned and run by companies whose goals are directly aligned with maximizing shareholder value. They extract as much profit as they can from the economic activities they coordinate. 

Web3 is an Internet made up of cryptonetworks with lower transaction costs and faster transaction speeds. It’s made possible by decentralized applications running on blockchains

owned by the user community —  not the profit extracting corps. Web2.0 platforms simply have no defense against eventually being replaced by cryptonetworks as minimally extractive coordinators. 

How does Octopus help usher in Web3.0?

Well, first we have to be honest and acknowledge that Web2.0 platforms are fantastic for Internet users. For a Web3.0 application to replace a Web2.0 application, it has to be a great Web application in the first place. It has to provide a user experience that is at least comparable with its Web2.0 counterpart.

If you can’t provide a good user experience, your platform will never be able to achieve the more durable and grandiose network effects required to guarantee your survival. Web3.0 application development typically has to sacrifice user experience because distributed ledger technology involves more complexities and increased costs than Web2.0 — which results in downgraded UX. 

But a cryptonetwork innovation wave is clearly upon us and it’s bringing promising Web3.0 application solutions in with the tide, so to speak. Blockchain frameworks such as Substrate and Cosmos SDK can now provide an unprecedented colossal design space to Web3.0 application developers.

Developers are now able to deliver a fully optimized Web3.0 application by building an appchain. At Octopus, we wanted to create a unique multi-chain network. Not just to be different, but to experiment with other possibilities, and to create conditions for finding a suitable infrastructure for Web3.0 as soon as possible.

While Substrate and Cosmos SDK have decreased the development cost of appchains, appchain bootstrapping is still a technically complex and capital-intensive job for developers. We created Octopus Network to solve bottlenecks in the ecosystem as well as accelerate the process because we believe that all public blockchains and multichain networks will eventually be interconnected — forming the Internet of Blockchains. 

“For a Web3.0 application to replace a Web2.0 application, it has to be a great Web application in the first place.” — Louis Liu, Founder Octopus Network

You mentioned Polkadot, which is also developing multichain, interoperable networks for Web3.0. How is Octopus different? 

Let me preface by saying that we see a Web3.0 future where Octopus, Polkadot, Cosmos, and perhaps many other protocols all exist concomitantly to provide multichain options for all types of Web3.0 developers. However, one of the key design considerations for Octopus is making Web3.0 accessible to all developers by solving the problem of how to lower the cost of both bootstrapping and operating an application-specific blockchain.

Compared to Cosmos, launching an appchain on Octopus Network is easier because validators sets don’t need to be bootstrapped for each individual appchain from the ground up. Compared to Polkadot, Octopus Network offers appchains a significantly less expensive security lease and doesn’t have a limit on the number of appchains capable of being launched. This is important because the Internet of Blockchains will not be realized with just a few dozens blockchains — There will be thousands if not more blockchains in the future. 

What is an appchain and why is it important?

An appchain, or application-specific blockchain, is an independent blockchain specifically used for a certain set of custom-designed applications. Appchains allow developers many options for optimization in the design of their application chains, such as governance frameworks and economic models — including those at the bottom of the technology stack. 

An appchain also provides a highly customized and low-cost infrastructure to deploy user-friendly applications with few overhead costs — while giving people complete control. Also, appchains can evolve rapidly while maintaining legitimacy. Each appchain has a native token and ready-to-use on-chain governance. 

Can you tell us a bit about the team behind Octopus?

The Octopus team (previously known as Cdot) has been working on universal blockchain interoperability protocol IBC and cross-chain integration for quite a long time, so we have an insight into the bottlenecks which can impede the development of Web 3.0 — such as technical and commercial barriers. 

The Octopus Team has successfully built IBC for Substrate and has also offered Substrate online training courses in China. These courses trained the first batch of Substrate developers in China. It was the genesis of the Chinese Substrate Community. We are also the organizers of the Rust community in China (including RustCon). 

Why did you name the project Octopus?

An octopus is a very different intelligent creature from a human. Instead of having a centralized nervous system as humans do, two-thirds of an octopus’ neurons are spread throughout its body and distributed amongst its arms. Those arms can make decisions on their own without input from the brain — essentially making the octopus a decentralized intelligent life form. 

The Octopus Network is a multichain interoperable cryptonetwork that emulates an octopus. Like the arms of an octopus, each connected appchain is empowered with its own intelligence and decision-making mechanisms to adapt to ever-changing environments. When connected as a whole, all members benefit from significant network effects and economies of scale — creating an Internet of Blockchains.

When will investors be able to support Octopus Network?

Interested investors will be able to support the Octopus Network on Skyward finance between August 22-28. We chose Skyward as it enables fair distribution and price discovery while being resistant to front-running, price manipulations, and sybil attacks for projects built on NEAR Protocol. Skyward Finance’s goal is to provide an efficient mechanism for initial price discovery and distribution through streaming time-based auctions that are accessible in a decentralized way. 

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