The Internet Computer for Geeks

The DFINITY Team

Paper 2022/087

The Internet Computer for Geeks

The DFINITY Team

Abstract

Smart contracts are a new form of software that will revolutionize how software is written, IT systems are maintained, and applications and whole businesses are built. Smart contracts are composable and autonomous pieces of software that run on decentralized blockchains, which makes them tamperproof and unstoppable. In this paper, we describe the Internet Computer (IC), which is a radical new design of blockchain that unleashes the full potential of smart contracts, overcoming the limitations of smart contracts on traditional blockchains with respect to speed, storage costs, and computational capacity. This allows smart contracts for the first time to implement fully decentralized applications that are hosted end to end on blockchain. The IC consists of a set of cryptographic protocols that connects independently operated nodes into a collection of blockchains. These blockchains host and execute ``canisters'', the IC’s form of smart contracts. Canisters can store data, perform very general computations on that data, and provide a complete technology stack, serving web pages directly to end users. Computational and storage costs are covered by a ``reverse-gas model'', where canister developers pre-pay costs in cycles that are obtained from ICP, the native token of the IC. ICP tokens are also used for governance: the IC is governed by a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, which, among other things, determines changes to the topology of the network and upgrades to the protocol.

Note: Changed contact author and updated section on advanced features.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Preprint.
Keywords: smart contracts blockchain distributed cryptography
Contact author(s): yap @ dfinity org
History: 2023-12-18: last of 4 revisions; 2022-01-25: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2022/087
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2022/087,
      author = {The DFINITY Team},
      title = {The Internet Computer for Geeks},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2022/087},
      year = {2022},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/087}
}