NOTE: This project is entirely for community consideration and discussion. There are no people from DFINITY or any other orgs working on it (as far as we know).
Summary
The Internet Computer enables novel technology such as a completely decentralized Operating System. Discuss whether this should be a priority for the DFINITY Foundation.
This sounds like an incredibly complicated endeavor that multiple other extremely large and successful organizations have attempted to do and failed (depending on your definition of failure, I’m mostly thinking of Firefox OS and Chrome OS).
It just seems like there are so many important things to do to just get the Internet Computer as a backend server technology working, that adding Endorphin on top at this point in time is just biting off way too much.
I agree with lastmjs about this proposal, again. However unlike Badlands, this seems incredibly difficult. While I see the gain, I’d rather the Foundation not tackle this at all until there is much, much greater adoption of IC as a place to host sites and dApps.
I think this would be much better suited for a grant someday, I’d rather the focus be on other priorities that help the Internet Computer thrive.
Echoing some sentiment, I think this is a lofty and worthwhile endeavor for a separate team. The possibilities become endless, considering the eventual rise of XR in day to day life, I could see Endorphin becoming the go-to for the physical, decentralized web.
With that said, it should be the problem of another team, separate from the core team. Not only will it be time consuming, it avoids over-centralization of the projects and keeps the separate. Better for all.
Agreed that a grant for the existing team ready to take on such a challenge makes the most sense in the near term.
As much as I am excited about this, I feel similarly to all of the above. I think this would be amazing to eventually have, but the scale of this is huge. Looking towards the immediate future, efforts here would be better spent laying out patterns for IC devs to successfully build PWAs.
The Astro X team is dedicated to building solutions for mobile devs and apps. We humbly think these solutions may share the same vision of Endorphin. We want to introduce current mobile stacks to the IC ecosystem before DFINITY finally builds the mobile OS.
What we are building so far:
agent_dart, a flutter/dart version equivalent to agent-js, for cross-platform apps built on IC. This SDK will be the foundation component of the mobile DApp ecosystem.
as of 2019 there are 2.7 billion people have a smartphone and most interact with their phones daily. The Internet Computer allows us freedom from the monopoly of a few large tech companies, but our smartphones are controlled by those same large corporations dictating what we can deliver through their app stores or download as a customer. Endorphin is a very important project and will have an exponential impact on IC adoption. I know others have tried but Dfinity succeeds where others fail. And if the project can be done in parallel with other important work, then no need to sideline. This would be huge for Dfinity and us all.
I just updated this thread to make clear its status.
To see an example of a project which is more baked (and a model of how these proposals should look more like) check out the timeline and thread on Increased Canister Storage: Increased Canister Storage - #13 by flyq
It is unfortunate that the projects that will be of greatest value (IMHO) are given the least consideration.
After the crypto crash the next boom will be putting decentralized in front of everything ( crypto will be so 20teens ) …
So yeh ‘decentralized plz dispensers’ will probably be valued at an ‘aspirational’ metric but the ‘good work’ will be Badlands and Endorphin themed projects.
I guess what I’m saying is if it’s possible… can we do more than just create our own version of dungeons and dragons?
Am fully cognizant and skilled in appreciating the technical issues with Badlands . I built a network where latency was the action item 24 x 7 …. Top shelf entropy mitigates latency because u can catch up … that is a level of crazy cool. Am all in conceptually.
In reference to crating a mobile virtual OS? A fractal of a NVRAM driven subnet? My word … that brings the entire planet in … u would think it might be a bit further up on the action item list.
Can’t help but pop back on how specious commentary like ‘ put a pin in and check in 5 years ‘ is in the real world ….
For example here is a gift wrapped road map on what was technically possible in 2005… a decentralized MVNO concept ….
A billion eyeballs motivated to look at your applications … do u think there might be value in your bundling one of the 1st offerings to the planet?
All the tools are there right now ( the tariff process at the public service commission was one of the few examples, other than stacks libraries at the universities, where open-source was the currency !!!)… let me repeat all the tools are there right now.
You have built a physical network! All u need do is say u want to implement a MVNO API.
Seems most of us believe the idea/vision here is fantastic!
But we are very concerned with spreading the already strained resources of the Foundation and community towards a project which could be as ambitious and resource-demanding as the Internet Computer already is, and the IC isn’t even close to being finished
As someone who has built multiple companies with dozens of employees … usually in a cutting edge niche …. Everything is always constrained and you are always stretching resources …
With that said…
The Andreessen Horowitz crowd requires some form of Badlands.
Pioneers get the arrows, settlers get the land.
IC will be the network backbone for different lands ( something good or something bad, or a bit of both ) … it is their destiny.
Last bit & this one is truly battle tested …
Serve the rich live like a pauper.
Serve the poor live like a king.
U can make bank while doing good. What a freaking concept.
I couldn’t agree more. Endorphin is something that needs to get underway. Let’s learn from past mistakes and make this thing work. We need “ethically sourced” mobile apps running on an open platform.
Reset the Internet…Domenic has graciously provided the seeds, we’d be fools not to make them grow.
I’m totally open to talk next steps in a public forum.
Honestly I’d rather have the foundation focus more on the IC itself, the roadmap is full of stuff that needs to be worked on. Developing an OS for mobile phone is extremely hard and bigger companies with more funding and manpower have failed, if in future a free and open source alternative is needed anyone can fork Android, remove all Google’s services and run dApps on it as progressive webapps, on the other hand only Dfinity has the technical expertise and knowledge of IC’s code to improve it for the time being.