Every Wednesday, Pakt will request questions from the Twitter community. Then, every Friday we’ll share our answers right here on Medium (and repost on Mr. Musk’s blue bird app).
In order to avoid exhaustively rewriting our white paper one FAQ session at a time, we’ll provide one long answer, one medium sized answer, and one brief answer each week.
Since this is our first batch, we’ll kick things off by addressing the biggest, broadest top line query we’re repeatedly asked —
Long Answer: What is a “Chainsite?”
h/t to @ChrisFusillo
Pakt’s in-house definition: Blockchain-powered web apps that 100x the trust and value of online connection.
Let’s set the stage: a pillar of Pakt’s founding thesis is that broken digital connections are breaking society. As it so happens, our founders happen to live in society, so this presents a bit of a daily frustration for us.
Every time we engage in business, social media, or just try to kick back and enjoy our favorite content, there’s a gnawing awareness we’re being subjected to exploitative, extractive, centralized mercenary middlemanery.
Thankfully, Avalanche has built, in our humble opinion, the blockchain capable of revolutionizing the very nature of digital connections. Upon this foundation, Pakt is building a core suite of intuitive tools for builders to construct Chainsites —
Friendly reminder: Blockchain-powered web apps that 100x the trust and value of online connection.
In turn, these Chainsites will mainstream global access to blockchain’s improved digital connections, and thus improve society writ large.
So now with the stage ambitiously set, what is a chainsite really? Like specific, actual, real-world examples?
One of our favorites: instead of a Web 2.0 ride sharing app that infamously exploits drivers, imagine a “Fair Open Access Market” (FOAM) decentralized co-op owned by the drivers. Or perhaps a decentralized game studio, facilitating international cultural collaborations like below —
Or instead of a h̶o̶o̶k̶u̶p̶ dating site that profits from your continued ̶l̶o̶n̶e̶l̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ single status, imagine a “Social Playground” boasting profiles with an immutable reputation layer of past dates, helping to ensure connections are genuine, high-trust, and high value from the opening message.
Or instead of a media streamer that cloaks viewership data from creatives to steal their rightly deserved profits (hello Writer’s Guild strike), imagine a “Content Expression Platform” streamer where writers, directors, artists, and talent can smart contract deals with a few clicks and automatically receive equitable royalties based on viewership.
The ELI5 version — Chainsites are the connection hubs of the New Internet, the better one we’ll create together using Pakt’s OS for On-Chain Connection operating atop Avalanche’s blockchain breakthroughs.
So really, the most important answer to “What is a Chainsite?” is your answer. What will a Chainsite be when you build one?
Medium Answer: What skill level do you expect users will need to spin up a Chainsite?
Credit to @Cryptokinder
Spoiler alert: next week’s “large question” will see us delve into the finer points of Pakt’s “OS for On-Chain Connection”, specifically how it is architected to be intuitive, co-created, and globally affordable. If we answered in detail here after our exhaustive Chainsite explainer, your scrolling thumb would fall off and you wouldn’t be able to retweet this post.
But to prime the pump with a medium-sized answer, we’ll own up and make a confession: we’re unabashed techno-optimists. However, we do not expect the entire world to learn to code, raise capital from VCs, or perfect their prompt engineering to compel an AI to help them spin up Chainsites.
That’s why we built Pakt’s “Command Center” for launching and managing Chainsites with two modes:
- No-code for those who never learned
- Developer API key access for those who did
For our beta, Pakt will feature a Fair Open Access Market “FOAM” template (like the previous Game.World image), plus an intuitive customizer tool to modify the new Chainsite’s colors, logos, and other attributes.
This means that in under 10 minutes and for less than $10, a user can launch an on-chain marketplace for goods or services, then begin dialing it in to their heart’s content with Pakt’s customizer... or hire tech talent off a different FOAM to assist with applying bespoke finishing touches.
(Alpha leak alert: this provides a the tip of the iceberg hint of what we mean by “co-creating” the OS for On-Chain Connection)
Brief Answer: What can we do to help?
h/t to all our pals in the Avalanche ecosystem
Friends, Romans, Avalanchers, if you’ve read this far, you’re already doing it. Thank you for engaging. Building the community. Banding together through the bear. Carrying the torch. Believing in something far more significant and world-boosting than “price go up.”
But above all, thank you for daring to dream of a New Internet.
To quote Barbara Sher: “We depend on each other’s dreams coming true.” Sound corny? Not to us. It’s the brass tacks progression of imagination → building → innovation.
So tell us what you want to build. Tell each other what you want to build. Connect. Pitch in. Win and help win.
One thing is for certain: the quality of our connections is the quality of our life. So lets build better ones together.
Sincerely,
The Pakt Crew
PS. Pop quiz. What’s a Chainsite?
