Dfinity boss aims to transform the internet to make it operate more quickly, safely and efficiently

Englishman Dominic Williams has ambitious plans through his Dfinity company to the change the way software and internet services are used. In short, he wants to transform the internet from something narrow to something much broader.

It was actually in 2016 that Williams, a graduate in computer science from King’s College, Cambridge (UK), set up Dfinity while in Palo Alto in California. As in the case of many who set up companies based on blockchain, he went on to set up a foundation in Zug, a foundation, he felt, being the perfect organisation model for his project, bearing in mind he regards Dfinity as a neutral, not profit-oriented, entity, its governance structure providing the company with the assurance it can remain politically and commercially independent. Of note is that the company now has branches in Neuchatel in French- speaking Switzerland and Zurich, too.

Since being set up three years ago, Dfinity has managed to attract investment amounting to almost $200 million, emanating in part from technology guru Marc Andreesen, who, along with Netscape, developed one of the first web-browsers. Indeed, Dfinity is now estimated to be worth some $2 billion.

What is it exactly that it does so well? Williams explained by saying that one needs to realise that companies such as SBB, UBS and Swiss (the airline) very much depend on complex software systems, whether they be for reasons of logistics, payment or customer management. Software really has become a core element of economic life today.

Williams and his team noticed, too, how, these days, the world is dominated by a few software monopolies, who exert great control. The case of the gaming company, Zynga, which developed the Farmville game on Facebook, was cited, it having made millions in turnover, until, one day, Facebook decided to change its newsfeed algorithms, causing Zynga’s income to plummet.

Belonging to these monopolies, too, says Williams, are companies such as IBM, Google and Amazon Web Services, which, with their huge data processing centres, have the capacity to develop the appropriate software and distribute it.

And this is where Dfinity comes in. “We want to change the way software is developed and hosted in a radical way,” said Williams. “There can still be great providers such as Facebook, Salesforce and eBay, but with the difference that the systems are not proprietorial, but open and decentralised, so that all people who use them can be confident that the rules of the game are not subject to sudden change.”

Hence Dfinity has developed a new type of internet format, based on blockchain technology and which could extend the current internet in a system Williams has named “internet computer”, with software and data being uploaded directly onto the protocol, something which the current TCP /IT internet protocol is not capable of, it being too narrow.

On the other hand, Dfinity’s protocol would be much broader, capable of hosting software systems and data, all leading to software systems being able to be used much more safely, more quickly and more efficiently. What is more, there would be no further need for maintenance, obviating the need for updates and new starts. Most significantly, Dfinity would be able to reduce infrastructure costs tenfold.

Whether Dfinity can change the internet so radically remains to be seen but it is planning to go ahead with a test network by the end of next month.

This article, from the economics section of the Zuger Zeitung, is based on one by Maurizio Minetti.