The Future of dApps with Nikil Viswanathan

The world of Web3 keeps coming up with innovations that amass its adoption. One such instrumental development is brought together by the Web3 development platform Alchemy. In a recent conversation between Soniya Ahuja, the founder and CEO of Orbis86, and Nikil Viswanathan, the CEO, and co-founder of Alchemy, the nitty-gritty of the future of decentralized applications (dApps) and Alchemy was discussed at length.

Notably, dApps are the key to the mainstream widespread adoption of Web3. It could get tricky, as the tech is fairly new, and entrepreneurs are trying to apply blockchain technology for usage beyond decentralized finance (DeFi).

Alchemy provides a whole range of developer tools, Software Development Kits (SDKs), Application Programming Interfaces (API), and the like to individuals and organizations who want to build upon blockchain. Web3 apps or dApps enable scalable ecosystems with increased interoperability and scalability to the level of everyday apps on Web2.

Alchemy: The AWS (Amazon Web Services) for Blockchain

Dubbed as the “AWS for Web3” and “Microsoft for blockchain”, Alchemy is a leading Web3 app developer platform being used by big names in the industry to develop dApps. What’s interesting is that the developer provider can also be efficiently used for developing applications on non-EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) chains.

Remarkably, the company has grown to surpass the unicorn startup mark to become a Web3 “decacorn” company, which is a company that exceeds the valuation mark of $10 Billion. Moreover, it has achieved this feat within just 16 months.

When asked about how Alchemy envisions the development of apps in the Web3 landscape, Viswanathan explained how Alchemy was conceived— “Three big shifts in technology in the last hundred years (are) computer, internet, and Web3. Each one had a platform that powered it (as such) like a developer platform. For the computer that was Windows and Mac like the operating systems and what that lets you do is build applications on top. So, for example, the things we know as a computer today— Excel, Word, Chrome, this kind of things, these kinds of applications were all built on Windows and Mac right for the internet.”

Citing the example of AWS, he continues, “There’s a business that you’ve heard of, (and a part of it) called Amazon, which has two businesses. It has the shopping business which we all know but we also have a thing called Amazon Web Services, which is basically the back-end technology that powers all of the apps on the internet. Uber, Airbnb, DoorDash; every time you use that it’s all those computers around Amazon. So the way we like to think about ourselves is the developer platform for Web3.”

Coming on to his own Alchemy, drawing parallels with Web2 services, he says— “If you use an NFT, if you use a DeFi, if you are using a Web2 product that integrates Web3… like all that is powered by Alchemy. And why is this important? When you think about companies with developer platforms like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. There are 250 million companies in the world (building on those three platforms), which is one tiny piece of one sector of one segment. But those companies are the three most valuable on the planet. If crypto becomes even a fractional size of the internet we have a chance to build something really impactful.”

Alchemy’s Mission to Onboard a Billion Users on Web3

In the current climate, crypto is already a trillion-dollar market, and the success of companies like Alchemy speaks volumes about the emerging shift in the direction in which5 Web3 is headed. In the previous decade, it was mostly about cryptocurrencies and DeFi activities. Now, people are looking to build decentralized applications that have wider everyday utility for the general public.

Alchemy already powers a plethora of projects such as OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace. These are front-end platforms. But it runs many back-end projects as well, which are lesser known to most people. The company is determined to onboard more than a billion users over Web3. For context, TikTok, a Web2 social media platform has a billion users. In contrast, only 84 million active crypto wallets were recorded last year.

Alchemy has set a mission to onboard a billion users in the Web3 ecosystem, with plans in place for building the “billion-user-onboarding products” on top of the platform.

According to Viswanathan, “I think there’s two broad categories and this is how I split them up— one is Web3 native products. So as we make decentralized Finance, NFTs… these kinds of products more accessible, I think we’ll see a much larger user base come in, and be able to use those applications. The second kind of category is Web2 enterprises that are deploying crypto-native products to their user bases. For example, everything from Banks to companies like Robinhood, Shopify that are doing token-getting (and other such) kind of products.”

He also emphasized the change in perspective of Web2 companies, where they are focussing on developing their products for Web3, “Even if you look at companies like Facebook, who paused their crypto stuff (for now), but they have billions of users.” adds Viswanathan.

“This concept that they can turn on NFTs, or token-getting, etc. to billions of users is really exciting because they’ve already bootstrapped a large user base and we can just bring those people to crypto. So that is honestly a very exciting thing that we’re seeing, that was not happening in 2018, that is happening now. In 2018, after the recession, most of these Web2 companies cut all their crypto stuff and now we’re seeing Web2 companies actually lean in.”

Blockchain technology has shown a lot of promise in recent years, with its out-of-the-box decentralized ledger and a whole lot of other functions. Key players like Facebook, Google, Mackenzie, Deloitte, and other members of the Big Four consulting conglomerate league, have their own blockchains and digital assets practices. Their focus is not on developing another crypto, but rather on building on top of blockchains, to leverage this decentralized ledger technology for customized functionality.

Concrete Use Cases of Web3 and its Impact on Real-World Financial Systems

Web3, especially the adoption of cryptocurrency, is going mainstream already in certain parts of the world, especially the developing world. South American countries like Venezuela and Argentina, and countries like Greece and Nigeria are facing hyperinflation, as high as 100 – 200%. People in these countries are waking up to the benefits of using crypto, such as stablecoin USDC, as a safe haven to protect their assets from devaluation.

Viswanathan gives real-life examples of the same, from people he has encountered. He says, “One of our PMs (Project Managers) was talking to one of the users that uses (crypto) exchange. It’s like this guy in Africa… Literally, for us, DeFi is a way to invest and make money, or on yield Farm, or whatever; but he (the man in Africa) puts his money in DeFi, borrows money out to buy groceries, and then pays that back.”

“So that is his means of having a stable currency. And it’s like holy cow! That’s such a cool thing to see— the concrete use cases take off. This is literally having the effect that Bitcoin in the early days was meant to have, which is— a stable currency not manipulated by the government.”

He cites the example of infrastructural differences between the developed countries like the US, and the developing ones. He shared an incident— “It’s called the “WhatsApp Effect”. When I was in college, I met this guy… and I asked where do you work. He said Whatsapp. But to me, at the time I didn’t get WhatsApp. I have free texting all my friends live in the US; why would anyone use this app? But then you realize for the rest of the world, texting is really expensive, data is really expensive, and group texting doesn’t work. So basically we all have iPhones, everyone else has Androids.

It’s this kind of concept around finance; if you’re in America and you have like a tech job, or whatever, you have a banking system that has mostly worked for you; of course, like ignoring the inflation and all that kind of stuff. So it’s really hard to understand how big of a deal it is to people in other countries. It gets me really excited about the potential this has to really positively impact lives.”

There is also a stark observation of more Nigerians turning to USDC for safeguarding their life savings due to the continuous economic fall of Naira. Notably, they could also use USD for the same. But the problem is that there are many regulatory complexities and taxes levied in the same. It becomes very expensive to convert fiat to fiat. The barriers are further stiffened in countries like those, where there are capital controls.

The regime wants to prevent people from converting their unstable currency into stronger ones, as people try to secure their hard earned money in failed governance institutions and financial systems. Decentralized cryptocurrency is a powerful tool in this case to bypass the state-imposed barriers.

Free Resources at Alchemy for Budding Developers

Alchemy does a remarkable job of providing academia to aspiring developers and tech enthusiasts. They have partnered with a lot of foundations and organizations that offer courses in web development, to come up with their study materials for free or at subsidized fee structures.

When asked about the learning resources available on the platform, Viswanathan replies, “Our whole mission is help people build apps. So some of the things that I think are probably most relevant— number one is we have free Alchemy University; you can learn how to code, how to code in web3, completely for free. It was a course that typically cost thousands of dollars before. (But now) people are getting full-time jobs out of it (the free courses of Alchemy University). We actually went and bought that company and said we’re just going to give it away for free.

The second is we have a venture fund that invests (in Web3 startups), and if you’re an entrepreneur trying to get started or just building something Web3, we’re happy to support. And if you’re a little earlier-stage, and trying to figure stuff out, we actually have a 25 million dollar grants program where we just give grants to developers to build (over the existing projects), and support the ecosystem.

Finally, we have a very very large free-tier (web development service) you can actually run. We have a service at Alchemy that people pay for, but we have a very generous fee offering. You can actually run entire companies off the free-tier. We intentionally did that because we said we need to help this next generation of builders and make it affordable for people around the world.”

Alchemy is one of the most promising projects for the ‘over-the-top’ propagation of Web3. It is not only a great platform for enterprises to build on top of, but also for individual developers and aspiring builders to grow and learn. The spirit of Alchemy, thus, resonates with that of Web3, which is all about democratizing access and opportunities to all. It would be interesting to see what Alchemy has planned for the future of Web3.

Soniya Ahuja, a respected leader in the Web3 and crypto community, empowers through Orbis86. With a background at Deloitte and Broadcom, her expertise spans two decades. Through initiatives like the 1111 Orbisons NFT collection, Soniya promotes diversity and community engagement. As host of “The Silicon Dreams,” she shares insights on AI, ML, and Web3, inspiring worldwide innovators. Passionate about educating and onboarding one million individuals into Web3, Soniya fosters adoption and understanding.