The Lab is Alive!

Check it out! It doesn't look like much now, but it's a Beginning of Infinity for the long arc of the Etherion Project.

It's a Progressive Web App (PWA), which is Google's term for a web app built with native-like features.

Pros:

• No need for any app store. The ubiquity of the web means it'll run on many platforms.
• Visible as an app icon.
• Automatically upgrades to latest, rolling-release style.
• Extremely lightweight, with lightning fast loads.
• Cheap to develop.
• Most or all of the app runs on the client, pushing the compute to the edge of the network. This means hosting costs are pretty much zero. Also, its distributed nature makes it more difficult to censor.
• Capable of being run even when you're disconnected from the network.
• The end user owns the stack it's run on, so they don't have to give up control of their data. More privacy, more secure.

Cons:

• No out-of-box exposure to app store audiences. Must make additional efforts to grow!
• The browser isolates the app for security reasons, so we have limited access to device features.
• Runtime performance is more optimized for native apps.
• PWA features are still undergoing development. Not as mature.

The Lab is the place where the big questions are answered. It's a staging ground for experimentation and prototype construction, helping to definitively reveal bad explanations. It will serve as a place to demonstrate proofs-of-concept, to showcase a small part of the realm of possibilities, and be a target for rapid deploys.

Expanding the definition of what a "release" is, this blog is also a release target! I aim to build a public history of the Project moving forward.

Enjoy! 🍻