Essentia is a new project that aims to make the use of decentralized web, including blockchains, easy for everyday users and consumers. This is a noble goal in and of itself – today, more than ever, we need power back in the hands of the users and away from the large corporations like Facebook and Google. Users should be able to control how they share their data, their identity, and how they reveal it to third-parties. This should not just be scooped up by third parties without user consent. The decentralized web helps users take power back. However, it is still a challenge for ordinary people to use.
The cryptocurrency and crypto-asset movement is one aspect of this decentralization movement. Crypto lets users interact and transfer value among themselves without relying on trusted third parties. With projects like Blockstack, the movement towards apps honoring data that the users provide and nothing more is upon us already.
The Value of Essentia
Essentia wants to play a part in this future. Essentia helps users access this whole decentralized world through a single point of entry, via the Essentia ID. This is a powerful user experience tool, and can help spur adoption of these technologies as real alternatives to the web today.
The way to think about Essentia is as follows – it generates and hold a seed or key for you, which is then used to sign into any number of different decentralized applications. Therefore, if you hold an Essentia ID, for example, it can generate a public-private keypair for Ethereum for you in a deterministic manner from your key, i.e. your ID. You can then use this to send and receive Ether on the Ethereum blockchain.
Another powerful aspect of this design is the ability to port over and interoperate. Since everything flows from the seed, it is easy to recreate everything on the user side. This happens without needing to trust third parties. Such a design architecture is especially appealing for better user experience.
Essentia Today and Beyond
Already, the team has created several integrations into the decentralized world. The users of the platform can start using those today. Already, many of the largest projects that the crypto community would likely use in the future are compatible with Essentia. These include Ethereum for smart contracts, Bitcoin for value transfer, IPFS for storage, and Mysterium for VPS-like services. It also integrates with other popular services like Status and Akasha in the future.
With these types of integrations, Essentia can become the single point of entry into the decentralized web. There is a high switching cost for ordinary users, but this is now lowered. It can be like the ‘browser’ into this world, where once you sign into it, you can just magically access this whole world. The ugly technical details are abstracted away. The user only sees and uses their services. Behind the scenes though, Essentia integrates with all these services, and provides full control to the user.
In the future, for the vision of true decentralized web is to be possible, the user experience side is going to become increasingly important. We have dreamed of humans and machines working together on the blockchain. Essentia is a first step towards realizing this future.
You can learn more about this project, check out the website. There may be a token sale in the future. If you decide to participate, be very sure to read the whitepaper and only put in what you’re willing to lose. All token sales are extremely risky and you can lose your entire principal.
Photo Credit: Andrea Kirkby