NEAR's Blockchain Operating System: A Beacon of Hope for a Democratic Digital Future?

NEAR announced its transformation into the Blockchain Operating System (BOS), a decentralized UI and frontend for crypto applications. It will give users a seamless experience exploring all the capabilities of web3 while giving developers an easy way to create new dApps through Lego-like interfaces.

Instead of competing with other blockchains, NEAR Protocol is building a decentralized internet by leveraging the strengths of its native blockchain. These include low transaction fees, sharding, high throughput, and robust security.

The BOS will support any blockchain network and Web2 backend, allowing users to switch between blockchains and applications in a breeze via a single-step onboarding process. This will improve user efficiency and convenience while eliminating pain points such as the need to create separate accounts for each activity.

For instance, users will be able to make payments with the same wallet over different blockchains, use decentralized applications, and access any public or private network without leaving the platform. It’s like being able to use a universal remote to control all your media devices – instead of having to switch between a bunch of different remotes, you now have a single, simple-to-use remote that can control them all.

The BOS will allow developers to use smart contracts and blockchain as a decentralized backend and frontend. It will also make their apps highly accessible and secure with high reliability due to its trustless nature.

This is similar to the way that the industrial revolution unlocked the potential for productivity and growth. Through mass production and automation, it provided an efficient and quick way to make products. By dispensing with centralized infrastructure, the BOS is revolutionizing crypto application development, maintenance, and scaling.

Here's how technology evolved to reach this point

The Blockchain Operating System is based on the technology of rendering a frontend directly from smart contracts.

Combining smart contract code with the frontend and blending the frontend and backend logic into one application was how the guys took this technology to the next level. Up to this point, NEAR Social, a social data protocol built on top of NEAR Protocol, has been the most prominent application of the technology.

One of the biggest breakthroughs is that it’s now possible to run Ethereum Smart Contracts on the Blockchain Operating System. For example, you can take the source code of Lido and launch it with frontend and backend on Near Protocol. It's as simple as taking the source code, creating a component, forking it, and you're done.

On top of the system, developers can build decentralized and composable frontends. In this way, they can add built-in features to different components and pieces with no separate hosting needed. As an example, they can develop components for DeFi, or for SocialFi, or they can combine both.

In other words, developers have the ability to create custom dApps with a wide range of functionalities and complex chain interactions between dApps or smart contracts, all while streamlining the development process.

The next step will be the development of plug-ins for existing browsers and perhaps even standalone browsers, à la Brave. Decentralized domain services like the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and Unstoppable Domains will be used instead of traditional domain name system (DNS) providers. The result will be a permissionless, decentralized internet.

The first entry point to blockchain-based decentralized internet

The BOS is similar to Android and iOS in the sense that when they first came out, there were few apps available, but they had SDKs, app-writing guides, and a lot of room for new apps, so mobile development flourished, opening up an enormous market for mobile apps and games.

Over time, this created a vast library of available apps, with unique features and capabilities, revolutionizing the ways we use our devices today. They were initially limited in functionality, but no one doubted they would become the future.

In a similar vein, the BOS is on a trajectory to become a major platform for developers, creating a burgeoning marketplace and unlocking even more growth potential.

The success of this system depends on how it is embraced by developers and the community that will sustain and grow it. What's more important is how users will adopt it. There is perhaps no greater concern as to why users might want to switch from web2 to web3.

Utility-wise, web3 doesn't differ much from web2. There are basically the same products, but only the form is different.

At the time when Android and iOS were nascent, they provided an entirely unique experience in terms of mobile access and internet use. For users, the Blockchain Operating System may not be as exciting as it is for developers.

In other words, it is about end users embracing the crypto's ethos – whether the ability to own and control their data in the decentralized internet is worthwhile enough for them to give up some comfort until web3 matures.

This is similar to switching from a horse and buggy to a car – the newfound sense of speed and possibilities is exciting, but it also requires a learning curve to utilize its full potential.