Blockstack CEO Muneeb Ali: 'You Don't Need a Blockchain' for All Dapps

Blockstack CEO Muneeb Ali criticized "Most" decentralized apps in the industry during a panel appearance Monday, drawing issue with how they are typically organized today.

At CoinDesk's Consensus 2019 conference, he took aim at the "Architecture" most decentralized apps use these days, arguing that apps across the space are putting too much reliance on blockchains.

That's not to say that blockchains don't have an important role to play in building "Decentralized apps," or forward-looking apps that users don't have to trust with their data.

Who's company is working on a decentralized app platform that recently announced plans to register their upcoming token sale with the U.S. SEC, argued that people are using the blockchain layer "Too much."

"You don't even need blockchains to build decentralized apps at all," he argued.

That's not to say Ali doesn't agree with the idea of decentralizing apps.

Ali pointed to the idea of a "World computer," an influential concept that's floated around the industry for years.

The concept is perhaps most tightly associated with the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, ethereum, though Ali stressed more than once that he is not referencing any one project in particular.

"If you take these concepts to Web3, they completely break down. Global state is absolutely not something we can put on a blockchain, where every new user is slowing everyone else down," Ali asserted.

In that vein, Ali noted that his decentralized app platform Blockstack has been working on its own storage technology, "Gaia storage," which is heavily informed by Ali's research as a computer scientist in that area.