Archway: The Future of Sustainable dApps
Archway is on a mission to create perpetual funding for developers to build impactful dApps.
Archway is a layer 1 blockchain on a mission to support sustainable and impactful dapps by creating equal access to capital for all developers through funding mechanisms built directly into the network.
A gloomy reality of the present web3 landscape is that the most popular dapps aren’t always the most innovative or impactful. In truth, they are usually the most funded and connected.
dApp developers have to balance between building truly impactful applications and appeasing investors because, without funding, most dApps never see the light of day.
Unfortunately, access to start-up capital for dApps is not as equal or democratized as the blockchain networks they are built on. Some developers get funding, others don’t.
Developers that rely on funding from investors and grants are often subjected to requirements and restrictions that may not be in line with their vision. In the end, developers either appeal to VCs (which may involve compromise) or create inflationary governance tokens that have no value, aside from voting, to fund development. Sometimes, both.
This is where Archway comes in
What problem does Archway Solve?
Archway is a smart-contract enabled, PoS blockchain built using the Cosmos SDK that allows developers to build cross-chain dapps that can send and receive data across the Cosmos ecosystem.
Archway allows developers to achieve self-sustenance by providing the infrastructure and economic model that rewards developers from transaction fees generated by their dapps.
In essence, a portion of the transaction fees generated from using a dapp is redirected back to the developers as rewards, creating a perpetual source of funding.
How does Archway Reward Developers?
Archway leverages three built-in functionalities to reward developers. They include:
Gas rebates
Traditional proof-of-stake blockchains reward validators with a fraction of transaction fees to incentivize them to maintain the security of the network. They end up burning the remainder to maintain a buy pressure.
Archway, on the other hand, will split transaction fee proceeds between validators and dapps developers. At the genesis of the main net, the distribution proportion will be 50/50, but this can change with time.
The rebates essentially pay developers roughly 50% of the transaction fees their dapps generate. These proceeds are proportional to the volume of fees generated, so the more fees generated, the larger the kickback.
The goal is to incentivize devs to build applications that create long-term value which goes hand-in-hand with Archway’s mission.
Inflationary rewards
Crypto coins can either be inflationary (without a supply cap e.g ATOM) or deflationary (with a supply cap e.g BTC).
Archway’s coin will be inflationary with a yearly target between 7% — 20%. The newly minted coins will be split 75/25 between validators and dApp developers. The developer pool will be distributed based on their percentage contribution to gas fees within an epoch.
Each dApp has a cap on the rewards it can receive. This cap is based on the total gas fees generated from its activities within an epoch.
Smart contract fee premiums
As smart contract technology improves, dapps can be programmed with custom back-end functions, some of which come at an extra gas cost.
Archway allows developers to integrate the cost of extra backend or infrastructure services into gas fees estimates, essentially creating different fee tiers.
For example, accessing a backend storage function will have a different gas fee than using a swap function within the same dapp. So when end-users use a specific service within a dapp that requires an extra backend service, they are charged within the transaction fee tier for that specific transaction.
Archway’s infrastructure allows developers to lump these custom fees into a total gas cost paid only once, improving user experience.
Other benefits of Archway
Access to the interchain
By building an IBC-enabled proof-of-stake blockchain, Archway allows developers to deploy CosmWasm smart contracts that work on all chains in the Cosmos ecosystem. This way, developers can deploy cross-chain dapps that create value for an ever-growing ecosystem.
Developers who cannot run custom blockchains can utilize Archway to run dapps or live test their models before employing more resources to build a custom blockchain.
Gasless transactions
Anyone who has used Ethereum knows how steep and inconvenient gas fees could be, and while newer chains like Solana have low gas fees, they can still add up for high-frequency users.
Developers on Archway can subsidize gas fees or eliminate them by drawing on funds from a pool to pay for gas fees. And because developers get gas rebates and inflationary rewards, they can fund this gas pool perpetually.
The future of web3 is interoperable, sustainable, and impactful, and Archway is one of the projects eager to spearhead sustainable web3 business models.
For more detailed breakdowns of the technologies that make up Archway, read their litepaper or their documentation.
Also, plug into the community using their links: Discord, Twitter, Official website.
