A Universal "Hostless" Substrate for a Post-Serverless Future
Key takeaways
- There has been a 60-year progression of server archetecture, and there is one final phase left
- There have been recent advances in cryptography, distributed systems, and web infrastructure
- It is possible can store data and run computation *anywhere*, even on untrusted machines
- Remove the concept of "local development", "production", and "deployment" entirely
The last 60 years has seen the rise and fall of several models of computing: mainframes, private server, shared hosting, containers, and serverless (to name a few). We have one final phase left: "hostless" or universal apps. By leveraging technologies like secure multiparty compute, the content-addressable web, blockchain, and the rise of Wasm, we are seeing the beginnings of a future liberated from specialized providers, acting on a distributed substrate of store and compute. With all this in place, users fully control their own data (and it never touches your servers), deployment is as simple as setting a flag on your local environment, and developers maintain zero infrastructure. Come learn about what is being built today for the next wave of computing, how we evolve past the serverless paradigm, and how it can make life simpler for developers and end users!