⚒️Why Composability Matters

Composability, Decentralized Frontends and why it matters?

What is Composability?

Part of the beauty of decentralization is being able to turn applications and contracts into programmable building blocks. This modularity allows for creative and specialized applications built on top of one or many of these building blocks.

Being modular and interoperable in turn allows others to take blocks from one stack and use these to their advantage within their own application.

Another core tenet of composability is being open and permissionless. For example, to start using the Solana protocol you only need a Solana wallet address and Solana (SOL) to interact with the network.

What are Decentralized Frontends?

When people speak philosophically about the ethos of web3, they speak about how decentralizing platforms with too much control is a core advantage, e.g. censorship in social media.

The smart contracts we build on top of are generally decentralized and permissionless, but the frontends we use are generally NOT. When the developer team behind a decentralized application maintains control of the frontend, their users are not experiencing true decentralization.

Let's use a DEX for example like Uniswap. Uniswap can control what currency pairs are listed and delisted for users to trade even though the assets can still exist on underlying smart contract.

In the case of marketplaces, a large amount of controversy arises around listing collections. OpenSea or MagicEden, for example, can take down a collection that they deem is in violation of their policies. Similarly, these platforms are prone to outages from time to time. In either case, users can no longer openly trade these NFTs and there is no alternative frontend for them, even though the NFT is validly listed on-chain.

We believe it's in the best interest of the space to allow for the creation of decentralized frontends.

Use Cases of Decentralized Frontends

• Project-dedicated NFT Marketplaces - NFT creators or project-based DAOs can provide their community with a customized marketplace experience and capture economics

• Curation - Curators can curate a collection or gallery of listed NFTs and earn marketplace fees for driving NFT sales from their gallery

• Brands / Websites - As more brands and platforms look to layer in NFT commerce experiences into their existing applications, they can more easily monetize their users