Is it possible to have the entire front-end of a distributed app (dApp) living entirely on-chain, forever? If so, we’re talking about a game-changer for developers in cost savings and third-party risk mitigation. React Onchain is the latest offering from scalable blockchain “serial entrepreneur” Dan Wagner, who described it as “the next logical step in a truly decentralized web.”
React Onchain is suitable for static/landing pages, simple apps, project docs and wikis, and more modern framework applications. It “works with React, Vue, Svelte, or vanilla JS. If it has an index.html file, you can deploy it.” It’s also 100% open source, features one-command deployment, and costs virtually nothing to use.
Bonus: it can even do streaming video. More on that below.
The state of app front-ends today
“Front-end as a service” platforms like Vercel, Netify, and AWS provide app developers with simple, easy-to-deploy solutions for distributed apps of any size. However, they also introduce the same kinds of problems associated with other centralized hosting options.
Online content of all types has, for years now, been coalescing into corporate silos that give ultimate control to those who own the data centers. They can fail, shut down, or alter their payment terms. They can be pressured into censoring content deemed undesirable for an ever-expanding list of reasons. App developers and content creators live at their mercy, wagering their existence on the platform’s continued ability to continue the subscription (and their own continued ability to pay for it).
Yes, they all come with free/hobbyist tiers for small apps and developers trying out new ideas. But if an app takes off, that scaling is going to cost big bucks in recurring monthly fees.
Scalable blockchain networks like BSV, which offer massive data processing/throughput at high speed and low cost, offer a promising alternative. That’s promising, as in US$0.01 to deploy initially, and then almost nothing. Wagner ran through a list of React Onchain’s costs and similar advantages in a Medium post recently, saying, “When hosting is effectively free and permanent, new use cases emerge.”
React Onchain uses a combination of OrdFS, B Protocol, and 1Sat Ordinals—all on the scalable BSV blockchain, running on the Bitcoin protocol’s original rules for transaction processing. Version history and tracking are possible without centralized registries or databases. It has a complete dependency analyzer that creates a topological graph of dependences and inscribes each file in the correct sequence, rewriting internal references so they point to the files’ exact locations on-chain.
The one-cent calculation is based on a full-production 200KB app with routing, state management, API calls, and animations. As long as there are still mining nodes processing Bitcoin (BSV) transactions, it will run forever at no additional cost.
“It’s about true permanence. Once inscribed, the application exists as an immutable artifact on the blockchain.”
Streaming video on-chain too? Sure, why not
Now, about that streaming video capability: yes, it’s even possible to do this on-chain. Wagner described a 50MB video split across dozens of inscriptions. His service worker takes care of HTTP range requests on the client-side, allowing zero-memory streaming where “data flows directly from blockchain to video player without buffering.” Like React Onchain itself, there’s no server required, and the content is permanent. There’s a demonstration of this here, and it will even handle 4K.
“React Onchain is a Web3 native solution for deployments,” Wagner told CoinGeek. “Things like Vercel make deployment easy and cheap, but it’s centralized. Something like React Onchain is the logical next step in a truly decentralized web. It’s low cost, fast, and deployments are permanent.”
“Assuming content providers that are running Bitcoin nodes continue to exist and can scale/add new functionality that compete with modern deployment systems/hosting solutions, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that on-chain deployments are the norm within the next 5-10 years.”
Wagner has created several other popular projects on BSV over the years, including gaming platform Haste Arcade, the Web3 digital asset wallet Yours Wallet, on-chain image storer 4EVERLY, and MNEE CLI (a command-line interface for the MNEE stablecoin). His creative exploration of new use cases for scalable blockchain is producing real-world results that are instantly accessible to both experienced developers and inexperienced users.
Watch: BSV blockchain turns developers’ vision into reality
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Source: https://coingeek.com/react-onchain-distributed-apps-at-minimal-cost/
