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metamask-extension
:globe_with_meridians: :electric_plug: The MetaMask browser extension enables browsing Ethereum blockchain enabled websites
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connectedhomeip
Matter (formerly Project CHIP) creates more connections between more objects, simplifying development for manufacturers and increasing compatibility for consumers, guided by the Connectivity Standards Alliance.
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SurveyJS
Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.
So, if the cost of running a node on a Blockchain is high, then how do we interact with it in our software? How do we actually run these marvelous smart contracts? Well, by delegating access to the Blockchain to a few major players that provide API access to interact with it. Right now, the market is rather consolidating around Infura and Alchemy. Even when it comes to authentication-over-wallet, most of the distributed applications nowadays delegate the task to MetaMask, which already provides integrations with most of the popular wallets out there. MetaMask itself, under the hood, simply routes API calls to Infura.
Looking at things in 2022, we can say that this vision hasn't (yet) become a reality either. Many years down the line, only one third of the traffic on the Internet is IPv6. In countries like Italy and Spain, the adoption rate is less than 4-5%. So NAT-ting is still a thing, with the difference that it has now been largely delegated to a few centralized networks (mainly Google, Apple and Amazon and their ecosystems): so much for the dream of a decentralized Internet of things. And the situation on the protocols side isn't that rosy either. The problem of fragmentation in the IoT ecosystem is well documented. The main actors in this space have built their own ecosystems, walled gardens and protocols. The Matter standard should solve some of these problems, but after a lot of hype there isn't much usable code on it yet, nor usable specifications (2022 should be the year of Matter though, that's what everybody says). Regardless of how successful the Matter project will be in solving the fragmentation that prevents the Internet of things from being an actual thing, it's sobering to look back at how far we've come from the original vision. We initially envisioned a decentralized web of devices, each with its own address, all talking the same protocols, all adhering to the same standards. We have instead ended up with an IoT run over a few very centralized platforms, with limited capabilities when it comes to talking to one another, and the most likely to solution to this problem will be a new standard which hasn't been established by academic experts, ISO or IEEE, but by the same large companies that run the current oligopoly. Again, so much for the dream of a decentralized Internet of things.