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# System prepended metadata

title: Why Build with Holochain?

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# Why Build with Holochain?

> Building with Holochain means you can design truly serverless applications, combining the performance and integrity of server-based applications with the resilience and user empowerment of distributed applications.

Holochain is a smart choice if…

* Your application needs to be accessible in spite of unreliable network conditions and total loss of connectivity.
* You want adaptive security that is immune to massive data breaches and resilient to coordinated attacks.
* You want to see your application scale automatically and cheaply with user adoption.
* You want to meet strong privacy requirements (e.g., GDPR and HIPAA) without much hassle.
* You consider data storage a liability and don’t want to be legally responsible for holding others’ data.
* You want to lead the way in respecting the privacy and agency of your users.
* You want to equip your user communities to own their infrastructure without having to become system admins.
* You’re exploring more ethical business models and want technology that makes it affordable to embody your values.
* You’re ready to trade some control for technology that treats your users with respect.
* You’ve tried blockchain but found it slow, expensive, and hard to tweak for your governance and permissioning needs.

Holochain might not be appropriate if…

* You need strong anonymity guarantees.
* You need to have a complete, consistent overview of all data in the system, including the ordering of events.
* (still working on these)

## [For client/server folks]

### Scalable

Performance scales linearly with new users, because everyone contributes useful compute and storage resources. Your app builds its own infrastructure with each new install. Capacity lives at the edges of the network, right where it’s most useful and accessible—the users’ own devices.

### Resilient

No server means no centralized failure points. Holochain’s core takes care of connecting all the pieces that keep the application alive, from networking and data management to authentication and threat response. Nodes communicate directly with each other using an encrypted protocol, maintaining redundancy and adapting quickly to failures and attacks. Holochain, in short, is built for anti-fragility.

### Empowering

Users are in charge of their identity, data, and infrastructure. Because the app lives entirely in its users’ devices, it’s easy for people and organizations to take ownership of their online activities without any special IT skills. This lets you support your users’ privacy and independence without the hassles of creating regulatory compliance policies or supporting on-premise deployments.

## [For DLT folks]

### Interoperable

Apps live in separate networks but can easily bridge to each other or to the outside world, allowing data sharing and consistent identity. And with an ecosystem of small, versatile, single-purpose Holochain apps, you can combine them together with your app to create new and more robust solutions that take advantage of the collective intelligence of the developer community.

### Evolvable

Holochain supports fast and agile development, letting you create microservices that can be swapped and updated at will. You don’t have to the code or application logic absolutely perfect before launch. You can add or replace code bundles, gradually upgrading components without disruption. Forks are tools again, not weapons.

### Fast and lean

Holochain replaces global consensus with direct peer communication. Users run software on their own devices, replicating only the data they’re interested in and reaching agreement at the speed of the internet. Meanwhile, a sophisticated immune system rapidly identifies and responds to network attacks.

### Flexible

Holochain lets you build your distributed app your way. Blockchain platforms impose one-size-fits-all solutions to consensus, economics, governance, access, resilience, and privacy. But Holochain isn’t a blockchain—it’s a versatile framework for building public, private, and hybrid networks of equal peers. With very few assumptions baked in, you’re free to design your network to suit your needs.