# Octopus Network - tl;dr

Hello and welcome to another episode of TLDR with me, Ben

Today we will be covering the Octopus Network

What is it?

How does it work?

Why Octopus?
- Because their neurons can make decisions without input from the brain making them a decentralized intelligent life form. Yeah! Science!

## Overview

One of the main obstacles to mass adoption of Web3 is a poor User Experience among decentralized applications.

Users may very well want a trustless, permissionless,
and censorship-resistant internet, but they aren't ready to give up good User Experience for it.

If users can't easily figure out how to use a product, or if it looks like it was made to run on Windows 95 does it even matter how good the product's infrastructure is?

One promising solution is creating entire blockchains, or appchains, customized to the needs of a single application or set of applications.
- Think Adobe Creative Suite vs MS Paint or Google Cloud Services vs Notepad.
Through customization, these appchains are able to deliver web3 apps without sacrificing web2 U/X.

But appchain bootstrapping, meaning getting it up and running, is a complex job for developers, to say the least.

That's where Octopus Network comes in. Octopus is a multichain network _designed_ for running appchains.

Octopus does this by providing:
- flexible leased security.
- out-of-the-box interoperability - that's connecting blochains like Ethereum and NEAR together.
- one-stop infrastructure
- and a readily engaged community

## What Does This Mean?

Conventionally, if you wanted to build on Web3, you would build a dApp, which is controlled by smart contracts, and must adhere to all the rules of governance of the chain you're building on.
Blockchain is great, but it's slow and expensive.

Appchains, however, give you all the benefits of a blockchain with the ability to customize entire layers of your infrastructure.

And that means every part is customizable.
From how users access it all the way down to the underlying consensus algorithm.
- You don't have to rely on browser extenetion wallets.
- You can omit gas fees for your users or allow them to pay in a cryptocurrency of their choice.
- You can even use a proof-of-whatever consensus algortithm for your on-chain transactions.

## How Does This Work?

Octopus is essentially a relay network connecting appchain transactions to designated validators in a marketplace-type environment.

### Huh?

Ok, let's do a quick overview of how an appchain actually gets onto the Octopus Network.

If you built an appchain using Substrate, which is a framework for building blockchains and appchains, and want it to anchor to the Octopus Network, you must apply and be voted in by the community.

Once you are an official Octopus appchain, you can take advantage of **Leased Proof-of-Stake**, or **LPoS** to secure your appchain.
- This means an $OCT token holder can choose to work on your appchain's transactions as a **validator** in exchange for rewards in your appchain's native token.
- or they can **delegate** their staked $OCT tokens to a validator, and earn rewards that way.

### Interoperability
Since appchains operate like mini blockchains, they require interoperability.

That's why on Octopus any asset issued on Ethereum, NEAR, or any IBC-enabled blockchain (ibcprotocol.org) can be transferred into, out of, and utilized by Octopus appchains in a trustless manner.
This means your appchain can communicate with other appchains and blockchains out-of-the-box.

## Possibilities

By providing cost-effective leased security, out-of-box interoperability, complete infrastructure, and a community ready to be engaged, Octopus is able to decrease the cost of bootstrapping appchains, which they are confident will unleash the next wave of innovation for crypto-networks and a better Web3 User Experience.

## Conclusions

Thanks again for watching!
Please let me know what you think,
and until next time, I'll see you on chain.

###### tags: `tldr` `content`