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Author: Adeola Oladipupo @ Contributor of PermaDAO

Reviewer: hrocksafdie @ Contributor of PermaDAO

Community Labs has said that its newly launched decentralised source control project is different from others in both the centralised and decentralised space because it fully utilises the attributes of Arweave. The launch is another step it is taking towards bringing the next big wave of end users to the ecosystem.

The Arweave-focused software development company, Community Labs disclosed this in an interview with this reporter shortly after it launched Protocol.Land which it first made public in September when it announced Oases, Lotus and Protocol.Land as initiatives aimed at bringing onboard end users into Arweave. It said it realised that the Arweave ecosystem has the tooling and infrastructure but lacks consumer-focused products.

While Lotus will be the first stablecoin on Arweave and Oases will tokenize and fractionalise property ownership, Protocol.Land will incentivize contributions and solve the problem of every Web3 codebase living in a centrally-governed Web2 environment.

“A project can use a decentralized code repository solution but it’s most likely lacking the permanence that Arweave offers. If they are using a centralized code repository solution, they have to worry about storing their code on a solution that deletes their repo or can revoke their access at any time. The fact that Protocol.Land is built on Arweave makes it so our users never have to worry about either of those problems,” Matt DiRienzo, the CPO at Community Labs told this reporter on Thursday.

In the centralised space, Github houses millions of repositories which is made up of codes for projects both big and small. But GitHub’s contribution to software development over the years has not been without pain points for developers. There have been reports of developers from some countries, including Iran and Syria being prevented from accessing their accounts because of some statutory laws in the jurisdictions GitHub operates. There have also been issues of DMCA take downs, trade control compliance, censorship of GitHub by foreign governments such as China, India, Turkey and Russia.

Protocol.Land operates like a GitHub that is built on Arweave. Powered by Warp Contracts, It has Arweave native git repositories and source control abilities.

“Most importantly, we believe that Arweave is the best blockchain for a code collaboration solution like Protocol.Land. Arweave is built exactly for a use case like Protocol.Land where various types of data can be uploaded and stored permanently without having to worry about censorship resistance,” DiRienzo said.

Reacting to why there was need for another code collaboration and repository application in the Arweave ecosystem and what it offers that others do not, DiRienzo said the biggest difference is Protocol.Land’s simplicity. He argued that while others have a part of their stack which uses Arweave and run their own chains which makes them worried about validators and network issues in addition to running the application, Protocol.Land does not have such complex operation and its team only have to focus on “best in class source control solution without having to also worry about developing and running the underlying network”.

Protocol.Land also highlighted the unique structure of its bounty feature. Projects using Protocol.Land can list bounties in their own repository without using third party tools. The solution also provides a single place to review and pay bounties which makes bounty management easier.

The team said it launched in beta to allow developers the Protocol.Land and give feedback that will help it build a roadmap for the development of the application.

“During beta, there will be a point where the team has enough information to determine what needs to be done to move Protocol.Land to full general availability,” DiRienzo said.