The TEA Economic Revolution for Developers

This article is probably the only non-technical document in our developer-oriented documentation. But I still want it to be here because it's totally focused on you, our developers. I would like to show you what the TEA economy and Web3 revolution means to you as a developer and what changes you'll experence in the coming years.

To work or not to work, that is the question

I live in Silicon Valley, a place full of tech giants and startups, (and to be honest, also homeless and drug addictions). The biggest dilemma for most developers is whether they should work for a company or make a decent life on my ambitious open-source project?

On one hand, working as a software engineer with an established tech company is well paid, with earnings higher than most lawyers and doctors. The salary is a must-have to live comfortably in Silicon Valley, at least if you don't want to end up homeless. On the other hand, you might have a dream to build some really cool open-source projects but this might end up only earning some donations. This sounds too close to asking for "spare changes?" on the street.

Let's see how Web3 and TEA project can merge these two sides, allowing developers to earn from publishing their code either as standalone apps or as libraries for other developers to use.

API-as-a-Service, you don't need to make a full application

Writing good code and running a successful start-up business are two different skillsets. In fact, running a successful business requires much different skillset than most developers have. This would require having business sense, marketing, networking etc. Simply writing killer code cannot make someone profitable in the current web 2.0 world. That's why most talented developers still have to get hired by one of the tech giants to make a living.

But what if simply writing an API could bring you profit? Yes, just an API, no need to develop a UI or front end: no business development, no backend server mentainance, and still be able to make money. Is it possible?

In web 2.0 no. In Web3 with the TEA project, yes!

This is called API-as-a-Service. Back in the year 2020, we made an early stage demo of the TEA Project. In that demo, we described a use case where Bob wrote a Tensorflow AI code and could make a profit without dealling with anything else. Bob does not need to host his code, and he doesn't need to find customers to load their data to run against his code. He simple uploads his code to the TEA Project, and someone will pay to use it. And he doesn't need to worry about someone else stealing his code because his code doesn't have to be open sourced.

Micropayments and high scalability are key

TEA has an open tokenomics model where no one gets a free lunch. Any actions in the TEA network needs to be paid by someone. No one works for free! Miners get paid through every line of code that runs through their CPU/GPU/TPU, occupies RAM / hard disk space, or transfers data using their network. Developers get paid by every time their code is executed. Consumers need to pay for whatever service they receive. Those micropayments can be done at an extremely low cost. That is one of the major benefits of TEA's layer-2 solution. Compared with ETH, it's almost free, and extremely fast.

Trust and security protect your profit

You don't have to open-source your project if you're uploading it to the TEA Project. Your code can be close-sourced if you don't need to be audited for security reasons. You only need to send your code to the TEA Project where it will be sent to a node's trusted enclave. Your code will be compiled there and run inside the enclave. No one can steal your code, and the execution environment can always be trusted. Any miner can host your code and run it; there's no need to send your code to your clients to run or to maintain a server on your own. All these aspects of the business are handled by the TEA Project. Your profit is protected and guaranteed once your code is selected for use.

Web3 applications are composed of all these smaller API-as-a-Service modules

In web 2.0, you'll have to open-source your code as a library so that other developers can use it for free or by donation in their own project. The unfortunate fact is that open-source contributors earn much less than they possibly could by going the donation route. In the TEA Project, all these components are just API functions, running inside one or more mining machines. Applications don't include this code in its own binary, but directly call these APIs and are paid for its usage by the billing system. The code developer gets paid in TEA tokens from the billing system periodically.

Pay by use is the new business model

Just like today's internet is a large set of links to different webpages hosted on different servers, Web3 applications would also consist of a bunch of links to different API calls underneath the facade of the app. The full application could be composed by thousands of those smaller components that are written by different developers. They're all linked instead of included (as in open-source libraries). Pay by use becomes the new business model.

The model encourage developers to work on their own projects instead of feeling forced to join a big tech firm so that they can afford to live in comfortably. They can make a decent living without the hassle of running a full business. Simply write good code, join the TEA Project, and get paid. Enjoy your life and happy coding!