Overview

➤ What is Canopy?

💡ELI5 with History

Imagine you're the boss in charge of making the best architecture for the new decentralized internet.

Engineer 1 wants to connect a bunch of blockchains together (e.g., Tendermint & Avalanche).

Engineer 2 realizes blockchains are really hard to launch and creates one 'builder chain' that makes new blockchain apps (e.g., Ethereum & Solana).

Engineer 3 realizes that just one 'builder chain' is fragile and makes each new blockchain app act as a builder chain too (e.g., Canopy).

Canopy is 2️⃣ things

1. A recursive framework to build blockchains.

2. The first decentralized network to host those blockchains.

Canopy offers developers the benefits of all blockchain layers in a single, easy to understand, framework.

Canopy seeds the layerless future with the first recursive security root: a decentralized network that allows new projects to launch like a smart contract but grow into a fully independent L0 to host future projects.

Want to dive deeper? Check out What is Canopy?

➤ Why use Canopy?

💡ELI5 with Web2

• Canopy is like bitTorrent for blockchain security. It enables blockchains to deploy and seed each other—creating an unstoppable mesh of connected chains that provide utility and security.

• Canopy is like react for blockchains. Simply fork the template at https://github.com/canopy-network/canopy, customize as needed, change the config file and have a blockchain 'out-of-the-box'.

• Canopy is like aws for blockchains. You can 'deploy' your blockchain on Canopy's mesh security network to have experienced node runners 'host' your chain while protecting it from hostile takeovers.

• Canopy is like kubernetes for blockchains. You can 'scale' your blockchain by spawning siblings or children chains.

• Canopy is like wordpress for blockchains. Canopy allows your blockchain to start simple like 'managed hosting' within the decentralized network - but go fully independent and sovereign like 'self hosting' at any time.

• Canopy is like a smart rpc client for blockchains. Canopy hooks to the APIs of other blockchains to perform cross-chain functionality like token swaps without any update to the 3rd party.

• ✅ All the benefits of L2 / Rollup / dApp

  • Day 1 security

  • Quick to market

  • Immediate ecosystem

  • No funding required

• ✅ All the benefits of L0 / L1

  • Independent scalability

  • Native security

  • No dependencies

  • Self governance

• 🚀And some new stuff

  • No-code chain migration ( L3 → L2 → L1 → L0 )

  • Recursive L⁰ functionality (C1 → C2 → C3 → C1 )

  • Scale up, down and sideways ( expand parallel L1a ⫘ L1b | cross-layer L1 → L2 )

  • Permissionless interoperability with any chain ( C1 ↔ Eth, Cosmos, Avax, etc. )

  • + more ( instant liquidity | automatic portfolio diversification | enhanced chain security )

Want to learn about the benefits? Checkout Why Canopy?

➤ What to expect out of these docs?

• 📖 A single 'wiki' for all things Canopy

  • Learn about the 'what' and 'why' of Canopy

  • Learn how Canopy works

  • Learn how to get involved

    • Build a chain

    • Run a node

    • Participate with CNPY

New to blockchain? No problem! Start at Blockchain 101 👈