Ten Thousand Words | Why the Web3.0 Revolution Will Happen in China?

Author ｜ Luo Yihang

Email | tluo@pingwest.com Since the 1990s, China has never actively or passively missed any wave of new technological revolution, whether it is mobile Internet or new energy vehicles, or whether it is artificial intelligence or automatic drive. Of course, it also includes the most popular Web3.0. Given that the argument that "Web 3.0 has nothing to do with China" has been quite popular recently, if you believe or agree with it, there are only three possibilities: 1. Your daily work and life have nothing to do with Web 3.0; 2. What you do in the name of Web3.0 has nothing to do with China; 3. You have nothing to do with China. There is a popular saying that those who venture into Web 3.0 in China have all gone to Singapore, and a small number have gone to Miami. Since the mining and trading of cryptocurrencies were banned in China, the soil where Web 3.0 thrives in China has disappeared. up. What's the point of digital assets (tokens) without cryptocurrencies? If digital assets (token) lose their meaning, where does the blockchain come from? If the blockchain is not established, how can there be Web3.0? This kind of logic seems to be transparent, but it actually confuses the difference between the blockchain technology that the next-generation World Wide Web (Web) relies on and the blockchain technology that supports the issuance of Bitcoin in the most critical concepts from the very beginning; it also confuses The difference between the essence of Internet economics and the appearance of monetary finance of smart contracts and digital assets. ——On December 20, 1990, Tim-Berners-Lee, a particle physicist known as the "Father of the World Wide Web", released the first website in human history: European Nuclear Research The home page of the meeting. However, it was not the homepages of scientific research institutions or professors that built the first decade of the human commercial Internet world, but hundreds of global news media websites and search engine. ——On August 23, 1999, Evan Williams (Evan Williams) released Blogger, which is the first platform that allows people to build personal blogs, and allows users to comment and interact with bloggers. The beginning of Web2.0. However, the blog soon became an unimportant tool. In 2007, Williams participated in the founding of Twitter. With Zuckerberg of Facebook and his Chinese counterparts on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, they started a social network, video tool, and personality. The gateway to the new world of e-commerce and Internet life services. ——On October 31, 2008, a mysterious person who called himself "Satoshi Nakamoto" invented Bitcoin and applied the blockchain network design for the first time. People quickly realized that blockchain could be used to carry out all kinds of criminally thrilling financial adventures. In 2013, Ethereum was born as the blockchain platform Ethereum, which is the native cryptocurrency. Thousands of "alternative coins" have emerged on it, setting off a "gold rush" crazier than the West Coast of the United States in the 1850s. gold rush. However, the consensus algorithm created by the distributed network transmission technology and the blockchain formed by the chain structure, as the basic structure of the next generation of the World Wide Web (Web3.0), can breed more application scenarios based on information networks: Web3.0 games have already Seeing the first scale, IBM's currency-free blockchain is helping it return to the throne of enterprise-level services, and fields such as medical care, logistics, real estate transactions, and trade are also exploring what Web3.0 will bring to them. This is the premise for us to discuss that Web3.0 has nothing to do with China, and how China is deeply involved in the Web3.0 information technology revolution. Those who wish to continue discussing the future and destiny of alternative currencies in China can now turn around and leave this article.

1. Discussion on the essence of Web3.0: China's perspective

The currently popular and generally accepted interpretation and description of the evolution and transformation from Web1.0 to Web2.0 and then to Web3.0 comes from Messari, a blockchain database and research institution in New York, and its researcher Eshita wrote in "Web3.0, In a nutshell "In the article, the characteristic of defining Web1.0 is "readable" (read); the characteristic of Web2.0 is "readable + writable" (read+write); the characteristic of Web3.0 is "Readable + writable + owned" (read+write+own). This is a description from the user's point of view. It seems to have grasped the Internet's increasingly interactive and personalized evolution context, and also grasped the essence of all information and transactions circulating through the Web3.0 network with the attribute of "digital assets". However, it is not a precise conceptual description of Web1.0, Web2.0 and Web3.0. In the era of Web 1.0, people can not only read, but also write on the Internet. In addition to submitting articles to news portals or being invited as website columnists, BBS is the square where netizens can "write" in that era. In the era of Web 2.0, more people can "write", but this is not the most important change. People become nodes that interact with each other on the Internet, and become individuals with specific identities and images. Expressing, interacting, acquainting, and freer and more flexible transactions based on individual identities are the keys to this transformation. In the era of Web3.0, through encrypted hash, time stamp and transaction data, the "writable" of every person and every institution on the chain network has become a digital asset and an encrypted digital contract, which has far-reaching significance. Beyond "owning" itself. This report by Messari, a blockchain research organization, lacks an understanding of the past history of the human Internet, especially the lack of understanding of providing services and transactions through the Internet other than the "information Internet", which makes it even better. Blockchain and Web3.0 itself.

Photo source: The title of "Silicon Valley" has an understanding of the essence of Web1.0 to Web3.0, which might as well jump out of the cognition of the United States. The United States is a country with a highly developed cultural content and financial industry and a dominant position in the world, which is also reflected in its Internet development history: Yahoo and PayPal in the Web1.0 era, YouTube and Stripe in the Web2.0 stage, Netflix/Gamify and Block/Coinbase, etc., which are being Web3.0, are both sides of the United States' strong export of Internet content and finance. Compared with the United States, the development of China's Internet has more tool attributes for transforming the infrastructure of the physical world and integrating the development of the real economy, which can also help us form our own cognitive framework for Web1.0 to Web3.0—especially for Web3 .0 cognitive framework: Web1.0 is the "Internet of Information". In the early days of the commercial Internet, receiving, transmitting, and publishing information were the main purposes and scenarios for humans to use the Internet. News websites, search engines, BBS communities, advertising publishing stations (eg Craiglist), chat rooms, and online games in their original state are all tools and platforms with distinctive information attributes. At that time, there was a popular saying that "no one knows you are a dog" on the Internet. The ambiguity, uncertainty, and dynamic change of a person's online identity are important features of Web1.0. Even if you send money to a friend via PayPal, or shop with the early days of Amazon and eBay, your ID only points to a residential address or bank account and has little to do with who you are. Therefore, in the "information Internet" stage, the various "accounts" that a person registers on the website are of little value. Web2.0 is the "Internet of Identity". With the advent of blogging and social networking, "who" people are on the Internet has become important. Labels such as gender, nationality, region, occupation, education level, hobbies, and lifestyle have become part of the accounts we register on social networks, video sites, shopping platforms, and even online car-hailing software in a rigid or flexible manner. The matching degree of dating apps, public feedback on opinions expressed on social networks, the effect of online celebrity live streaming, and patients' evaluation of doctors' online consultations are all closely related to "who you are". An identity that is close to "real" will bring more direct results and benefits to people who have behavioral trajectories on the Internet. And a person's behavior trajectory on the Internet also potentially constitutes a part of "identity", which is used by recommendation engine algorithms to recommend articles, videos, friends, products, and even online car-hailing drivers that they are more looking forward to. All online behaviors are socialized . People know whether you are a person or a dog, and so do algorithms. And Web3.0 is the "Internet of Contracts". The "identity" of Internet users, through the distributed file transmission and storage system composed of encrypted hash and time stamp, will be strengthened as never before, and can even be traced back to birth certificates, academic registration, business registration and professional qualification certification issued by the government. Information, encrypted and solidified by "stamping", can only be added and cannot be tampered with. A series of network behavior tracks based on the user's "identity", such as the release of pictures, texts and videos, online shopping records, bulk transactions, utility bills, commercial contracts, forensic evidence collection, production and supply chain process links, etc., will be passed through each "identity" The asset certificate (token) and smart contract operation of "identity" are clearly recorded and stamped, and even automatically promoted by the smart contract. It makes the "truth" no longer have the opportunity to be artificially shaped. A person or organization's identity and behavior track are truly recorded, and the contract with other parties is systematically advanced and cannot be tampered with. The next-generation World Wide Web with blockchain as the infrastructure not only enables users to confirm ownership by digitally mapping digital assets or physical assets with "tokens", but also clearly fixes the contractual relationship corresponding to "ownership". Looking at the evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0 from the above perspective, it is not difficult to find that it is the evolution process of a user's "identity" from abstract to concrete, from useless to useful, from a reference symbol to a contract system. The essence of Web3.0 is "Contract Economics". "Contract economics" is an ancient discipline, which aims to study how economic subjects solve the problem of information asymmetry through specific contractual arrangements. It belongs to the same category of "information economics" as the popular "Freecomics" (Freecomics) 15 years ago, and the former is the reaction of the latter. The blockchain Internet is the soil for the revitalization of contract economics: it no longer emphasizes the freedom of users to come and go and enjoy all Internet services for free brought by the early Internet, but instead emphasizes the hidden business and benefits of every user and every network behavior. Monetary value, and these implicit commercial and monetary values are protected by smart contracts concluded through the blockchain network. Looking at the long-term timeline, Web3.0 will be reflected in any human business behavior that needs to use the blockchain network to generate value and consolidate contractual relationships.

Let’s take a look at the essence of Web3.0 “contract economics” and what it means to China— in the period of Web1.0 “information Internet”, China is an out-and-out follower. In the Web2.0 "identity Internet" stage, China has gradually become a major Internet business force in the world, and even surpassed the United States in some fields. A series of network business forms that are deeply integrated into the real economy and solve the contradictions of China's unbalanced and inadequate development, such as logistics and logistics services, have achieved a geometric leap in commercial value through the identification of user "identities" and algorithm optimization. In the Web3.0 "Internet of Contract" era, China's highly digitalized real economy and commercial formats continue to develop, while contractual trust and protection of rights and interests between commercial organizations and consumers, as well as commercial organizations, are still prominent sticking points. It requires a technology system that is less likely to be artificially shaped, more just and more automated, and bridges the gap between development and trust, thereby creating brighter businesses, better consumption and more solid individual value. And the more large, complex, diverse and complete the business and social form of the industrial chain system is, the more it needs such a "contract"-based technology base, such as China.

2. The falsification of "decentralization": China's role

Some people say that an important feature of Web3.0 is the "decentralization" effect brought about by the distributed file transmission and storage blockchain network. For example, "Decentralized Finance" (De-Fi, Decentralinzed Finiance), which was born based on the application of blockchain in cryptocurrency, means that people can "freely" exchange currencies without the participation of banks and governments, so as to realize the trust of the government and the government. Decentralization of the banking regulatory system. Another concept derived from this is "DAO", which is the abbreviation of "Decentralized Autonomous Organization" (Decentralized Autonomous Oranization), which is the collaborative behavior of co-creation, co-construction, co-governance, and sharing spontaneously generated by a group that has reached a consensus. Many people who hold this idea believe that China is a country that believes in the principle of "centralization" in both social and business governance, and does not have the theoretical and practical soil for "decentralization". The severe ban on cryptocurrencies is a typical example of China's promotion of "centralized" governance. Therefore, whether it is in finance or other areas of business and social life, it is difficult for Web3.0 based on the blockchain to truly become a reality. Therefore, Web3.0 has nothing to do with China.

This logic seems reasonable, and it also caters to the secret psychology of some cryptocurrency enthusiasts who have been expelled from mainland China to stand on the sidelines or gloat, and it is a good material for popular articles. However, if we have some basic understanding of human history—even human Internet history, we will find that these people’s understanding of “decentralization” has been a skyscraper built on sand dunes from the very beginning. The first generation of the World Wide Web (Web 1.0) invented by Tim-Berners-Lee itself is the product of the ideal of "decentralization" of human beings, and it also relies on the "consensus" of human beings. The "World Wide Web Consortium" (W3C), initiated by Berners-Lee in 1994, is itself a "consensus organization" dedicated to promoting the development of new standards to promote compatibility and agreement among industry members. The contribution of the World Wide Web to mankind, from motivation to result, points to the decentralization of information construction rights. At that time, what could be better than building a website or homepage, linked together with hypertext links, to check and balance the discourse hegemony of broadcasters, TV stations, newspapers and publishing houses? However, the "decentralization" experiment of the early World Wide Web quickly turned to its opposite: a group of portals and vertical professional websites with media attributes, such as America Online, Yahoo, PChome and Sina, etc., formed a super entrance that devoured Internet traffic . And soon after, the traffic and influence of these super websites had to rely on the weight ranking given by more powerful portal websites—search engines such as Google and Baidu. The ideal of "decentralization" of the early Internet was bit by bit eaten away by business giants. Therefore, when blogs (Blog) as a distribution center for personal voice expression, and early social networks such as Friendster and MySpace came out in the name of "Web 2.0" at the beginning of this century, whether it is their self-promotion or user expectations , all point to the "decentralization" of independent creation, independent comments, voting with feet, interactive sharing and mutual connection. At the first Web 2.0 Summit held in San Francisco in October 2004, the concepts of "harnessing the wisdom of crowds" and "decentralization" were frequently proposed as the hallmark features of Web 2.0. Who dares to say that Wikipedia is not a go-to What about the large-scale knowledge database that is centralized and freely edited by users? Who can deny that users will not have more freedom to express, share, and connect on Facebook and Twitter, which are belatedly coming in the future? Those who are desperately advocating and rendering People with the rose-colored vision of "decentralization" of Web3.0 may have accurately removed the heroic declaration about how to achieve "decentralization" of Web2.0 more than 10 years ago that remained in their brain memory; of course, this It may be related to the fact that some Web3.0 radical participants are too young. What happened later in Web2.0 is clear to everyone: Facebook and Twitter have become a testing ground for a few people’s super will and a black box for recommendation algorithms, including of course China’s Some content and social products. And life services based on social, geographical location and identity attributes, such as Uber and Didi, also use recommendation algorithms to look down on their users from the "God's perspective". They are the new Internet "central nodes" and also Nurturing and nurturing new centralized users. The history is like this, how should we believe in the "decentralization" ideal of Web3.0 advocates and practitioners? After all, the history of the human Internet for more than 30 years is a technological Idealists open a new chapter in the prophecy that "the heaven is dead, and the heaven shall stand", speculators with ulterior motives and realists with no expression take advantage of it, and finally become the new "heaven" together. The history of the cycle law is ruthlessly subverted by the next generation of "yellow sky ". Unfortunately, the current Web3.0 world has entered the stage where speculators with ulterior motives and unscrupulous realists carefully disintegrate "decentralization" It has not had time to bring any real value to the "contract economy" outside of cryptocurrency. Perhaps no one can deny that the legendary Satoshi Nakamoto is a technological idealist. The Bitcoin he invented The currency system has indeed established an unprecedented "decentralized" currency transaction and issuance autonomous system, as well as a "consensus" algorithm based on the "mining" proof-of-work mechanism. The Ethereum that was born later also seems to be very good has inherited and developed this system and consensus algorithm. However, in the past 10 years, cryptocurrencies have emerged one after another, but what consensus have they established? In addition to realizing the decentralization of free issuance and trading "currency", let The mining, distribution, trading, and warrants of cryptocurrencies seem to run in a decentralized manner on a distributed blockchain computer network. What does it bring to more people? How much of this radical decentralized financial game? Participants participated in "community building" by voting in the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), and really defended their own wealth? When "decentralization" becomes a "righteous" way for a few people to obtain wealth that originally belonged to more people "name", and a technical tool that is popular through distributed block network computing and storage, we can no longer combine the "decentralized" technical path with some idealistic human social concepts that it once contained. Confuse. As a social ideal, "decentralization" has appeared many times in the history of the human Internet, and it does not exist at all. Those advocates of "decentralization" of Web3. A large number of bitcoins have been dug up. They are likely to control more than 50% of the Bitcoin in the blockchain world, and have the ability to form the central node of fact by organizing more than 50% of the hash rate of the Bitcoin network, above any "consensus", and Bitcoin The future fate of the system will largely depend on the moral sense of this small group of people. Those advocates of Web3.0 "decentralization" may not be willing to explain at all: how the blockchain cryptocurrency project Solana, which is supported by the venture capital giant a16z, was developed on the blockchain from the beginning The core node, and its verifier needs to pledge 1 million US dollars equivalent "Solana coin" (SOL) to carry out blockchain verification, and requires a lot of computing resources, resulting in very few participants joining the consensus verification, making Solana has almost become a blatantly "centralized" public chain-it also proves this by its ultra-high performance and ultra-high downtime beyond Ethereum. Those advocates of Web 3.0 "decentralization" may be more ashamed to admit: they add "consensus mechanisms" based on consistent validity rules, in most cases, because they have a good understanding of the hash and code on the blockchain. How it works is actually unknown. They participate in a consensus that they don't know how to participate in, and become the harvested. And the Elon Musk-like characters' "carrying goods" on social media for a certain cryptocurrency is largely the only basis for their decision to accept this "consensus". The popularity of "social standard" through cryptocurrency does not necessarily bring about the centralization of computing power and technology, but it will definitely bring about the centralization of influence and beneficiaries. It’s time to disenchant “decentralization” again. Only when we realize that the "decentralization" idealism of the inventor of the blockchain has been disintegrated to pieces by the flood of speculators, can we calmly accept a future of Web 3.0 based on realism—— On a "centralized" blockchain network controlled by core nodes, "decentralized" distributed ledgers and encrypted hashes are used to protect the digital property rights and commercial values between different economic entities from infringement, and Shaping their mutual contractual relationship - this should also be the role played by the Chinese government, enterprises and social organizations in the Web 3.0 wave. China's participation has removed the fundamentalist elements of Web3.0's "decentralization" and endowed it with a stronger color of technological neutralism, making it more effective through "decentralization" technical means to serve complex business chains, Social systems and transaction contracts. "Centralization" is a part of the Chinese cultural tradition, and it is also a deep element embedded in the social structure and commercial structure, but it does not prevent the "decentralized" cells from growing on the nerve endings of this body. After all, the wise emperors of the feudal dynasties in China knew a truth: only by dispersing the land to more people to occupy and cultivate, and to cultivate various crops that can be traded, instead of allowing the land to be annexed by a few people, the court can confiscate more. Centralization of power can be more indestructible. The 14-year technical practice of the blockchain has also verified a fact that is close to the truth: the absolute "decentralization" of computing nodes is the natural enemy of operational efficiency and scalability— more precisely, decentralization, efficiency / An "impossible triangle" is formed between scalability and security, and one must be sacrificed to take both into account. Well, in China, a long-term pursuit of business and social efficiency and regards it as a virtue, it is committed to applying blockchain technology to a wider range of business and social contract scenarios, rather than a group of people quietly observing some kind of cryptocurrency transaction. What do we care most about the countries in the process of flow? If an "alliance" is established on a relatively centralized blockchain network of a computing node, on the premise that there are laws, regulations and supervision to participate in "centralized" governance and become the greatest consensus, the efficiency and interaction of transactions, contracts and mutual linkages will be realized. Maximizing safety, what is unacceptable? In other words, rather than pretending to be "decentralized" on a "centralized" blockchain like Solana to establish various exchanges and issue tokens, accepting a majestic centralized alliance chain to create more actual value, is right Is it a good deal for the Chinese government, organizations, commercial institutions and consumers?

3. On the Inevitability of "Demonetization": China's Choice

Putting aside the fundamental myth about "decentralization" and endowing the blockchain technology behind it - or Web3. path, and its relational mapping and substantial break with the previous two generations of the World Wide Web. Web3.0 websites or applications generally adopt the IPFS (Interplanetary File System) invented in 2014 - it is a network transmission protocol designed to create persistent and distributed storage and shared files, and it is also a content-addressable object And other hypermedia distribution protocols, that is, the nodes in the IPFS network will form a distributed file system, and the data will be split into dozens of smaller data, distributed and stored in dozens of different servers, even if one server is down It does not affect other storage. This is also the principle of "decentralization" in the technical implementation of Web3.0. The first two generations of the World Wide Web used the HTML protocol invented in the early 1990s, which retrieved data from a centralized data storage center and generated static or dynamic web pages through protocol standards. In this sense, you can even think that IPFS is the real "second generation World Wide Web" (Web2.0). This is undoubtedly a breakthrough in technological evolution. If we look at some technical keywords about Web3.0, it is not difficult to find their mapping relationship with the previous two generations of the World Wide Web, which will help us understand what a sound Web3.0 should look like——

"Chain" ≈ operating system Any "chain" is composed of blocks, which are responsible for storing information, connected into chains in the order of generation time, and stored in the server (node). Each "chain" - Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, etc., can be regarded as the "operating system" of Web1.0 and Web2.0. The project "on-chain" is a software or APP running on an operating system. The "public chain" is like Windows or Android, as long as the basic agreement and "consensus" are followed, applications can be uploaded. The "alliance chain" is more like Apple's iOS system, and the project needs to undergo stricter review and follow a stronger centralized "consensus". "Smart Contract" ≈ TCP/IP + API "Smart Contract" is a computing protocol that propagates, verifies, or executes a contract, allowing for traceable, irreversible, and immutable trusted transactions without a third party. As a protocol, the reference objects that can be mapped by "smart contracts" are the "TCP/IP protocol" of Web1.0 and the "API protocol" of Web2.0, which guarantee the transmission of information between different networks and the data call across applications. However, smart contracts have stronger economic properties of service contracts and transactions, and their traceability, immutability and irreversibility are not available in the previous two generations of the World Wide Web - after all, it is easy to interrupt network transmission and close data retrieval permissions thing. "Scenario"/Dapp ≈ website, desktop software + mobile APP The application "scenario" on the blockchain is also called "Dapp" (distributed application) by some people, which is equivalent to the website and desktop software in the Web1.0 era And mobile applications (APP) in the Web2.0 era. Distributed applications and scenarios based on Web3.0 can be accessed through browsers and specific mobile apps. The current mainstream Web3.0 application scenarios are undoubtedly the endless cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges issued on various public chains, as well as the application of digital asset non-homogeneous tokens (NFT). You have to admit that Web3.0 is the next-generation World Wide Web infrastructure that most seamlessly integrates with money, assets, transactions, and finance. Why is Web 3.0 becoming a breeding ground for cryptocurrency trading and financial ventures? The reason lies in the issuance of tokens. "Token" is a computer science term, usually translated as "token", which is a secret code for exchanging information between different devices. The token on the blockchain network is the "secret code" for the "smart contract" to be verified and executed, and it is a sign of asset ownership. It is a new thing that cannot find a mapping reference in the previous two generations of the World Wide Web, reflecting the essence of the blockchain network. In a blockchain application whose main function is to mine, issue and trade cryptocurrencies, "token" is the incarnation of "token", which can be directly used to confirm its ownership and conduct trading transactions. Since blockchain technology was born in response to Bitcoin, the earliest token is a Bitcoin. However, with the development of blockchain networks and the emergence of more application scenarios, people need to have a clearer understanding of the nature of tokens. It's not just cryptocurrency, it doesn't even have to be cryptocurrency. It should be translated as "token", that is, "circulatory encrypted digital equity certificate", which reflects the ownership of asset equity. A token can be a digital real estate certificate, a large number of lithium battery cargo records delivered to Tesla by the Ningde era, a property stamp of an imperial Xuande stove, and the copyright fingerprint of the publisher of a Jay Chou single... They can be used because With the token, the certificate of ownership is obtained, and then the ownership and use rights are "circulated" with smart contracts. The transaction method for circulation can be the encrypted currency attached to the token itself, or it can be the digital legal currency. This is a token, and it is also the theoretical and technical basis for the "non-currency" of Web3.0. Almost every advocate claims that Web3.0 and blockchain technology can bring a more trustworthy and wonderful future to the human business world. However, what we have seen so far is still that various cryptocurrencies and exchanges exist It's all the rage on the blockchain. Others claim that there are rich and attractive application scenarios built on the blockchain, and these scenarios ultimately point to token transactions and wealth harvesting. One example is the recently popular running app StepN, released on the Solana platform. Can you imagine running to make money? I spent nearly $1,000 worth of "gold coins" to buy a pair of virtual sneakers, and then spent a lot of money on equipment, and then ran every day, leaving traces on the map, accumulating gold coins, upgrading equipment, and waiting for new players to join me. People buy it. The founder of StepN claims: because gold coins and equipment can be traded on the platform, StepN only charges transaction fees, so it generates actual value, which also prevents it from becoming a "Ponzi scheme". However, the only possible difference between StepN and a classic Ponzi scheme is that as long as there are always fewer sellers than buyers on StepN, it can continue to operate. And the Ponzi scheme needs to constantly have new "next players" to buy the assets of the "online". However, can the "shoes" and "equipment" that are so hyped so expensive really attract more downlines to join forever? And is "running" really that important in this increasingly costly game of drumming and passing flowers? What value does it represent other than something that can be purchased with tokens? Web3.0 trendsetters are so keen on the "X to earn" model, making money from games, learning to make money, singing to make money, sleeping to make money... They have opened up another way for people to understand Web3.0, so that some people can participate in meaningful However, it usually lacks an effective mechanism to prevent the flood of speculators and turn them into a token financial game with the main goal of "going online and harvesting offline" rather than the action itself. At the moment, this seems to be the paradox of the "X to earn" Web3.0 model: when people try to use the blockchain network to create "de-financialization" application scenarios, only tokens are used as incentives and rewards. At that time, the financial attributes of tokens are bound to stimulate human greed, which will soon overwhelm the original features of these scenes and become the protagonist of the game. When the X of "X to earn" becomes a decoration, and when you can earn without X, it is only one step away from a financial scam.

Why must this be so? The history of the Internet may tell us some answers: the history of pornographic websites is almost as long as the history of the early commercial Internet, and gambling is the most enduring application of Web1.0. After the rise of Web 2.0 social networks, the "friends" app for strangers is the fastest to make money through membership fees, and of course there are live broadcast rewards for beauties and handsome guys. In essence, cryptocurrencies, like pornography, gambling, dating and ambiguous live broadcasts, are the things that can most arouse people's inner secret desires and sloshing, and naturally have strong vitality. What's even more frightening is that the financial nature of cryptocurrencies makes it more like a kind of gambling itself, which is even more irresistible. Web1.0 and Web2.0 can give birth to a series of applications that change human life and business forms, and create companies with a market value of hundreds of billions of trillions of dollars, because although "pornography, gambling and drugs" are tempting, they still cannot prevent people from pursuing more The yearning for good things. In contrast, cryptocurrency can be described as "fatal temptation", and it is also supported by idealistic concepts such as "decentralization", "community autonomy" and "financial revolution"-whether idealists, speculators or realists, all are Can find a reason to join it openly. This leads to an embarrassing situation: cryptocurrency is blocking the progress of Web 3.0's beautiful vision of changing the world. From this perspective, it is not difficult to understand why the "non-monetization" of Web 3.0 has become an inevitable choice for China to participate in the Web 3.0 revolution. It is not difficult to understand why China's policy authorities are still actively learning and exploring the application of blockchain technology and accelerating the popularization of digital renminbi while cracking down on the issuance and trading of domestic cryptocurrencies. In the jungle world of cryptocurrency, the global Chinese are an extremely active force. Before 2018, mainland China was also the most thriving area for cryptocurrencies in the world. Hundreds of thousands of miners, cryptocurrency issuers and traders only smelled the smell of hot money, and could not smell the coming of danger: whether it is The early players who harvested wealth through cryptocurrencies, or the latecomers who heard the news and waited to be harvested, the premise for them to participate in this game is to purchase the corresponding amount of cryptocurrencies with US dollars. However, most people's US dollar assets are in China, or they need to exchange RMB for US dollars to remit abroad. It caused the outflow of China's foreign exchange reserves, which is also suspected of "money laundering". No matter how much cryptocurrency advocates emphasize that they are pursuing financial "decentralization", no one can hide an obvious fact: "decentralized" Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, etc. Tokens, the starting point of their circulation, are the most "centralized" legal tender in the world - the US dollar. Otherwise, how do you understand the enthusiasm of US dollar venture funds such as Sequoia Capital and a16z for cryptocurrencies? Without the global centrality of the U.S. dollar, there would be no global popularity of cryptocurrencies. So, for China, which is committed to promoting the internationalization of the renminbi and the application of digital renminbi, what does it mean to open the door to cryptocurrencies and allow wealth in China to be converted into U.S. dollars to join the game? Federal Reserve official John Williams (John Williams) recently stated that cryptocurrencies cannot negate the Fed’s role in supplying money and liquidity and bringing stability to the economy and financial system, adding that the Fed must carefully consider appropriate regulation to protect Consumers and investors, ensuring the stability and security of the financial system. The U.S.’s attitude towards prudent regulation of cryptocurrencies, but does not put an end to them, relies on the status of the U.S. dollar in the world, while small countries such as El Salvador and Honduras, whose fiat currency credits have long since collapsed, directly announce that they accept Bitcoin as their legal tender—these are probably the only two extreme situations in the world. Cryptocurrencies can be given the most opportunities. China, on the other hand, does not belong to any of the above situations. For China, the internationalization prospect of a strong and credible RMB is irreversible, and the rights and interests of digital assets on China’s blockchain network must also be circulated and guaranteed through the digitization of RMB. Perhaps, when the yuan’s international status has never been consolidated one day, China may show another flexible attitude towards cryptocurrencies. In terms of the scale and speed of returns, the allure of digital finance is always greater than that of the ordinary digital Internet economy, and the allure of the digital economy is greater than that of digital-based manufacturing and the real economy. If China's Web3.0 and blockchain networks are dedicated to serving complex business chains, social systems, and transaction contracts on top of this huge economic and social organization, the "non-currencyization" of tokens and the credentialization of digital assets , may be a necessary choice at the root.

4. About the "growth of all things" led by the alliance chain: China's imagination

Looking at the long-term timeline, Web3.0 will be reflected in any human business behavior that needs to use the blockchain network to generate value and consolidate contractual relationships. China's Web3.0 is dedicated to serving the complex business chains, social systems, and transaction contracts on this huge economic and social organization. "Kidnapping". More application scenarios of Web3.0 must also accept the fact that the economy, business and governance of the real society are born out of the laws, rules and cultural customs that have been formed, and are restricted by the "centralized" rules of the real world. The application of Web3.0 in real society and business will never be able to completely establish a new set of "decentralized" rules like the cryptocurrency world-this is true for any country and region. It must dispel the charm of "decentralization" and accept "centralization" participation at least at some levels, such as those involving laws, regulations, and guiding policies. This also means that the "consortium chain" with typical server node centralization characteristics is a more realistic choice. Promoting the "alliance chain" is not only a choice suitable for "China's national conditions". On a "centralized" blockchain network controlled by core nodes, "decentralized" distributed ledgers and encrypted hashes are used to protect the digital property rights and commercial values between different economic entities from infringement, and Shaping their mutual contractual relationship - this should be the "Chinese plan" for Web3.0 and blockchain technology to be applied on a large scale to the real social, economic and commercial operations of the world and all mankind. In China, Tencent, Alibaba (Ant Group), Baidu and JD.com have all built their own alliance chains, from content copyright, equity, insurance, bonds, supply chain finance, taxation, justice, commodity anti-counterfeiting traceability, logistics transportation and ecology Protection and other aspects provide "on-chain" services. Alliance chains initiated by state-owned enterprises, think tanks, and government agencies such as BSN and Chang'an Chain have also been established one after another. In addition to being used in commercial and government affairs scenarios, they are also committed to solving the independent and controllable issues of the underlying public infrastructure and intellectual property rights of the blockchain. Chinese Internet giants have never been reconciled to losing their voice in the face of new technological waves. For example, Tencent is a company that has successfully crossed the two cycles of Web1.0 and Web2.0. Now, together with Alibaba and JD.com, it is trying to continue to play the role of the speaker of Web3.0 in China. However, this is not a sign of the Web3.0 revolution happening in China. The Web3.0 revolution took place in China, which means that the next generation of companies that will truly change people's lives, business and transactions, and then change the world will be born on this land; instead of Tencent , Alibaba and ByteDance Day after day they consolidate their splendor. Does that sound overly optimistic? Let’s go back to 2005, when Wang Xing was forced to sell “China’s Facebook” Xiaonei.com to Thousand Oaks Group. Can he imagine that Meituan will become the top three tech giants in China by market capitalization 12 years later? Let’s go back to 2011. After WeChat was born and quickly became a national-level social network and life network, can it expect the challenges of Toutiao and Douyin a few years later? Founded in China, ByteDance became the world's leading social media company only fifteen years after the concept of Web 2.0 came out. May wish to imagine the way Web3.0 lands, takes root and grows in China from several areas: 1. Copyright-based digital content - in recent years, digital content based on the traditional Chinese cultural value system has sprung up on the Internet platform. It exists in multiple forms such as stage plays, music, film and television works, cultural and creative products, art collections, etc., which not only demonstrates cultural self-confidence, but also contains huge commercial value. And these works created or released in digital form, such as an antique version of the Song Dynasty turquoise water-sleeved uniform in "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", a new piano version of "Dunhuang", a set of blind boxes of Buddha statues in Mogao Grottoes, a The amber orange lipstick jointly customized by L’Oreal and the Forbidden City, a private collection of a blue-and-white porcelain pen holder with the story of Cai Xiang’s bridge-building gods and immortals during the Kangxi period, and a pixel-level replica of the bronze chime bell of Marquis Yi of Zeng… all of them can be stored on the blockchain network. Token, and sell its digital content to the public by issuing "non-homogeneous digital asset certificate" (NFT). The original copyright of these works has been confirmed through the alliance chain as the basis of the transaction. Other digital content can also be transformed into tokens for NFT issuance. Are we tired of the war of words between Tencent Music and NetEase Cloud Music over the copyright of a certain music album? What if the copyright of music works can be traced from the beginning through the blockchain, and then issued in the form of NFT? If the publication of novels and the adaptation of film and television dramas can be "on-chain" to determine the copyright ownership, and then the copyright sharing and work distribution can be automatically executed through smart contracts, the creation and distribution of digital content will become a lower cost, more convenient transaction and various There is something more profitable on the other side, which is the foundation of the digital content boom. Ordinary users can also consume new content by purchasing NFT—of course, it will challenge the current membership model of video websites, after all, you will no longer buy a full year of website membership for a drama. Unlike the large number of NFTs currently issued on Ethereum and Solana, the ultimate goal of copyright-based digital content distribution is to allow more people to own digital cultural products and content worthy of collection, generating consumption value, rather than creating new financial derivatives Taste. Does anyone really believe that the "Boring Ape" NFT comics that have been fired for $100,000 have any long-term collection value? Or are those 10,000 oddly ugly monkeys with different expressions a more valuable art collection than Van Gogh's sunflowers? "Non-homogeneous" ugly monkeys and virtual stones are actually just another form of "tokens". The suspended token circulation is still a game of asset harvesting. The distribution and consumption of digital-based copyright content cannot be reduced to a token issuance game in China, nor can it become a fertile ground for secondary market transactions of virtual currencies.

Its real value is that it will promote the formation of a new generation of digital content platforms—whether it is text, video or music platforms. They bring content creators (and in many cases rights holders) and content consumers closer than ever before. The use of NFTs also brings the process of consuming content closer to "retail" than buying memberships. For advertisers, Web3.0 will bring a previously unexpected scenario: when every "on-chain" user, the behavior track of consuming digital content and browsing digital content is protected by "identity encryption". Being directly tracked, acquired and analyzed by advertisers is actually tantamount to opening up the "algorithm". Those Web2.0 social media that make users' behavior tracks into "algorithmic black boxes" and then turn them into advertising tools will lose their crystal balls. It brings not only more independent users, but also advertisers who make more independent decisions on where to place their ads. 2. The "Internet of Everything" promoted by smart contracts - China is a country with a relatively high popularity of "Internet of Everything", which benefits from the development of the Internet of Things promoted by the real economy that integrates Internet applications into real life. China is also the country with the largest number of connected IoT devices in the world, with hundreds of millions. Smartphones, computers, air conditioners, new energy vehicles, road facilities, smart grids... Every device can become a computing "node" of the Web3.0 blockchain through a distributed network. You can imagine what this means for the future operation of China's business: these huge numbers of smart devices are based on both the Internet of Things and the blockchain network. Each device is a token . They are based on the interconnection of the Internet of Things system, and the "smart contract" based on the blockchain system automatically triggers each other's instructions, allowing businesses and transactions running on hundreds of millions of smart devices Can run without human intervention and confirmation. If you believe that Web3.0 is not only the cryptocurrency world, but also a collection of complex business chains, social systems and transaction contracts based on the blockchain network, then it is not difficult to realize that the entire Internet of Things should be built on On the block of Web3.0. Whoever has the most developed IoT infrastructure has the opportunity to create a more developed and more scenario-applied blockchain network, such as China. "New York Times" columnist Steven.P. Williams (Steven.P. Williams) described in the book "Blockchain Wave" the scene where the blockchain is applied to real life in the future: You are sitting in a car shaped like a Japanese rice ball. In the electric car of the future, the entire surface, including the ring-shaped windshield, will consist of high-efficiency solar panels. The solar panels store electricity into a battery in the underside of the car, which has a conductive sheet on top of which is attached a smart meter connected wirelessly to the blockchain. The driving task is mainly completed by artificial intelligence. When stopping at a red light, the car will automatically wirelessly transmit the excess power to the grid, and the automatic digital smart contract records all this. The electricity uploaded to the grid can be bought by other car owners, and cars may travel on countless grids, and all electricity purchases, purchases, and transaction transfers are handled by smart contracts to allow electricity to circulate. When the solar panels are out or the wind is low, the grid's digital agent will ask the car to discharge the power stored in the battery to supplement the overall power supply. At the same time, smart covenants can ensure the power balance in the car so that the car will not collapse. Those who have experienced Tesla's charging and autopilot functions will not be completely unfamiliar with the above situation, although it is still a bit ahead of its time. However, is this scene bound to take place first in the United States, rather than in China? You must know that China is the world's largest producer and consumer of new energy vehicles. China is also one of the few countries in the world that spares no effort to promote large-scale multi-scenario commercialization of clean energy. China also has the world's largest and unified management power grid. And China is still exploring the "vehicle-road coordination" of expressways and cars... When all these organic business behaviors and public governance measures can be run on the basis of Web3.0's block network, you will still doubt Web3. 0 revolution will not happen in China? When new energy vehicles become a part of the blockchain, and smart meters and solar panels are Web3.0, who can deny that this is a new world? In China, the devices that can be connected to the Internet of Things and the blockchain at the same time are not only smart cars and smart grids, but also countless TVs, lamps, air conditioners, industrial robots, smart factory production lines, warehousing and logistics bases... They are all One by one token, and behind these uneven and polymorphic tokens is the transition of commercial species and business forms. You can even think that the financialization of tokens and the instrumentation of tokens are likely to be one of the essential differences between China and the United States on the development path of Web3.0. 3. "X to earn" that generates real value - even without the emergence of Web3.0, "X to earn" as a commercial form has already grown in China, such as "ant forest": people use Alipay to scan public transport Low-carbon behaviors such as card payment, household water and electricity bill payment, hospital registration, and book ticket purchases can all reduce corresponding carbon emissions, thereby obtaining virtual "green energy". When the accumulated energy reaches a certain value, users can use Alipay as a virtual Planting trees, correspondingly, Ant Group can work with partners to plant a real tree for each virtual tree on Alipay. The saplings in Alipay must be watered and grown by "green energy". Ant Forest has the element of "X to earn", because the "green energy" accumulated by users' low-carbon behavior is actually tokens , which can also be used to exchange corresponding Alipay coupons, Huabei and small amounts in theory. Loan Equity. The trees planted by "green energy" form a forest and become a forest park, and part of the tickets and camping proceeds sold in the park can be returned to users who contribute "energy". The Ant Group itself also builds its own alliance blockchain - "Ant Chain". The essential difference between it and StepN's "running to make money" is that "green energy" must be obtained through the actual low-carbon behavior of users, and cannot be used for financial transactions. But StepN is essentially a reissue of cryptocurrency. Users don't even need to "run", as long as they buy and sell equipment to attract "next buyers", they can reap the money of latecomers. This model can be used to transform commercial and social activities in many fields in China, such as "Treatment to earn" : China is a country with insufficient and unbalanced medical resources, including the imbalance of medical case sample resources; and China's medical insurance system is not enough to cover all the medical behaviors of people. Just imagine, if a patient allows his or her medical records to be legally obtained by medical institutions and medical institutes, as a case of scientific research and resource sharing, he/she can obtain medical fee reductions, and any hospital that uses relevant medical records, even new Patients need to "pay" for these medical record data, and related behaviors are connected to the medical insurance system. If the whole process is objectively, irreversibly and tamper-proofly recorded and promoted by the "smart contract" on the blockchain network, then it is obviously not just one party that benefits. It can also reshape many online medical platforms, and even allow platforms such as "Shuidichou" and "Easychou" to have completely different operating rules and methods. Another example is Drive to earn. Although Didi and Uber have helped drivers achieve this, they themselves are highly data- and operation-centralized organizations that play a role in matching transactions and maintaining trust between drivers and passengers, and also provide many consumers with doubts. algorithm. You can imagine what it would be like if the online car-hailing service becomes an "on-chain" Dapp: any car that meets the road standards (driver and license plate qualifications meet government requirements) can directly find the passengers who need it, no longer need An intermediary platform is required to dispatch orders; because the blockchain can realize the transparency of the algorithm, there is almost no room for manipulation in the dynamic price increase of Didi and Uber. Drivers can even dynamically set their own prices (within the pricing range stipulated by the government, this also needs to be guaranteed by the blockchain mechanism). The platform only needs to charge a very small commission rate, and it no longer needs to hire so many people. If it is a self-driving electric car, it can even go out to make money by itself, and realize the purchase and sale of electric energy by itself through smart contracts. All this is not utopia, and many scenes that were regarded as utopia 15 years ago have become reality today. These "X to earn" future Internet businesses that generate specific value and bring new business models should be closer to people's reality than StepN's running to make money. Now that the Web3.0 revolutionaries in the United States and Singapore are busy issuing and trading cryptocurrencies, and similar business forms have realistic soil and signs in China, it might as well let them happen in China first. 4. The underlying technology and infrastructure of Web3.0 - it is conceivable that if Web3.0 will carry meaningful business and social behaviors of human beings, and form them into a technically constrained contractual relationship with the unique "smart contract" of the blockchain , What an astonishingly large amount of data it will create. In the Web2.0 era, the massive data created by the global explosion of social networks and mobile Internet has driven profound changes in global data storage, whether it is Amazon Cloud AWS, Microsoft Cloud Azure, Google Cloud Google Cloud or China's Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud Both Huawei and Huawei Cloud are products of this profound change in the Internet. In China, if the Internet of Things system of "everything grows" is grafted on the blockchain network to create a commercial connection based on the contract economy between people and things, things and things, it will inevitably require an underlying reconstruction of data storage technology. In order to reduce the cost of super mass storage data, adapt to the "distributed network", and reduce the dependence of new innovators on traditional data centers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. This is why "decentralized" data storage is on the agenda. At present, there are some decentralized data storage startups in the world, such as Arweave, Firecoin, Safe Network, Sia and Utopiad, etc. Google is also working hard to promote the upgrade of distributed storage technology. It is worth mentioning that in China, Oceanbase launched by Ant Group in June 2020 is a player that cannot be ignored in the field of distributed databases. This also means that at least in the early stages, technically "decentralized" distributed databases are still a key area worth exploring for technology-driven entrepreneurial teams. This is also one of the most radical proponents of Web3.0 in the world, and the venture capital institution a16z is quite keen to invest in the track. Just like cloud computing architecture, decentralized data infrastructure is also an area involving core key technologies and independent intellectual property rights. China needs independent and controllable decentralized data storage technology and services to support the construction of a more complex and large commercial and social contract operating system based on China's blockchain and Web3.0 ecology. It is hard for you to imagine a system that supports important data, property rights certificates, transactions, and smart contracts in China's production and supply chain system running on a distributed data storage architecture built overseas, and this also means that the new generation of technology-driven companies Business opportunity. And, "on-chain security" is bound to become a new topic of network security. Given that the data carried by Web3.0 is closer to the essence of human economic and commercial behavior than any previous generation of the World Wide Web, such as contract transactions such as finance, insurance, games, energy, and real estate, disputes about its security, doubts, and crimes are full of pleasure. It is impossible to stop trying. Just take Ethereum, which is the most trusted by cryptocurrency developers around the world, as an example. The frequent outbreaks of security vulnerabilities in its smart contracts have caused losses of tens of trillions of dollars in assets. A .0 future is impossible to accept. Therefore, the "new network security" around a series of key links such as data security, vulnerability mechanism, and authority intrusion of blockchain and smart contracts will also become a new opportunity for the next generation of technology-driven companies. Generally speaking, the richer the application scenarios of the blockchain network and the more mature the development, the larger the market for "on-chain security" will be. Although the "consortium chain" is becoming an operating system-level facility advocated by China to build the next-generation Internet, and is even expected to become the mainstream configuration of blockchain networks connected to more real economies and commercial operations around the world, we still cannot ignore the "public chain". "There are still some valuable financial scenarios and application scenarios accumulated on the platform, and the "interconnection" between the public chain and the alliance chain has become a key. Obtaining more users through the public chain, attracting more developers, and creating more business models and application scenarios are also issues that must be considered by the alliance chain. The underlying solution that provides the interconnection between the alliance chain and the public chain based on the trust and security mechanism, and balances privacy and supervision, is likely to become an important underlying technology entrepreneurial direction, and it is also China's next-generation Web3. Provide an entrance to the Web3.0 "China Solution". The above are just some imaginations that Web3.0 is "related" to China's future economy, society and business, and they cannot be all of them.

epilogue

From Web 1.0 of the "Information Internet", to Web 2.0 of the "Internet of Identity", and then to Web 3.0 of the "Internet of Contract", observing the evolution of the world Internet for more than 30 years, we cannot deny a fact: the Internet between China and the United States , began to gradually divide in the Web2.0 period, and moved towards two different development paths. It has nothing to do with good or bad, or even values. The United States is a country with a highly developed content culture industry and financial industry, which also determines that its Internet technology revolution is usually the first to produce subversive breakthroughs in these two fields. As early as more than 20 years ago in the era of Web 1.0, Google and Netflix appeared shortly after the birth of Yahoo and America Online, and at the same time, PayPal was born, which made the American banking industry uneasy at that time. In the era of Web 2.0, Facebook and Twitter have become powerful tools for the global export of American values, and financial tools based on corporate and personal identities such as Stripe and Wealthfront have emerged as the times require. Therefore, it is not difficult for us to understand why when Bitcoin was born with the blockchain network and the future Web3. Come out - the highly developed financial industry is the key to the savage growth of financial and derivative innovations in the United States. In China, Web1.0 is a relatively lackluster stage. Entering the historical cycle of Web 2.0, China has produced WeChat and TikTok, products that either profoundly change the order of global social networks, or have a strong impact on the form of global social network products. However, a more important trend is that China's Internet has begun to deeply integrate into its It is even the process of the global real economy and trade. It has given birth to the world's most developed backbone logistics network, the most convenient urban life application, the most flexible consumer credit model, the largest number of Internet of Things smart devices, and a relatively developed and highly informatized manufacturing industry. To some extent, it is making up for China's past economic and social development of insufficient and uneven "lessons", but it has indeed brought about a stronger digital economy in China. And finance is only part of the supporting role. From this perspective, it should not be difficult for us to understand: why the Web3.0 revolution will definitely happen in China, and it will happen in China in a completely different form. It is not a decentralized practice of financial derivatives, but an application of "decentralized" blockchain technology to deeply shape the real economy, manufacturing, commercial transactions and society brought about by "contract economics" The practice of governance change. Finance will play a role in it, financial technology will change, but that's not the whole story. Let them engage in their Web3.0 revolution, and we engage in our Web3.0 revolution. Let's see who can do it faster and can shape a better future world.