Editors Note: This article comes fromWebX Labs Daily (ID: gh_3bc595acebaf), reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
Editors Note: This article comes from
WebX Labs Daily (ID: gh_3bc595acebaf) WebX Labs Daily (ID: gh_3bc595acebaf), reprinted by Odaily with authorization.Guest of this issue: Liu Yi, founder of Cdot, early investor of Bitcoin, researcher of Web3.0, blockchain technology, encryption economics and encryption protocol governance. 【Web3.0 Dialogue Marathon】 The second session of the WebX Lab Dialogue Marathon continues. The guest Liu Yi explained the essence and defects of Web2.0 from the perspective of economics, and also looked forward to the application and implementation direction of Web3.0. For the future of WebX Labs 【Web3.0 Series Research Report】 Iteration provides a lot of new thinking and inspiration. Question 1 What is the most direct link between Web2.0 and Web3.0? In fact, this is particularly worth thinking about, especially for Web3.0 entrepreneurs, who definitely hope that their work will become a pioneer, so they need to find an entry point and find the place where Web3.0 is most likely to land first. From a macro point of view, there is no consensus on the concept of Web3.0, but the common starting point is that the current Internet, that is, Web2.0, has fundamental flaws that cannot be repaired through small repairs. Make fundamental reforms at the protocol level. Where are the problems of Web2.0, including how to solve these problems, in fact, different people have different opinions. The Web3.0 we are talking about actually comes from the concept proposed by Gavin Wood in 2014. Now everyone thinks that Web3.0 has a complete protocol stack, and each part of these protocol stacks is based on a decentralized, point-to-point encryption protocol. Features, is a trustless transaction or collaboration infrastructure. If the encryption protocol trend is regarded as Web3.0, it basically operates in parallel with Web2.0, and there is no intersection. When will there be intersection? We have to wait until the problems that Web 2.0 tries to solve but have not been solved are solved by Web 3.0, and even the problems that Web 2.0 has initially solved are replaced by Web 3.0. If the latter happens more and more, Web2.0 will gradually move away from the middle of the stage, and Web3.0 will become the mainstream Internet. This process may take a long time, 10 years, 20 years or longer. Gavin Wood proposed three goals of Web3.0: Every Internet user should be able to control their own assets, identity and data. From this point of view, assets must come first, because starting from Bitcoin, it is to solve the problem of Internet users directly controlling their own assets. And this entry point is very good, because things related to assets are speculative, which can attract a large number of funds and personnel to enter this field, so this field has become very popular in less than 10 years. Many people, including me, started to enter this circle through speculating on coins, and then gradually understood the Bitcoin protocol, and then went to find the connotation and the source of thought behind it. If you start with assets, the next step may be to solve the identity problem. If you don’t solve the identity problem, you can’t solve the data problem, because there is no way to control your own data without personal identification. So it should be advanced from the timeline of assets, identity and data. Question 2: In what areas might high-quality Web3.0 business models appear first? First of all, we should admit that Web 2.0 is very successful and has benefited tens of millions of people. It is much wider and deeper than our current encryption protocol. There is enough awe in the Internet generation. I think fundamentally, Web2.0 solves the problem of trust. Consumers believe that the seller will not lie to you, because your negative evaluation will do more damage to him. In the transaction process, buyers and sellers have three types of information at play: one is supply and demand; the other is quality; the third is cost and utility (Utility). Supply and demand can be resolved through Web1.0. Although cost and utility information are asymmetrical, I have always believed that any Internet technology should not be used to reveal cost and utility information, otherwise it would be a kind of harm to the economy, because if cost and utility information is widely used, it can Squeezing both parties, there will be no economic surplus in the transaction between buyers and sellers. So we only talk about quality, Web2.0 solves the problem of asymmetric information on quality. Product quality ratings, reviews, and business reputation are actually quality scoring columns, but these products are basically interchangeable products or industrial products, and cannot be disclosed for non-interchangeable (such as second-hand housing) and quality (such as financial products) goods and services are not applicable. Therefore, the first flaw of Web 2.0 is that it has not completely solved the asymmetry of quality and information. A large number of fields have not been well resolved by the Web 2.0 platform, including finance, real estate rental and sales, medical care, education, marriage and love, part-time labor and so on. Therefore, the most fundamental use of Web3.0 may be to eliminate the asymmetry of quality information. Now the most likely thing is finance. Finance is inherently a platform industry, and all financial institutions are actually intermediaries. The Internet platform is an economy that uses Internet technology to match multiple transactions for profit. In fact, financial institutions have been like this since ancient times, so the Internet platform is expected to at least partially replace the financial platform. However, finance is restricted by regulation, because finance is a field with a high degree of information asymmetry, and precisely because of the high degree of information asymmetry, intermediaries are very much needed. Regardless of whether it is a traditional platform or an Internet platform, once it becomes a monopoly intermediary, it can squeeze profits from buyers and sellers, and all profits will flow to the platform. In fact, this is the second shortcoming of Web2.0 in my opinion, the issue of fairness, that is, Rent Seeking on the platform. In this sense, we should think that Web3.0 is a more credible and fairer Internet. The platform is no longer a business whose vocation is to make profits, but a decentralized protocol. The protocol itself has no incentive to seek rent. Its The appeal should be to continuously expand its own economic scale, and this new type of agreement can create trust on a larger scale. I think it is Web3.0. Question 3 Why can Web3.0 solve the asymmetry of quality information, and what technologies are needed? I think disintermediation is wrong, but to be able to evaluate intermediaries. There is no way to eliminate quality information asymmetry, because the investment in information is different. In the transaction, the seller always has an information advantage. The intermediary is employed by the buyer and has basically the same or at least comparable level of knowledge about the quality information of the product or service as the seller. This is the basic principle for the intermediary to play a role. We must solve the quality information asymmetry We must introduce intermediaries, but now there are many intermediaries who are not responsible for buyers. At this time, it is necessary to design an encryption protocol to screen qualified intermediaries, and through transaction structure arrangements and evaluation mechanism arrangements, the intermediary will faithfully fulfill the principal-agent relationship with the buyer. The Web2.0 platform can also do this, but the problem is that once it is done, it will become an intermediary platform. When it reaches a certain scale and competition is no longer the theme, it will try to seek rent. become increasingly unfair. So we have to use a decentralized protocol to solve it. Question 4 You just said that the first thing that is likely to land is finance, so what is the relationship between Web3.0 finance and DeFi? I have always called it open finance, and DeFi can be said to be an experiment of open finance, a disposable prototype, because finance must be compliant and regulated, which is recognized. The essence of the financial industry is the efficient allocation of social resources. From this perspective, the current DeFi money is only transferred between agreements, and no penny can really enter the production field. This is why I think it is a prototype. It exists without financial purpose. Question 5. In addition to regulatory compliance, what kind of innovation is required at the technical level to realize open finance? From the perspective of infrastructure, there is no platform that can carry open finance yet. Libra is a good attempt, and the infrastructure of open finance should be Public-Permissioned Chain. Public means that it meets the conditions of prior disclosure and can be accessed without approval. Permissioned means that bookkeepers must be supervised. This is the future of open finance. Question 6 You just mentioned that the second step of Web3.0 is to solve identity. Can you talk about the logical relationship between identity and credit in Web3.0? What we mean by self-identity is to allow every Internet user to grasp and control their own identity, which is different from our real identity, which is issued by the state. And DID should have SSR (Self-Servant ID), it is not given, it is declared, this identity cannot be fraudulently used or frozen. It is to generate a pair of keys, match the public key to an address, and use the private key to sign, indicating that this address is me. Because I control the private key, no one can impersonate me, and no one can strip my identity. But this identity also needs to be associated with other things, such as various third-party Verifiable Claims, such as ID cards, graduation certificates, and credit. Credit is a voluntary market formed through independent identities, and credit can be accumulated anywhere. As for where credit is recognized, it is a matter of a third party. This is a two-way choice. Credit is no longer evaluated by a single institution. You must pay attention to your own credit in any transaction scenario. Question 7 What do you think is the gap between the DID products of the blockchain and the ideal credit system and identity system? What other technologies are not solved? I think the basic technology has been solved. The problem now is that this technology has network effects, and the more people use it, the more useful it will be. Therefore, it will be particularly difficult to popularize in the early stage. Once it reaches a critical scale, it will be able to enter a period of rapid development. The first to use it is pure investment, no one has DID, no one issued DID, no one issued Verifiable Claim, and no one used Verifiable Claim, so the early stage of development must be very difficult, because the storage capacity is not large, and the amount of calculation is also small. Not too big, so there are no technical difficulties. Now it mainly needs continuous promotion from all parties. Question 8 What do you think is the gap between the DID products of the blockchain and the ideal credit system and identity system? What other technologies are not solved? The difficulty with data is that most of our data is not born with us, but generated in the process of using Internet applications. So whether its ownership is fully owned by the user should be a question mark. There are two ways to use data value: overall use and personal use. The first is big data. In this process, no ones privacy is exposed, and the value to the entire society is formed. When cutting big data into personal data, although individuals can directly control the data, scattered data is difficult to use, because the transaction cost exceeds the value of individual data, so I think this direction is wrong. Personal data analysis can be used to provide better personalized services, and can also be used to predict the utility of products and services to individuals. The latter is an invasion of personal privacy, and the most common is the so-called big data killing, which should be banned through legislation.
