Errance, the product lead at KNN3 Network joins us today to share his thoughts on Web3 communities and ownership economy.
Moderator: Hey guys glad to have you here! Errance, could you give us a brief intro about KNN3? And Michael about Blockless?
Errance: Of course! KNN3 Network is a multi-chain relationship aggregator, empowering web3 social discovery. KNN3 provides graph solutions for web3 multiverse relational aggregation to empower Social dApp and AI analytics. We aim to become a community-driven data curation protocol to enable on-chain data collaboration.
Michael: Haha thanks Errance for sharing. Blockless is a WASM-based decentralized web service platform that serves as a customizable execution layer in Web3. Whether you’re building blockchain oracles, Web3 indexers, NFT platforms, or any dApps that cannot be built on a blockchain alone, Blockless has the services to help you build decentralized applications with flexibility and reliability. Been a pleasure working with Errance and the broader KNN3 team on supporting their Verifiable Dynamic Credential Service (VDCS) with the Blockless network!
Moderator: Fantastic! So following today’s topic, what is ownership economy in Web3 for both of you?
Errance: A lot of people say that the economy of ownership is web3, but I think it’s only a small part of web3. In web3, users have sovereignty over their accounts, assets, and data, and will no longer be blocked by a single “central party” without authorization, and their assets will no longer be frozen (except maybe Tornador Cash? rofl), user data will no longer be sold. Users can truly enjoy “ownership” of personal information (including assets and information) to a certain extent.
Michael: In crypto, it really starts from how the Bitcoin network marks contributions from node runners. These miners maintain the ledger and in return receive BTC in their accounts. The more you contribute to the network by offering computation resources and preventing sybil attacks, the more BTC you will have.
But still, in this setting, one’s power is only associated with how much hardware and electric resources he contributes. Later on, as we have various layer-1s and fungible tokens, projects start to represent stake in the project in the form of tokens. One prime example of ownership economy is DeFi. These projects were able to quickly gather traction and utility compared to 2017 ICO projects. The main differentiator is that DeFi projects are offering token stake to those who are actually providing service to the platform (say, LP token holders).
Moderator: How is KNN3 and Blockless involved in the ownership economy of Web3?
Errance: KNN3 Network does not directly involve “ownership economy”, we focus more on the aggregation of users’ multi-chain relationships in web3. That is to say, KNN3 is actually one of the enabling factors of it. Through multi-dimensional relationships, behavior traceability, and AI analysis, we help the entire ecosystem to better confirm the “ownership” of users.
Michael: The way Blockless functions is similar to a layer-1 blockchain. Retail users can contribute their hardware resources to the network and earn token rewards. Developers can build on Blockless which consumes our BLS token. The BLS token is also required when a node joins the network to prevent sybil attacks. Token holders are the ones that govern and run the blockless network.
The end goal for blockless is to free Web3 from centralized web service providers such as AWS. Solutions like these are not censorship-resistant. If collusion of major providers happens, Web3 will lose all of its merits over Web2, including censorship resistance and trustworthiness. It would be left with just its shortcomings, including comparatively expensive fees and poor transactional throughput.
Moderator: Do you feel token is an intrinsic part of Web3 user loyalty？
Errance: User loyalty is reflected in the user’s stickiness to the product, the sense of community belonging, and the synchronization of ideas.
Sadly, most of the current tokens cannot carry the above narratives well. It is true that through sunk costs and speculative properties, users will generate temporary loyalty to a product or project by holding tokens, but once they get enough profits, most users will sell their tokens and move on to the next product. or community.
But yes, tokens have a positive effect on user loyalty, but only if this token can bring two benefits or potential benefits (especially economic benefits) to users.
Michael: Generally I think yes. However, I do agree with Errance that currently many tokens have no use case. A great product can cultivate great user loyalty without a token. But I think the interesting part is how a well-designed token system can make things far more engaging for users. For instance, when the token is used actively in platform-native utilities and governance, the type of things loyal users are contributing to the product would be very different compared to if the project has no token.
Moderator: What’s your view on DAOs?
Errance: The DAO has been an area of both anticipation and despair for me from start to finish.
The expectation is that when users have voting rights, can non-elite consensus lead a project to the right path? After a broad consensus is reached, can capital and power still control the direction of the group through proxies? I was looking forward to these things happening, and in fact, they have happened, and the results are really hopeless.
The essence of the DAO is still meritocracy, and it is still the template for the bicameral governance of the Roman Republic that has survived for more than 2,000 years. At the time, the decision-making system had absolute boundaries — how fast could your messenger run? Now, information is basically transmitted on the Internet at the speed of light. Can you spot the difference? The efficiency of information and communication has increased thousands of times, and our decision-making chain is still stuck in an unknown corner of the Mesopotamian plains 2,000 years ago.
Michael: I think a major issue DAOs face now is scaling. How do you coordinate efficiently within a loosely coupled group of more than 200? This can be incredibly difficult and necessarily introduces information friction within the group. Hierarchy will likely also emerge.
A contributing factor to this is that DAO tooling is having a hard time capitalizing. Some are reluctant to pay for DAO tooling, and there are simply so many of them to choose from.
But I do think DAOs are the future. It means that through some automation mechanism, contributions from more people can be taken into initiative. In other words, DAOs are a necessary product of automation (technological advances) and a higher rate of information flow in general. You can’t imagine groups of people achieving what they are doing via DAOs today 100 years ago, right?
Moderator: Which Web3 project is the best in community engagement?
Errance: To be honest, in the DeFi space, APY, token prices, and scams are discussed in most communities. In the community of public chains, it is mainly based on technical discussions. I happened to find a bunch of interesting people in a community called “memeland”. Although there are still administrators and community members, the relationship between everyone is very harmonious (of course, there is no shortage of GM every day!)
This is an NFT community, and the main force of precipitating users comes from 9GAGS (a Hong Kong-based meme website). Everyone’s favorite and the happiest thing every day is to share all kinds of self-governing emoticons — basically they are very funny and creative works. You can see ideas and words that make you laugh everywhere in the community, you will feel very happy.
Just like the question answered before, there is no token, the community is united by its own cohesion, and new social relationships are formed between users, which are deposited in the platform.
Michael: I personally feel Polygon has one of the strongest communities out there. Of course, there are ones like dogecoin that have great communities, but those ones are rather united by a meme. Instead of conscious efforts from a team.
The interesting part is that the project was able to attract sustained attention without major team/founder PR moves. Rather, many community members have no idea who the leadership team members are. Their key to success was really all about constant and transparent communications with the community, as well as making products easy to use. Think I will have to invite Polygon’s community team members for future episodes haha.
Moderator: Nice looking forward to that! This is about it for today’s sharing session. Thanks, Errance and Michael for coming, and I will see you guys next time!
Blockless is a WASM-based decentralized web service platform that serves as a customizable execution layer for Web3.
As a permissionless network, Blockless allows network participants to contribute with a variety of computational hardware resources, ranging from Android devices to high-performance servers.
For developers, Blockless makes it easier and faster to build oracles, indexers, NFT platforms, or any dApps that cannot run on a blockchain alone.
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