Author | Spike; Editor | Jerry Crypto;
Copyright | ThePrimedia
Editor's note:
There is an old Chinese saying, "The fish is what I want while the bear's paw is also what I want. You can't have it both ways, Mencius said.
In the world of Web 3.0, decentralized technology is what the public wants while practical applications are also what the public wants. You can't have it both ways.
This article will attempt to analyze the gap between Web3 and the ecological construction in real life, and on this basis will explore the path to breakthrough.
Part 2: Broken
In his book "The Law of Imitation", French sociologist Tarde pointed out that "in the process of human change, there are rarely completely new inventions, but more adaptations and imitations". To achieve the breakthrough in Web 3, we need to rationalize the current parallel, but actually conflicting logical paradoxes (please refer to the previous article for details), and find its breakthrough point and explore feasible paths.
Faced with the step-by-step encroachment of VC, the survival space also has a starburst. We will use our faith and technology to expand the frontier and gather all developers to conquer the city until we finish killing the profiteers; facing the wilderness of the scene, we have never felt barren, social graph, creator economy and SaaS are already waiting for us to eliminate all the false gods that hinder progress and put all the new gods into the Buddha's niche for people to worship. Facing the technological divide, the completion of development kits will allow more technical tools to meet users directly, and decentralization will deconstruct the role of platforms at the technical level ......
Newton once said: If I see a little further than others, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants. This time, we will build the Nine Stages together from the bottom.
Underlayer tech: reinventing faith and technology first
In the process of building Web 3, a rethinking of its underlying logic is adapted to the new situation in response to the dilemma of its intrinsic mechanics.
- Faith Reinventing
Without faith, there is no decentralized everything. Uniswap did it with AMM to reconstruct aggregation, Bitcoin did it with PoW to objectively represent consensus, but Web 3 has SBT, PoS mechanisms, and the expectation of all users that consensus has emerged and that it is better to start acting than to sit back and talk to move towards a more diverse DeSoC society.
Everything can be captured by Web 3 and generate value accordingly, everything! These values can be flowed, naturally carry value, and everything has value.
This is the foundation of faith on which the opportunities that Web 3 brings us to revolutionize the application space. A faith that has been tumbled by the hype and bubbles in the past, the cryptocurrency world is once again gaining trust in development and practice.
For example, Brave, the most widely used privacy browser, has launched Goggles in an attempt to provide more relevant search results without touching more of the user's privacy. Combined with its own token, BAT's ad usage service, this is already a very mature attempt commercially. If it goes further and entirely builds the back end of the blockchain, with information stored on IPFS, it could have the magic to reconfigure the interactive interface of the internet.
- Technology first: innovation gradually spreads
Image source: Wikipedia
In the processing of innovation pace, the transition of Web 3 from Innovator to Early Adopter can be seen. Although the value is still small in terms of absolute market share, desktop, enterprise, and basic facilities are gradually being built. It belongs to the process of gradual technology spreading.
Crypnote tool, for example, is already a highly finished product. While previous note-taking products such as Impression Notes and Onenote had to face data migration problems, the Web 3 backend is structured directly on the blockchain storage network, which is a redesign based on Web 3 technology.
What kind of Web 3 applications will technological innovation bring us, even if it is possible. This is the point of our exploration of the paradox. Let's talk about what Web 3 products will actually look like.
Social: from SocialFi to graphical evolution
As an important cornerstone product of Web 3.0, social products need no further explanation of their strategic importance. History has given Web 3.0 a social synonym that is not the oft-repeated SocialFi, but the "social graph".
Why the popular SocialFi can't do the job? SocialFi, commonly known as "social money exchange", is the use of Token inside Web 3.0 to stimulate the use of their product. Take BBS Network as an example, 50% of its tokens will be distributed to active users, how can activity be increased through token hype? Of course, it is to create "high-quality" information, so that more active followers and subscribers can be attracted. No matter how stringent the review mechanism is, as long as the mechanism of trading activity for Tokens exists, there is room for "data manipulation".
When the 'feature > hype' tipping point is reached, the real need to retain users have met their requirements, the product cycle lengthens and is eventually replaced by a newer mechanism, it is a 'whale fall' effect and then everything grows. But the current socialFi model is not designed to curb spam, and existing governance mechanisms fail. For example, Twitter is used to gain new knowledge, but such SocialFi applications are used for profit.
The profit motive is a problem that cannot be avoided. "The social money exchange" is not the main social category of Web 3, but in the long run, new native social applications will emerge, "social graph" is the forerunner that dances with the times. Social graph is the "social relationships", which means that there is no central node, relying on the blockchain network for direct coupling and transmission among individuals.
When the social networking sites in Web 2 are upgraded to the "social graph" in Web 3, what has changed?
Let's look at the graphic methods of traditional social networks:
The first point is that in existing social networks there is a reverse flow of information and data. The information flow between users is bidirectional, it means "I follow you, you follow me back." We can see each other's information content, but the data behind this content is not synchronized with the information flow, but is stored on centralized platforms such as Twitter and Weibo.
The second point is that the information among individuals does not flow in a consistent direction, but is skewed towards KOLs and institutional accounts, creating various "centralized" nodes.
The third point is that data is collected by the platform and then made into API interfaces with different permissions, which are subsequently sold. Therefore, it is the data stream, not the information stream, it can be monetized. For example, opening a membership is essentially the platform selling user-created content. If the profits from the sale can cover operational overheads, it is equivalent to the invisible and legal "exploitation" of individuals by the platform, which is the real business model of platform traffic.
Look again at the way information flows in the Web 3 social graph: information and data flows are in the same direction and the relationships can be Tokenised, there is no center and difference.
For the trend toward content centralization, the cross-chainability and interactivity of the social graph will allow this problem to be solved naturally. Decentralized social applications should be componentized, whereas an edge node and a central node can exist simultaneously in different groups.
So, there are already products in the transition phase from Web 2 to Web 3 that are practicing from this perspective, such as Tiktok, which has launched Tiktok Moments through a partnership with ImmutableX to create NFTs from popular videos, with the revenue from sales mainly going to content producers and NFT makers. Furthermore, if anyone can make their social content into NFTs or even issue tokens, Web 3 Social will definitely move forward.
To sum up: why SocailFi will not be the future, while the social graph concept has more possibilities for success?
spam from the Token cannot be eliminated.
there is still a trend of content centralization of head KOLs, agencies, and commercial companies, and ordinary people naturally prefer stars and celebrities with their own halo.
And the social graph promises to solve both of these problems.
The Social Graph also needs an upgraded privacy system to protect it, that is the "on-chain credit system".
Social networking doesn’t necessarily require real identities. If it's an ordinary exchange of information and you just want to have fun, you don't need to care about the person's role in reality. As Guilin says, "you can call them whatever you want", but when it comes to address-based financial transactions, identity verification is a must, requiring information verification to be as important an infrastructure as ChainLink.
The current path to annotation functionality is to continuously record activity at an address, and when enough of its historical data has accumulated, we can profile its users with publicly available information, which works for giant whales and exchanges and institutional wallets. But what if the future spreads to Web 3 wallets that are used by young and old alike?
"Knowing who you are dealing with" is a very real need. If the Web 3 algorithm is optimized, it is possible to use the credit system to make highly accurate judgements without knowing who the person is. For example, the contact verification tool Go+ Security users can verify more than 360,000 Tokens on the Ethereum chain, including more than 180,000 risky addresses and more than 20,000 phishing sites.
Creation: from NFT hype to content monetisation
The basic evolution of the creator's economy is as follows.
Web 1.0 era, creation was a natural act based on the desire to share, largely without a profit model, it was a beautiful utopia.
Web 2.0 era, centralized monopoly platforms controlled the values and flow of information, and creators basically only got a small share of the profits.
Web 3.0, there was no centralised traffic distribution platform, so creators could take the lion's share of the profits.
For creators, "Internet without a center is a good Internet!" In terms of basic text creation, the problem with Web 2.0 was that the monopoly of the platform was so prominent that we lost sight of the fact that the ability to create was the fundamental problem, whereas in Web 3 world 'creation itself' is beginning to emerge. What really limits distribution is the ability to produce content consistently, not the so-called channel restrictions. Genuine quality content cannot be confined to one channel, and in a fully competitive marketplace, it can run to rival teams if it is suppressed.
The value of Web 3 is that for the first time, the right to create is truly back in the hands of the individual, for the purpose of creation itself, and with the value of perpetual retention, a Web 3 creator economy is indeed something to look forward to. Imagine a fair, creator-friendly economy where more work is done for more money, and Web 3 will be their main stage, with a fairer environment for quality creators to realize their value.
It is important to note that Web 3 is not all-powerful while there is true equality for all in terms of barriers to entry for distribution, there will still be individual differences in content production and distribution capabilities, and it will remain a historical norm for the few to distribute to the many. Take V2EX's Planet, content creation and sharing blog-like tool based entirely on IPFS as a storage backend, but also with guinea pigs as the default subscription in its default interface.
The main problem with the development of NFT, for example, is the existence of a king of OpenSea and the high concentration of content in the PFP area.
From OpenSea DAO to LOOKSRARE, to the "rise" of the Magic Eden market on Solona, what do we see? After the repeated attempts, the heat death after the frenzy, the rich categories, and the user habits cultivated by the first-mover advantage, making this long assassination may continue for a while, until the appearance of the savior.
From the perspective of the creator economy, we see a high degree of centralization of NFT platforms and creators. This is because what users really want is quality content and do not "care" so much about the degree of decentralization. Looking further at the NFT trading categories, we see even less decentralization, as the head trading category is PFP, and while other categories briefly top the sales charts every day, Yuga labs is the Deep State, with the vast majority of NFT market share, including BAYC, MAYC, Meebtis, Otherside, and even ApeCoin based on the ERC-20.
But there is hope, like the new developments in RRS3 Crossbell, is an ownership platform where the information generated by social activity, it will be the initial form of user data ownership on Crossbell, as a content monetization platform with the primary goal of returning data sovereignty over individually created content to the creator. Where it is a game-changer is the ability to empower users to reclaim ownership of their data through a built-in capital design. At the same time, Crossbell has been designed with an emphasis on information interoperability, which means that third-party applications can build on this in a friendly way.
Wider use scenarios for NFT can exist in GameFi, Meta Universe, and DeSoc. Only by making NFT more popular and moving into more application scenarios will it be possible for the dividends of the creator economy to fall on more people. Polygon, for example, is making a bold attempt to encourage the masses toward monetizing NFT content by releasing its new NFT Minter, which allows the creation of NFTs using custom programs at no Gas cost.
The monetization of content is a feature of NFT to be further developed in the Web 3 era. Monetization of content can be understood as the Tokenisation of personal values, and when humans start to enter the Web 3 world more frequently and extensively, creativity, in whatever form, will be fully guaranteed as a basic "human right".
SaaS: From To B to To C
In the existing web world, SaaS seems to be a corporate product, a natural To B, such as Jetbrains' development tools, Dassault's industrial design software and EDA for chip design. But in the Web 3 world, SaaS will offer a possibility to anyone. In addition to the social graph and the creator economy, SaaS tools will also hold up the grand blueprint of Web 3.
The move from To B to To C is not just a change in who uses it, but a re-scaling of production relationships. In Web 3, SaaS will become a pervasive infrastructure that anyone can build on their own, providing integrated applications or API interfaces for all types of users.
The reason for this is that whether it's social or the creator economy, the product design is basically based on the relationship between "people and people", and To C applications will become the main breakthrough direction for SaaS. If we want the infrastructure to continue to go into more services, it will have to go to the L1 scale, even hardware devices, like ASIC miners do.
One solution currently available is a secondary service based on an existing product, most typically IPFS, with a free trial and unlimited capacity, which is basically the equivalent of free-riding if you can build a commercial service on top of it.
For example, Skiff's decentralized email and cloud document office suite service can be used for personal daily writing, and communication as well as an alternative to Google workshop's office suite. If the other party uses a Skiff account, all records of their email communication and cloud document collaboration are kept on IPFS without going through any centralized servers.
The emergence of such applications shows, on the one hand, that the current IPFS, after many years of development, is primed to offer commercial services; but on the other hand, we must also see that such products still have heavy traces of imitation and still need long-term development to explore new product models.
In the case of analytics tools for the blockchain market, there has always been a market for professional analytics tools due to the transparency of information on the chain and the frequency of transactions, but there is also a threshold. While individuals can analyse on-chain information directly, it is clear that this difficulty requires a developer's skill level and is not friendly to the average person. Is there a breakthrough possibility?
Tools such as Dune and Nansen, which have raised $80 million and are valued at $1 billion, are easier to 'infrastructure' because they don't need to include transactional functionality, and even the functional modules can be user-defined, just open SQL interfaces. In essence, it is a pipeline device, the project open API interface, and documentation. Users continue to query the accumulation of data when the user habit is well cultivated, and the formation of the traffic will have a commercial value.
The barrier of this tool lies in user habits and data accumulation, not in the development difficulty, and Chainlink is a different design logic, it is an infrastructure that everyone agrees on, because the prophecy machine data needs to be accurate with high precision and cannot be easily replaced just because the interface looks better or there are a few more function modules. This is the iteration of the SaaS scenario from To B to To C, and the business opportunities it presents.
Web 3.0 is still in its infancy, and we need Web 3 to truly transition to an era where users and services support the profit model so that it will last for a long time. At the end of this article, let me review the breakthrough path of Web 3.0 again. Under the guidance of re-engineering beliefs and projects, whether it is a social product towards mapping, a creator economy of monetizing content, or a SaaS software to upgrade from To B to To C. ...... is a "lone and brave man".
Perhaps there are still problems with Web 3.0, and practitioners are still lost in the dark, but this analysis is not a denial of Web 3.0, our intention is to do everything possible to avoid a frenzied fishing expedition, to prevent a bear market that would plunge many into extreme denial and doubt if the Internet bubble of the early part of this century were to hit.
Web 3.0 may be a long way off, it may require many iterations, and the "lonely and brave" who enter the game may fracture into sand, and the project will go up in smoke, but it is like a shimmering light to the world of the future, which will eventually illuminate the stars of the future world at a moment in time. "To those who cry and roar in the night, who says that only those who stand in the light are heroes" ......