Web3.0
: A new user-led network ecology.
Web3 (also known as Web 3.0, also written as web3) is a concept about the development of the World Wide Web, mainly related to blockchain-based decentralization, cryptocurrencies, and non-homogeneous tokens. In Web3.0, users perform interactive operations to meet their own needs, and use blockchain technology in the interaction to realize the creation, distribution and circulation of value. This entire process of user interaction and value circulation forms the Web3.0 ecology. Compared with the platform centralization feature of Web2.0, Web3.0 is committed to realizing a "decentralized" network ecology that is owned and co-built by users.
For the intelligent internal reference of this issue, we recommend the reports "Web3.0 Era: Openness, Privacy, and Co-construction" and "A Preliminary Study of Web3.0: A User-Oriented and Decentralized Network Based on Blockchain Technology" by Guosheng Securities and Soochow Securities. "Network Ecology", revealing the main elements and characteristics of the Web3.0 ecology.
Web3.0
User-led network ecology
In the era of Web 1.0, the content was provided by the website (PGC), and users could only passively browse text, pictures and video content, and could not participate in the creation.
During the Web 2.0 period, website models such as blogs, video platforms, and forum communities emerged. Users can independently create and upload content (UGC) on the platform, share and accept other people's opinions.
All this will undergo profound changes in the Web3.0 era: the Web3.0 world will be fully open, and users' behavior in it will not be restricted by ecological isolation. It can even be considered that users can freely roam in Web3. World; user data privacy will be protected through encryption algorithms and distributed storage; in the Web3 world, content and applications will be created and led by users, fully realizing user co-construction and co-governance (DAO, decentralized governance), and users will Share the value of the platform (protocol).
In addition to a completely different Internet model and user experience, Web3 will bring a new traffic entry paradigm. In the Web2 era, the traffic entry mode that occupies users' attention will undergo some interesting changes.
Driven by the distributed technology represented by the blockchain, from the decentralized point-to-point ledger experiment to the decentralized smart contract platform, countless new applications (Dapps) have been born, and DeFi has gradually formed the "financial platform" in the digital world. service", and NFT accelerates the on-chain of assets. We see that outside the traditional world (online and offline), users are getting closer and closer to a digital world that blends and grows together. So far, people are calling for a brand-new online world—metaverse, which can credibly carry personal social identities and assets, and the community will have stronger dominance.
The Web 3.0 technology stack can be divided into three main layers: protocol layer, application layer, and network infrastructure layer. All of this is mainly built on the basis of the blockchain (of course the protocol layer can also have auxiliary parts under the chain). From an application point of view, Web 3.0 covers DAO (and tools), privacy, applications, storage and data, games, creator economic platforms, social networking, and almost covers most of Web 2.0.
With the vigorous development of the cryptocurrency industry, a large number of Web3.0 applications have emerged in the past two years. Of course, most of these applications may eventually be transitional products. Some applications even have flaws in the economic model and solving user pain points, and do not reflect more real needs than Web2.0.
In any case, the Web3.0 ecology has already taken shape, and the veil of Web3.0 will be unveiled step by step in the continuous application exploration.
Web3.0 ecological components: 1) User identity: users use wallets, master multiple virtual avatars, and participate in the interaction of Web3.0 network ecology. 2) User interaction: user interaction is carried out through blockchain technology, so as to realize the creation, distribution and circulation of value. 3) User organization: users form autonomous organizations to create various applications, tools, protocols, etc. for the Web3.0 ecology in collaboration. 4) Underlying support: Blockchain provides underlying support for Web3.0 from the technical layer and distributed storage from the data layer.
Users participate in the interaction in the online world through virtual avatars. In Web3.0, the collection of virtual avatars is the user identity. This identity is truly owned and controlled by the user. It is also called Decentralized Identity (DID). Compared with the user identity in the Web 2.0 era, the user identity in Web 3.0 is quite different in terms of identity control, openness, security, and privacy. The user identity of the Web3.0 ecology is decentralized, and its manifestation and usage have the following characteristics:
1) Decentralization: DID, as a collection of user identities, is completely in the hands of users and is not fully controlled by any organization. Any organization's authentication of user identity is just one element in the collection.
2) Form of expression: the user stores the identity authentication information issued to him by various institutions on the blockchain address fully controlled by the user, and this blockchain address is often also the user's wallet address.
3) How to use: log in each application on web3.0 through the wallet. The user experience is similar to WeChat login in the web2.0 era. The difference is that DID is owned and controlled by the user, while WeChat will be restricted by the platform.
1. Three major labels, openness, privacy and a world of co-construction.
The openness of Web3.0 is reflected in:
1) The access of users in a certain Internet application "field" is fully free and the threshold is low; for example, users can often use a blockchain account address to log in to the application on the chain, no registration permission is required, and the operation is convenient;
2) User behavior is not restricted by third-party subjects. Internet applications break the original so-called boundaries and barriers within and between ecosystems. Under the principle of compound code operation logic, applications are highly combinable and complex; The direct case is the so-called DeFi Lego. Any application can call or aggregate the underlying basic protocol (such as DEX), and the synthetic asset platform maps real-world assets to the chain (no delivery relationship), which is equivalent to breaking the so-called online-online and the boundary between virtual and reality.
3) In addition, the interoperability between applications based on different infrastructures within Web3.0 can be solved by the "cross-chain" protocol; therefore, the behavior of users in multiple applications in the Web3.0 world can produce similar social relationship graphs, further improving data Value mining potential.
To give a metaphor for a game application, users can easily enter a game world without being restricted by a third party; users can freely implant their favorite characters/images into the game, and even make characters act across platforms/fields, while In the Web 2.0 era, in games such as Glory of Kings, you can’t decide the choice of characters, let alone kill your favorite Monkey King into World of Warcraft—it’s not difficult to connect to the platform in this regard, just because the control is not in the hands of users. Of course, you can also trade equipment such as character skins (with the help of NFT), and even establish a complex game equipment derivatives market based on other DeFi protocols. In short, the way of living of Web3.0 is completed cross-application platform, cross-virtual and reality.
Privacy: Transfer of data ownership and value. Data privacy has become the focus of global supervision. The current solution is to strengthen legal protection and make users aware that theft of user data is an illegal act; the second is to introduce privacy computing through homomorphic encryption, multi-party secure computing, and trusted execution. Environment and other technologies to ensure that data is not visible in plain text during use.
In the era of Web3.0, users will tend to protect personal data privacy in a more thorough way, which will lead to the transfer of data ownership and value. With the decentralization of applications, when the data on the chain can be checked, user behavior, generated data, and even application protocols also need to be protected by privacy. Privacy protection is multifaceted, including basic blockchain platform privacy protection, stored data privacy (distributed storage), user private key management, and anonymous protocols.
DAO: A network world of co-construction, co-governance and shared value. The construction of the Web3.0 ecosystem, such as applications, tools, protocols, etc., is inseparable from collaboration. The organizational form that enables users to collaborate in an orderly manner is called DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). The full name of DAO is a decentralized organization. Users are organized and formed due to common goals. They use blockchain technology and smart contract programs to formulate and execute rules, so as to achieve a form of community self-governance that can ensure fairness.
The user's content creation in Web2.0 Internet applications is limited in many ways (restricted by platform review, cross-platform restrictions), and even more restricted in community governance, thus limiting the user's economic sharing of creators. value capture. The openness principle of Web3.0 will break these limitations, and the incentive mechanism of the blockchain will effectively feed back the value of the content economy to the creators.
Blockchain technology is the core technical basis for the establishment of the DAO form. The organizational rules are written through blockchain smart contracts, and the execution is guaranteed by the program. At the same time, the rules are stored on the block and cannot be easily tampered with. During the establishment of DAO, the creation, distribution and circulation of value will also occur. DAO is established in user interaction and continues to create value in the interaction. DAO distributes value by issuing project tokens and NFTs, enabling users to enjoy DAO's governance rights and income rights. DAO tokens and NFTs can also be circulated in DeFi.
As an organizational form in the Web3.0 era, DAO is quite different from traditional organizational forms in terms of organizational structure, organizational rules, and ownership of rights. DAO has the following advantages: organization rights are distributed to all organization members in the form of organization tokens, thereby realizing community autonomy and rights distribution, thereby greatly stimulating the participation and enthusiasm of organization members, and promoting the construction of web3.0 community projects have an important role.
The current DAO is mainly built on the Ethereum blockchain network. This is because Ethereum has established a distributed and decentralized smart contract platform, and DAO needs to rely on smart contracts to program governance rules, so as to ensure that DAO can operate according to the rules it writes. Objectively speaking, DAO is still in its infancy and has many shortcomings: 1) It depends on the program, and there may be bugs; 2) The preset rules, lack of flexibility in execution, are not suitable for dealing with complex situations; 3) The DAO governance model is not enough Perfect, there are governance loopholes.
At the current point of time, due to the shortcomings of DAO, it is still unable to fully rely on the automatic execution of the program. Therefore, the current governance method of most DAOs adopts a combination of on-chain governance + off-chain governance - through smart contract programming on the blockchain , to complete most of the simple, highly repetitive, and frequently invoked rule execution settings, and to carry out complex rule governance through the establishment of an executive committee and DAO user voting.
2. Web3 promotes the integration of "real world" and "virtual world"
In the era of Web3.0, Metaverse will be a very imaginative and creative network form. In the Web2 era, people are accustomed to using "virtual world" and "real world" as the boundary between online and offline worlds. The metaverse built on the basis of Web3 will be a deep fusion of the so-called "real world" and "virtual world".
The Internet in the Web2 era has obvious ecological boundaries (this is the result of the operation mode of centralized companies), an Internet giant controls the core access of the ecology, and there are relatively few cross-ecological applications—for example, online payment tools cross Ecological restrictions, blocking of hyperlinks between important Internet application portals. The so-called Internet applications are actually restricted to activities in different ecological areas. In the metaverse world of the Web3 era, the "gap" and boundaries of the Web2 era will be broken.
In addition to the cross-chain application mentioned in the above chapters, which solves the integration between different main chain ecologies, the metaverse world and the so-called "real world" will continue to merge. For example, a subject in the Metaverse, in addition to engaging in economic activities in the DeFi market, can also hold assets and interests in the real world. In other words, there is no separation between the "virtual world" account and the "real world" account system for assets in the Metaverse, and the Metaverse will be a fusion of the "real world" and the "virtual world". It is generally believed that although the world of the Metaverse is co-built by users and different applications can be freely integrated through various means, the virtual world of the Metaverse cannot be connected with the asset accounts in the real world because there is an ecological gap in the real world. Therefore, the "external metaverse" cannot break into the ecology of the current Web2 era.
Policy, Supervision
and new traffic value
In 2021, the government will issue corresponding policies to vigorously support the development of Web3.0-related industries. The 14th Five-Year Plan has repeatedly mentioned the need to vigorously develop blockchain technology, and at the same time increase the development and construction of metaverse-related technologies such as immersive video, virtual reality, and 8K high-definition video. The State Council and local governments are competing to issue policy documents to vigorously promote the construction of related industries in the local Metaverse. At the same time, the government imposes strict regulations on virtual currencies. In 2017, the central bank issued an announcement, pointing out that virtual currency does not have the function of legal currency, and related risks need to be paid attention to.
In September 2021, 11 departments including the National Development and Reform Commission issued a notice strictly prohibiting the addition of new virtual currency "mining" projects, and at the same time accelerated the orderly withdrawal of existing projects, completely prohibiting "mining" activities. The application of blockchain technology has gradually landed in finance, logistics, digital copyright, insurance and other fields. In the financial field, while reducing the cost of financial transactions, it improves the rapid completion of transaction payments. In the field of logistics, logistics costs can be reduced, and the production and delivery process of items can be traced. In the field of digital copyright, works can be authenticated to ensure the authenticity and uniqueness of ownership. In the field of insurance, the automatic triggering of insurance policies is realized through the application of smart contracts.
The regulatory challenges brought about by Web 3.0 are undoubtedly huge. Under the background of openness, privacy and co-construction, it does not mean that Web 3.0 applications do not need supervision. But there is no doubt that due to the huge innovation of the Web3.0 application business model, the supervision method is bound to undergo major changes to adapt to the development of new things.
Therefore, in the era of Web3.0, supervision will present the following development trends: 1) For the channel/business that communicates the two worlds of Web3.0 and Web2.0, it will be the first to seek a suitable supervision model to adapt to the development of Web3.0:
2) In terms of privacy and anonymity, there may be KYC at the bottom layer, and moderate anonymity at the application layer: For the privacy and anonymity functions brought by the distributed network, on the one hand, there is a need for privacy and anonymity; on the other hand, it does not mean privacy and anonymity would completely ignore regulation. In the real world, supervision must exist, and Web3.0 will also explore the way of integration with supervision. A seemingly feasible approach is to implement supervision at the bottom of the blockchain network, which means that there will be regulatory constraints such as KYC on the bottom account, and achieve moderate anonymity at the intermediate protocol layer and application layer. Of course, the means of supervision are also flexible, and information such as user KYC can be stored in a multi-signature network participated by supervision.
3) In the process of DAO governance, supervision is bound to be introduced as a governance party: DAO is an important governance mechanism for the operation of the Web3.0 world, but the ideal DAO solution does not seem to be able to solve all problems, and often requires arbitration and recovery of stolen After issues such as assets occur, government agencies and regulatory agencies in real society often play a very practical role. For example, it is not enough to completely rely on DAO when hacking incidents frequently occur in the DeFi system and losses caused by other unpredictable events occur.
At this time, it is often necessary to resort to means such as the real social government and the law. For example, when a risk occurs in a DeFi project, relying solely on the decentralized governance of the community may not be able to urge the development team to protect or recover users' encrypted assets. On the contrary, when a crisis occurs, it is the centralized institutions and legal deterrence in the real society that can really deter attackers. For example, when some personal information of the hacker is exposed and some assets are frozen by the centralized organization, the hacker is willing to negotiate with the development team and promise to return the stolen assets.
What kind of paradigm will the Internet's important traffic (entry) value be in the Web3.0 era? Web2.0 competes for user attention and capital flow, so as to realize the realization of traffic value. In the Web3.0 era, the value of traffic entry is still important, but it is by no means limited to this.
For example, Uniswap, one of the biggest contributors to the promotion of "DeFi Summer", is also a traffic portal like Web2.0 from a user-oriented point of view-users use its DEX protocol to complete the transaction exchange function, and the handling fees paid by users are used as The traffic of the protocol (platform) is realized (part of which is fed back to LP). From this perspective, Uniswap is not fundamentally different from other Web2.0 applications. However, as a basic DEX protocol, Uniswap can be called by other protocols to produce complex features (the so-called DeFi Lego).
The most typical applications such as income machine gun pool, transaction aggregator, etc., users complete DeFi "mining" income and transaction exchange functions on these applications, often behind the call of DEX protocols such as Uniswap, and these protocols are hidden from users In the background, and there may be multiple protocol call processes in the middle. But for the Uniswap basic protocol traffic realization, the effect is the same.
Due to the openness of the Web3.0 world, these calls do not have issues such as licensing and ecological boundaries, and are completely open. Therefore, the traffic value paradigm of Web3.0 will show the characteristics of openness. In addition, the value of Web3.0 traffic is also strongly related to the number of protocol calls.
At present, many platforms such as social networking (WeChat, Weibo), entertainment (Steam), and finance (Oriental Fortune) we have seen are the beneficiaries of the evolution from Web1.0 to Web2.0. What is the future evolution to Web3.0? of?
Web3.0 is full of imagination, and its final landing form cannot be clearly judged now. But the trend is already showing signs. During the evolution to Web 3.0, many products in the form of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 have appeared. Typical representatives in this regard are the NFT trading platform Opensea and the Metamask wallet. Opensea's income depends on NFT transaction fees, which is similar to the model of traditional e-commerce or centralized exchanges.
Metamask wallets are embedded in PC browser plug-ins such as Chrome and mobile apps. As an important user entrance, Metamask integrates the swap aggregation function. Users can directly call the DEX protocol to complete token exchange, and then pay additional fees to the Metamask platform . Both are typical Web 2.0 products. But users operating on these two platforms is a typical product or function in the Web3.0 world.
In the Web 2.0 era, various APPs have become the main front of applications, giving birth to businesses such as buying volume and flashing, and a lot of time and data of users are bundled in the head APP. However, the existing Web 3.0 applications are mainly accessed through web browsers on the PC side. The mobile terminal is accessed by a web browser, and the wallet App can also be used as the entrance, but the specific application is still accessed through the web.
Unlike in the Web 2.0 era when manufacturers liked to develop independent mobile apps and PC clients, Web 3.0 may break this phenomenon. It may be more convenient for apps and clients to collect user behavior data, and it is also convenient for core manufacturers to manage ecological applications (app store review and management like appstore), which will change in the Web 3.0 era that emphasizes privacy and development. Maybe Web 3.0 is just like its name, the web will be the foundation of all applications.
Zhishi believes that in the era of Web 3.0, users will enjoy real data autonomy, and by then, the Internet will definitely take on a new look. However, behind the great autonomy is also accompanied by risks, and it may be more important to prepare for a rainy day in policy formulation.