WEB3.0 white paper

I

Part1 New Wave

So what exactly is Web3.0?

What changes can TA bring to the world today?

What technologies does TA consist of?

How to realize Web3.0?

What opportunities does TA bring?

What can we get out of it?

Web3.0 is a very cutting-edge topic, full of uncertainties, and no one can accurately predict when it will come and in what form it will come. But the trend has already appeared, and I only use this article as a starting point, hoping to promote it with like-minded people.

Web 3.0 is also a very old topic, since 2006, the term Web 3.0 has been getting more and more attention, and it is also the focus of more and more debates, and this phenomenon has continued until now.

"People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think when Scalable Vector Graphics is used extensively on top of Web 2.0—everything is rippled and folded and looks edgeless—and a whole sheet of semantics The web covers a huge amount of data, and you have access to this incredible data resource."

—Tim Berners Lee(2006-5)

"Web 1.0 is dial-up Internet access with an average bandwidth of 50K, and Web 2.0 is an average bandwidth of 1M. Then Web 3.0 should be a network with 10M bandwidth and full video. Only then does it feel like Web3.0."

—- Netflix founder Reed Hastings (2006-11)

"(Web 3.0) Apps are going to be created differently. So far the term Web 2.0 has come up mostly in response to something called "AJAX"...and my prediction for Web 3.0 will be a patchwork of applications , with some main characteristics: the application is relatively small, the data is in the Cloud, the application can run on any device (PC or mobile phone), the application is very fast and can be customized a lot, and the application is like Spread like a virus (social networking, email, etc.).”

— Google CEO Eric Schmidt (2007-8)

Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS), where 4C = Content, Commerce,6Community, C = Context, P = Personalization, VS = Vertical Search, namely: Content + Comments + Community + Context + Personalization + Vertical Search;

—Sramana Mitra

No matter how Internet people define Web3.0, they have not grasped the most important feature of Web3.0: distributed.

In 2017, the co-founder of Ethereum and the founder of Polkadot: Gavin Wood formally proposed the concept of distributed Web3.0. Of course, Ethereum named the JS development kit that connects the smart contract with the front end as Web3, which also shows Ethereum's attitude towards Web3.0.

What is certain is that Web 3.0 will set off a wave far beyond Web 1.0 and 2.0, and in this wave, there will be companies whose market value is much higher than that of Internet giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tencent, Ali, and Baidu. A batch of rookies. What is even more worth looking forward to is that these rookies may appear in front of the world in a new form of self-organization or ecosystem.

When writing this article, I learned that on December 1, 2018, Wanxiang Blockchain Laboratory, Matrix Element, Computing Power Think Tank and other units jointly initiated the establishment of "Zhenjin Society", aiming to create a The first privacy protection and data security platform in China. This is the first time in China that industry leaders and enterprises have raised Web3.0 to a strategic level.

Coincidentally, in the past few months, Web3.0 has replaced blockchain as the focus of discussion at many blockchain conferences held in the United States and Europe. We believe that soon more and more friends will discover and take the lead in stepping on the waves of Web3.0, riding and dancing with the waves.

Recently, there is an argument that Internet entrepreneurship is dead, and the ten-year golden period of entrepreneurship from 2008 to 2018 has passed. On the surface, this is true. In an environment where funds, data, and traffic resources are highly monopolized, almost all entrepreneurs and innovative projects are on the road to death or surrender. Web3.0 will break this monopoly from the bottom and rekindle the sparks of innovation. At present, these sparks are still very weak and fragile, but a single spark can start a prairie fire.

For practitioners in the blockchain industry, after an in-depth understanding of Web3.0, they will find that blockchain is not the beginning of Web3.0, nor is it the end of Web3.0. Blockchain is the golden door to open the door of Web3.0. key. Those who understand the concept of blockchain will understand Web3.0 better, and will also get the biggest dividend in the upcoming tide of Web3.0.

Part2 Distributed

In 1994, Kevin Kelly systematically elaborated on the concept of distribution in his book "Out of Control". He started from the study of bee colonies, self-organization, ecological circle, industrial ecology, network economy, electronic currency, and artificial evolution. He successfully predicted the technologies that are emerging or hot today, including: artificial intelligence, virtual reality, crowdsourcing and crowdsourcing. chips, cloud computing, Internet of Things, big data, network economy and digital currency, etc.

These successful predictions all stem from Kevin Kelly's deep understanding of distributed theory. Zhang Xiaolong, the father of WeChat, once recommended this book to many people, and even decided whether to admit college students to join the WeChat team based on whether he had read and understood the book.

The profoundness of this book cannot be explained in a few words. We have highly concentrated the advantages of the distributed model in the book and listed them below:

Individuals in the bee colony do not have the characteristics of highly intelligent life, but as a whole, they can embody a high-level intelligent life and form a self-organization.
Distributed organizations are more resistant to risks.
Users within an ad hoc are more equal.
In distributed self-organization, system awareness is bottom-up control, and most nodes are highly satisfied with the system.
The distributed organization eliminates the damage to the entire system caused by negative factors such as corruption, greed, and brain flooding of the central node.
The rules of a distributed organization are generally simple, or at least not complicated.

Compared with centralization, distributed is more stable, has stronger anti-risk ability, lower consumption, fairer, more transparent, and simpler.

It is this seemingly simple distributed thinking that enables us to achieve rapid development in artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things, blockchain and other technologies today, and solves some problems that cannot be broken through with centralized thinking. Technical Difficulties. For example, distributed machine learning (DML) has covered almost all fields of computer science, including: theory (such as statistics, learning theory, optimization theory), algorithms, and core machine learning theories (deep learning, graphical models, kernel methods) . Distributed can make good use of big data, and it has become the most widely used machine learning technology in the industry.

Part3 decentralization

The idea of decentralization can be perfectly interpreted by a sentence in "Out of Control". Right now

"There is no beginning, no end, and no center, or, conversely, a beginning everywhere, an end everywhere, and a center everywhere."

— "Out of Control" Kevin Carey

This is a completely different kind of thinking from what we are used to. Whether it is the history of thousands of years of human beings or the history of the development of the Internet in recent years, they are constantly advancing in the process of separation and combination.

We believe that the issue of decentralization should be viewed in two parts.

First of all, from a technical point of view, with the improvement of the computing and storage performance of a single node, as well as the improvement of the performance of the network linking each node, the distributed network can bring about a significant improvement in overall performance. And if we still insist on centralization, the performance of the entire network will be limited by the performance of the centralized server, which is not conducive to the development of technology.

Typical examples are the mainstream technologies used in cloud storage, such as GFS and HDFS. When the number of nodes is skyrocketing and files are fragmented, the service can only be supported by continuous hardware investment. On the other hand, decentralized storage technologies, such as IPFS, abandon central control nodes and adopt network discovery technologies such as KAD to achieve a balance between quantity and performance. Make up for the defects of cloud storage.

What I said above may be technical, and let me give you an example that most people are familiar with: Xunlei.

Every computer and box using Xunlei's service is both a data acquirer and a data provider, thus forming a huge peer-to-peer storage network. After downloading a file, you can become the distributor of the file. In the past, one server provided the download, but now hundreds of nodes provide the download together. In this way, Xunlei met the needs of users for high-speed downloads when the network infrastructure was not yet mature in the past few years.

Therefore, at the technical level, whether it is distributed storage or blockchain, it has been clearly stated that the decentralized peer-to-peer network is the future of network development

However, at the level of society, community or corporate governance, decentralization may not necessarily bring the desired effect. At this point, we must fully realize that human nature has a huge impact on the final result in the process of decentralized governance. The most realistic example is ICO, as an advanced financing model controlled by open, transparent and non-tamperable algorithmic codes, which eventually cannot withstand the greed of human nature and become a tool for illegal fundraising and wanton fraud.

Therefore, the decentralization we are talking about here is limited to the technical level. Perhaps one day in the future, with the development and maturity of technology, decentralization at the governance level will be forced, but for now, we only talk about decentralization at the technical level.

Namely: Decentralization refers to a peer-to-peer network of decentralized servers.

Applying Kevin Kelly's style, we slightly change, namely

In the decentralized server network, there are no servers and no center, or vice versa, there are servers everywhere and central nodes everywhere.

If you want to use poetic language to describe the elegance of decentralization, it is: Compared with "one tree striving for spring", the scenery brought by "a hundred flowers blooming" is even more beautiful!

Part4 Risk and Loss of Control:

However, even decentralization at the technical level still cannot prevent social problems caused by excessive and free flow of information and funds. This will be the biggest risk and challenge on the decentralized network.

In a centrally controlled network, everyone’s identity is known, and there are laws and regulations, and people’s words and deeds will be self-restrained. In a decentralized network, if everyone's identity is hidden, uncontrollable risks of information will inevitably arise. The Internet will be full of rumors, false information, unhealthy content, and even become a haven for crime.

If combined with a decentralized digital currency, various underground commercial activities will flood the network. This is the fundamental reason why the governments of major countries around the world have always maintained a cautious and strong regulatory attitude towards digital currencies such as Bitcoin. In some countries, users of digital currency must go through very strict anti-money laundering (AML) and identity investigation (KYC). The out-of-control risk prevents the occurrence of some vicious social problems.

So, is centralized identity verification the only solution to the risk of loss of control on a decentralized network? Is it optimal?

We believe that, at present, this is the only viable option. As mentioned in the second point above, identity verification is a problem at the level of social governance, and centralized solutions are more effective.

However, if you do real-name authentication on a certain website, you must not only upload the front and back of your ID card, but also submit photos of your ID card in hand, and these photos will be manually reviewed on the platform. This is a very scary thing. Platforms or staff with malicious motives may use these user data to do illegal things at any time.

In the second half of 2018, in the long-term rental apartment "Yu X" thunderstorm incident, the platform stole customer identity information on a large scale to apply for loans from banks. Now, a large number of uninformed tenants not only lost the right to live in the apartment, but To inexplicably bear the heavy bank loan repayment obligations.

Therefore, it can be seen that the direct consequence of centralized identity verification is: private information is easily leaked, and once leaked and used maliciously, the consequences are extremely serious.

We believe that we can go further when it comes to centralized identity verification. That is: to establish a centralized digital identity authentication system based on cryptography for privacy protection and data security.

This digital identity system will become everyone's unique ID. This ID has a proper term on the distributed network: DID (Decentralized ID), which is a distributed identity system.

Whether it is by plane, high-speed rail, staying in a hotel, shopping online, or chatting on the Internet, expressing opinions and comments, this DID will undertake the dual functions of data encryption and identity verification. At present, it is very likely to adopt a public-private key mechanism, and it is also possible to combine public-private keys with human body feature recognition technologies (such as fingerprints, iris, and face recognition) in the future.

The biggest difference between this distributed identity system and the existing identity verification system is that it is not controlled by any commercial company, and in most common scenarios, it only has the function of cryptographic verification. In other words, when verifying identity, any organization, institution, business, or individual can quickly prove "someone is someone" through cryptography without knowing the specific identity information of the person being verified.

It is hoped that one day in the future, this digital identity verification system will be able to upgrade our current ID cards or passports and visas, etc., and by combining with certain biological characteristics of our human body, it will become a new authentic and credible identity verification system that cannot be stolen or tampered with. Generation ID system.

This identity system will become the most important credit and security guarantee in the Web3.0 era.

Part5 Trusted Network

Whether it is centralized or decentralized, it is inseparable from a set of combined technologies, namely: trusted network. The trusted network consists of five parts, which are briefly introduced as follows:

1. Trusted identity:

The DID mentioned in the third point above is the trusted identity technology.

2. Trusted ledger:

Namely blockchain. The essence of the blockchain is a distributed ledger technology. Through multi-party bookkeeping, the ledger is credible, reliable, transparent and tamper-proof. Why do you need a trusted ledger? Because when value transmission is carried out on the peer-to-peer network, it is necessary to ensure that this kind of value transmission without centralized credit endorsement is reliable. At this time, blockchain technology is needed, which is also the most important role of blockchain technology.

3. Trusted Computing:

Strictly speaking, trusted computing should be called Trustless computing, that is, "trustless computing". Multi-party computation (MPC), which is currently being researched by more than half of the world's cryptographers, is an important solution for trusted computing. Trusted computing needs to solve the problem of how to complete collaborative computing among a group of mutually distrusting parties while protecting privacy. Take the medical blockchain project as an example. Legally speaking, hospitals are not allowed to disclose any patient data, let alone exchange or buy and sell data without authorization. But for medical research, the more data the better. How to resolve this contradiction? This is where trusted computing comes in. Through multi-party secure computing technology, calculations such as data statistics and classification analysis can be performed without disclosing the content of identifiable data. At present, when performing big data analysis, the privacy protection of users is rarely involved, which also hinders the development of the big data industry to a certain extent. And trusted computing will provide a safe and reliable solution for this.

4. Trusted storage

The trusted storage here mainly refers to a very popular technology: decentralized storage. Decentralized storage represented by IPFS has the following characteristics: Once data is stored, it is difficult to be tampered with or deleted; all data can be directly accessed, such as in the IPFS network, no matter whether the data is text, video, or music , can directly access the data through the Hash value. Trusted storage is the core technology of Web3.0 and the concrete realization of Semantic Web. She will be responsible for the content storage and access protocols of the entire Web3.0. Just like our current cloud storage, future distributed storage will support the content storage and distribution of the entire network.

5. High-speed network

When the computing and storage capabilities of each node (such as computers, mobile phones, IoT devices, etc.) reach a certain level, the network linking each node will become very important. Only when the network bandwidth is high enough can the role of each node be played repeatedly, and the decentralized server can be realized. A high-speed network is like the soil of a trusted network world. Without this soil, there will be no trusted network. At present, the 5G network has been substantially constructed. In the next 2-3 years, with the promotion of the 5G network, various technical modules in the trusted network will develop rapidly.

Part6 peer-to-peer network

When we talk about a trusted network, there is a prerequisite, that is, the network must be a peer-to-peer Mesh network. Both Web3.0 and trusted networks are built on the basis of Mesh networks. We can call it Distributed Network (distributed network), and some people call it Decentralized Network (decentralized network). It doesn't matter, as long as it is the picture on the far right in the picture above.

The reason why this point is emphasized is that both Bitcoin and blockchain are based on peer-to-peer network technology. Only in the peer-to-peer network, the trusted network has value, and Web3.0 has value.

In the blockchain industry, there is a saying: blockchain technology is difficult to implement. The reason is that we often build blockchain applications based on a centralized network environment. For example, if payment is under a centralized network, why use blockchain? Credit card, Paypal, Alipay, etc. are enough to solve. In fact, almost all legal currency payments are based on a centralized network. Under this premise, it is a false proposition to talk about a decentralized legal digital currency based on blockchain technology.

Satoshi Nakamoto named the Bitcoin white paper: Peer-to-peer electronic cash system, which emphasized that Bitcoin is based on a peer-to-peer network. Without the peer-to-peer network, the value of Bitcoin is zero.

Part7 From the physical world to the digital world

In the real world, communication and collaboration between people are generally realized through various social organizations such as families, communities, companies, political parties, countries, races, and religions. The most critical role these social organizations play in communication and collaboration between people is to build trust.

Without these centralized social organizations, it is difficult to imagine collaboration among individuals as individuals. Collaboration is the most important factor for human beings to overcome nature, promote social development, and advance science and technology. Without cooperation, human beings may still remain in the primitive state of raw hair and bloodthirsty.

In the digital world, however, this collaborative bond has changed. Algorithms become the link between people in the digital world. Individual rights and obligations are clearly divided through algorithms. At the same time, these algorithms are solidified through blockchain technology and cannot be tampered with, becoming a consensus of cooperation and collaboration. This consensus does not need to be maintained by family patriarchs, company leaders and various functional positions, the country's police force, religious leaders, or the ruling class. It is a norm that is jointly formulated and followed.

For algorithms to become the link of collaboration in the digital world, it is not enough to rely solely on blockchain technology as a trusted ledger. As mentioned in the fourth point above, we need to be driven by a trusted network, that is, trusted identities, trusted ledgers, trusted computing, and trusted storage.

As a bridge between the physical world and the digital world, we also need a software technology and a hardware foundation. Hardware technology is a point-to-point network based on high-speed communication, while software technology is: public-private key system.

The public-private key system has a long history, but it is especially important nowadays. She is the encryption foundation of the entire Web3.0 and an important breakthrough that determines whether Web3.0 can quickly enter the mainstream society in the future.

Part8 From Web1.0 to Web2.0

Web1.0 is similar to the traditional database accessing the Internet, and its characteristic is that the output of content is controlled by the server and the operator. Users are just passive recipients of content. In 2004, Facebook launched Web2.0, which emphasizes the interaction of content. Users are no longer just content receivers, but can become content providers and platform co-builders. It is precisely for this reason that a large amount of data on the Internet has begun to converge to various major factories. Social data flows to social platforms such as Facebook, Tencent, and Twitter, while e-commerce and consumption data flows to e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Alibaba. Data has become the greatest wealth of these platforms, and it is also the most important resource for the platform to monetize through advertising or big data.

Due to the continuous flow of data to centralized servers and commercial organizations, data monopoly has emerged. Data monopolyism seriously hinders technological innovation and progress. Breaking data monopoly has become the biggest consensus in the Internet industry apart from several giants and their associated companies.

What Web3.0 needs to do is to promote data equality from a technical perspective and break data monopoly.

Part9 From Trusted Network to Web3.0

From trusted networks to Web3.0 data monopoly has given birth to the data affirmative movement, and the blockchain is the vanguard of the data affirmative movement. The data affirmative movement makes the concept of Web3.0 come into being naturally.

Technically speaking, Web3.0 is based on the existing Web2.0 and combines several trusted network technologies. Web3.0 is not an independent technology, but a mixture of different technologies.

Web3.0 is not a technical category, but an abstraction of an industry application trend. Just as Web 2.0 includes social networking, blogging, Weibo, C2C e-commerce, etc., Web 3.0 will also include more implementations at the technical and application levels.

II

part1 pain point

Web3.0 is not a castle in the air. In fact, many products currently have more or less some features of Web3.0, the most typical one is digital wallet.

After a long period of observation and investigation, we found that the biggest problem with current applications of this type is that the user experience is generally poor.

In order to allow more readers to understand this issue, here is some space to popularize the basic concepts of digital asset management.

When ordinary people surf the Internet, they usually open a website through a browser or open an application with a mobile phone. If we encounter a website application that requires login, we will register an account with a mobile phone number or email address and an easy-to-remember password. You only need to enter your account number and password when you use it later.

This mode is called: "Username-Password Account System". For ease of use, almost all platforms have a "retrieve password" function, because most users will forget their passwords, and at this time, mobile phone numbers and email addresses become the way to retrieve passwords.

The "username-password" account system is very mature, and in order to prevent it from being removed from the database, security measures such as data encryption are also constantly being improved. Moreover, as the development of the Internet becomes more and more centralized, the giants have further come up with ways that are more user-friendly. Such as WeChat login, QQ login, Weibo login, Alipay login and other one-click login interfaces. Coupled with fingerprint recognition, face recognition, and even direct login without a password-free mobile phone verification code, many people can use various applications conveniently without memorizing usernames and passwords. In fact, it is very difficult for users to go back to the previous era of cumbersome registration, login, and remembering account numbers and passwords.

The reason why the user account verification experience can be so excellent is that almost all Internet applications store the user's user name and encrypted password on the platform's own server, as long as the user name/password entered by the user and the data on the server If the data in matches, it means that the login verification is successful.

Let's look at the digital wallet again.

At present, many APP markets do not welcome blockchain applications, such as the Apple China App Store market. In addition, some third-party APP distribution markets are not friendly to blockchain applications. For example, Dandelion, a domestic APP distribution market, clearly stipulates that it will no longer accept the release of chess and card mahjong games, blockchain, and financial applications.

These set up the first obstacle for users to use blockchain digital wallets.

Secondly, almost all digital wallets use public and private keys, Mnemonic mnemonic words or Keystore login methods. Since public and private keys and mnemonic words can hardly be memorized by the brain, many users will save these important information related to asset security on local devices, such as computers, mobile phones or tablets. This is likely to cause the following problems:

If the phone is lost and the public and private keys are not backed up elsewhere, all assets in the account will be irretrievable.
Sometimes after the digital wallet APP is upgraded, the local public and private keys will be cleared. If there is no backup, all assets in the account will not be retrieved.
In order to prevent the above two situations, some people will write the public and private keys or mnemonic words on paper, in computer files, or even send themselves an email containing this information, thinking that they will never lose it again. But in fact, these insecure account management methods can make assets more vulnerable to theft.

Therefore, in the use of digital wallets, a very interesting paradox has emerged: for the sake of asset security, the public and private keys of digital wallets are no longer kept by the server, but by the users themselves. Instead, it increases the risk of asset loss. Another more serious problem is: because the public-private key mechanism has poor experience, cumbersome and security risks for ordinary people, few users are willing to use it.

In a larger scenario, this problem will also become the biggest pain point in the future development of Web3.0. A product with only a few million users cannot become a great product; an era with only a few million users cannot become a great era.

To develop Web3.0, this problem must be solved first. Since Web 3.0 is unstoppable, and since privacy protection and data security on the Internet are major trends, this problem is worth solving.

Part2 Opportunities

Behind the above pain points is a billion-level market, which is the entrance of the Web3.0 era, namely: Decentralized Web Browser, abbreviated as DWeb.

Let's first look at several famous browser wars that the Internet has experienced in the past 25 years.

At the beginning of the development of the Internet, data access and interaction were performed on Unix minicomputers through the command line, which was almost impossible for ordinary people to use.

In 1993, the NCSA organization of the University of Illinois in the United States published the first browser that can display pictures, named Mosaic. The emergence of Mosaic brought many people into contact with the Internet for the first time, and it became instantly popular.

A year later, the core team of the Mosaic project came out to set up the company. In November 1994, the company was renamed Netscape Communication Corp., the famous Netscape company. The browser product Netscape Navigator developed by it - Netscape browser ushered in a new era. The team named the kernel of the Netscape browser Mozilla. The word Mozilla is derived from "Mosaic Killa", the terminator of the Mosaic browser.

After the Netscape browser became popular, Microsoft, belatedly aware of the important strategic significance of the Internet and browsers, began to develop its own browser in early 1995. In August of the same year, IE 1.0 came out, which was also modified based on the Mosaic browser kernel.

The first browser war broke out. In the end, Microsoft put the Netscape browser to death with the help of bundling the IE browser with the Windows operating system. Microsoft IE browser once monopolized 96% of the market share.

After Microsoft's victory, the innovation and development of browsers fell into a low ebb. The IE browser was not updated for a long time, and security holes appeared frequently. In early 2004, a team split from Mozilla launched the Firefox Firefox browser. Since Firefox was developed using the open source community model, its iteration speed was far faster than that of IE browser, the monopoly at the time, and it quickly seized more than 20% of the market share. The battle between IE and Firefox started. Around the same time, Apple's Safari browser was launched in early 2003. The second round of the browser wars broke out.

In 2008, Google launched the Chrome browser and joined the browser wars, forming a global browser competition pattern of four giants: Microsoft IE, Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari.

Today, according to the latest statistics, integrated desktop and mobile platforms, Chrome has occupied 61.75% of the market, becoming the largest browser, Apple’s Safari accounted for 15.12% of the market, FireFox, UC and Opera browsers accounted for 4.92% respectively , 4.22% and 3.15%. IE, once the absolute dominant browser, has shrunk to 2.8%.

The reason why I spend so much time introducing the browser wars in the past 25 years is to explain that the browser, as the entrance of the operating system, the entrance of traffic, and the entrance of applications, has always been the battlefield for giants to fight. Whoever occupies the browser market will occupy the commanding heights of the entire Internet industry, and whoever can easily repel competitors through browsers and support their own products to grow rapidly.

In the era of Web 3.0, the opportunity to seize the entrance of DWeb browsers is in front of all young entrepreneurs, which will surely bring more imaginative foundations, and at the same time lead to more bloody battles. If search engines, social networking site platforms, and e-commerce platforms are the entrances of the Internet era, then browsers are the gatekeepers of the entrances.

In the era of Web 3.0, the DWeb browser will become the guard of the new generation of entrances, but now, there is no one in the guard room.

Part3 Dweb browser

What exactly is a DWeb browser? Since there is no such mature product yet, we can only make the following visions for the future DWeb browser:

She is a Web3.0 browser for decentralized servers
The browser is the entrance, users can browse the website without feeling and safely, and use Dapp
All content is encrypted and stored on decentralized storage devices, never disappearing
Through the PGP public and private key mechanism, all content is encrypted and transmitted, including website browsing
Safely save the public and private keys of major public chains such as BTC locally to facilitate the operation of wallet assets and use various Dapps
Anyone can easily build a personal blog on a distributed network and share knowledge freely
After the browser runs and visits a website, it becomes a node, and the browsing is distributed
Support for distributed domain name systems such as namecoin, ppk or ENS
Make information more credible through the DiD identity system

Part4 technology stack

Web3.0 sounds pretty good, but the reality is not perfect, and many related technologies are very immature.

In the figure below, the author compares Web3.0-related technologies with current Internet-related technologies.

1. Name:

Now, all websites are called Web, and applications are called APP. In the beginning of the Web 3.0 era, it will be called DWeb or DApp to distinguish it from Web/App, but D will be removed when it matures.

2. Entrance:

The entrance is divided into two categories: one is the browser and application, and the other is the operating system.

The former includes mobile apps, mobile browsers, desktop applications, desktop browsers, etc.

Operating systems include desktop operating systems, such as Windows, LInux, MacOS, etc., and mobile operating systems, such as Android, Apple IOS, etc.

After 25 years of rapid development of the Internet, we found that all the entrances have been occupied by the global giants without exception.

In the era of Web3.0, the entrance will be DWeb browser and digital wallet. Right now, it's just getting started.

3. Transmission protocol:

Now, at the network application layer level, commonly used transmission protocols are: http/https/ftp/smtp, etc. Web3.0 belongs to the innovation of the network application layer, but it is still based on the existing Internet technology and will not change the network protocols below the transport layer. However, several new peer-to-peer network protocols will definitely appear in the Web3.0 era.

At present, the relatively mature P2P network protocol

Among the above protocols, BT, libp2p and Bitcoin are currently more popular. Among them, the libp2p protocol can support Web applications, and the others are more inclined to file transfer.

A good DWeb browser should cover the above mainstream protocols as much as possible, while supporting the traditional http/https protocol, and can easily access a large amount of content. If this is the standard, all the above P2P protocols may be unqualified, and the innovation and breakthrough of the protocol layer will largely determine when the era of Web3.0 development will come.

4. Content storage

Now, almost all open content on the Internet is stored on cloud servers. Major companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Ali, and Baidu have provided us with easy-to-use, reliable, and affordable storage and computing services.

The common feature of cloud storage is that all content can be conveniently added, deleted, modified, and checked, which increases the risk of data insecurity.

In addition, most of the content stored on the cloud server is blocked by the server, and the content cannot be directly exposed to the network, making it difficult for big data analysis, artificial intelligence technology, and search engine technology to intelligently analyze network content. It is also the reason why the Semantic Web has been unable to make substantial progress.

Some distributed storage technologies headed by IPFS have found a breakthrough point, directly accessing through the Hash value, and further socketing semantic description metadata, so as to make the content on the network more intelligent. And the value of directly tagging metadata on the content will far exceed the value of tagging documents such as Html/Xml at present.

Distributed storage is an important solution to realize the Semantic Web, and the Semantic Web is one of the important features of Web3.0. This is the most potential value of distributed storage.

Attachment: The Semantic Web is a vision of the future network, as one of the characteristics of the 3.0 Internet era. Simply put, the Semantic Web is an intelligent network that can not only understand words and concepts, but also understand the logical relationship between them, which can make communication more efficient and valuable.

The core of the Semantic Web is: by adding semantic "metadata" (Meta data) that can be understood by computers to the content on the World Wide Web (such as: HTML documents, XML documents, pictures, videos, etc.), so that the entire Internet becomes a common medium of information exchange.

5. Database

Friends who have done Web or App development know that an application consists of three modules: the presentation layer, the data layer and the consistent logic control layer, that is, the MVC framework.

The data layer includes structured data and unstructured data. Unstructured data storage is the content storage mentioned above. Structured data storage is generally implemented using structured databases such as mysql and Oracle.

Like content storage, databases also have the risk that data content can be easily added, deleted, modified, and checked.

A week ago (November 28), Amazon, the world's largest cloud computing service provider, released a new service at the AWS Conference: Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB). QLDB provides an append-only, immutable data record set that keeps a secure log of all changes. And, the changes are cryptographically linked and verifiable.

Although QLDB does not adopt blockchain technology, it has taken an important step on the road from ordinary databases to "trusted databases".

Compared with QLDB, the decentralized database (Decentralized DB, referred to as DDB) goes further. In addition to requiring a powerful and efficient timestamp similar to QLDB as a proof that cannot be tampered with, DDB also needs to implement data on a distributed network. Consensus.

At present, the distributed database technology has just started, among which GUN and Orbit-db based on the IPFS network are currently put into commercial use. In the United States, DDB technology has attracted great attention from all sides.

6. Consistency logic

The so-called consistency logic refers to the data operation and communication instructions that all clients need to execute together.

For all existing Web/App applications, the consistency logic is written on the server, while the presentation layer is on the client side. There are various implementation schemes for client and server data request and feedback, such as Ajax, XMLHttpRequest, REST, WebSocket, Pubsub, etc.

The logic on the server is generally implemented in languages such as php/java/go/c++.

In the Web3.0 era, there will be no servers, or every node is a server. Therefore, a new solution is required to implement the consistency logic on the existing server.

This solution is the "smart contract". Smart contracts are actually a kind of "Function as a Service" (Function as a Service, FaaS for short). Friends who have done contract development on the blockchain know that many functions (or methods) will be written in a contract, and those public methods can be called separately from the outside to achieve a certain function.

The smart contract of Ethereum is a kind of FaaS that cannot be tampered with, while the smart contract of EOS is a kind of FaaS that can be continuously iterated.

Smart contracts are a "serverless" architecture. Amazon AWS Lombda, which was born almost at the same time as Ethereum, is also "serverless", but the latter's so-called Serverless does not mean that there is no server, but that the server exists in the form of a third-party service with specific functions.

In the Web 3.0 era, what we need is real serverless implemented through smart contracts, not the centralized serverless of Amazon Cloud.

7. Pay

The Internet has been used as a high-speed information transmission tool for a long period of development. In 1998, Paypal was established, which solved the problem of online payment and made e-commerce and online consumption possible.

Ten years later, the birth of Bitcoin in 2008 solved the problem of payment without third-party banks or payment institutions as credit guarantees.

Undoubtedly, in the era of Web3.0, on the peer-to-peer network, the payment method based on blockchain is the only choice. Whether it is Bitcoin, Ripple, or Ethereum, they are all payment methods.

Payment is the most important function of the blockchain, and it is also the most down-to-earth and popular function of the blockchain so far.

8. User management

As mentioned earlier, the current user management is the "username-password" method. In the Web3.0 era, the "public key/private key" will be used to manage and verify user identities.

But this mode is not absolute. For the convenience of users, the public-private key system is often combined with the "username-password" mode.

The DWeb browser ForceNet developed by IPFS Force Zone and Blockstack, the largest DWeb browser company in the United States, both adopt the dual protection mechanism of "ID + password + public and private keys".

This user identity management and verification mechanism guarantees data security on the one hand, and also takes into account user experience on the other hand, which to a large extent solves the biggest pain point of the Web 3.0 era mentioned above.

However, it is far from enough to only solve the contradiction between public and private key security and user experience. The user management system also needs to be closely integrated with DID management. Only in this way can trusted identity be realized and the content flood crisis caused by excessive information freedom in the Web3.0 era can be prevented.

9. Domain Name System

Whether it is an IP address or a Hash address, it is very difficult to remember. For this reason, there is a Domain Name System (DNS). DNS is a distributed database on the World Wide Web that maps domain names and IP addresses to each other. It enables users to access the Internet more conveniently without having to remember IP numbers. . For example, we can enter baidu.com in the browser instead of: 220.181.57.216. Although both can open the Baidu homepage, the former is obviously easier to remember and spread. baidu.com is something that DNS brings us to remember.

However, the current DNS has been highly centralized and controlled, so the decentralized domain name system (Decentralized Domain Name System, DDNS) was born.

The most famous DDNS system is Namecoin. Anyone can register a domain name ending in .bit with very little money, which is very convenient. This domain name system runs on the Namecoin blockchain, and no one can interfere with it.

The same DDNS also includes EmerCoin’s .coin domain name, Ethereum’s .eth domain name, and so on.

Part5 Technology Maturity

Web3.0 is a combination of the above eight technology stacks, none of which are indispensable. Currently, these eight technologies are at different stages of development and maturity.

The following table is a rating made by the author after investigating the maturity of the above technologies:

It is not difficult to see that, except for blockchain payment and decentralized domain name system, other technologies are still quite immature. This is what the author mentioned in the previous article:

Blockchain is not the beginning of Web3.0, nor is it the end of Web3.0. Blockchain is the golden key to open the door of Web3.0. Those who understand the concept of blockchain will understand Web3.0 better, and will get the biggest dividends in the upcoming tide of Web3.0.

Part6 Ending

Today is December 5, 2018. Five years ago today, on December 5, 2013, the People's Bank of China and other five ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks", clarifying that Bitcoin is a special virtual commodity. It does not have the same legal status as legal tender, and cannot and should not be used as currency in market circulation.

The highest price of Bitcoin that day was $1141, and five years later, the price is stable at $3900. During these five years, the lowest was $162 and the highest was $19,980.

If we say that from 2009 to mid-2015, it was the era of digital currencies such as Bitcoin; from mid-2015 to today is the era of blockchains such as Ethereum; and the next cycle must be the era of Web3.0, the next round of bull market It may be brought about by a technological breakthrough in Web3.0, or it may be brought about by a certain killer application.

Therefore, when we understand the limitations of the blockchain, we will not be disappointed by the delay in waiting for the application of the blockchain;

When we see the trend of Web3.0 clearly, we will not be confused because of the temporary cold winter of the blockchain industry;

When we see that so many technologies need to be developed, we will shift our focus from the blockchain to more technical fields;

When we understand the turbulent history of Internet development in the past, we will understand why the door of Web3.0 has just opened, and the excitement is worth looking forward to and embracing.

When we look forward to the future with confidence and strive for it, the future will surely come ahead of schedule.

I

II

Guess you like