Web3 Kernel: Freedom, Hosting and Utopia

Author: Solaire, YBB Capital

introduction

In 2014, Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum, proposed a concept from the perspective of decentralization and democratization of the existing Internet. In this world, the services we use are no longer provided and controlled by a single company, but are jointly maintained and contributed by global users through blockchain technology. This approach empowers every participant equally, and he calls it the next generation of the Internet or Web3.

In 21 years, the blockchain frenzy rekindled the concept of Web3, but the definition of Web3 was very vague at that time, just like the king's new clothes. At that time, everyone was talking about Web3, but no one knew where Web3 was. Until 2023, Web3 is still in the early stages of exploration, but the definition is relatively clear, that is, to subvert the data monopoly of traditional Internet giants through the characteristics of the blockchain, but there are still great differences in the development category and form of the industry. **Currently, the true form of Web3 has not been fully revealed. It may go through many stages and evolution processes. The process leading to a new Internet form is relatively bumpy. The content discussed in this article is based on my subjective perspective based on the current industry What is the meaning of Web3 and how should Web3 develop. **

Born from Free Web3

Historically, mankind’s pursuit of freedom began with citizenship and political participation in the classical era, experienced the exploration of individual rights and religious freedom during the Enlightenment period, and developed to the free market and property rights concepts of modern liberalism, as well as the socialist public ownership and non-public ownership. The idea of class differences. In these different times and different cultural backgrounds, the ideological differences on free exploration still have a profound impact on us. Today, in the confrontation with the centralization of some industries or systems, new paths will be created to explore freedom and produce different ideologies.

Today's traditional Internet giants, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc., control personal data to a large extent constitute their business model. They collect, store and analyze users' personal information to provide more personalized services and earn revenue through advertisements and other commercial activities. However, this control over personal data raises a host of issues, including privacy, data security, and data ownership. Based on this background, the next-generation Internet proposed by Gavin Wood gave blockchain entrepreneurs ideas, combining traditional Internet and blockchain to create a next-generation Internet, personal information freedom, democracy, decentralization, and used by all participants At the same time, the interest relationship is changed from traditional Internet companies providing services to users, and users provide information to them to generate benefits to a model where participants co-construct and then spread benefits to all participants.

This new Internet model is called Web3, and its key features are mainly:

**1. Decentralization: **Web3 uses blockchain technology and decentralized protocols to eliminate a single centralized authority and achieve more reliable and secure data exchange and storage through a distributed network.

**2. User control and data ownership: **Web3 gives users direct control over personal data. Users can choose when to share, store and manage their own data to protect personal privacy and data security.

**3. De-trust and transparency: **By using blockchain technology, Web3 realizes trust-less transactions and contract execution, providing higher transparency and verifiability.

**4. Asset confirmation and exchange: **Web3 provides support for encrypted currency and digital assets, enabling users to conduct decentralized value exchange and asset management.

Overall, Web3 aims to build a more open, free, fair and democratic Internet, enabling individuals to better control their digital identities and data, and to achieve more secure, private and credible online interactions.

The grand vision of Web3 seems to be no less than Bitcoin's vision of changing traditional finance, but what happened is that in non-financial applications, the current performance of most Web3 projects is not satisfactory, which leads to some problems such as in non-financial applications Does it make sense to use blockchain in And how should we integrate with the traditional Internet industry? Should the blockchain continue to implement financial attributes? Quoting Vitalik Buterin’s point of view in Where to use a blockchain in non-financial applications?, stay away from the blockchain universalism "blockchain everywhere" and away from the blockchain minimalism "blockchain minimalist", I personally understand this sentence Whether it is necessary for the project to use blockchain technology, this article will discuss the above issues from some mainstream use cases in the non-financial field around this point of view.

Framework problems for Web3 applications

Pursuing freedom or proceeding from reality is a complicated issue. Blockchain was originally designed to solve financial centralization, distributed architecture, consensus mechanism, and data structure. These designs inevitably make the entire network very inefficient, different from Web2 is based on a centralized server model. The blockchain needs to verify transactions and ensure that every node in the network is updated before a result can be established. Although later blockchain practitioners have made countless efforts to increase the possibility of blockchain, from the establishment of Ethereum, to the construction of Ethereum Virtual Machine (Ethereum Virtual Machine), so that smart contracts can run on it, to achieve the possibility of application operation , In terms of scalability, around the defects of EVM, build a second layer, side chain, sharding or change the consensus mechanism to add some innovations to create a new public chain. **All practitioners related to the public chain are working hard to solve the impossible triangle of the blockchain, namely decentralization, security, and scalability. **

I do not deny that these efforts are useless. On the contrary, it is very meaningful to promote the scalability of the blockchain. But under the current situation, we must admit the fact that we have been developing within the framework built by Satoshi Nakamoto , it is not yet possible to implement the application to the extent of Web2. The decentralization and security of the blockchain are always higher than the scalability. Even if the impossible triangle is broken, the essence of the blockchain is a giant in terms of architecture Linear form, this is the invisible framework of the blockchain. The significance of this design itself is to eliminate the counterparty risk between peers and reduce the cost of reconciliation friction. Today, Web3 applications build programs on the blockchain like in Building an app in Excel is just as restrictive and inefficient. It does not conform to the meaning of Web3 itself if it breaks away from the framework. If it conforms to the framework, it has to accept some inevitable inefficiencies and complexity. **

Therefore, the current idea of app application projects is to reconstruct a certain type of Web2 app through a compromise method, such as social or video applications, and combine the application part with the chain or separate the assets and user data to the chain, and finally Get some crude, inefficient, and blank Web3 products. For most people, they need a social platform with enough resources to browse and interact rather than a complicated task platform. They need a video platform with user-generated content and a rich video library to browse. The current Web3 Video platforms like to bundle users through the token model instead of focusing on content. This type of product uses "blockchain everywhere" as the underlying logic to achieve Gavin Wood's concept of Web3 as the primary goal, and put this concept above the user Value and efficient production efficiency, this is the behavior of putting ideals above reality. Looking at the development history of human industrial products, it is always a process of finding a balance. All products with advanced ideas or put the cart before the horse are without exception. It is a failure, even if they meet the needs of a small number of people, it is difficult to develop, because products with a large enough number of users can be favored by the market, and only with enough funds and strong demand from users can the industry develop rapidly. This positive relationship is also a simple truth.

The current situation of application projects is a bit nondescript, and it can even be said that there is no clear purpose, just for the sake of chaining, **I personally think that at this stage, more should help or guide traditional games Companies and Web2 companies are on the chain, through their high-quality services and content to change the status quo of such products, the blockchain gives them more economic benefits and possibilities, and the strength of Web2 will bring more users and developers It is a win-win model for those who want to promote the construction of Web3 applications. **

Utopian SSI

Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a concept that advocates giving individuals or entities complete control and management of their own digital identities. Its core idea is that everyone should have their own identity, just like they own their own personal items, instead of relying on governments, companies, or any centralized third-party entities to confirm or manage their identities.

In this model, individuals directly own and control their identity data and decide when, how and with whom it is shared. This data may include a variety of identifying information such as names, addresses, dates of birth, passport numbers, and more complex data such as educational, banking or medical records.

The concept of self-sovereign identity has been nearly completed under the application of blockchain technology. In the blockchain, **SSI is called a decentralized identifier or DID (Decentralized Identifier), which is a new type of identifier. Used to provide persistent, verifiable, decentralized identity verification in the digital space. The main goal of DID is to provide a way for entities (such as people, organizations, devices, etc.) to control their own online identities without relying on any centralized registry. **

Technically, a DID is a string with a specific format, usually associated with a blockchain or other distributed ledger technology (DLT). DIDs enable entities to make identity claims directly on the web without going through an intermediary (for example, a social media platform or email provider) for verification.

**A key feature of DIDs is that they are controlled by the entity itself and not issued by a third party. Entities can create, update and revoke their own DIDs without going through any centralized registry. **

DIDs are a key tool for realizing the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) model, which enables entities to own and control their own identities instead of relying on centralized identity providers.

For example, a DID might look like this: "did:example:123456789abcdefghi". In this example, "did" is the fixed identifier element, indicating that this is a DID. The "example" is the so-called DID method, which illustrates how this DID is created and managed on a specific blockchain or DLT. "123456789abcdefghi" is the specific identifier part of the DID which is unique within the associated blockchain or DLT.

Self-sovereign identity is the core of Web3, and it is also a concept with strong utopian meaning. "Utopia" is a word derived from Greek, which is a combination of two words "ου" (nothing) and "τόπος" (place) Cheng, which means "a place that does not exist". The word first appeared in Thomas More's Utopia to describe an ideal, perfect society or community. I think Utopia and DID are very matching words. It is not only the hammer that breaks the barriers from Web2 to Web3, but also a hammer that does not exist. As mentioned above, "The concept of self-sovereign identity under the application of blockchain technology Achieved near completion", why use the word near completion?

Because DID, like the triangular problem of the blockchain, also has its own triangular problem, "privacy", "decentralization" and "Sybil resistance". Cryptocurrency systems such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many others do not centralize the process of recording user identities, and users do not need to provide any personal information when creating their own digital wallet addresses. However, this approach creates a problem: projects that treat these addresses as unique identifiers are highly vulnerable to Sybil attacks.

To avoid such attacks, some Crypto projects require users to go through additional customer identification (KYC) procedures, such as submitting government-issued identification. This does effectively prevent Sybil attacks, but it also means that users need to sacrifice a certain amount of privacy. At the same time, this verification method does not conform to the spirit of decentralization of the blockchain, because it relies on other non-decentralized authentication method.

It is difficult to prove that a person is unique in a network while ensuring privacy and decentralization. The current mainstream method is to confirm through the social graph through the relationship network or through the iris scan of the orb, but no matter what kind There are logical problems in both methods. For example, the social graph can update a new identity only by updating the relationship network, while Worldcoin’s Orb iris scan claims to only save the hash data of the iris, but this centralized method cannot guarantee There are no cases of man-made evil. Reality is always tinged with some dystopia, but I think the use of blockchain technology on DID is necessary, and DID can also be achieved by trade-offs between triangles, maybe introducing SBT (soul-bound tokens) Or through the local biometrics of the mobile phone device, a suitable balance can be found between the triangles.

Web3 bearer decentralized storage

The main features of current decentralized storage include:

**1. Distributed:**In a decentralized storage system, data is divided into multiple parts and distributed on many different nodes (usually personal computers) around the world instead of being stored in a single central server superior.

**2. Security: **Because the data is distributed on multiple nodes, this makes the decentralized storage system more secure and less vulnerable to single-point attacks. At the same time, many decentralized storage systems also use encryption technology to protect data security.

**3. Fault tolerance: **Because data is replicated and stored on multiple nodes, even if a node fails, the copies on other nodes can still provide data, thereby improving the availability of the system.

4. Transparency: Many decentralized storage systems are based on blockchain technology, which means that all transactions are public and can be viewed by anyone, increasing transparency.

**5. Censorship resistance:**Because data is distributed and often protected by encryption, decentralized storage systems are highly resistant to censorship, even when blocked or censored by governments or other agencies Next, data can also be accessed and retrieved.

**6. Persistence: **Because data is replicated and stored on many nodes around the world, decentralized storage has high durability. Even if some nodes fail or disappear, data can still be found from other nodes back.

Decentralized storage is a relatively early development track in non-financial applications of blockchain. As a key container for Web3 data carrying, decentralized storage has always had two most critical pain points, high threshold and weak performance. It runs counter to the value of users, but I think decentralized storage is in line with the necessity of using blockchain technology. At present, there are some projects that continue to raise its upper limit, such as ETH Storage and Arweave. Whether it is web3 app or Metaverse in the future, both A sufficiently decentralized container is needed to carry the data and the front end. I am still optimistic about the future of this technology. The current direction is relatively simple. Continue to increase the speed and reduce the cost of gas in terms of storage space and storable content I believe that the characteristics of decentralized storage will be more attractive than traditional centralized storage.

Bitcoin

To sum up, I have proposed three key non-financial use cases of web3. It can be seen that the entire concept of Web3 is at a relatively early stage. They are all limited due to certain problems, and inevitably need to go through some crooked paths .

When Gavin Wood proposed the concept of the next-generation Internet, he did not consider the inefficiency of the blockchain and the violation of business principles, which led to the phenomenon that practitioners first built the roof and then the building. I agree with Vitalik Buterin. The chain is not omnipotent nor can it only be used in a minimalist way. Every application of technology should consider the status quo and have a clear purpose. An impetuous mentality will only lead to faster failure. If Web3 has a spiritual benchmark, Bitcoin may It is very consistent. Although each code designed by Satoshi Nakamoto is not complicated, it has its own clear purpose. Bitcoin belongs to no one and belongs to no one. It subverts traditional industries and inspires subsequent practitioners in 15 years. It still affects us deeply today.

Why buy bitcoin is the slogan of YBB, and the above is my answer. I hope that one day when someone asks me why I am all in web3, I can also have my answer. My expectation for it is also to subvert the tradition and break the monopoly , a technology that belongs to the people, no one can stop the surge of the trend, I hope all practitioners will encourage each other.

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