Every day in Singapore is sunny, with occasional showers in the afternoon or evening, freshening up the air.
Outside the window, the woods sway gently, the beach is warm, and the coast is calm.
Each day is somewhat similar, yet every new day is uniquely different.
I've previously written an article about what Web3 is. Considering the recent war situations, Web3 as a decentralized Internet might be better described as the re-decentralization of the Internet.
I'll take some time to address a question posed by a friend: What problems can Web3 truly solve?
Certainly, given the current state of Web3 technology, this is an excellent question.
There's an underlying assumption here that it's solely based on existing technologies.
Within the Web3 tech stack, there are several technologies that have been objectively validated as useful, such as blockchain, cryptography, distributed computing and storage, smart contracts, tokens, and NFTs.
We can consider these problems from the surface to the core.
It's clear that the crypto community, led by Bitcoin and Ethereum, has now reached the 'Early Mass' phase, with roughly 300 million users. Of course, the actual frequent users are less; as of October 2021, Binance had over 28.5 million users.
In the foreseeable short to medium term, what problems in the crypto community can be effectively addressed by technology?
Clearly, the technology can better address some of the public social demands within the crypto community, such as how the public expresses their ideological demands. We've noticed the emergence of initiatives like Constitution DAO or Assange DAO, which offer interesting solutions. Such demands were typically addressed on the internet through voting or offline gatherings.
However, new technology offers a distinct solution to these challenges. Whether these solutions can address the actual problems remains to be seen. Still, they at least offer a more rational approach to expressing public demands, potentially replacing traditional methods like protests. In the next four to eight years, we can indeed expect more such innovative solutions to public demands.
Our community governance and collaboration will see significant enhancements, with large-scale collaboration and governance that transcend time and space limitations emerging. Whether it's remote working due to the pandemic or cross-cultural collaboration resulting from wars, several challenges have become evident. We truly need technology to help us with asynchronous collaboration and governance across spaces.
We can already see hints of this in various DAO organizations.
Distributed work and cross-regional governance will soon become pressing issues for organizations.
Traditional solutions were based on organizational and management theories. But as organizational structures become more fluid, governance, motivation, and collaboration become pressing issues. Of course, challenges directly related to economic objectives are likely to be addressed first.
Chances are, we will have more optimized decentralized governance and collaboration tools. Even centralized organizations can leverage this technology to address specific challenges.
The problems at the economic and incentive levels are evident. We have all the ingredients for innovative incentives in more economic scenarios. Over the past two years, from DeFi to NFT to GameFi to SocialFi, the evolution is based on using past technology to solve present problems.
This approach is very pragmatic and will likely become even more widespread.
The recent emergence of "move-to-earn" is intriguing. Of course, such concepts have existed historically. Why are they only now being extended to these scenarios? Incentive innovations must address current economic challenges and ensure sustainability. Many past approaches have only tackled the primary issue of incentivizing users. If these methods lack legitimacy, they're unlikely to become the norm. Observations from the past suggest that paradigm shifts aren't just about breakthroughs but also about systematically addressing the need for long-term economic legitimacy. Clearly, from decentralized to open finance and even more decentralized finance, these are likely approaches. Especially today, when centralized banks have completely abandoned neutrality. Given this, not just games but broader internet-based platforms like brand-centric, lifestyle, e-commerce platforms, O2O, content, and consumer hardware might see new innovations from the incentive perspective. Although not all of these solutions will be sustainable, their potential has significantly increased. Content-oriented solutions, for instance, will clearly benefit from NFTs, with promising opportunities in music, video, audio, and more.
From a technical standpoint, it's evident that the tech stack will have more layers, with clearer logic between layers, aligning with the evolution of blockchain technology. We can view these problems as pertaining to the foundational, middle, and upper layers.
At the foundational level, the primary challenges are security and stability. As the blockchain economy grows, these challenges become more pressing. Essentially, we need a more stable currency and financial infrastructure that remains trustworthy, regardless of societal changes. Any interruption or security issue at the foundational Layer1 can directly hinder the functioning and expansion of the upper economic layers. Also, the demand for security and stability becomes more urgent when technological revolutions are on the horizon. From an industry-wide perspective, we need an unbreakable foundational technology to provide a solid base for developers. From this viewpoint, not only from an economic perspective, but also in terms of "new incentive platforms", we might have greater expectations for foundational applications in currencies and tokens.
The middle layer can evidently be used to address the scalability limitations of blockchain. If we want to widely expand blockchain applications, the development of the middle layer is crucial. From this perspective, we're likely to see the emergence of more interconnected and standardized middle layers. This technology will solve many scalability issues in the entire blockchain industry, potentially leading to the emergence of protocols and economies that are tenfold larger than before. This ensures that existing scenarios, like financial ones, become more mainstream, while also laying the groundwork for reforms in business and media gaming scenarios. With trust being output at the foundational level and the middle layer expanding computational capacity per unit of time, naturally, more economies of scale will emerge. To put it simply, we might witness explosive growth in DeFi and more mainstream open financial platforms. We might also see the emergence of broader decentralized platforms or centralized platforms leveraging this technology. With platforms like Opensea boasting user numbers in the millions, it's evident that whether we're moving towards centralization or decentralization, we're just at the beginning.
The direction of technological reforms at the upper layer is vast. What is evident is the resolution towards more efficient development and a more universally adaptable user experience.
The universality and interactivity of protocols are bound to improve significantly. As of now, we don't have any truly user-friendly applications, especially when viewed from an internet application standpoint. For instance, wallets are truly cumbersome to use, with issues related to switching between different wallets, user experience, platform compatibility, and support for protocols and NFTs.
Many of these problems are thrown to developers for resolution. For a regular user, what's desired is a decentralized application as easy to use as the browsers of old. They seek easy-to-play games, mobile payment apps, and content-viewing platforms.
Of course, large-scale innovation driven by this upper layer will come, spanning a broad range. We often see many interesting applications such as mail, communication, signing, and media emerging. However, these are just a fraction of the potential. Both the application of protocols and the protocolization of apps are worth noting. It's a vast domain, and unpredictability dominates. If we view the 300 million community members through the lens of internet users, their common needs are apparent.
Indeed, technology will evolve, encompassing foundational technologies, blockchain systems with specific features, complementary mid-tier technologies, and more. We can likely anticipate more robust blockchain tech reforms, broader innovative protocols and applications, larger economic entities and platforms, richer and more robust monetary mechanisms, more scenario-driven economies, and unforeseen public demand solutions, as well as more decentralized, economically balanced collaborative organizations.
I've written quite a bit, but these thoughts are evidently based on a problematic assumption: they're grounded in the existing "blockchain" tech stack, speculating on what changes might be sparked. But the world doesn't evolve this linearly.
Indeed, science and technology often advance while toppling previous establishments. Theoretical systems, research, foundational technologies, and many high-level developments obviously operate on different cycles. But if Web3 can broadly be defined as the next decentralized internet, when discussing uncertainties, we're merely spreading our wings of imagination. Casting aside initial assumptions – which are probably closer to reality – there isn't much room to dive deeper, but let's briefly ponder a new chapter.
Viewing from an individual perspective, what truly belongs to me? Surely, my money, assets, identity, words, data, and network. Could decentralized technology better assure personal ownership? Paradigm shifts in any aspect of personal ownership could be profoundly impactful. While often considering bottom-up approaches, let's consider top-down ones.
Could concepts and rules we take for granted, like knowledge, science, justice, morals, order, and freedom, undergo significant long-term reforms? Might a paradigmatic solution to ideological conflicts arise?
Could DAOs truly replace age-old corporations, becoming the new organizational and governance structure of the 21st century?
Might we not only have pragmatic DAOs in the economic dimension but also a plethora of public organizations for broader societal issues? Think of innovative educational and aid organizations. DAOs' resilience is evident throughout history.
Could we witness not only larger economic entities but shockingly novel economic scenarios that were never a part of our past lives? Such as economies shifting our perceptual modes, or unprecedented monetary, trading, and payment methods.
Could we have a different kind of "blockchain", or even varied accounting forms?
Could we break existing technological boundaries with the same energy consumption, creating a new decentralized tech stack, empowering completely distinct economic and organizational forms?
Could we transcend the current decentralized theoretical framework to embrace a different or more worthwhile tech-philosophical framework?
The answer is, of course, uncertain.
When we close our eyes and think about the world, about ourselves, amid all uncertainties, even in the minutest probabilities, a fundamental existence stands out. A compelling question might be, what do we genuinely choose to believe in?
Personally, I choose to believe in decentralization, and even in breaking beyond it.
The more chaotic the world gets, the more I choose to believe that we deserve such possibilities.
Hence, I choose to believe in Web3, hoping Web3 enables us to think up, produce, own, enjoy, and truly become better.