A Brief History of Web3 Thoughts – A Real Blockchain Entrepreneur

introduction

From the open society to the password punk movement, from Bitcoin to Ethereum to Polkadot, the context of Web3 thinking is clearly identifiable. Ideal and success, what should blockchain entrepreneurs pursue? Freedom or efficiency, what choices will be made in the development of technology? Please listen to me for you.

Web3 is a more free, open, secure, and fairer next-generation Internet vision. I want to start with Karl Popper's open society concept. The reason is that the password punk movement is a group action of IT technology geeks, the purpose of which is to defend the cornerstone of open society – personal privacy in the Internet age. The password punk movement gave birth to Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is undoubtedly the pioneer and guide of Web3. In the open society -> password punk movement -> bitcoin -> Ethereum -> Web3 chain, blockchain practitioners are mostly familiar with the middle part, namely Bitcoin and Ethereum. Therefore, the main length will be placed at both ends of history.

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Open society

Popper's "Open Society and Its Enemies" is a sleek masterpiece whose core content is a critique of historicism. The concept of historicism is also the invention of Popper. He puts all kinds of ideas that try to predict the direction of history into which he thinks it is only the arrogance of thinkers. Not only that, but the deepest suffering of mankind has probably originated from the pursuit of "Utopia society." Under the lofty goal, some people have taken good care of others' right to think, express, property, and even to survive. It can be said that since its inception, there has been no more bloody and chilling words than the word "sublime".

The critique of historicism is in line with Popper's philosophy of science. Popper believes that all propositions that cannot be falsified are not in the scientific category. Humans can summarize scientific theories through observation and experimentation, but they can never prove scientific theories. In many people who think they have received science education, Popper’s point of view is ridiculous. Because people are accustomed to deterministic causality, and rarely pay attention to the huge asymmetry between confirmation and falsification. To give a simple example, there is a person in the house, and when you walk into one, there are two people. Everyone thinks that they have mastered the scientific theory: 1+1=2, and can predict the results with confidence. But we know that if people are replaced by particles, the particles can be in a certain area and outside a certain area, 1+1 is no longer equal to two. It can be said that 1+1=2 is not absolutely established, but is probabilistic, but in the macro world, this probability will be very close to 100%. Recognizing that all scientific theories cannot be fully confirmed, or are not absolute truths, seem to help the daily life. However, the ability to believe in human beings, even from the natural sciences to the social sciences, is so convinced that an "ideal society" that must be realized will often lead to "man-made disasters." The theory of natural science can be tested, and history cannot be repeated or tested. Humans can only explain history, and all explanations are chosen from the infinite facts. Even so, there are often many explanations for logic (and assuming that historical characters act rationally). It can be said that with regard to history, we don't even have 1+1=2, let alone build a building of an ideal society.

In "Open Society and Its Enemies," Popper mainly criticized three philosophers. What they have in common is that they sum up the laws from the past human history, try to predict the direction of history, and even direct humanity to develop into a more inevitable and better social form. Popper believes that the direction of history is not destined, but open, influenced by everyone's choices and efforts. And those who think they have mastered the laws of history and tried to complete "utopian social engineering" are extremely dangerous. For example, everyone knows the reform of Wang Shuo in Chinese history. Wang Hao’s personal talents and ethics have reached an impeccable level. From the perspective of Confucianism, it can be described as “complete” or close to “sage”. Some historical researchers say that Wang Wei’s virtue is just a disguise of fame, I can’t believe it. If a person is ruthless in his life, how do you distinguish between hypocrisy and morality? Wang Wei believes that Confucianism contains the heavens and is the law of the operation of all things in the world. As long as everyone is in accordance with the ritual system, the ideal society will naturally be realized. Therefore, after he became an emperor, he carried out a series of social system reforms and vigorously implemented them with severe punishment. The reform of Wang Shuo brought about great social turmoil and the country collapsed. It is estimated that in the 8th year of the reign of Emperor Wang, the Western Han Dynasty had a population of 50 million. After more than a decade of chaos, by the 25th year of the reign, Emperor Guangwu reunited China, the national population had dropped to 10 million, and 80% of the population died in war. And the famine caused by the destruction of production. The pain of history and lessons can be said to be incomprehensible. But until now, there are still many scholars who believe that Wang Hao’s reform has “progressive elements” or “historical significance”. Understand the theory of open society, we can know that Wang Hao’s failure is not due to the right or wrong of policy measures, but to the overall design of society, it will inevitably fail, and it will cause great disaster. The root cause is that historical trends are uncertain, cannot be predicted, and cannot be designed.

Some people say that the title of "Open Society and Its Enemies" is not appropriate and should be renamed "The Enemy of Open Society." Because the whole book is criticizing historicism, there is very little positive description of an open society. Why doesn't Popper tell us what an open society looks like? The reason is very simple. Popper opposes historical determinism. He believes that no one, including himself, can predict the ideal social form, and the open society that can be portrayed loses its openness. So we can only know what kind of social form is not an open society. In this sense, Popper represents the self-knowledge of mankind. George Orwell's paintings are more vivid about what is not an open society. Many people have already seen Orwell's biography "1984", so I recommend Orwell's other work, "Animal Manor . " This fable is less than 60,000 words and can be read in 1-2 hours. It is a shortcut for 996 office workers to understand open society.

Also, don't think of Popper as a historical nihilist or an agnostic. On the contrary, Popper said: "The future depends on ourselves, and we do not rely on any historical inevitability." He believes that human beings can create a better future, but not through top-down, uniform and uniform "Utopia Social Engineering" achieve. It can only hope for a bottom-up, rich and diverse "sparkling social project." "Spreaded Social Engineering" uses information held by private (or small groups) and is at the end of Qingping, but it may not be able to make partial improvements. They can stack, reinforce each other, or even trigger a chain reaction, which in turn changes the structure and appearance of society as a whole. In 1994, Popper died at the age of 92. He saw humanity entering the Internet age. In the Internet age, perhaps the design and evolution of encryption protocols is the best interpretation of "sparkling social engineering." The experiment of encryption protocols is non-violent, driven by thousands of entrepreneurs around the world, and the speed and diversity of innovation is unprecedented. All of this began with a group of "freaks" who are committed to using technology to defend the open society – password punk .

Password punk movement

Since the 1980s, on the one hand, people have been relying on networks and computers to process and store information, communicate with each other, or make business transactions such as payments. On the other hand, the governments of countries such as the United States and Britain always use cryptography as a military technology to manage. It may seem a bit difficult to understand at the moment, but at the time cryptography was equivalent to an munition that seemed to be justified. Because almost from the day of birth, the technology of data encryption and decryption is mainly used for military purposes. Especially after telegraph technology is widely used in military communications, countries are committed to developing encryption technology to protect their military communications. At the same time, the development of decryption technology, trying to decipher the other party's password. This is almost the same as the study of more powerful artillery and more protective armor.

Some technical geeks who pursue liberalism and anarchism are keenly aware of the importance of privacy in the Internet age, and it is feasible to develop open source encryption technology to protect personal privacy. Because encryption technology is strongly asymmetric, it is the proper encryption with a normal personal computer. Without a key, even if you use a supercomputer, you can't crack it. In Kevin Kelly's famous book "Out of Control" published in 1994, KK put forward the idea of ​​"encryption wins", because of the asymmetry, the open source encryption software available to everyone is enough to fight the world's most powerful government. Or organization.

In 1985, David Chaum published a paper "Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete" (no need for identity security: a trading system that makes Big Brother unable to do anything, David Chaum is clearly a reader of "1984"), first discussed anonymous The concept of electronic cash. In 1992, after a gathering in California, the password punk movement officially got its name. In 1993, Eric. Huges published the " Pcrypt Punk Declaration" , which clearly stated that privacy is the cornerstone of an open society. The mission of password punk is to develop and provide open source cryptography tools free of charge to the world, enabling everyone to gain the ability to protect personal privacy in the online age. In the same year, Wired magazine featured a cover article titled "Encryption Rebellion," in which three masked people were the three leaders of the cryptic punk movement: Eric.Huges, Tim May, and John Gilmore .

In 1991, Philip Zimmermann developed the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) toolkit for encrypting files and mail. He uploaded the PGP code and software to the network and was quickly downloaded and used by many people. Some users came from outside the United States. The US government believes that Philip Zimmermann violated export restrictions, launched a criminal investigation against him, and ordered him to stop spreading PGP source code and products on the Internet. The troubled Philip Zimmermann did not yield, he printed the complete source code of PGP as a book. The First Amendment to the US Constitution stipulates that citizens enjoy freedom of speech (freedom of the press is part of freedom of speech), while books are not arms, and the US government has no right to interfere with its exports. Eventually in 1996, the US federal government abandoned the criminal charges against Philip Zimmermann, and since then amended the law to relax the export restrictions on encryption technology. Internet users around the world can finally legally use encryption to protect personal privacy. After 30 years of hard work, password punk and its followers have developed a variety of data and communication encryption tools that have made a significant contribution to defending personal privacy. But the most cryptic punk is the anonymous electronic money system.

Bitcoin prequel

The Password Punk Campaign brings together a large number of outstanding computer scientists and cyber hackers who have been trying to develop practical anonymous electronic money for many years. Through anonymous electronic money, online value transfer can be completed, and personal privacy is not exposed to organizations such as merchants, banks and credit card providers. It is the jewel in the crown of privacy protection in the Internet age. Password punks have repeatedly tried to build an anonymous electronic money system, and various Internet entrepreneurs have made many attempts. The table on the right side of the above chart is listed in the Bitcoin and Cryptographic Technology published by Princeton University. There are nearly a hundred electronic payment systems and proposals worthy of attention, but none of them can satisfy the anonymous payment needs.

There are three programs that make an important foundation for the birth of Bitcoin. The first is the E-cash project launched by David Chaum in the 1980s. The goal of E-cash is to establish an anonymous Internet payment system. The payer can prove that the transaction exists, but no third party can get the information. E-cash attempts to create a black hole in the existing financial system, and the funds flowing through the black hole cannot be traced. David Chaum is a Dutch registered company that operates E-cash and has patented its technology. This caused him to attack from both sides, and password punk believed that his business operations and patent applications violated the purpose of the password punk movement, and the existing financial system could not tolerate the untrackable funds.

Another cryptic punk that makes an important contribution to cryptocurrency is Wei Dai. His B-money is very similar to the later Bitcoin. They are all based on P2P networks, centerless operations, casting money through unforgeable calculations, etc. Wait. Nakamoto has sent three emails to Wei Dai, saying that the bitcoin he invented "achieved Wei Dai's B-Money concept." But in fact, after completing the white paper, Nakamoto bought the B-money paper at the prompt of Adam Back. Therefore, Wei Dai said: Although Nakamoto mentioned my contribution in the Bitcoin white paper, in fact, my connection with Bitcoin is extremely limited. Wei Dai's name is Chinese, and his only public photo is also the Asian face. He is a famous password punk, the author and maintainer of the famous Crypto C++ library, and the Either smallest currency unit Wei, named after him. However, his personal information is hard to find, which has aroused my curiosity. After a multi-party search, I finally found out. Next I will post some of the findings, which may be seen as disrespectful to the password hero, but I have no intention. On the contrary, I hope that more people will understand the password heroes, what they did, and why they did so to express my respect.

Wei Dai's father is Microsoft's senior architect – Dai Xiwei. Mr. Dai Xiwei published a memoir called "Crossing the River", in which he wrote his son in just a dozen pages (the book does not mention his Chinese name, but is represented by wd). According to the book, Wei Dai was born in Shanghai in 1976. When he was 9 years old, he moved to the United States with his parents. Since childhood, he has shown extraordinary talent. During his time at Washington State University, he worked as an intern at the Microsoft Research Code Group, where he published a series of high-level papers and met almost all of the top experts in cryptography. After graduating from college, he refused Microsoft's repeated retention, and also shirked the goodwill of friends to invite entrepreneurship, indulge in the world of code and music, and only communicate with like-minded people all over the world through the Internet. By the time he wrote in 2002, Wei Dai, 26, still had no permanent occupation and lived with his parents. His father was very predictive and wrote: "Wd is actually another generation of new IT people – still quietly developing, but perhaps another generation of IT people who will eventually change the direction of the future IT industry… In their eyes, reputation Or status, not bad at all, as for more, that is what other people are doing. Since everything is done only to be loyal to their own feelings, then any false and speculative is of course ignored by this group. Heroes, such as Gates or anyone else's success, of course admire, but not their role model. Manipulating a large institution can certainly meet even greater challenges, but this institution will also manipulate you, why should you lose yourself? Be a symbol? 'People are in the rivers and lakes, and they are still in their own hands.' is their ideal."

The third password punk that has a great influence on Satoshi Nakamoto is Adam Back. Unlike David Chaum and Wei Dai, Adam Back still has a huge influence in today's blockchain industry. He is the founder and CEO of Blockstream, and most of the bitcoin core developers are employees of Blockstream. Adam Back published a paper on two-way anchoring sidechains in 2014, opening the door to two-tier network innovation. Ten years before Bitcoin was invented, Adam Back proposed Hashkash. Hashcash is not really about solving the general payment problem. Its starting point is how to prevent the abuse of Internet resources, such as how to fight spam. Hashcash proposes to generate some kind of proof through unforgeable hash operations. Similar to stamps, sending emails must be stamped, which greatly increases the cost of sending spam. Hashcash pioneered the mechanism for providing proof of workload through hash operations. In addition to the three projects mentioned above, there are still many projects that contribute to cryptocurrencies in the pre-Bitcoin era. These include Nic Szabo, who is known for his "smart contract" concept, and his proposed Bit Gold program. Due to space limitations, it cannot be described.

transaction cost

After years of efforts by many password punks, the practical cryptocurrency has been on the line. I won't go into the details of Bitcoin here. Everyone who studies the blockchain carefully should read the Bitcoin white paper first (at least as early as possible). Bitcoin is the crystallization of the development of the open society->password punk movement, but its success is due to economic law. In order to understand the development of bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies), we must first understand the important concept of economics – transaction costs. Transaction costs, also known as transaction costs, are simply the cost of completing a commodity exchange. For example, if you want to trade stocks in the US stock market, in addition to the cost of buying stocks, you have to pay the cost of RMB for the US dollar, the cost of remittances, the transaction fee, etc., which are all transaction costs.

The above chart shows the main transaction costs, including: search cost, the cost of finding the right transaction object; bargaining cost, bargaining cost; decision cost, transaction decision, cost of signing the contract; supervision cost, supervision of the counterparty The cost of compliance; the cost of default, the cost of enforcement or claim for default.

There is also a large category of transaction costs that are most closely related to the currency – the cost of payment, which refers to the cost of the buyer’s payment and the cost of the seller’s collection. The cost of payment can be broken down into the cost of saving and carrying the currency, including the cost of the buyer holding the currency and carrying it to the transaction site, and the cost of the seller saving the currency and taking it away from the transaction site. Identify costs and identify the cost of currency authenticity and color. The cost of transferring money, the cost of transferring money from the buyer to the seller, the handling fee for the remittance is the cost of the transfer. The exchange cost, the buyer and the seller use different currencies, you have to have a currency exchange, bear the cost of exchange. Exchange risk cost, which refers to the cost of changes in exchange rates during currency holdings. The cost of inflation, the cost of inflation during the holding of the currency. Privacy exposes costs, and the costs incurred by both parties in exposing privacy to the other party or third parties during the sale and purchase process. The cost of privacy exposure for ordinary commodity transactions is not significant, but for some transactions, the cost of privacy exposure is high. This cost is closely related to the cryptocurrency, and it can even be said that the cost of privacy exposure has made Bitcoin.

Why is Bitcoin?

After many attempts, the anonymous password punk Nakamoto confirmed the Bitcoin network protocol in 2008, realizing the first large-scale anonymous electronic money system. Then we can't help but ask: Why is Bitcoin successful, and how is it different from many previous unsuccessful attempts? First of all, it is certainly not because of the reputation of Nakamoto. Before the publication of Bitcoin, Nakamoto was unnamed in the password punk circle or the encrypted mail group. Just like the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Mathematics, every week, it is similar to a folk scientist who claims to have fully proved Goldbach's conjecture. The anonymous electronic cash system has been tried too many times by too many people, and Bitcoin seems to have nothing special. In addition to Halfini's eye-catching jewels and the admiration of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin white paper did not provoke much response in the encrypted mail group. But it turns out that Bitcoin is really different.

Bitcoin is used as currency because it can reduce transaction costs in certain trading scenarios, the most typical example being dark net payments. Both buyers and sellers of the dark network do not want to expose personal privacy, that is, the buyer and the seller do not know each other's identity, and the transaction cannot be inquired by others. Ordinary electronic payment cannot fulfill the above requirements. Until the advent of Bitcoin, reliable anonymous payments were made and were not controlled by the company and the government. Because of the existence of Bitcoin, combined with e-commerce technology, the dark network was born. In addition, Bitcoin has a big use case for cross-border remittances. Cross-border remittances have long been dominated by interbank organizations, and no competition has resulted in extremely high costs and extremely low efficiency. It is hard to imagine the Internet era. In large banks where all business processes have been IT-oriented, cross-border remittances take several days and receive a handling fee of a few percent of the remittance amount. Bitcoin can perform very fast (1 hour) remittances at very low cost (around $1), and the transaction cost advantage is extremely obvious.

The history of currency development is the history of reducing transaction costs (mainly payment costs). Every currency revolution is a currency that has increased or enhanced certain characteristics, making the new currency more powerful in reducing transaction costs. The early primitive currency was universal and widely accepted, solved the double coincidence problem, reduced the search cost in transaction costs, and made large-scale commodity exchange possible; the precious metal currency is more versatile than the original currency, regardless of the nomadic tribe. It is also a farming tribe. With the development of trade, gold and silver are gradually recognized as currency, which expands the trading group, and also reduces the cost of currency preservation and exchange costs; coinage is another currency revolution after the precious metal currency. Mint brings an important currency attribute – interchangeability. Interchangeability means that coins of the same specification, regardless of age and degree of wear, are of the same value, reducing the cost of currency identification and the cost of change; banknotes are the currency revolution after coinage. The earliest banknotes – the Northern Song Dynasty Jiaozi was born because Sichuan's local iron money was too heavy, it has better portability, reducing the cost of currency preservation and carrying. However, the full replacement of coins by banknotes is not entirely due to the cost of carrying. It is the result of the government's vigorous promotion. Checks have appeared after the banknotes. In our country, the use of checks is less common and is generally limited to payments between agencies. Cheques are more convenient than banknotes. Just pay a few dollars to write a number. If it is a large payment, it can significantly reduce the cost of carrying money and the cost of reselling. However, the use of checks increases the cost of privacy exposure compared to banknotes. The payer of the check must have a bank's checking account. The payee is written on the check and must prove his identity when cashing. That is to say, both buyers and sellers understand each other's identity, and the payment transaction is recorded by the bank. After the check, electronic money appeared, the most typical of which was Alipay and WeChat payment, which further reduced the cost of keeping, carrying, and transferring money. China's large and medium-sized cities can basically enter the cashless society, which is a great innovation in the history of currency development. The biggest contribution of e-currency is to make large-scale e-commerce possible, and commodity trading has broken geographical restrictions and achieved globalization. By reviewing the history of the currency revolution, it can be clearly seen. The currency has always evolved along the main line of continuously reducing transaction costs. The cryptocurrency has not changed the basic law of currency evolution.

By the way, I will discuss a few common mistakes about Bitcoin. The first point: "Bitcoin is digital gold, or bitcoin is rarely used for payment, so it is not money." In fact, gold is now a currency, still has three currency functions of payment media, value storage and pricing units. Just because the cost of payment is high, it is rarely used for ordinary payments. The same is true for Bitcoin. The second point: "Bitcoin has no endorsement by the state, so it is not a currency." This view clearly confuses the currency and the legal currency. The currency does not need the endorsement of the state, or even the existence of the state, and the emergence of the currency is earlier than the state. Similar mistakes with this view are: "Bitcoin is deflated, monetary policy cannot be adjusted, so it is not money." The third point: "Bitcoin is a collectible or speculative, not a currency." Collectibles and speculators There are some common characteristics: lack of flexibility in supply, long-term preservation, and stories to tell. Bitcoin is particularly suitable for speculation, its supply is fixed (not growing as demand), permanently stored on the Internet, and quickly acquired and transferred around the world. And Bitcoin is high-tech, created by anonymous hackers, and has endless imagination. Dutch tulips are far away, but in the past few decades, I have witnessed the speculation of products such as Clivia, Pank, Pu'er, and Garlic. It’s like someone who fry Pu'er tea, I drink Pu'er tea, I could have been in parallel. Just don't come over and tell me that I am drinking speculation.

I don't know if you found out. For those who oppose (or don't like) Bitcoin, Bitcoin can be anything, but it can't be money. As if acknowledging that Bitcoin is a currency, it insults something sacred. The main reason for this misunderstanding is the lack of understanding of the history of money. In fact, money is not a sacred or special thing, but a ubiquitous commodity attribute (the monetary nature that Hayek calls), that is, the ability of goods as a general equivalent to reduce transaction costs. There are many commodities used historically as money: food, salt, cattle, slaves, cocoa beans, textiles, shells, beads, feathers, canines, whales, stone plates, knives, hoops, woodpeckers, human skulls, Tobacco, fur. These so-called primitive currencies do not necessarily happen only in the distant past. For example, in prisons, the commodity economy with cigarettes as a currency is often spontaneously formed. In areas where hyperinflation occurs, people use their daily necessities as currency. Bitcoin is a monetary virtual commodity with interchangeability, separability, countability, scarcity, durability, portability, accessibility, and programmability that are much more than a thousand years old. The king of money – gold. Only by studying Bitcoin as a currency can it be possible to understand its value and the law of development, otherwise it will be almost impossible.

The intrinsic factor in the rise of Bitcoin is the reduction in transaction costs, or it is a better currency in certain trading scenarios. But the cryptocurrency that was born before Bitcoin failed. Can E-cash not reduce the cost of privacy exposure? The failure of E-cash lies in the centralized architecture, which increases the cost of trust. Users are still worried that their data and privacy will be leaked or misused by E-cash operators. On the other hand, the centralized structure is unable to cope with the traditional financial supervision, so it is inevitable to die. B-money first proposed a centerless P2P electronic cash structure. Although Wei Dai did not implement the B-money solution, I believe that even if it is implemented, B-money will not succeed. The reason is that B-money is completely decentralized. There is no unified monetary policy, and the computing power can be directly converted into currency. Then, from CPU mining to GPU mining, to ASIC mining, each round of mining efficiency breakthrough will cause a monetary depreciation of the currency, Imagine who is willing to hold a large number of currencies that cannot be hedged? Bitcoin draws on Hashcash's workload proof design and implements a unified monetary policy through Hash Collision to ensure scarcity. For the first time, the combination of encryption protocol design and economic mechanism design created a new field called cryptography economics.

Beyond Bitcoin

In 2011, Li Qiwei, a Chinese engineer who worked at Google, launched the Litecoin. The Litecoin basically reused the Bitcoin code, but made a few minor adjustments. The fast time was shortened to 1/4 of Bitcoin, from 10 minutes to 2.5 minutes, and the total currency circulation increased fourfold, from 21 million to 84 million. In addition, the hash algorithm has been replaced. In short, Litecoin is faster, cheaper and more suitable for payment. In the technical community, Litecoin is often despised because there is no original technical contribution to the development of Litecoin for eight years. Li Xiaolai commented that Litecoin has nothing. The concept of “Bit Gold, Wright Silver” is worth several billion dollars. I think it is a bit unfair, just like some people say that Columbus is nothing remarkable. Just sailing from Europe to the west can be found in the New World. The birth of Litecoin at least made people realize that cryptocurrency is not just a bitcoin. You can create new cryptocurrencies for the lack of bitcoin or by adding whimsy.

The dot coin that was born in 2012 put forward a new consensus mechanism for the problem of a large amount of energy consumption in the PoW consensus mechanism. The Wanda, also born in 2012, is not an independent blockchain, but an application layer protocol superimposed on Bitcoin to expand the use of Bitcoin and turn the blockchain from a special ledger into an asset issuance platform. Wanda Co. Complete the world's first ICO. The Ripple coin, which was born in 2013, uses the blockchain for remittance and settlement scenarios. The development direction is to cooperate with traditional financial institutions to achieve fast and low-cost exchange of value.

2014 and 2015 were the bear markets of Bitcoin, and the market was in a downturn, but the cryptocurrency innovation ushered in the Cambrian explosion. The Monroe coin, which was born in 2014, made the transaction information invisible on the public ledger, which greatly improved the privacy. The Dash coin that was born in the same period introduced the main node mechanism, achieving faster transaction speed and better privacy. 45% of the block rewards were provided to the main node, 45% to the PoW miners, and 10% to the development and promotion. That is, PoW+PoS mixed mining, and developed a community governance mechanism. The German letter coin, which was born in 2015, also uses PoW+PoS hybrid mining, and creatively implements chain management, and makes major decisions such as agreement escalation to the holders to vote on the blockchain.

The Wanda currency has a profound impact on the development of cryptocurrency. Vitalik Buterin (V God) worked with the team at Israel and the Wanda Coin after dropping out of the university. During this time, he sprouted the idea of ​​Ethereum. Wanda was renamed Omni in 2015, and the familiar TEDA, the USDT, is an asset issued using the Omni agreement. The price of TEDA is anchored to the US dollar, thus eliminating the exchange risk cost in transaction costs. Since the day of its birth, TEDA has caused a lot of controversy in the industry, and it is still in the whirlpool until now. But it has not prevented USDT from becoming an important member of the cryptocurrency world, with a market capitalization of nearly $3 billion. Explain that the market has considerable practical demand for price-stable cryptocurrencies.

In 2014, Daniel Larimer (BM) released BitShares, a highly functional and complex asset issuance, collateral and trading platform. Bit stocks have achieved a more mature DPoS consensus protocol with far more performance than Bitcoin. Jed McCaleb, one of the founders of Ripple, later created the stellar coin. Stellar coins can be considered as open source versions of Ripple and have better asset issuance and exchange capabilities. Although many cryptocurrencies focus on asset issuance, such as NEO, Quantum, Biyuan, etc. originating in China. But the real detonation of crypto assets is the ERC20 standard for Ethereum in 2015. ERC20 Ethereum's application layer agreement on the issuance and trading of certificates. Assets that meet this specification can seamlessly interface with wallets and exchanges that implement the ERC20 protocol. In 2016, the card issue broke out. Most of the more than 2,000 cryptocurrencies currently on the market are Ethereum ERC20.

Ethereum – World Computer

In 2014, the 19-year-old V God released the Ethereum white paper, and together with the collaborators, realized the Ethereum online one year later. Ethereum introduced Turing's complete virtual machine into the blockchain, turning the entire network into a universal virtual machine shared by the whole world. Developing Web3 applications no longer requires fork bitcoin or other chain code, nor does it need to develop and debug complex technologies such as p2p communication, consensus protocols, state storage, etc., just use the smart contract high-level language to develop test application logic and then deploy it to Ethereum. can. Ethereum and other smart contract blockchains that followed emerged significantly reduced the development threshold for Web3 applications.

The concept of the world computer, I initially understood it very difficult. Because I grew up in the personal computer era, the teacher told us that the world's most ridiculous prediction came from Thomas Watson, the former chairman of IBM. He said: The world only needs five computers. And 70 years later, a 20-year-old boy said: We built a world computer. And since I started learning programming, I have been told to think carefully, try to save every KB of memory, every CPU instruction, every MB of hard drive. The problem of programming later is to deal with concurrency/multi-threading. Under the premise of avoiding the competition condition, try to make the machine multi-core. Ethereum, the world computer, is completely unfamiliar. It allows all nodes (tens of thousands) on the entire network to perform the same calculations, store the same data, and the cost is almost crazy. V God gave the estimate that performing calculations or storing data on Ethereum is 100 million times more expensive than doing the same calculations or storing the same data on a commercial cloud platform. That is, the calculation that can be completed by spending 100 yuan on a normal cloud service, and putting it on the Ethereum requires a cost of 100 million. So why should we use Ethereum, a very slow and expensive world computer? Because it has all the computers of all time, whether it is a mainframe, a minicomputer, a PC, a computing cluster or a cloud. First of all, Ethereum is a global single instance (Globe Single Instance), and as long as there is Internet access, this makes the state of computing global, accessible to everyone, and recognized by everyone. There is also that Ethereum does not belong to any person or organization, the world computer will not be down, will not be shut down, and cannot be censored. Attacking its underlying network (not including immature smart contracts running on it) is extremely difficult or even impossible. Because Ethereum has these qualities, it can become an innovative public land, Internet court, guarantee the execution of any contract that can be expressed in code, become the settlement layer of the global economy, and so on. And using all of this does not have to be at the expense of personal privacy.

post-Snowden era

The concept of Web3 was proposed by Dr. Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum. Gavin Wood also made Web3 the Internet of the post-Snowden era. Let us briefly review who Snowden is and what he did. Edward Snowden was born in the United States in 1983. He was a former CIA technical analyst and later worked for defense project contractor Booz Allen Consulting. In June 2013, Snowden disclosed the secret documents of the National Security Agency's prism monitoring program to the Guardian and the Washington Post. He was immediately wanted by the US government. He was in Hong Kong at the time of the incident and then flew to Russia. After Snowden, he again exposed the British secret intelligence surveillance project through the Guardian. This incident is also known as the "prism door." The prism door reveals a horror truth to the public: the intelligence departments of the United States and the United Kingdom are conducting large-scale, almost unlimited monitoring of their citizens without legal authorization and without the knowledge of the public or even Congress. The “Prism Gate” makes people who think they live in a democratic and free country realize that the world depicted in 1984 is not far from them. Big Brother is not only watching them, but they are not aware of them. At the same time, the prism door also proves that the password punk movement is by no means a mediocrity, defending the privacy of citizens, and really only relying on oneself. After the prism door, Snowden has been reclusive in Russia. He has received some interviews and has also delivered some speeches. He said that he does not oppose the government, but instead acts as a citizen to help his country's government act in accordance with the law. Regarding the comments made by him outside, whether he is a traitor or a hero, he has no intention of receiving it. Although he gave up his job for the secret, he broke off contact with his girlfriend and could not meet his relatives and friends, but he said that he would never regret it. Time flies, the prism door has been six years. In August of this year, Snowden will give a speech at the Web3 Summit by video connection, and I am very much looking forward to it.

Web3 and its vision

In April 2014, the co-founder of Ethereum, Gavin Wood, who was the CTO of Ethereum, published a blog post titled "Decentralized Applications: What Web 3.0 Looks Like". The concept of Web3 was first elaborated. Gavin Wood believes that in the post-Snowden era, Internet users can no longer continue to trust companies, and companies will only manage and use user data for their own profit-making purposes. It is therefore necessary to build an Internet infrastructure and applications with minimal trust. Gavin Wood proposed that Web 3.0 will be based on the new Internet technology stack, which consists of four modules: static content publishing, dynamic messaging, trusted transactions and integrated interfaces. Users interact with Web3 applications using an untrackable anonymous identity (public key address), messages between users are encrypted end-to-end, and transactions are reached by a decentralized consensus engine, eliminating the cost of intermediaries and counterparty risk.

Dr. Gavin Wood left Ethereum in 2015, initiated the establishment of Parity and the Web3 Foundation, continued to promote the Web3 business, and worked with his collaborators to constantly adjust and enrich the meaning of Web3 ideas. The passage from the picture is taken from September 2018, and Gavin Wood's blog post "Why We Need Web 3.0" can be seen as the definition of Web3. The translation is generally: "Web 3.0 is an eclectic set of protocols that provide application developers with a foundational module that enables them to build applications in new ways. These technologies enable users to verify the authenticity of accepting and sending information. Ensuring that the transaction is reliably paid and obtained. Web 3.0 can be seen as an enforceable Internet Magna Carta, and the cornerstone of individual freedom against authority."

By definition, Web3 is a set of protocols designed to develop a new generation of Internet applications and realize the vision of Web3. The Web3 vision has two meanings. The first layer: Web3 is a serverless, decentralized Internet. In the network computing architecture of Web3, participants or nodes are equal. There is no difference between server and client. All nodes participate in the formation and recording of network consensus more or less. So what is the use of Web3? It is the second meaning of the Web3 vision to answer. Web3 allows everyone to master their identity, assets and data. Mastering your identity means that no one else or organization is required to give identity, and no other person or organization can use, deprive or freeze identity. Mastering your own assets means not being deprived of assets and being free to dispose of assets. Mastering your own data means that everyone can generate, save, conceal, and destroy personal data as they wish, and no organization can use their personal data without his permission. In the digital age, people who have mastered their identity, assets, and data are capable of mastering their own destiny.

Interpret Web3 from another angle

Another more common perspective on the interpretation of Web3 is to list and compare the three stages of the development of the World Wide Web. Web1 is a static web page, mainly used for the distribution of static content. The user experience is very monotonous, and the business model is mainly to display advertisements. On the second generation of the World Wide Web, the website has strong interactivity and functionality, a large amount of content is generated by users, and the web is developing towards socialization and mobility. In addition to more personalized and more accurate advertising, the business model also provides a variety of e-commerce services. In the era of Web2, the Internet giant represented by FAANG and BAT was born. They have a large number of users and service providers, store a large amount of data, and provide personalized advertising and e-commerce services based on this, creating a huge network effect, in fact, a monopoly. The vast majority of Internet users and small service providers have failed to share the enormous wealth created by Web2 and bear the risk of personal privacy being violated and personal data being abused. It is necessary to break the monopoly of the Internet giant, let users have their own data, and share the benefits generated by the data. A new generation of Internet infrastructure, represented by P2P communication protocols, distributed storage and blockchain technology, is needed to develop decentralized applications. The decentralized application is not controlled by the individual, but is a built-in incentive mechanism (pass-through), which is built, co-managed and shared by all participants of the agreement (including developers, service providers and users). Users control their own digital identity, data, and assets. Thereby moving towards a more private, safer, more free and fairer Internet. Interpreting Web3 from this perspective, the advantage is very simple and clear, because everyone is a web user, it is easy to understand the relevant concepts. However, there are some shortcomings, mainly because it is easy for listeners to think that Web3 is the natural evolution of Web2 and is driven by the development of Internet technology. This impression is inconsistent with the actual situation of the birth and development of Web3 ideas. Needless to say, Nakamoto, the spiritual leader of Web3, Gavin Wood/V God/Snowden is not an Internet practitioner. The Web3 idea is more an extension of the password punk movement than from the reflection of Web2.

There is another concept for the next generation of the Internet, sometimes called Web3, led by the W3C World Wide Web Consortium and the inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Bernard-Lee. Regarding what is the next generation of the Internet, the W3C has been exploring. About 10 years ago, the W3C focused on the Semantic Web, with the goal of making Internet data more structured, with unified and accurate metadata, enabling computers to understand and use data in depth, making the Internet smarter. At the same time, Sir Lee also saw the monopoly of the Web 2.0 era on the Internet, and the resulting fairness and security issues. Almost as soon as Gavin Wood proposed the Web3 concept, Sir Lee launched the Internet Magna Carta campaign, calling on users and practitioners to discuss the rules of the next generation Internet. The exploration of the next generation Internet by the W3C and W3F respectively has the same goals and different focuses, and they are mutually influential. So Gavin Wood called Web3 the executable Internet Magna Carta.

Web3 technology stack and application features

The above picture is the Web3 technology stack organized by the Web3 Foundation, which is the protocol that can be included in the Web3 category and its implementation. Since this article is a history of ideas, it will not discuss technology in depth. What we are most concerned about is the difference between the Internet application developed with such a new technology, that is, the Web3 application, and the traditional Internet application. I think the various protocols and implementations of the Web3 technology stack are designed to support applications that have properties that are not available in three traditional Internet applications: trust minimal\permissionless\censorship resistant , which is trust minimization, no license, and anti-censorship. No license means that anyone can access the app using a self-generated ID, no registration, no need to provide personally identifiable information, and no approval from the app developer or third party. Anti-review means that anyone can use the application equally, without being discriminated against or denied service because of his personal identity or data. Trust minimization is the most ambiguous in the three attributes. An application built on the Web3 technology stack is a peer-to-peer, centerless (ie, serverless) network that cannot be manipulated by any single or a few entities. Trust minimization means that the user trusts the whole of the network, so there is no need to trust individual entities or trust counterparties. For example, decentralized exchanges, 1CO contracts, or other Defi applications are guaranteed by a smart contract platform where users can confidently trade, bet or lock positions without worrying about default risk. The three features of trust minimization, no license, and anti-censorship are in line with the Web3 vision. Through a multitude of Web3 applications with these features, Internet users can control their digital identity, assets and data to achieve the Web3 vision.

Polkadot/Substrate

Polkadot is a public link project initiated by the Web3 Foundation and a new member of the Web3 technology stack, developed primarily by Parity. Compared to other Web3 technologies, Polkadot is characterized by the ability to implement trusted interoperability (cross-chain transactions) between blockchains. Substrate is an open source blockchain development framework abstracted by Parity during the development of the Polkadot project. It can quickly and flexibly develop web applications or application platforms in the form of independent blockchains. Both Polkadot and Substrate are new members of the Web3 technology stack and are tools for implementing Web3 applications. So what are the advantages of Polkadot and Substrate compared to existing agreements, such as Ethereum, which is mainly a technical issue.

There are already tens of thousands of DApps on the Ethereum/EOS/Wavefield three major smart contract public links. But with a few short-lived spinach games and funding slots, users are few and very active. Some people have even questioned: Is decentralized application a pseudo-concept? I think the problem is not a decentralized application, but a smart contract platform. It can be said that the development of decentralized applications on the smart contract platform has entered a dead end. There are two reasons for this, starting with performance and transaction execution cost limits. Low performance and high transaction execution costs are two sides of a coin. For example, the Ethereum network has only 15tps of processing power. In order to guarantee fairness and resist witch attacks, it can only be a transaction fee bid. What the user experiences is that the DApp is very slow, and it costs money. The industry has been paying attention to the performance of public chain for a long time, and many teams are exploring the expansion of the three ideas of representative system, layering and sharding. The work "The 4D long text says Polkadot architecture" organizes the technical route of expansion, problems and solutions encountered, as well as major project implementations, and puts Polkadot/Cosmos into fragment expansion. In short, cross-chain technology achieves capacity expansion while maintaining interoperability through a divide-and-conquer approach.

But performance/cost is not the only limit for smart contracts to DApp. EOS has been able to achieve thousands of tps of processing power through a representative system, which is two orders of magnitude better than the performance of Ethereum 1.0, and the transaction execution cost is borne by the developer, which makes DApp take off the slow and expensive hat. However, the EOS main online line has been in existence for a year, and there is still no real decentralized application. This can't help but doubt that even if Ethereum is upgraded to 2.0 (about two years), will the spring of DApp really come? After repeated thoughts, I think that in addition to performance/cost constraints, DApp also faces the second important limitation of the smart contract platform: decentralized governance is absent. In order to achieve and ensure verifiability, smart contracts exclude upgrades to applications, making it difficult for applications to fix defects and continue to optimize. And Polkadot/Substrate gives governance capabilities to the Web3 application chain. By lifting the two development bottlenecks of performance and governance, Polkadot/Substrate is expected to trigger the third wave of Web3 applications. For an in-depth discussion of this, please refer to the book "Translating DApp Innovation Potential across Chains".

By the way, Cosmos, Cosmos and Polkadot are also called cross-chained males. They have similarities in the basic ideas for solving capacity expansion and interoperability, and there are also many differences. For specific comparisons, please refer to "Wanzi Longwen said Polkadot Architecture". However, please note that Cosmos is also part of the Web3 technology stack. The Cosmos team also participated in the Web3 Summit hosted by the Web3 Foundation last year and delivered a speech. If you only realize that the two projects of Cosmos and Polkadot are similarly positioned and are directly competitive, you will be confused. If you put in the ideal background of Internet evolution and Web3, you can understand the competition between Ethereum, Polkadot, and Cosmos. They all want to be the best Web3 technology and become the most important consensus engine, but their big goal. It is consistent. This dispute with the market share of commercial companies is not entirely the same thing.

Two interwoven historical clues

Last month, the Orange Book published a translation entitled "Coase Economics and Mechanical Clock", originally written by Taylor Pearson in February this year's blog "Market is eating the world", literal translation is "The market is engulfing the world." This article also explores the potential and future of the blockchain to improve social production relations, starting from transaction costs. Economists began to pay attention to the transaction costs starting with Ronald Coase. The 1991 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Coase, in recognition of his discovery and clarification of the importance of transaction costs and property rights in economic organization and institutional structure, and its role in economic activity. In 1937, Cos, who was only 27 years old, published his undergraduate thesis – "The Essence of the Enterprise", using the concept of transaction cost to solve the problem of the existence of the enterprise and the boundary of its expansion scale, thus opening up the new institutional economics. The door.

Enterprises are extremely common economic phenomena, and most people will not consider why there is a problem with enterprises. At the beginning of the last century, microeconomics has established theories that supply and demand determine prices, and prices influence consumers and producers. People have an in-depth understanding of the operating principle of the "invisible hand" of the market. But since personal production and consumption can be effectively regulated by market mechanisms, why are there so many companies? Coase explained that the existence of the company is because it can reduce transaction costs. For example: I am an employee of a company. The boss has to transfer me from the marketing department to the sales department. I just need to talk to me and explain why. Whether I like it or not, I will obey the arrangement in most cases. If you want to adopt the market mechanism, you have to worry about it. You need to increase the average salary of the sales department to attract people from the marketing department. You can't let the people in the marketing department go to the sales department. Otherwise, you have to reverse the adjustment. Obviously, the market mechanism is dealing with This type of problem is very inefficient and can even be said to be ineffective. Employees and companies usually sign labor contracts for a relatively long period of time. This is a transaction that consumes transaction costs such as recruitment, interviews, and contracting. During the term of the contract, the transaction cost of the employee's work for the company is very low. Therefore, the essence of the enterprise is to form a group with low internal transaction costs in the market. When economic activities are carried out through the enterprise, the advantage of low transaction cost can be exerted.

In the era of Web 2.0, the Internet has already eroded the territory that originally belonged to enterprises through the establishment of a trading platform. As shown on the right side of the above figure, the traditional retail industry has the power to face e-commerce. Newspapers and magazines have been severely impacted by the media. Airbnb and Uber have implemented downsizing against the hotel industry and the taxi industry. After the emergence of Bitcoin, the market began to use the new programmable currency, Encrypted Pass, to launch a new round of encroachment on the traditional territory of enterprises. The blockchain can implement an open, transparent, and trusted encryption transaction protocol. Both individuals and businesses can participate. There are no restrictions on nationality, nationality, geography, language, and legal jurisdiction. The entire transaction process does not require bargaining and contracting, and there will be no default. Within the small economy managed by the encryption protocol, transaction costs such as bargaining, decision making, contracting, and supervision are very low. Therefore, the encryption protocol can reduce a variety of transaction costs on a large scale, and it is expected to greatly expand the scope of application of the market, covering a part of economic activities that originally required enterprises to be effectively organized.

From the open society to the password punk movement, from Bitcoin to Web 3.0, the torch of thought is passed on in the hands of idealists . At the same time, generations of doers are also practicing the concept of "sparkling social engineering." Beyond the ideological world, the practice of truly changing society must conform to the laws of economic and technological development. Specifically, it has the advantage of transaction cost and defeats inefficiency with high efficiency. As mentioned earlier, Bitcoin dominates the practice of many cryptocurrencies because it has the transaction cost advantage as a currency. Moreover, its incentive mechanism is designed to perform the bootstrap of the network effect. Although Ethereum is the ideal product of the world's computers, what really brings success to Ethereum is low transaction cost, globally accessible, de-intermediary asset issuance and venture capital financing, namely 1CO. After Ethereum became the payment currency of 1CO and the value of investors and financing projects, its market value and influence began to soar. When we look back at the history of Web3, we can clearly see the historical clues of idealism and realism.

Web3 entrepreneur's companionship

The topic of this article is "A Brief History of Web3 Thoughts – A Real Blockchain Entrepreneur". So who is the real blockchain entrepreneur? Everyone knows that the cryptocurrency industry is full of scams. But so far, I have not encountered even a practitioner who admits that I entered the field with the purpose of deceiving others. Therefore, using subjective motivation to distinguish between innovation and scam is not operational, we need a more objective and clearer definition. First, the blockchain is just a technology that can be used for the next generation of the Internet, as well as proprietary or proprietary enterprise solutions. And in the Web3 technology stack, blockchain is just one of many technologies (although it can be a very important one). Therefore, it is necessary to further clarify that the entrepreneurs who develop Web3 protocols and Web3 applications are the objects discussed here.

What is the Web3 startup project to create? There are two major directions, one is to develop new or enhance the existing Web3 technology stack; the second is to develop Web3 applications. I appeal to entrepreneurs, especially Web3 entrepreneurs in China, to pay more attention to applications, because only applications are the vehicle to realize the vision of Web3. In the past few years, thousands of platform public or second-tier network projects have emerged around the world, and quite a few have originated in China. This certainly reflects the unsatisfactory Web3 underlying agreement, there are many areas for improvement, and there is a lot of room for innovation. However, according to the law of network effects, there are not many basic protocols that can survive and carry a large number of applications. Excessive and dazzling concepts have overdrawn social resources and become more and more a game of money-selling in high-tech outerwear. At the same time, after Bitcoin, there is no Web3 application that can compete with Web2 applications. More than 99% of Internet users simply cannot feel the existence of Web3. Now with Polkadot/Substrate, it is technically possible to develop Web 3.0 applications with minimal trust, no need, and anti-censorship, and user experience and usage costs can compete with Web 2.0. The golden age of Web3 application entrepreneurship is kicking off.

So what exactly is a Web3 application, what is the difference with a Web2 application? Developing a Web3 application is to design and continually optimize a set of transaction protocols (or transaction rules) that are implemented by cryptographic techniques (primarily blockchains) and are therefore also referred to as encryption protocols. The digital product or service market defined by this set of agreements has the advantage of transaction cost, which can achieve the aggregation of trading activities and establish a network effect. Web3.0 applications have many similarities with the Internet platform, and are committed to establishing a market that is widely involved and accumulating network effects. The biggest difference is that the Internet platform is built and promoted by commercial companies, often supported by venture capital in the early days. The essence of the Internet platform is to replace inefficient traditional intermediaries with efficient Internet intermediaries. When the platform is large enough and the network effect is strong enough, the controller of the platform will squeeze the returns of other market participants to maximize their own interests. For Web3 applications, the entrepreneur defines and implements the encryption protocol. The agreement includes the benefit distribution structure (the general economic model). All market participants participate in the market according to the encryption protocol and receive the certificate. Although in the early days, developers had a great influence on the encryption protocol, he could not change the rules arbitrarily. Once the developer attempts to harm others, other participants can fork the encryption protocol and keep the encryption protocol out of control by individual.

At the end of this article, there are three sentences for Web3 entrepreneurs (mainly application developers) as suggestions: to be ideal and to face reality. Master technology and understand business. Think independently and integrate into the community. First of all, I don't think anyone who knows nothing about Web3 ideals or who is suspicious can succeed through Web3 startups. For entrepreneurs who still think in Web 2.0 mode, Web3's technology and methods are all limited and difficult (high cost, immature, protocol upgrade can't do whatever they want, etc.). Instead of adapting to it, it is better to continue to do Web2.0 entrepreneurship. On the other hand, Web3 entrepreneurs should know that only ideals are not enough. Although entrepreneurship often has an idealistic color, it is ultimately a kind of business behavior. Successful entrepreneurship should bring returns to entrepreneurs, teams and investors. Only business activities that conform to economic laws are likely to succeed. Successful Web3 applications must address the actual (preferably widespread) trading needs, and such transactions can reduce costs through encryption protocols (the greater the better, the better). Without this foundation, no matter how strong the technology and the more sophisticated the model design, there will be no actual results.

Asking a person to be proficient in technology and having a deep insight into the market, and is an ideal realist, very difficult or even unrealistic. More situations should be made up of entrepreneurs with different backgrounds. Team members respect each other and trust each other. Such a combination can greatly increase the probability of successful entrepreneurship. Innovation requires extraordinary thinking, and innovation can only come from individuals (individuals or teams), not from market research or crowdsourcing. Successful entrepreneurs must be independent thinkers and people with strong self-confidence. The special thing about Web3 applications is that it is ultimately built, shared, and shared by many participants. Therefore, while keeping their independent thinking, Web3 entrepreneurs must also integrate into the community, transfer the concept and value of the project to more people, and become part of the community. This is not the same as traditional Internet entrepreneurship.

My investment institution, Random Capital, is positioned as the China Web3 Venture Project Investment Fund. Welcome everyone to scan the QR code of the map, add my WeChat, and discuss various Web3 startup topics.

Related Links:

• Animal Farm: https://www.kanunu8.com/book3/6879/index.html
• "Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete": https://www.cs.ru.nl/~jhh/pub/secsem/chaum1985bigbrother.pdf
• The Password Punk Declaration: https://www.jianshu.com/p/85b6b84a5e85
• Encryption Rebellion: https://www.wired.com/1993/02/crypto-rebels/
• Bitcoin and Cryptographic Technology: https://www.lopp.net/pdf/princeton_bitcoin_book.pdf
• Bitcoin White Paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
• The Ethereum White Paper: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper
• Decentralized Applications: What Web 3.0 Looks Like: https://gavwood.com/dappsweb3.html
• "Why do we need Web 3.0": https://medium.com/@gavofyork/why-we-need-web-3-0-5da4f2bf95ab
• W3C World Wide Web Consortium: https://www.w3.org/
• Web3 technology stack: https://wiki.web3.foundation/en/latest/tech_stack/tech_stack_overview/
• "Wanzi long text speaks through Polkadot architecture": https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/K0pG-Mc2eK7IYhuxd9un4A
• "Translating DApp Innovation Potential across Chains": https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/USjB-Tg8G66QM8WgTibZ6w
• Kos Economics and Mechanical Clock: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/tGmrNSlKYCfV8R3MOd_x_w
• "Market is eating the world": https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2019/02/28/markets-are-eating-the-world/
• The Essence of the Enterprise: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937.tb00002.x
• Random Capital: http://random.capital/

Author: Liu Yi

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