Babbitt column | The unique development of currency, hiding the important direction of Dapp development

As an observer and practitioner of distributed business, in the past few years, the author has been fortunate to witness the ups and downs of many industries including industry, technology, and finance. When researching, it is inevitable to trace back the history of various industries. In the process, individuals found that currency, especially the digital currency industry, has a very interesting place compared with the manufacturing, energy, computer, communications and other industries that have been in contact with before. It is different from other industries in focusing on technology research and development. The currency industry is a place that is filled with a lot of controversy.

This is not to say that there is no debate in other fields, nor that there is no technological progress in the money industry. Rather, in the news of various industries, the proportion of technological changes and product applications in other industries is relatively higher, and digital currency interest groups are arguing. Even the proportion of fighting for infighting is higher – there is a dispute between French and Bitcoin, a dispute between Bitcoin and Ark, and then a dispute between Bitcoin and Bitcoin, and even a dispute between Bitcoin and gold… If other If the industry gives a sense of laboratory, then the digital currency industry is more like a debate field.

Why is there such a situation? In fact, with the conclusion that the author introduced to you in the previous article , this problem can be fully explained.

When you get to the point, I will take you in the form of a table to take a look at the development history of several other industries:

• Schnorr+Taproot soft fork, an invincible proposal with expansion and privacy?
• World Blockchain Conference · Wuzhen countdown to 30 days, the first batch of heavy guest list was released, BATJ came
• After the National Day holiday returns, the market is fully warming up. Is it a red envelope or a bull market?

It can be found that whether it is the more traditional manufacturing and energy industry, or the relatively new computer industry and communication industry, their development trend has a very obvious feature: that is, several major indicators that determine the product experience, in the emergence of technology When breaking through, there will be a tendency to rise at the same time. Please note that what is mentioned in this sentence is that several indicators “rise at the same time”, instead of saying that one indicator rises and the other indicator falls, in other words, after A technique is better than the former and is an objective fact that is recognized by most people. And after experiencing new technology, few people want to go back to the old technology. For example, after you are used to electricity, you will not want to burn wood at home. After using the 4G smart machine, you will not want to return to the 1G old man machine. Although in some specific scenarios, the original old technology can also have a place, for example, some rural areas still use coal to burn coal, and some field activities still need to use walkie-talkie communication, but this is more like special A helpless choice under external conditions, rather than saying that the original technology itself has any distinct advantages over the trendy technology.

However, in the currency field, the situation seems to have become completely different.

Maybe some friends will say, how can the money industry be different? "Physical currency – metal currency – banknotes – electronic money" is also a manifestation of the currency becoming lighter and more standardized! Do you think someone will carry gold bullion with them now? Although in some countries like Japan and the United States, some stubborn people still insist on using banknotes and credit cards, mobile payments have begun to penetrate into people's lives!

What these friends may not have thought is that in addition to its portability, there are many other factors in the evaluation of the currency. For example, anonymity. Nowadays, many consumers are very confident in the large enterprises that collect user payment information. They think that these giants will protect their privacy very well, so electronic payment and mobile payment are beneficial and harmless. But in the eyes of some consumers, big companies are not worthy of being trusted. If we give their payment information to them, these chasers will not know what to do with it.

Therefore, for these people, whether they can protect their privacy is a very important attribute of money, so they would rather sacrifice some convenience and use paper money with better anonymity. After adding this rating indicator, paper currency and electronic money are better and worse, and you can't discuss it. Because the value of large payment companies is not trustworthy, this is a very subjective issue in itself. And privacy and convenience are more important in the process of payment, and it is completely impossible to say. It’s just that the industry is rushing to the ground and it’s not going to come out.

In fact, in addition to the trade-off between convenience and privacy, that is, the dispute between paper money and electronic money, there are other evaluation dimensions of money. One of the most controversial points is the endorsement asset behind it. After all, there are thousands of differences in the external appearance of money, but their use is the same, that is, to exchange goods and services, and endorsement assets, is the direct determinant of the purchasing power of money. Throughout history, it is not difficult to find that in the past 1000 years, human society has been repeatedly entangled in this issue: whether money should be issued based on centralized national credit issuance, or should be based on decentralized precious metals and other assets. So, what choices did they make?

From the above picture, we can see a very interesting thing: on this issue, the central banks have never found a fixed answer, but instead reciprocated in these two options – today adopts centralized National credit endorsement, ran to trust the decentralized precious metals tomorrow, and a few days later, back to the centralized national credit, even now, the decentralized bitcoin is still concentrating on the impact of the centralization every day. The status of legal tender, so tossing back and forth, can be said to be "to make a change, to change again, to commit to change, to be tempered."

Why does society struggle back and forth between currency centralization and decentralized endorsement assets? The reason is actually the same as the entanglement between people in the privacy and convenience of money. If the choice of privacy and convenience comes from the extremely subjective question that people should "should not trust big companies", then the center The reciprocation of decentralization and decentralization stems from the more subjective and more controversial issue that people should "should not believe in the self-control of the central bank": supporters of credit money believe that centralized currency can produce more flexible Monetary policy, while opponents of credit currency believe that the central bank's waywardness will only dilute its own assets. It can be said that unless the two are matched, the above-mentioned problems will never be discussed.

Ok, the key is coming: In the last article, the author once introduced a conclusion to people that people often show a characteristic on the issue dominated by subjective trust: repeatability. That is, I think that a option is good today, but after using the a option for a while, I will start to think that the b option is good. The reason why this happens is because the marginal effect of an option is diminishing, and when the marginal effect becomes very weak, people will have the power to switch to a stronger marginal effect. On the other option, after all, there is a difference between the two. For example, during the financial crisis, many people will feel that flooding is good and the central currency is good.

But after the crisis has passed, people will begin to feel neutral and stable, and decentralized assets are good. And given that the economic development is volatility, we can see that in the past few hundred years, people have been switching between centralized currency decentralized currencies. The current currency is in the node of an endorsement asset from centralization to decentralization. Bitcoin and Facebook's Libra are typical cases. The former is a very thorough decentralized parliamentary governance model, while the latter adopts a fairly distributed reserve asset. Perhaps these two projects will not succeed in the end, but it is not important. Because of their emergence, the decentralization of global currency endorsement assets has become an unstoppable wave.

The development of other industries is often accompanied by changes in technology. Since the change of monetary assets is often caused by the collapse and reconstruction of people's trust, this process is often accompanied by endless debates and struggles. As a challenger who wants to replace the centralized credit currency, the digital currency industry will inevitably have a variety of wars from the outside to the inside. This is not entirely the responsibility of the practitioners, but also has a certain relationship with the characteristics of the industry itself. Although in my opinion, the debate in the money industry should be appropriate, after all, the reliability of money credit assets is not based on "screaming", but should be obtained through real achievements, but this is another The topic is over.

The history of the development of the above several industries (that is, energy, industry, computers, and currency) actually tells us one thing: in the development of human society, those industries dominated by objective indicators will have a trend. existing. For example, in the Maslowian demand theory system, everyone admits that the development of human society will develop in accordance with the trend of “satisfying food – living a good house – satisfying spiritual needs”. Because the people who have reached the next level will definitely be better than the people in the former level. But in those areas dominated by subjective intentions, this trend is not obvious. For example: I know that the basic needs of people are to eat and eat well, but what kind of meal is good? Some people may feel that there is no meat, but some people are vegetarians. For example, although everyone wants to satisfy their spiritual needs now, how can they be satisfied? Some people think that it is the right way to be happy in time, but some people will feel full when they learn to charge. This kind of thing is too subjective. You can’t say who is right or wrong, and you can’t talk about any trend. It’s bigger. It may be: just like a normal passerby to the third and fourth, people's needs will constantly switch back and forth between these options – eat vegetarian when you are tired of eating meat, eat vegetarian when you are tired of eating meat, learn to learn to be annoying, play on the world, play Bored and started to learn for life…

For technology companies, including blockchains, this repetitiveness of the group often leaves many observers and practitioners puzzled. For example: about five or six years ago, readers at that time especially liked to read in-depth articles. The manuscripts written by the survey reporters were often the "guests" on the Internet, but in just a few years, The rise of people suddenly turned to short articles that could be finished by 3~5 mobile phone screens, and lost interest in the long-form "deep text". Just when the authors of the media have racked their brains to figure out how to create a “short, fast, cool and cool text”, today’s headlines, which are famous for recommending such articles, have recently revised the recommendation mechanism and lowered the “low style” content. Push, and instead start recommending even pop-ups with some in-depth articles. This is because users have seen the white articles for too long, and they have produced conflicts and even tired feelings. Instead, they have a fresh sense of the deep articles that were abandoned in the previous two years. This change has driven technology companies like today to make major adjustments to the recommendation algorithm to satisfy the user's taste.

From the history of money, and the experience of today's headlines, we can easily see. These cases are actually supporting the point mentioned in the previous paragraph of the author – that is, in the field dominated by subjective preferences, the user's needs are often repeated, and now many friends like to limit Dapp to In the game field, even wanting to equate the former and the blockchain, it is very unwise for the author to think. Let's not say that the game industry is now a Red Sea dominated by Tencent and Netease. Even if it is not, the proportion of the game's activities in the people's timetable has reached a high point. As a spiritual entertainment activity, it There is absolutely the possibility that it will be abandoned by users who are highly subjective.

However, this does not mean that the blockchain game is useless. We must know that the world's first mobile app is actually a snake game in Motorola's mobile phone. In fact, in the software industry, video games play far more than “pleasant mind and body” – in order to please the discerning young players, game makers have to continuously improve the operability of the game interface. This, to a certain extent, has played a role in improving the mobile software client experience. Now if you take a look at some c-side non-gaming applications, or even some B-side industrial applications, you will find: the operating interface of these clients. There are many elements that are borrowed from video games.

So, is there any point in the blockchain game that is now in the industry? In my opinion, there is! Its role is mainly to explore what kind of client interface should be presented in front of people, and how the cryptocurrency should be embedded in the blockchain application, that is, blockchain games It should be the experience of building a front-end interface for future blockchain applications, similar to the role of a “Dapp development training base”, as if you really want to put it into commercial use, or even attract a large number of players to play. Just think about it. So many manufacturers of video games focus on product creation, but they still can't achieve good results. Now many project parties should focus on product development, but also have to take into account the value of tokens. Can they be more focused than others? Now these pieces of so-called "chain tour" are excellent evidences. After all, when a C-side industry supplier is more than the number of customers, this is not a problem of overcapacity, but you There is no need for this sub-sector.

Author: Sun vice president

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