Wuzhen·NEO founder Da Hongfei: The next generation of the Internet uses a hierarchical structure

From November 8th to 9th, the “2019 World Blockchain Conference·Wuzhen” hosted by Babbitt was held at the Wuzhen Internet International Convention and Exhibition Center. The conference gathered more than 100 global blockchains, digital assets, AI and 5G fields. Experts and scholars, technical geeks, opinion leaders, and founders of popular projects, with the theme of “application unbounded”, explore the application of blockchain, technology frontiers, industry trends and hot issues, and promote blockchain technology and industrial innovation. development of.

NEO founder Da Hongfei delivered a keynote speech on "Decoding the Future – Next Generation Internet."

Da Hongfei said that although today's Internet looks very good, it has three problems. First, online systems are very fragmented and cannot be interconnected. Second, there is also a relationship between the physical world and the online world. Many are divided, and the third is the phenomenon of platform monopoly and data monopoly.

The infrastructure to solve these problems, many people call it Web3.0, Dahongfei is called the next generation Internet, and this will be created by the fusion of emerging technologies such as 5G, AI, IoT, blockchain.

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In addition, Da Hongfei also suggested that the next generation Internet may be presented through a hierarchical structure, where Layer 0 is a content neutral network, Layer 1 is a global state and clearing layer, which will see many public chains, such as digital asset agreements, Distributed identity protocol, distributed storage protocol, Layer2 is the transaction layer, daily transactions occur at this level, the last Layer3 will be the application interface, there will be a variety of applications such as browsers, wallets.

(Photo: NEO founder Da Hongfei)

The following is the full text of the speech, Babbitt finishing:

Da Hongfei: Good afternoon everyone! I am coming to Wuzhen for the second time. I think this is a place full of vitality and a place full of liberalism.

I flew from Shenzhen to Wuzhen this morning. I have a particularly strong experience at the airport in Shenzhen. The digital economy and the Internet are really a very great thing. I believe that everyone here has the experience of flying. In fact, flying is a very painful thing. We used to receive a lot of news to remind us to go to the airport two hours in advance, and the international flight must be three hours ahead of schedule because the security check and identity verification process is very complicated. But when I flew from Shenzhen this time, I didn't get any boarding pass at all. There was very little interaction with people. It has a level called "one card pass". You use your ID card to scan on a machine. Face recognition, passed the first license and the person's security check. In the second baggage check, you don't need to print out your boarding pass and show it, because in its database, when you take the ID card, it already knows that you have checked in and know you. Which flight is your seat number and your seat number, and you don't need to take the computer out now. Just take the charging treasure and don't exceed the milliamperometer, so the whole process is very smooth. In fact, I am a bit worried about not getting on the plane today, because I only had 45 minutes when I arrived at the airport, but there was still a lot of spare time in the whole process.

So the entire Internet, the entire digital economy and the digitization of our lives should bring a lot of convenience to our lives and also increase a lot of efficiency. So, this is a very good point that the Internet has brought us.

But under such a very prosperous Internet economy, it seems that there are a few clouds in the sky. In the past, there was a person named Kevin in physics. He said that there are two small black clouds floating in the physical sky. Maybe these two black clouds are solved. The whole physics is very complete. He thinks that the physics at that time only needs to add bricks. The work of filling the tile is fine.

Today's Internet is also in this state, it looks very good, but it seems to have some small problems.

Three problems with the Internet today

What are the minor issues? First, I think today's Internet is a very fragmented system. Everyone uses two payment methods every day, one is WeChat payment, the other is Alipay, and then the magic is that there is no way to interconnect between the two systems. I use WeChat today. I can't pay for an Alipay account on the WeChat payment. The reverse is also the same. This is hard to imagine.

When you are doing information communication and information exchange, if you open my mobile phone, open the directory on the first screen, there is WeChat, there are communication tools used in various regions, but there is no complete communication between them. Very strange information. The Internet should allow information to be transmitted faster, but due to today's underlying architecture and upper-level organizational forms, the Internet has evolved into a monopoly platform to monopolize data, and create obstacles for itself, and to prevent others from interconnecting with him. This is one of the problems.

Second, there are still various kinds of divisions in the physical world and the online world. For example, Alipay and WeChat payment cannot transfer money to each other, but if you really want to operate it is OK, you can withdraw a sum of money from your WeChat to the bank, and the bank will transfer to another bank where the Alipay account is located, possibly through The central bank's payment system is then converted to Alipay. In fact, the process that it goes through is to convert a completely digital information into electronic information. In the bank, it is even transformed into a certain degree of offline daily end-of-day delivery and day-end liquidation. Information to complete the exchange of information or financial payments.

So when we have to digitize a lot of offline real physical assets, we will encounter many difficulties. The difficulty lies in:

1. There is no standardized, uniform agreement that can digitize assets;
2. There is no online digital identity, so that we have no way to put our offline legal relationships, financial relationships, and our online reputation on the chain.

Because of the lack of these infrastructures, we still live in a world of “half online, half online.”

In the face of such problems, a company in the United States has launched a very controversial plan. I think everyone here must have heard of it, called Libra.

What is Libra's goal? I think one of its goals is to use the information infrastructure that every country already has, that is, the Internet, your mobile phone, your various digital apps, and Facebook's own apps. The information infrastructure replaces the “half-line, half-offline” financial infrastructure of these countries.

Because you want to replace a country, you have to go to a country to carry out financial business, you have to go deep into its financial infrastructure, it is very difficult, it involves a lot of licenses. But when Libra used Facebook's Libra model to compete with the old financial systems of these countries, it was actually a purely infrastructure and half-information half-line competition. This is the second issue we are facing today.

Third, it has a relationship with platform monopoly and data monopoly. Today's Internet data is basically collected on several large platforms. Naturally, there is no need to say it in China. It is called BAT. Of course, there are still some new giants. In the United States, there are many companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google. data.

Once they have centralized data storage and management, a single point of failure is inevitable. This single point of failure can not only create obstacles when providing services, but more importantly, it has no way to avoid data leakage, data theft or data abuse. For example, the most famous is Cambridge analysis. Facebook illegally and inappropriately leaked 87 million Facebook user data to Cambridge Analytical Co., which provides more inclined help for American politicians and general elections. A very influential data abuse incident. In today's platform-based, giant-style mode, there is no way to overcome these problems.

So we realized that there are a few small black clouds today, but it is very likely that these dark clouds, like the influence of quantum mechanics on physics at the time, may bring us the overall transformation of the Internet. Some people may call it Web3. .0, I think the more accurate word is called the next generation of the Internet. I also feel that I and many of my colleagues here, what we are doing is not just a blockchain, but it is very likely that we are doing some key infrastructure in the next generation of the Internet.

The combination of 5G, AI, IoT and blockchain will produce a + effect

I personally came into contact with Bitcoin in 2011. In 2015, basically everyone talked about coins. All the projects were called Bitcoin, Litecoin, and various coins. But in 2016, banks began to realize that there is a technology behind it that can be used in many other applications, so at that time there were a lot of projects, called chains, today is the chain, tomorrow is that chain, all kinds of chain. I think we have actually entered a new era. In this new era, we have more than just coins, not just chains, but the combination of these technologies, how to do the next generation of the Internet. infrastructure.

I was in the last three no schools. What is interesting about this school is that it will tell you something about the history of science and philosophy of science. There is a picture, I will be shocked after reading it, that is to say the development of human GDP. According to this figure, before the first industrial revolution of mankind, there was basically no major change in the world's GDP. The per capita GDP of 300-800 dollars has been like this for thousands of years. No matter what kind of social system you use, which king, which one is the highest, it is 800, but it is 300. However, after the industrial revolution, the human productivity and the ability of the economy to create wealth have increased exponentially. It can be said that with the invention of the steam engine, there is a steam engine +, a steam woven fabric, a steam engine to drive the train, and a steam engine. Industry has been created in various industries, and this is the first revolution.

In the second revolution, a variety of electric-powered devices, as well as electric-driven electric lights and electricity production, appeared.

The third industrial revolution was the information revolution. At this time, "Internet +" appeared. In recent years, China's Internet industry has benefited from the Internet + various traditional industries.

Will it be a smart revolution in the next era? In the intelligent revolution, we will see various technologies. For example, technologies such as 5G, AI, and IoT are combined with blockchains to produce + effects with other industries.

Another point is that many people will say that the blockchain is actually nothing remarkable. Its technology is very simple. It is not a cryptographic algorithm or a consensus mechanism. Is there anything new?

If you look back at the invention of the steam engine, the steam engine was not invented by Watt. Watt only invented a more efficient steam engine, a steam engine that is more easily used by various industries. The prototype of the real steam engine was long ago. It was already in the Roman era, and it was already there before Watt. So the same, our future next-generation Internet will be a fusion of multiple technologies, not just a breakthrough in technology.

I came from Shenzhen and Guangzhou this time. When I was in Guangzhou, I participated in a wealth forum. On the forum, a lady from PWC gave me a number. This data comes from Gartner. It says that in 2030, the whole district The market capitalization of the blockchain industry will reach $3.1 trillion.

I just checked the market value of the top five Internet companies in the United States. The answer is directly written in March 2019. The market value of these five companies adds up to just $3.1 trillion, so this is a very big coincidence. I checked the market value of the entire US stock market today. The answer is $31 trillion, which means that the top five companies account for 10% of the entire US stock market. In the future, we will only see the size of the blockchain industry as large as the top five companies. After I posted this tweet on Twitter, I saw someone commenting that this number is conservative and we should be able to see a better future.

What is the next generation Internet like? I want to give myself a simple understanding.

The next generation of the Internet uses a hierarchical structure

I think the most important thing is that it will be a layered structure with different layers. At the bottom level, we call it layer 0 (Layer0), which is a content neutral network. In this network, we will have a variety of network protocols such as TCP/IP today, and almost all applications are likely to run on cloud services. Today, there may be many cloud service providers on site.

Then, we will have a variety of technical modules for telecommunications and electronics, and we will also be at the bottom, including 5G technology modules, modules including IoT. With IoT, we can do everything, and we can truly achieve pure The digital economy. So, this is the bottom of the underlying network, called a content neutral network.

Further up, called the global state and the clearing layer, this is the general ledger layer that records important data states and important financial assets around the world.

In this layer, we will see a lot of public chains, such as digital asset protocols, distributed identity protocols, distributed storage protocols, I think these are very important protocol families in Layer1. In the digital asset agreement, you can see the public chain. For example, Ethereum focuses on digital assets, and there are also some centralized but global accounts, including Alipay. In addition, in the identity section, there are many applications in foreign countries to do this.

Just said that many platforms will form data islands, how to connect the systems together? Very important is the interoperability protocol, which is more simply and straightforwardly called a cross-chain protocol. Today, the more cross-chain protocols that everyone listens to are Cosmos, and Polkadot, which are more concentrated in two areas:

1. How to realize the mutual transfer of assets, more is how to make a pass from the A chain to the B chain;
2. How can it incubate a network that belongs to it or belongs to it in its existing ecology, a bit like a sub-chain or a branch.

We are also working on the design of cross-chain technology solutions recently, and our design goals are very different in these two points:

First, we don't just do the transfer of cross-chain assets. What we want to do is the consistency of cross-chain transactions, that is, in two separate databases or two separate books and two blockchains. One thing, we ask that these two things either succeed at the same time or fail at the same time. With this kind of operation, we were able to piece together the same building blocks and build a complete next-generation Internet application. So this is something to do across the chain.

Layer1 is finished, and then Layer2, the transactions that happen every day are at this level, so it is called the transaction layer. Therefore, in the future, the BTC network will not use everyone to transfer funds, but between the institutions and institutions to conduct transactions and liquidation, and many transactions will occur in the side chain. In addition, some centralized, local books are also transaction layers, and a large number of transactions occur on them, such as the bank's own system. There are also some alliance chains and private chains, and also at the trading level, where a large number of transactions take place.

In the end, we will build the interface of the application, there will be a variety of applications for browsers and wallets. As time goes by, we will start from the bottom layer. At the earliest, if you look at the earliest Internet-making companies, it is a company that does access and infrastructure, but as the network matures, Start with a browser, it is a tool, get a larger market value, followed by Yahoo, Google and other content companies, until the end, now the larger company is the company that occupied your phone. So analogy is that there will be such a process in the blockchain industry. You can combine the current stage to see which application is the easiest to run out.

Finally, put this picture together, Layer0, Layer1, Layer2, Layer3.

My last speech came here. Finally I want to share with you a sentence I have seen recently. This is what Alan Turing said. He said:

"We predict that in the future, it may not be as clear as we can see. We can only see a relatively short distance. Even so, we can see that there are actually a lot of things worth doing."

I hope everyone here can build the next generation Internet with us.

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