Web3: Substance, Essence and Awesomeness

Any epoch-making technology will be truly accessible to the public in 20 years.

Written by: Wei Jianfan

The title of this article might be confusing, isn't the substance the same as the essence? What is a good drink.

What is substance, essence and stick

If you don't care too much, "essence" and "essence" are actually similar. But in this article, there is a slight difference.

"Essence" refers to what a thing is originally.

"Essence" is an elevation. At a higher level, it is said what category a thing belongs to and which theory it conforms to.

The "sticky drink" is more like a loud shout from a Zen master. He may not understand this thing very well, but he can see through the essence at a glance, shout a sentence from a higher dimension, and make a dimensionality reduction blow, which will let you go from fanaticism The state immediately woke up.

So, simply put:

• Essence: what is it?
• Essence: What is it actually
• Awesome drink: it's not this thing!

Human Essence, Essence and Stick

In order to facilitate everyone's understanding of these three concepts, let's first look at what the essence, essence, and essence of "human beings" are.

The essence of human is an advanced animal with nervous system, circulatory system, respiratory system, digestive system, urinary system, reproductive system, immune system and motor system.

personal representation

But is this the nature of man?

No, the essence of human beings should be higher and more abstract.

The question of "human essence" is a proposition studied by philosophers. Generally speaking, it is to study why people live and what they want to do when they live.

In my opinion, human beings are essentially a complex organic organization striving to survive and perpetuate.

In essence, human beings are the carrier and expression of the genome, and the genome can be adaptively inherited through humans.

People are the inheritance of genes

Well, now there is a Zen master who said:

Man is but a speck of dust in the universe.

Man is the dust of the universe

Into the title

This article mainly talks about the following things: BTC, ETH, NFT, DAO, and finally Web3.

Hype Cycle for Blockchain and Web3, 2022

The above picture is the famous "Hype Cycle" (Hype Cycle), which Gartner releases once a year, showing the rising period, rapid development period, declining period, climbing period and stable application period of new technologies.

Some people also call it the "hype cycle" because it reflects more people's high sentiment towards a certain technological thing.

The picture above shows the maturity curve of blockchain and Web3-related technologies released in July 2022. It can be seen that both Web3 and NFT are relatively at the top, but the world is changing too fast. It's going to hit rock bottom.

BTC

The essence of BTC

In fact, it is very simple, BTC is a piece of software and the data it generates.

The architecture and ideas of this software are written in the white paper, and the implementation of this software is on Github.

What do these software do? All transactions that occur within ten minutes are packaged to form a block.

Then all blocks are synchronized with each other on more than 10,000 computers around the world.

BTC node statistics, from

At the same time, several mining areas and mining machines around the world are fighting day and night, keeping accounts, and obtaining rewards.

Intensive HASH calculation

Private key, public key, QR code, balance reading, and signature in the user's wallet.

Public and private keys in the wallet

The essence of BTC

• Transaction records that cannot be tampered with by multiple people.
• Non-tamperable modification of a large number of calculation guarantees.
• Credible decentralized value transfer system. (This is a more compelling description)

An epoch-making technological breakthrough: the immutability of electronic data.

An epoch-making application breakthrough: the native electronic currency on the Internet.

stick drink

Isn't BTC just an open source software project with many people participating!

Wherever a group of rabble can take the project, the code can be changed if it is said to be changed!

If you say fork, you will fork! (It is entirely possible to produce 100 types of BTC)

ETH

The Essence of ETH

ETH is based on BTC, adding the function of running code (so-called smart contract).

Everyone can upload code to ETH, trigger the code to run, and read the calculation results.

The code and running results are stored synchronously in databases of about 8,000 servers on the Internet.

(Data Sources:

The Essence of ETH

ETH is a large computer that is jointly maintained by multiple computers on the Internet, cannot be tampered with, can be calculated, and can be stored.

So ETH calls itself the "world computer".

Since then, the Internet has a universal trusted and computable mechanism.

Combined with various IoT, automated and trusted transactions and payments can be realized.

For example, the most classic example: you apply for a short-term rental of a residence, you will get an unlock key, and then you can use this key to unlock the door, and when you cancel the lease, you will automatically pay digital currency.

Christoph Jentzsch, Slock.it；DEVCON1, London, 2015.11

stick drink

Isn't ETH just some young programmers adding code upload and calculation functions to the BTC project!

Changing an otherwise elegant project into a messy and ugly one!

World Computer? I think it's more like a leek cutting computer.

NFT

The essence of NFT

NTF records the binding of artwork numbers and blockchain addresses through smart contracts.

Just put a number on the chain, and the artwork entity is off the chain, such as on IPFS.

Like BTC and ETH, you have the private key to transfer it.

The essence of NFT

People finally have real ownership of digital assets.

What is yours is yours, what is not yours is not yours.

Thanks to blockchain technology.

stick drink

Isn't NFT just an application on ETH? Just for a number?

Painting money to buy pictures? How important is it that you want that blockchain record?

NFT: digital collection

(I thought 25 yuan would give me this big silver box)

Knife

The Essence of DAO

DAO writes the rules of multiplayer games in smart contracts.

Various roles invest and obtain rights and interests according to the established game rules.

Common DAO types:

• Investment DAO (such as "The DAO")
• Subsidized DAO
• Collection DAO (such as "Constitution DAO")
• Club DAO

The essence of DAO

DAO solidifies the rules on the blockchain, and everything is open, transparent and automatic.

DAO provides a technical possibility for large-scale trusted cooperation of human beings.

DAO is a new type of company. There is no senior management, no black-box operations, no bad debts, no finances, and no personnel.

stick drink

Are there any really exciting DAOs by now?

All codes have the final say? Stop talking, who is rolling back?

Emin Gün Sirer and Vitalik Buterin celebrate successful ETH fork in response to The DAO event, July 20, 2016, Cornell University

Web3

The essence of Web3

The difference between traditional development and Web3 development is as follows. It can be clearly seen that Web3 mainly uses blockchain at the back end.

The main difference between traditional development and Web3 development

If you take a closer look, you will find that the client usually uses a wallet to sign, and the backend mostly calls the Provider to communicate with the blockchain, and the storage uses a decentralized file system such as IPFS.

More specific Web3 development architecture diagram

In this way, the most important data is on the chain, and the storage of front-end web pages and other data can be decentralized.

The Essence of Web3

People are trying to reshape a stronger and more reliable Internet.

At a time when people are moving the entire world to the Internet, it takes a solid foundation. Web3 is that solid foundation.

This is just like the structure of the future city proposed by Paolo Soleri, with Layer2, Layer3, Layer4 on a solid base...

The "superstructure" of the future city, the small picture on the right is the same scale of the Empire State Building

stick drink

Do the Internet with such a heavy way? Stop dreaming!

Have you ever seen any Web3 that is actually used!

Epilogue

Perhaps, we need to wait until 2029, when this technology will be out for 20 years.

Any epoch-making technology will be truly accessible to the public in 20 years.

What is going on with Web3, we will see when the time comes.