Author: jolestar Source: X, @jolestar
This was the topic of my presentation at the open source conference last week. Interestingly, the first speaker Vitalik also talked about the inheritance relationship between Web3 and open source from the perspective. There is also a project that is going to build a decentralized Git network, all from this perspective of thinking and practice. From the perspective of Free Software, the industry's exploration starting from Bitcoin can be included in the concept of Free Service.
From the perspective of software distribution, proprietary software has experienced a switch from Software to Service (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). Although SaaS is commonly used in the B2B scenario, the current Web2 internet applications can all be seen as a form of SaaS. SaaS establishes a business model on the Cloud side, with free distribution or no client-side. While Free Software has missed the entire SaaS era and has been "bled" by proprietary software. How to turn Free Software into Free Service?
Of course, it is necessary to clarify the definition of Free Service here. Free Service is not just building a Service using Free Software, but to be able to continue the characteristics of Free Software.
Free Software has some key features that guarantee the user's freedom to use the software, mainly including:
Source Code Access, which is part of Open Source, and is the basis for ensuring the next two rights.
Allowing modification and derivative works
Free Redistribution
No Discrimination Against, without any usage condition constraints. Soul-searching question: If criminals use Free Software to commit crimes, should the developers be held responsible? Is there a need to have means to prevent such use?
So by inference, Free Service should have two key features:
No permission required for node operation
No permission required for service usage
This is actually the Permissionless that is often mentioned in the Crypto/Web3 field, so we can say that Free == Permissionless.
It needs to be explained that the concepts of Open Source Software and Free Software often overlap, but we can borrow Richard Stallman's words:
"Free software is a political movement; open source is a development model."
Free software is a political movement to fight for rights, while Open source is a development model. So here we continue the idea of Free Software and use the term Free Service.
How to make a service where anyone can operate a node? And they need to constitute the same service, and there is no admission license for users to use? What if the node operators do evil? What if the node operators censor users? What if users abuse the system resources? These difficulties seem to be impossible to have a technical solution, but until Bitcoin gave an answer.
Bitcoin's Solution
The above problems have no pure technical solution, until Satoshi Nakamoto combined economic game theory and technology to build Bitcoin. The key to Bitcoin's solution has two points:
Based on Proof-of-Work (PoW) and the longest chain selection, the node operators (miners) follow the protocol defined by the code based on economic interests.
Granular metering billing makes users consider economic interests and not abuse system resources.
Through the above two points, the Free Software Bitcoin has become a Free Service.
In the more than ten years since then, the entire industry has been trying to apply this solution to more scenarios to run Services. There have been attempts to directly blockchainize Software, attempts to provide general computing on the chain (represented by Ethereum's smart contract chains), and attempts to provide storage on the chain. Let's abstract it, the basic infrastructure required to run a Service includes three parts:
Finance
Computation
Storage
Why put finance first? Because since the Free Software movement, it can be found that if there is no Free Finance, Free Software will also be frustrated, as can be seen from the recent Linux Foundation incident. Finance is the foundation for the operation of organizations and software systems. This is also why this industry started with Cryptocurrency, and then incubated DeFi.
Speaking of this, someone may argue that a lot of crimes are carried out through Cryptocurrency, so does Cryptocurrency support crime? This needs to be discussed from the most fundamental value perspective. Finance, as well as software, will become the most fundamental infrastructure for human survival and social operation, like air. Even if you are against crime, you don't want the government to have the power to decide whether to provide air to criminals.
In this direction, the industry's progress has been the most significant. But computation and storage have obviously encountered bottlenecks, and the industry has been trapped in the trilemma, and the applications that can run are mainly DeFi-like applications where users are willing to pay higher transaction costs.
Blockchain-based Basic Services
If the blockchain is limited by the trilemma, it is difficult to directly blockchainize complex Software, then let's change the approach, can we just rely on the blockchain to achieve Permissionless? The current Layer2, modularization, and off-chain computing solutions all belong to this direction of exploration. There are several models in this direction:
1. Using the blockchain as a global Event Bus
I detailed this approach in my previous article . Rooch is also a practice in this direction, using Bitcoin as a global Event Bus, and then providing a programmable smart contract environment, where developers can launch applications based on users, data and assets on Bitcoin.
2. Using the blockchain as a global registry
For example, the decentralized Git Service mentioned earlier can use the chain as a registry to register the ownership of the repository and provide repository name services, but the rest can be fully implemented through the P2P network.
Protocols like Mastodon and Nostr can also use the chain as a registry to achieve user account and data migration.
3. Smartcontract-izing application backends
There are already many smart contract programming languages and virtual machine solutions on the market, such as Solidity, Move, and WASM, which are a bit like the various dynamic page programming technologies (PHP, JSP, ASP) that emerged at the beginning of Web2. If a high-performance smart contract platform with Crypto payment is provided, Free Software can directly smartcontract-ize itself to realize Free Service.
4. P2P networks combined with the chain
The financial infrastructure provided by the chain can allow P2P network applications to build business models. If in the future our applications all need to be accompanied by an AI agent, most applications should be in this mode.
Value Capture and Business Model
Free Software almost has no way to build a paid and commercial model, so it mainly relies on donations, which also leads users to think that Free Service is just free software. While Crypto/blockchain has solved the payment and finance problem, it has also explored the transaction fee (Gas fee) model, which is a new type of completely pay-per-use business model.
In this model, users pay per use, and developers only have development and deployment costs, without server maintenance costs. For users, if the Gas fee is low enough, the cost of using the software will be much lower than the current monthly subscription model.
Of course, there is also a problem here, the user's Gas is paid to the chain, not to the application, the application needs to design additional billing models to obtain revenue, but if the chain provides a Gas sharing model, where a portion of the user's Gas is shared with the application, the application will naturally achieve a completely pay-per-use model. This is also why current applications are mostly DeFi-based, because DeFi can easily set up payment points in the application, but other applications are more difficult. Rooch will try in this direction, sharing 30% of the Gas fee with the contract developers.
The advertising model in the internet can also be reproduced on the chain, which can be called the Reference sharing model. The goal of internet advertising is to drive traffic, to guide users from one application to another. On the chain, it can go one step further, allowing users to directly use the target application in another entry application, thanks to the inherent composability of chain applications. But this has not been fully realized yet, because of the lack of a referral incentive system, so many projects prefer to copy a project rather than directly compose. For example, Uniswap can directly provide a Reference address in the entry method, and application developers can embed the Uniswap component in their own application, filling in their own address as the Reference address, to get a share of the transaction fees. I also hope that more protocols will explore this model together.
Summary
Since its inception, Bit has evolved from an electronic cash to a digital gold, with different expectations at different stages. However, its ultimate goal is not to be nurtured as an ETF or central bank reserve, nor to make its holders wealthy by realizing "one Bit, one villa", but to open up a new continent, whether it is called Cryptocurrency, blockchain, or Web3, its goal is "freedom".
When I started writing this article, Bit was still surging towards $80,000, and by the time I finished, it had already broken $90,000. While everyone is immersed in the joy of the rise, I want to say that Bit's rise alone is not a bull market. A real bull market will see the emergence of a large number of new projects, and Finance has already achieved a certain degree of Free, so what new application forms will take the lead in Free? We can explore and wait and see.
Borrowing RMS's words, our goal is Free Service, and freedom has no pure mathematical or technical solution, introducing economic game theory may not be enough, we need more "people" to participate.
