Original title: The road to salvation for Web3: Let assets belong to assets and platform belongs to platform
Author: YUUU, source: mirror
The market conditions in recent months have given many people the idea that it is enough for the crypto to be a casino. Posting memes and dishes is the only feasible way. As for many concepts such as Web3 mentioned before, it is Difficult to achieve. It is true that the crypto is very suitable for casinos and has strong demand. There is no doubt about this. But if it does not conflict with it, the concept of Web3 is not unfeasible, and it is becoming more and more clear. Previous Web3 social, content and other fields have taken many detours. Many projects have tried to completely build a new system to replace Web2. However, what blockchain changes is the bottom layer. When the upper product form remains unchanged, this kind of Substitution is nearly impossible. So what is the feasible route? To put it simply, it is to let the assets belong to the assets and the platform to the platform. Integrate the assetization of blockchain into the current centralized platform and change the platform's gameplay and profit model. So how to do all this, we will expand on it in detail below.
Let’s start with renting a house
In order to better explain this change and understand the significance of this change, let's first look at an example that is easier to understand in other fields, that is, the rental market. There are very serious problems in the current rental market. The most important problem is that housing information is monopolized by intermediaries. Therefore, while providing rental services, intermediaries are manipulating the market and selling poor information. The result of this current situation is that while rents continue to rise, everyone feels that renting a house requires more and more energy and the experience is getting worse and worse. So some people came up with an idea, which is actually being implemented gradually by some local governments, which is to set up a government-operated housing information platform. All rental information must be released on this platform, with guide prices. The government's housing platform does not mean the elimination of intermediaries. For example, the landlord does not want to go to the government platform to submit various certificate information, manage the property, or show people the property in person, so he entrusts an intermediary to do it for him; the tenant is inexperienced and cannot quickly screen the properties that meet his needs on the platform, so the intermediary can do it for the tenant. provide such services. At this time, the intermediary degenerates into an organization that earns labor fees and provides value-added services to landlords and tenants. It cannot manipulate the market through monopolizing information to obtain higher profits as in the past. The role of the government housing platform is to separate housing information from rental agencies, making housing information independent.
Corresponds to digital content and data
First of all, it should be clear that the content mentioned here has a wide range of meanings. It can be statements and relationships on social media, a blog post on a blog platform, a Youtube video, digital paintings, music and photo works sold by creators, or It is digital copyright, it can also be digital games, etc. By analogy with the rental market, various Internet platforms are like rental agencies, monopolizing the process of digital content from issuance to distribution and reading. This is very different from the pre-Internet era and non-Internet fields. For example, when publishing a book, the author creates it on paper or on a computer, then finds a publishing house to publish and distribute it, and finally sells it in bookstores. Readers buy the book and take it home to read. Each link is an independent department or scene. This is not the case on the Internet. The typical example is a social media platform. The platform includes the entire process from content publishing, distribution to reading, forming a two-sided market for creators and readers. The platform has formed in the process of development. The snowball process of the more content attracting readers, and the more readers attracting authors, inevitably leads to a platform monopoly, which creates many problems and contradictions, and leads to a stalemate in which everyone complains but has to use it.
But then again, the fault of all this does not lie with the platform. Internet platforms were unable to get rid of this model before, not only because they didn’t want to, but also because they couldn’t. There is one difference between digital content and physical works, that is, it does not have a carrier itself, but must rely on a carrier to read and disseminate. For example, it requires electronic devices (computers, mobile phones, etc.) to read, and a space to store the content (possibly a local hard drive, It may also be stored in the platform's cloud server) and needs to be disseminated through the Internet (website, p2p, etc.); more importantly, the digital world needs an identity to identify the creator, and this function could only be achieved through the platform account in the past. . All of the above have created sufficient conditions for the emergence of the current platform model. Creators need a place where ownership can be marked and content can be easily distributed, and consumers need a place where content can be easily discovered and read. If the author wants to use a If a platform distributes content, the content must be distributed on this platform, and consumers must go to this platform to consume and read. Therefore, the entire process is naturally monopolized within one platform (in fact, it must be so).
One of the key points is that under the current digital content mechanism, if an author wants to distribute his works on a certain platform and protect his own creative rights, he must go to this platform to publish the content. The content and the platform are bound together. Because content verification and distribution must be achieved with the help of a platform. Then think back to the rental market at this time. If the content itself can be imagined as housing information, independent from the intermediary (that is, the Internet platform), and does not rely on a specific platform for confirmation and retrieval, then the platform's monopoly process will naturally be broken.
Therefore, similar to renting a house, content also needs to have a platform-independent release channel. But there are differences between the two. Housing information is separated from intermediaries in the form of government management, but content cannot be realized in this way. So if you want to do it now, how can you achieve it?
How to achieve content independence
Content storage
In the current web2 platform, content is stored on the platform's server, which is the fundamental limitation, so a decentralized storage space is needed to store content. The more common ones currently are IPFS/Filecoin and Arweave storage networks. Take the decentralized content distribution protocol Mirror as an example. Mirror uses Arweave to store content. Arweave is a decentralized storage network that can achieve "pay once, permanent storage." Storing content in a decentralized storage space is the first step in breaking away from the platform.
Account system
Just decentralized storage is not enough, because if the account system that publishes content is still an account using a centralized platform, it still cannot get rid of the platform. Because the account system of the centralized platform is closed, other platforms cannot directly establish contact with the creator when reading content. Therefore, a decentralized account separated from the platform is needed to publish content. The most suitable one at present is a blockchain account ( The most accepted in the current environment is the Ethereum account address). Bind the decentralized storage content to the blockchain address, and then further mint NFT on the blockchain. The NFT metadata points to the decentralized storage content link. This step of operation realizes the confirmation of the content of the article. Since the account is also decentralized, the platform can read the author's account information at the same time when reading the content, and establish further associations and interactions (such as comments and rewards).
Other advantages of content independence
In addition to getting rid of the current platform’s monopoly on content, independent content has other advantages. I mainly think of two points.
The first is that content is easier to retain for a long time and will not disappear when the centralized platform is closed. Although the current decentralized storage is not yet mature, for example, whether Arweave can really achieve "pay-once permanent storage" still needs time to be verified, but as the technology gradually matures, I think the reliability of centralized storage will definitely be far greater than that of centralized content platforms. of.
The second advantage is to improve content plagiarism, but this is not the perspective that everyone likes to mention about blockchain rights confirmation. At present, content plagiarism and illegal transfers occur frequently. One of the important reasons is that these infringing contents can attract users and bring traffic to the platform. Therefore, the platform lacks the motivation to regulate content plagiarism and can instead profit from it. In the independent content mode, the platform can capture all free and open independent content, and there is no need to plagiarize content to enhance the attractiveness of the platform content, which can naturally alleviate this phenomenon. At the same time, after independent content is confirmed on the chain, it also provides convenience for rights protection. When the two phases are combined, it is hoped that the phenomenon of content plagiarism will be improved.
How to build a service platform
What is a service platform?
In the face of content published independently of the platform, the content platform also needs to have a "degradation" like the rental agency mentioned above, from the current platform that monopolizes the entire content process to a platform that provides value-added services for independent content . The platform provides reading, subscription, interaction and other services for independent content, and attracts readers and users through a better user experience. Such a platform is a bit like today's physical stores. For example, bookstores do not create and publish books, but only distribute them, that is, sell books; game disc stores only sell game discs and do not go to Waiting for game distribution and account system.
But many people may have questions, how can a platform achieve profitable survival by relying only on these services? Most of today's platforms rely on monopolizing content and creators to earn traffic. If the content is independent, the platform cannot monopolize content and creators, and traffic The difficulty of monetization has also greatly increased. There is one difference here from physical stores, that is, the platform can create a new value-added service: platform data capitalization.
Data capitalization value-added services
This concept may seem abstract, but there is actually an example in the Web2 field, and that is the fitness APP Keep. Keep is the leading APP in the domestic fitness field, but the road to profitability has been difficult. Various traffic monetization methods such as advertising, selling courses, and selling goods have not performed very well until Keep found a breakthrough point: selling medals. Keep sells medals due to the online marathon event launched in 2015. After the run recorded by Keep reaches the marathon distance, you can obtain online and physical medals. Physical medals require payment; then Keep launched a series of medals and posted them on social media The platform unexpectedly became popular, allowing many people to check in to keep medals, and promoted wider spread, and the social attributes were gradually established and strengthened. In February 2023, there were rumors that Keep’s medal revenue reached 500 million. Although Keep officially denied it in a statement, there is no doubt that its medal revenue is very considerable.
The reason why Keep can turn medals into social symbols, take the route of grass-growing economy, and bring very considerable revenue. One aspect that may be less paid attention to is that Keep has established a brand reputation through years of operation, allowing The public trusts Keep-certified data. On the surface, Keep sells medals, but in fact it sells data certification, and medals are just a representation of certification. This coincides with the concept of Web3, and also guides the direction of Web3's Internet platform operations. As we all know, user data on various platforms is very valuable. Accurate user data can lead to more accurate content recommendations, more effective advertising and marketing, etc. Then these user data naturally have asset value. However, the value of a single piece of data is low. Only when a large amount of data is aggregated can it generate value, such as the reader portrait of a work, the emotional tendency of comments, etc. Then one of the revenue directions of the platform is to capitalize this kind of data. Taking reader portraits as an example, a universal portrait format can be constructed through an asset protocol. Authors can spend money to buy one of their own articles just like they spend money to buy keep medals. Portraits of readers of works and sold to other platforms or advertisers.
The logic here is that the author will spend money to buy the platform's data because it can bring him greater benefits. The reason why it can bring greater benefits to the author is that other platforms and advertisers recognize this data, and other platforms and advertisements The reason why businesses can recognize data is that the platform that generates data has many users and a good reputation, and everyone believes in the value of the data on this platform. Driven by this logical chain, the operating goal of the platform is to bring a better user experience as much as possible, attract more users, create a better platform reputation, and make the interests of users and the platform more consistent, so that the platform can achieve revenue while less harming the interests of users.
Of course, the data that can be capitalized is not limited to data that can actually bring economic benefits. Data that can bring bragging and social attributes like Keep running data may account for a larger proportion, but no matter what kind of data it is, as long as it is displayed and use value, the platform can capitalize it and allow users to purchase their own data assets.
Let assets belong to assets and platform belongs to platform
We have repeatedly talked about the platform issuing assets before, and issuing assets requires a lower-level asset protocol so that data assets can be used everywhere. There is no doubt that asset issuance protocols are what blockchain is best at. Returning assets to assets means using blockchain to issue assets and confirm rights.
In some current Web3 social projects, the project attempts to put the entire process on the chain, including comments and likes. This is not impossible, but in practice, usually a single like and comment has no value on the chain, and is not worth the cost. So in the early days, a better way may be to keep links other than asset issuance in the current centralized platform, such as interactive behaviors such as attention, comments, and likes on the content platform. When these behavioral data accumulate to generate value, And it can be capitalized through the platform. The new assets created by the platform may also lead to new Crypto Native gameplay, bringing new narratives and opportunities.
For the platform, it retains the traditional mechanism of Web2 and adds the new mechanism of Web3. The old centralized content distribution can still exist, but independent content will also be included in the platform, and the centralized content can be capitalized once it generates value. , and use this to create a new profit model and achieve the organic integration of Web2 and Web3.
What is the difficulty
The above analysis sounds good, but if you want to implement it, you face two difficulties:
The first is the lack of infrastructure. The infrastructure for blockchain operations has not been developed. Many people have said in this regard that a very important infrastructure is the display of encrypted assets. There used to be an example where Twitter could set up an NFT avatar, which was authenticated by a wallet signature. Clicking on the avatar could see the holding address and contract, but this feature has been offline. Without this kind of infrastructure, data with social value will face a problem after being capitalized, that is, it cannot be displayed.
The second and most critical thing is that existing platforms may not have the motivation to make such a transformation. This is certainly true for large platforms. Now that they are making money from monopolizing the market, transformation will not be beneficial to them.
How to solve difficulties
Are there any solutions to the above two major difficulties? There are some immature ideas.
Regarding the first infrastructure issue, there is a contradiction, that is, there are not many holders of crypto assets (especially NFT) and there are few high-value assets, so the platform naturally has no motivation to access and display, so the display value and social interaction of NFT Attributes are always unable to be used, which in turn limits development. I think there is only one way to break this dilemma, and that is to draw more and more people into the crypto through some channels. For example, through the recent hot local dogs and various plates, more and more people After entering the crypto, you will be exposed to various FT and NFT assets. When enough people accumulate, and the demand for display assets becomes stronger, it will be possible to promote the access to large platforms. But when it comes to this, there is one point that I really want to complain about, that is, this responsibility should actually be shouldered by the leaders in the industry to promote it. However, the actual situation is that not only is it not promoted in Web2, it is not even done well in the crypto. There are so many so-called on-chain reputation NFTs, behavioral data NFTs, etc. As a result, KOLs are still relying on screenshots to share their investment results, and have cultivated many "everlasting earning bloggers". I haven’t even finished this scene in my own circle, let alone launched it.
As for the second problem of platform transformation, I think the possible entry point lies in some medium-sized platforms or platforms in vertical fields. Such platforms have a certain scale of content and users, and may be of good quality, but in the current Internet platform The operating model is at a natural disadvantage and difficult to make a profit. Under this pressure, these platforms may consider transformation and try a new platform model and profit model.
Summarize
Based on the decentralized storage and decentralized account system, creators can separate digital content from the platform and exist independently, thus getting rid of the current situation of content platform monopoly on content. The platform is "degenerated" into a place that provides value-added services for content. And rely on data capitalization to create new profit models, and the platform's data assets provide material for the new Crypto Native model. Of course, this system itself is not perfect yet, and some of the technologies it relies on still need time to be verified, and the service-oriented platform business model generated by it still needs further exploration. The most important thing is that this requires the efforts of the leaders in the circle who are obsessed with creating concepts to make money. For more small forces in the circle, being a good casino to expand the circle is also a contribution to this process. The power of
