Li Qiang, a trainee reporter of 21st century economic reporting, reports from Beijing
In the earliest portal era, users could only passively browse the text, pictures and other content provided by the Internet, which constituted the "read-only" of the Web 1.0 era. With the development of mobile Internet, Web2.0 has evolved into "readable and writable". Users can not only read network content, but also publish their own content and modify Internet content.
In the era of Web 2.0, the centralized approach has greatly reduced transaction costs, resulting in increased returns to scale and significant network effects, which in turn has spawned the platform economy. At the same time, the problem is that although users can participate in the production of content more deeply, the corresponding rights do not fall into the hands of users.
Because most of the user's behavior needs to be conducted through the platform intermediary, the platform has in fact mastered the control of user information, access rights and other aspects. For example, under the rule of "either agree or not serve", users can only transfer the rights of the data subject. The platform can decide the life and death of content on the ground of violating the platform rules at any time, and users have to agree that personal data will be collected or even over collected; However, users are also in a more passive position in front of algorithmic techniques such as big data killing and information "feeding".
As a result, taking back the rights that should belong to users from the monopoly platform has become a new demand of Web3.0. Wei Kai, the deputy director of the Institute of Cloud Computing and Big Data of the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications, described it as a prescription made by technology geeks for the contradictions accumulated in the development of the Internet over decades at the latest seminar of the Information Hundred People's Association.
The dispute between efficiency and fairness
Li Zhenhua, president of Ant Group Research Institute, said in his speech at the aforementioned seminar that, unlike Web2.0, efficiency is the priority, Web3.0 is mainly to solve the fairness problem, and help the platform participants in Web2.0 get back the transferred rights by using decentralized methods such as technical means, governance mechanisms, consensus algorithms, etc. to meet user needs.
Different voices believe that the decentralization emphasized by Web3.0 is a pseudo demand. Most Internet users only care about a good use experience and have no desire to control data and participate in community governance.
"We see that in the transition phase from Web2.0 to Web3.0, emerging platforms such as Roblox in the overseas market are moving towards Web3 from the direction of openness and co construction, and are popular with young users. We believe that Web3.0 is in line with user needs, and will gradually be recognized and accepted by the public with the improvement of market education and the transformation of the regulatory environment." Li Zhenhua said.
Further exploration shows that although new technologies, including blockchain, have helped to improve industrial efficiency and make life more convenient, they have not directly affected the main social order and socio-economic relations. In addition, many current distributed projects are actually dressed in the cloak of decentralized technology. In the actual business practice process, they are not decentralized. Therefore, it is doubtful that these new technologies touting decentralization will have the value of cost reduction and efficiency increase.
For many projects based on Web3.0 technology at present, Xu Qian, a senior researcher of the cloud chain blockchain of Ouke, thought in a public speech not long ago that the standard for judging whether a project is high-quality is unchanged, that is, whether it can reduce communication costs, improve cooperation efficiency, and ultimately improve productivity. He said frankly that at present, some Web3.0 project implementation schemes are not as good as Web2.0. If productivity is not improved through scientific and technological progress, Web3.0 will become a false proposition.
"In the vision of Web3.0 interconnection and mutual trust, the improvement of efficiency is first reflected in the elimination of redundant information. Although the problem of high infrastructure costs is still faced, I tend to think it will be solved in the future. We are more concerned about how to quickly reach consensus and reduce the cost of trust. Now many Web3.0 projects are semi centralized in order to improve efficiency, and you can choose some High weight nodes to improve transaction efficiency. " According to the Lin Daozhuang team of IEEE Digital Finance and Economic Standards Committee.
In the opinion of Chen Yongwei, the director of the research department of Comparison magazine, Web3.0 focuses more on overcoming the problems of Web2.0 than on the total denial of Web2.0. The platform model will still exist in the era of Web3.0, but people will try to use some more low-level and decentralized protocols to realize the functions of the original platform.
"In many cases, centralization is more efficient, such as digital RMB, which does not use blockchain at the issuance level, but has national credit as a guarantee. There is no need to use blockchain to increase credit, and centralized issuance will also make it more efficient to use, so the future network is more likely to be a pattern where Web2.0 and Web3.0 coexist, or centralization and decentralization coexist." Chen Yongwei said in a recent media interview.
Chen Yongwei believes that Web2.0 is a significant problem, and centralization will be the most valuable innovation direction of Web3.0 in the field of greater harm to efficiency and user rights. For example, in the "creator economy", the too strict centralized platform makes it difficult to guarantee the interests of creators, and Web3.0 may be a good alternative.
How the Web3.0 Economy Evolves
Although Web3.0 has been highly valued by the capital market, its economy is still small compared with Web2.0. Li Zhenhua pointed out that with the continuous incubation of Web3.0 consumer projects, the phenomenal products at the consumer end are the key to the public's breakthrough of Web3.0. Capital and market participants are also looking for new "narratives", such as Angry Birds in GameFi and Tinder in SocialFi.
Xu Qian believes that in the current transition stage, there will be no particularly landmark events, and the transition process will be carried out in a subtle and evolutionary manner.
For example, the content creation platform and game platform are transferred to Web3.0 by returning the value ownership of content to users, and the usufruct of content in the process of use is gradually returned to users. In this process, the profit distribution rules are developed by the platform in a black box style, and gradually transformed into a pre agreed, tamper proof agreement between the platform and users through smart contract technology. In the user's perception, the company and products have not changed, but the migration from Web2.0 to Web3.0 has actually been completed.
However, it is worth noting that under the catalysis of smart contracts, NFT, DAO and other tools, Web3.0 is also creating a new business model.
For example, the meta universe game Axie Infinity enables game pets to have transaction and collection value by NFT. Players can invest corresponding resources to cultivate pets, increase their corresponding NFT value, and finally trade on the blockchain by cultivating, fighting, and breeding.
Through these transformations, Axie Infinity has changed from a simple game to a P2E (Play to Earn) project. In addition, a series of X2E mode meta universe products such as StepN's M2E (Move to Earn) have emerged.
At the same time, in the integration of other traditional business types, the changes brought about by Web3.0 are more "fierce", such as the fastest growing DeFi (decentralized finance) field of Web3.0.
The so-called DeFi refers to the financial application ecosystem built on the blockchain. The goal is to develop and operate a financial system without intermediaries such as banks, payment service providers and investment funds in a decentralized manner, and to provide all types of financial services on a transparent blockchain network.
Chen Yongwei pointed out that because the financial industry itself has high requirements for risk control, it has been engaged by centralized financial institutions for a long time. However, because of its own profit and risk control objectives, people will face higher barriers to access to financial services, and the accessibility of financial services will be limited. In addition, when providing financial services, centralized financial institutions usually require users to provide a large amount of data and information, which poses a potential threat to users' privacy and personal information security.
In the operating mechanism of DeFi, users pledge certain collateral to the blockchain and trigger relevant smart contracts, so that users can enjoy financial services by setting agreements, get rid of the impact of centralized institutions, and avoid risks. This time and cost efficiency improvement, especially in cross-border and cross institutional financial services, has obvious advantages.
Lin Daozhuang's team especially pointed out that although the decentralized technology based on blockchain is a technology worthy of promotion, it is only one of the optional technologies, and there is no need to overstate its role in changing the financial order or economic order.
In the innovation of financial formats, Lin Daozhuang's team believes that DeFi practice is difficult to bring major changes to the order logic of the real economy in the short term, "Taking the most common direction of the meta universe under Web3.0 as an example, the current meta universe can reduce costs and increase efficiency, especially in the business scenario of manufacturing industry. There is not much asset exchange in this scenario, which still needs to wait until the digital transformation develops to a higher stage, until the topics such as industrial Internet, intelligent manufacturing, digital twins are more mature, and the main social issues are When production and life are transferred to the digital world, DeFi demand will rise. "
