Joseph Lubin, Consensys founder: forget wave fields. Ethereum is the largest blockchain ecosystem
April 21, DecryptreleaseFollowing is part of Consensys founder Joseph Lubin's speech Toward a Global Settlement Layer at Deconomy 2019.
Economy era
Behind every change in the economic era is the explosion of technological innovation, which has improved efficiency, promoted human cooperation and brought us to a new era.
In 1984, John Gage, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, pioneered "the network is the computer" & NBSP; This slogan, many web1 and web 2 companies have popularized the web to billions of people around the world over the years, greatly unleashing our social nature and creating the social network. Global community revolution -- enabling us to organize global collective action in real time.
Objective to trust
Over thousands of years, humans have built countless systems and technologies that have dramatically improved the quality of life. But these advances are built on a somewhat fragile foundation: society's bedrock layer of trust
To create even the most basic common action, people need to trust each other. But historically, all the basic layers of trust in our society have been built on & NBSP;Subjective trust & & NBSP;& have spent Above:
Trust a single individual, or
Social networking, or
Business platform or institution, or
A large central authority, such as the government.
This subjective trust works well in many situations, but can go wrong when there is misunderstanding, information asymmetry, or power imbalance. Reliance on centralised trust allows some middlemen to extract too much value from the flow of transactions.
Most of the time, they stand between content producers, service providers and customers, inject the necessary trust into the relationship, and collect the rent. Until recently, this was the only way we knew of large-scale cooperation on earth.Now we need a new and better infrastructure of trust on which to base all the technological, commercial and political tools that make the world go round
In blockchain and distributed protocol systems, we finally have a breakthrough: automated trust in objective things can replace old, fragile subjective trust and then implant trust in all systems
This revolution in trust will change everything. Now we can reframe the system and society so that agreements are enforced with assurance, and build truth, fairness, and justice into the system of social rules, so that everything we do is reset to a sounder foundation of trust.
This emerging revolution in the global trust infrastructure -- largely driven by distributed blockchains and related protocols -- will power everything we do in the age of trust automation. This phase of the economic revolution will not only allow us to create more orders of magnitude of value in less time, it will likely change the definition of value.
Trust revolution
The trust characteristic of block chain system comes from its thoroughness of decentralization. Some types of blockchain networks can resist manipulation -- they can't be tricked into breaking up, even if nearly half the nodes on the network are malicious.
With thousands of nodes in networks like bitcoin and ethereum, we can be sure that these systems are more resistant to manipulation than almost any in human history. If everyone on the planet happens to have a full-node device connected to the network, we can achieve maximum decentralization of the blockchain network.
Workload proof (PoW) systems can easily lose their decentralized properties at the node level due to the following problems: expensive hardware and energy, channel skew for efficient hardware, and scale efficiency of large mines.
Elaborate proof of interest (PoS) systems can remove these asymmetries, allowing more people to own or control the hardware to participate in the network. The barriers to entry would be low enough for almost anyone to authenticate transactions on ethereum's network to help protect the network.
Casper's proof of entitlement (PoS) will lead to a breakthrough in scalability and make the network more decentralized and secure. The ethereum beacon chain test network using Casper is up and running, and the eight teams building the protocol implementations should be in sync on the Shared test network within a few months.
Settlement, terrace, walled garden & cake; & have spent & have spent & have spent
Settlement is the act of finalizing a sale or transaction. When the settlement is complete, all parties to the transaction receive what they have bought and sold and are no longer delinquent. A settlement system, a settlement platform or a settlement layer is a place where business, buying, selling, or trading is settled.
But there is no such thing as a cohesive global financial system. The gardens are fenced off: securities firms serve within their jurisdictions; Each country has a centralized custodian; Banks process transactions across the country, and when it comes to crossing the fence to complete a transaction, they rely on relationships with correspondent Banks.
EBay, PayPal, MasterCard and Amazon can be seen as clearing platforms for certain types of transactions. Google Play and the App Store can also be considered clearing platforms. None of them put the interests of the consumer first. Most of them are suffering the consumer and extracting the most value from us. Each has to protect its pricing power first -- limiting the freedom, choice, and quality of service of the end user.
The traditional economy is about building the deepest, widest moat to protect competitive firms.
There is now a clear stream of developers on some blockchain platforms who can spend seconds deploying and using software at any time for pennies without access. Take Loom or Axie Infinity, which anchor it to ethereum -- a platform that isn't owned by anyone, but by everyone. The platform itself won't take you away. 30% of your income. Nor will you change the rules imposed on you for selfish economic gain. This is the industry's fairest base, or "global clearing layer." In addition, ethereum allows scarce digital assets to flow between all games that comply with relevant token standards. This is unprecedented, but also the natural result of an open, Shared platform.
Decentralized finance is on the rise, and soon blockchain companies will have less to rely on traditional financial infrastructure.
Platform risk
The regulatory and single point of control (or loss of control) problems caused by closed platforms affect every aspect of the global economy. At the same time, the barriers caused by the closure maintain the pricing power of enterprises at the cost of consumers' service quality, cost and choice.
Through the distributed protocol, for the first time in human history, autonomous root identity information management is realized (through a system similar to uPort). Privacy controls are implemented (by the likes of 3box & cake; Personal data safe); Self-employment is achieved (through something like Gitcoin or Bounties.Network & NBSP; ), these implementations are based on trusted (no access required) platforms like ethereum.
Trust each other. But historically, all the basic layers of trust in our society have been built on & NBSP;Subjective trust & & NBSP;& have spent Above:
Trust a single individual, or
Social networking, or
Business platform or institution, or
A large central authority, such as the government.
This subjective trust works well in many situations, but can go wrong when there is misunderstanding, information asymmetry, or power imbalance.
Reliance on centralised trust allows some middlemen to extract too much value from the flow of transactions.
Most of the time, they stand between content producers, service providers and customers, inject the necessary trust into the relationship, and collect the rent. Until recently, this was the only way we knew of large-scale cooperation on earth.Now we need a new and better infrastructure of trust on which to base all the technological, commercial and political tools that make the world go round
In blockchain and distributed protocol systems, we finally have a breakthrough: automated trust in objective things can replace old, fragile subjective trust and then implant trust in all systems
This revolution in trust will change everything. Now we can reframe the system and society so that agreements are enforced with assurance, and build truth, fairness, and justice into the system of social rules, so that everything we do is reset to a sounder foundation of trust.
This emerging revolution in the global trust infrastructure -- largely driven by distributed blockchains and related protocols -- will power everything we do in the age of trust automation. This phase of the economic revolution will not only allow us to create more orders of magnitude of value in less time, it will likely change the definition of value.
Settlement, terrace, walled garden
Settlement is the act of finalizing a sale or transaction. When the settlement is complete, all parties to the transaction receive what they have bought and sold and are no longer delinquent. A settlement system, a settlement platform or a settlement layer is a place where business, buying, selling, or trading is settled.
In a stock or equity transaction, settlement between clients of a securities firm may occur at the bank level, while other settlements may need to occur at the base level. This base layer is called the central depository. In the case of the country we're in now, it's the Korea Securities Depository.
But there is no such thing as a cohesive global financial system. The gardens are fenced off: securities firms serve within their jurisdictions; Each country has a centralized custodian; Banks process transactions across the country, and when it comes to crossing the fence to complete a transaction, they rely on relationships with correspondent Banks. The same kind of settlement tends to take place on many different kinds of platforms outside the financial industry. & have spent EBay, PayPal, MasterCard and Amazon can be seen as clearing platforms for certain types of transactions. Google Play and the App & NBSP; Store & have spent It can also be regarded as a clearing platform. Others include travel websites and health maintenance organizations. None of these institutions put the consumer first. Most of them are suffering the consumer and extracting the most value from us. Each has to protect its pricing power first -- limiting the freedom, choice, and quality of service of the end user.
The traditional economy is about building the deepest, widest moat to protect competitive firms.
You've always had to pay a fee to deliver your work to users. There is now a clear stream of developers on some blockchain platforms who can spend seconds deploying and using software at any time for pennies without access. For example, & have spent Loom or Axie Infinity, and anchor it to ethereum -- a platform that isn't owned by anyone, but by everyone. The platform itself won't take you away. 30% of your income. Nor will you change the rules imposed on you for selfish economic gain. This is the gaming industry's fairest foundation or & NBSP; "Global clearing layer". In addition, ethereum allows scarce digital assets to flow between all games that comply with relevant token standards. This is unprecedented, but also the natural result of an open, Shared platform.
Service providers such as block chain company subject to finance platform, because the world, if the Banks think software development company are developing the next generation of database technology, the bank architecture unacceptable impact on the degree of decentralization, is very difficult to build the software development company will bank relationship. But decentralised finance is on the rise, and soon blockchain companies will be less reliant on traditional financial infrastructure.
Platform risk
The regulatory and single point of control (or loss of control) problems caused by closed platforms affect every aspect of the global economy. At the same time, the barriers caused by the closure maintain the pricing power of enterprises at the cost of consumers' service quality, cost and choice.
So everything we do is subject to platform risk, whether it's Banks, game consoles, social networks, app stores, mobile phones or even countries.
Through distributed protocol, for the first time in human history, autonomous root identity information management is realized (through a system similar to uPort). Privacy controls are implemented (by the likes of 3box & cake; Personal data safe); Self-employment is achieved (through something like Gitcoin or Bounties.Network & NBSP; ), these implementations are based on trusted (no access required) platforms like ethereum.
Rich protocol layer and economic opportunity
In 2016, Joel Monegro of Union Square Ventures published a song called the 'rich-pact'. "Fat protocol"). The article points out that unlike the Internet and the web & NBSP; which have no value attributes; Protocol layer, we will see the evolution of a protocol layer with its own value attributes from the blockchain ecosystem (similar to ethereum or other web3.0 & NBSP; Protocols, including: decentralized storage, bandwidth, complex computing, identification, location proof, etc.), each protocol can be based on; Open platform for token protocol.
Ethereum is an open platform based on the rich protocol. It has a programme called Ujo Music, through which more than 1, 000 artists (a number that is growing by 10% a month) reach their fans directly, bypassing intermediaries (typically, record labels and streaming platforms take 70% of that revenue).
As we've seen in the bitcoin and ethereum ecosystem, the open source platform supports bifurcation at the source level or network operation level.Bifurcation is a good thing. It allows some members of the community to take new directions if they are unhappy with the status quo. It is also an evolutionary mechanism for exploring solutions and providing more options. Above all, the threat of bifurcation keeps us motivated and open to ideas. With either continuous upgrades or passive forking, switching between platforms is cheap, and artists can switch between platforms as easily as checking a selection box. The original dream of the Internet, of censorship as a nuisance, has come true. Of course, we still need to be innovative and vigilant.
Vertical polymerization
In the early days of the web, network protocols were indeed monetized. Cisco has done an excellent job at the level of the protocol. Then, other protocols (HTTP & NBSP; SMTP, XMPP) as part of the vertical products (AOL, MSFT, Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon & NBSP; Wait for the company to) monetize. Bottom-up vertical aggregation works well for companies because it allows them to act as intermediaries to maximize their interests in an ecosystem or to expand more easily in related market segments. Vertical convergence is also a key factor that leads to the closure of the platform and the formation of a walled garden moat. Think about what Google, Amazon/AWS, Microsoft, Apple and WeChat are doing.
In the blockchain era, the monetization of network protocols will advance horizontally. For different industries and market segments, open platforms based on hierarchical protocols are more conducive to competition because these granulated platform products lower the barriers to entry at each level. After full competition, successful experience will be difficult to replicate directly between different agreement layers, which conforms to the original intention of competition law and anti-monopoly law. This economic architecture will result in smaller, more specialised business organisations and fairer monetisation agreements.
Next generation financial industry infrastructure
The next generation of financial industry infrastructure will include: centralized or decentralized spot scrip markets (using utility and securitized scrip); Atomic exchange protocol; Stable currency; Parameterized markets for insurance products and exchanges; Lending platform; Trade finance platform; Insurance platform; Open vc platform and decentralized governance mechanism. Futures, options and other derivatives allow resource providers to hedge price risk and resource consumers to lock in prices over time as needed. These infrastructures already exist and will soon mature.
Building new financial infrastructure will boost global IT. The granulation and commoditisation of infrastructure is the same for other industries. We will see a freer free market, including: more cooperative competition; More efficient; Lower barriers to entry; More fair. FinTech & have spent The/DeFi revolution allowed all of this to take off, and much of it happened in ethereum.
Closed platform = corruption & Inefficient.
Closed platforms foster corruption and inefficiency
The global economy is rife with market manipulation because of closed platforms and greed. Even the highly liquid markets of the current economy are often corrupted. For a long time, some people who control resources and have patience have observed and manipulated the market for their own benefit.
If we really could scrimp the world, the financial firms and traders who control the resources would go to great lengths to manipulate the markets for economic and political gain. We do not want the highly liquid scrip market to be equally vulnerable in the next generation economy, so the most decentralised platform is the only choice as the underlying settlement layer of the global economy.
About the blockchain ecosystem: what are the options?
Given that we agree that freedom, choice, maximum trust, and so on are good attributes, what are our reliable options when it comes to reconstructing the enterprise and how it collaborates using a global clearing network with these attributes?
Fabric
Could it be IBM Fabric?
No, it can't skip the relatively small networks of private and licensed systems.
Fabric can issue tokens, but only in narrow scenarios.
Fabric technology advocates closed platforms (with limited access).
R3 Rope
R3 Corda is a blockchain software service for Banks. It focuses more on trusted issues of point-to-point transmission than on trusted data sharing.
Corda can issue tokens, but only in narrow scenarios.
Corda technology advocates closed platforms (with limited access).
EOS
The debate over EOS has been going on for a long time because EOS is played by 21 & NBSP; It's not completely decentralized. These nodes can collude and collude if they want to; The government and other chaebol can also bribe or force them to act against their will. This would allow the & have spent The interests and security of EOS users are compromised.
If EOS outgoes do bad, they are voted out - the main way EOS guarantees decentralization. But it is also controversial because, unfortunately, there is no good way to test whether these supernodes collude, collude, bribe, or are forced to do something inappropriate.
I can imagine EOS being used for some games; But it's impossible to imagine that the tokens of those games would have a high value, because using EOS would be highly risky for group value theft
Polkadot
Polkadot was created by the Parity client development team at ethereum -- a powerful team.
Polkadot achieves scalability through a main heartbeat chain (or "trunk chain"). There are many branch chains on it. Polkadot plans to release their relay chain mechanism in the third quarter of 2019.
The Polkadot project sees ethereum as one of the potential "virtual side chains" that can be bridged.
Any branch chain (" parallel chain ") that wants to be connected to the Polkadot middle chain must be voted on by the holder of the dot (token of the Polkadot system). When a branch chain is no longer supported by the majority of dot holders because of non-compliance, the branch chain is terminated or removed from the system.In fact, Polkadot is the license chain, and white lists and blacklists of branch networks are the core guiding principles for managing Polkadot systems
Given a branch chain that allows anyone to upload a dApp without authorization, eventually the Dot holder may object to these operations; By default the dot holder is responsible for the entire system, so the branch chain will not be free to provide the service. Polkadot will be a highly controlled license chain platform.
Cosmos
Cosmos also has strong technical team support.
Cosmos does not really publish the underlying trust layer services, but rather focuses on interoperability between independent platforms. But in the coming years, Cosmos doesn't seem to offer any interoperability features other than allowing tokens to be transferred across networks; The Cosmos team believes that the most important use case for interoperability is the transfer of tokens across networks.
I hope Cosmos will perform better as a tier 2 solution and connect to the underlying trust layer if necessary.
We also expect Cosmos to interact with ethereum via token transfer Bridges.
Dfinity
Dfinity has a strong team.
Currently Dfinity is a closed network controlled by a small group of investors and token holders. But as far as I understand, Dfinity doesn't want to be a global foundation trust and clearing layer service, they're more like decentralized AWS. No matter Dfinity & have spent When they are released, they should do better than expected.
Dfinity doesn't seem to be able to become a global foundation of trust, like Cosmos, because their initial design selection put system security and consistency before availability and applicability, resulting in this situation. Only Dfinity 34% & NBSP; Block delay (and many other possible node errors) caused by erroneously shielded nodes of Dfinity & NBSP; It will stop, and every system built on it will shut down. This is unacceptable for many different levels of application
So I would subjectively say that for a global clearing service, there is currently only one appropriate underlying trust service available... Let's hear it!
Er... Wait, let's forget about the wave field
Yeah, that's right.
The etheric lane 1.0
By any measure, ethereum is the largest blockchain ecosystem. Ethereum is ahead of bitcoin in terms of the number of core protocol engineers, which far outstrips the rest of the blockchain systems combined. In terms of application-level developers, Gartner says the ethereum ecosystem has 40 times more developers than IBM Fabric, the next largest.
Ethereum is really a system with no access restrictions, no white lists, no blacklists. Anyone can join ethereum for transaction verification and upload apps. It is a global zero-audit based trust layer with no central node control or failure issues.
Again: ethereum is the largest blockchain ecosystem by any measure. There are a few things we need to work on in order to build this into a global base for clearing services:
Ease of use (user interaction and user experience)
Privacy and confidentiality
scalability
In an effort to attract more users, many projects are working to provide friendlier users, rather than forcing them to remember for fear of losing their ids and tokens. A safe word. Only when the user is familiar with the whole system does the project give the user more responsibility. The advent of blockchain introduces a whole new mode of operation, so we also need to educate our users -- like In a gradual way, Apple guides users to pinch, tap and press their iphones with different gestures. MetaMask, Burner wallet and 3box & cake; And so on, are in the pursuit of simple and efficient user experience design, in order to achieve greater market acceptance.
We have also made great progress in privacy and confidentiality. Private networks can access ethereum through technologies such as Plasma, or through status channels, Aztec agreements, and other means of securing transactions on ethereum.
Ethereum -- ERC tokens
Most Web 3.0 standards were introduced in ethereum. The constant innovation of the ERC token standard on ethereum is another proof & NBSP; -- proof that ethereum is on fire. The well-known ERC20 and ERC721 protocols have promoted the wave of tokens in recent years and also led to the use of non-homogeneous tokens in the game field. & have spent The ERC223 and ERC777 agreements are upgrades to the ERC20 agreements; ERC998 protocol extends the practicability of ERC777 protocol. ERC1337 & have spent The agreement regulates subscription and payment based on block chain; ERC1400 protocol specifies the security of tokens; ERC1155 protocol proposes multiple token functions; These are just a few.
Ethereum's momentum
Ethereum 2.0, Polkadot, and Dfinity have similar architectures and functions and similar launch dates. Of course I expected more Serenity & Serenity; Phase 2 (ethereum 2.0) is fully functional, and in these "next generation architectures" & NBSP; Before launch, can obtain majority approval. It takes a lot of work to build a platform, and it takes a lot of effort to get a platform off the ground. The ethereum ecosystem is diverse, professional, and dynamic to achieve this goal quickly and well. Building block chain ecosystem needs a lot of work and network effect; So by then, ethereum will be several orders of magnitude larger than the other two, and will already scale well for tier 2 solutions.
Ethereum is rapidly innovating on tier 1 (basic trust layer) and tier 2 (application layer) services. Ethereum tier 1 is currently the only option for global clearing services because it prioritizes availability and applicability over consistency, is relatively quick to reach consensus, and is strictly decentralized to the maximum extent possible.
Quantification of degree of decentralization
How to evaluate the degree of decentralization and then compare the competitiveness between blockchains has been a focus topic.
Many discussions have focused on blockchain scalability and TPS, but this is not the best way to measure blockchain throughput because they do not take into account the degree of decentralization of blockchain projects. We use Instead of these measures, DTPS (or, as they're called, decentric transactions per second) objectively compare blockchain performance and potential by quantifying the degree of decentralization and throughput.
DTPS is the product of TPS and DQ (decentralized coefficient). DQ is a parameter between 0 and 1:1 represents complete centralization, and 0 represents complete centralization. DTPS takes into account both the primary network transactions and the secondary transactions that occur in parallel through side chains, Plasma networks, state channels, and other extension mechanisms.
Of course, the current question for DTPS is whether the evaluation of decentralization and throughput is objective enough, especially when it comes to measuring expansion scenarios that do not occur on the main chain. In this case, we are trying a "dynamic measurement approach" and seeing if the DTPS given are objective.
The first layer DTPS
This is the DTPS sketch that excludes the second layer of throughput. Bitcoin and ethereum have the highest degree of decentralization when considering only the underlying layer of trust, but the TPS performance is mediocre.
Layer 1 + layer 2 DTPS
This DTPS sketch takes into account the partially existing layer-2 throughput. In general, the lower the degree of decentralization, other things being equal, leads to DTPS & NBSP; The smaller, the less secure it is. Today's global information infrastructure, limited by the inherent centralization form, technology, and social habits, will always use the centralization of the framework and technology to deal with affairs, leading to their & NBSP;; DTPS is almost zero; This can lead to data breaches, server hacks, and common security issues.
By establishing a basic clearing layer service, many blockchain networks and related systems can "anchor" their transactions on it, and with each additional side chain or relationship chain added to the root chain, DTPS of the entire ecosystem rise.
conclusion
The open source and sharing of platforms is a natural trend and is closely related to our daily life. We should also strive to build more digital infrastructure into such open and Shared pure land, bringing common benefits to all; If we put more effort into the underlying agreements so that everyone can share resources cheaply, the overall well-being of society will increase significantly.
If everyone can trust the native digital value created on one of the underlying clearing services layers, we can move from a zero-sum mentality to a positive-sum collaboration, free of the brutal competition and resource constraints of the past.
Unbridled, bountiful thinking will promote economic development guidelines that give priority to cooperation, and eventually turn swords into ploughstocks. A solid cryptographic economy encourages us to succeed together, because if your open source platform succeeds, your money will roll in.
Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:
Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
Related Articles
