Speed Reading | What did the big names talk about on the first day of the Wanxiang Conference?
The 8th Wanxiang Blockchain Summit has arrived as scheduled, with a 5-minute quick read of this year's sharing content from the experts.Author: Chain Teahouse
The 8th Wanxiang Blockchain Summit has arrived as scheduled. Today is the first day, but it is happening online. In fact, the off-site events of the Wanxiang Blockchain Week every year are far more exciting than those inside the main venue, both in terms of the number of participants and the sparks of ideas generated.
This year, the industry event of blockchain has shifted from bars, cafes, and clubs in Shanghai to the streets, guesthouses, and parks in Dali.
Although there is no offline After Party to enjoy this time, let’s focus on the content of the summit and see what the big names have shared this year. Chain Teahouse brings you a 5-minute quick read.
1. "The First True World Computer - Internet Computer Blockchain"
Dominic Williams, Founder and Chief Scientist of the DFINITY Foundation
In 2014, inspired by Gavin Wood's concept of a "World Computer" while he was still a member of the Ethereum community, he founded DFINITY in 2015. Everything in Web3 is about Tokenization, which requires a true "World Computer" to run new smart contracts, and the IC blockchain has made this a reality.
He compared the costs of storing 1GB of data on Ethereum, Solana, and the IC blockchain, concluding that Ethereum requires $100 million, Solana $500,000, while IC only needs $5, and the costs do not fluctuate with the price of ICP. He further criticized Solana, stating that its daily transaction volume of 30 million cannot compare with IC's 500 million, and it may also experience severe network failures.
Currently, 99% of DAPPs and services are deployed in the cloud, and even blockchain nodes themselves are in the cloud, which is unsafe. The IC blockchain is the true Web3 internet.
ICP smart contracts can interact across chains without the need for cross-chain bridges, such as directly processing Bitcoin on the Bitcoin ledger, thus enabling the creation of native Bitcoin DeFi. This is because the IC blockchain unlocks Chain Key cryptography as its underlying support.
IC smart contracts are called Canisters, which are essentially software executors that can perform a variety of interesting functions, and they can execute in parallel.
The reverse gas fee model of the IC blockchain is worth noting; smart contracts pay for their own computation rather than the users.
The design of the IC blockchain is aimed at completely replacing traditional IT architecture, and even enterprise-level systems will eventually be built on the IC blockchain, representing a huge opportunity. Everyone can feel the disruptive effects the IC network will have in the coming years.
2. "Aptos Blockchain - Secure, Scalable, Updatable Web3 Infrastructure"
Avery Ching, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Aptos
Avery Ching's views on cloud services are fundamentally opposite to Dominic's. He believes that cloud infrastructure has led to explosive growth in internet services, allowing startups to focus on application development (rather than infrastructure scaling). However, Web3 needs a decentralized infrastructure layer to realize cloud services, which must be intuitive, instant, and low-cost, thus requiring a complete rethinking of the entire blockchain technology stack.
He also introduced the Aptos team's thoughts on technological accumulation. Four years ago, they developed the Move language that meets security and performance needs, and later realized they could not predict the technological path several years into the future, so they should ensure applications are upgradable. Subsequently, to address the issue of fully utilizing hardware devices, they introduced parallel execution. Finally, to solve the problem of large-scale applications, they support different types of sharding solutions (such as internal sharding among validators and sharding between validators).
Of course, more emphasis was placed on the Move language tailored for blockchain. They are very optimistic about the future of Move and believe Aptos will lead Move into the future - "Move"ing With Aptos.
Since its launch in February, Aptos has seen over 200 projects built on it.
3. "Decentralized Society, Seeking the Soul of Web3"
E. Glen Weyl, Microsoft CTO, Political Economist, and Social Scientist, Founder of RadicalxChange Foundation
DeFi has truly changed the world of finance, but it cannot execute some basic functions of traditional financial systems, at least not independently. This contradiction arises because, in the Web3 ecosystem, everything is tradable, and everything is transferable.
DAO organizations are at the core of Web3's potential, but DAO governance has so far mainly been realized through fungible tokens (FTs), meaning anyone can purchase over 50% of the tokens to capture the entire value of the DAO ecosystem, which affects the potential for DAO development.
Building a decentralized society starts with a new type of token, which we call soulbound tokens, or "SBTs." Soulbound tokens are fundamentally different from standard NFTs; they are not financial items or assets but represent the relationship between the issuer and the recipient (rather than the recipient's property). The issuer can revoke these soulbound tokens, but the recipient cannot transfer them, at least not unilaterally.
Thus, SBTs can help us realize many possibilities, such as on-chain asset leasing, airdrops, credit, etc. In short, they will become another important dimension for our thinking about integrity and social relationships.
Finally, he believes that the next upward cycle in the crypto world will realize some visions based on SBTs. Signs are already emerging - at the Ethereum NYC conference, all winning projects were related to soulbound tokens.
4. "Research and Exploration of the Metaverse"
Li Ming, Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology Standards Committee
He believes that NFTs will have the following trends in the future:
Content Aggregation. Currently, the pricing of NFT collectibles is often dictated by platforms, violating the essence of the creator economy. In the future, a content aggregation platform may emerge, using internet platforms as sales channels for distribution.
Identity Aggregation. Some cutting-edge projects are already exploring applications of identity aggregation, allowing users to purchase NFTs or digital collectibles on any platform and store them in one app, eliminating the need to download multiple apps to store NFTs from different platforms.
Utility Rights. NFTs are difficult to circulate freely, and their value cannot be realized. NFTs must become passes, props, or certificates with special significance and function in the metaverse to unlock their value.
The metaverse is the integrated logical expression of the digital consensus ecosystem, with key elements including organization, identity, assets, and activities, and blockchain can support the development of the metaverse from these four aspects.
The entire metaverse ecosystem can be divided into five layers: technology, content, economy, collaboration, and governance systems. The technology system can further be divided into five layers, including network, system, service, scenario, and space.
The development of an industry or the emergence of new business scenarios requires cultivating a large number of applications to achieve innovative breakthroughs. In this process, it is recommended to unify industry consensus, explore methods for technological integration, innovate application scenarios and business models, and strengthen research on technology ethics governance.
5. "New Stage of Blockchain: Explosion of Application Protocols"
Xiao Feng, Vice Chairman and Executive Director of Wanxiang Holdings, Chairman and General Manager of Wanxiang Blockchain
The recent Ethereum upgrade signifies that the infrastructure construction phase of blockchain is nearing its end, and an explosion of applications is about to arrive.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, after decades of internet protocol wars, the TCP/IP model emerged as the ultimate winner for the following five reasons:
Driven by demand, with code preceding standards, gradually leading to standards through market testing.
Initiated from the bottom up.
Adopted an agile development model, continuously iterating quickly based on market demands and technological possibilities.
Developer-friendly and user-friendly.
Completely open-source and open, requiring no authorization; anyone can use it, and anyone can contribute to this model.
He believes that the blockchain protocol stack will follow a similar path, with Ethereum playing a core role. As a network for clearing and settling underlying blockchain value, Ethereum is expected to reach hundreds of thousands of TPS within three years, millions of TPS within five years, and tens of millions of TPS as planned by the Ethereum Foundation within ten years.
The infrastructure construction of Ethereum should be completed within three to five years, and the blockchain is expected to see an explosion of applications starting in 2025.
Finally, whether it is the internet protocol stack or the blockchain protocol stack, the more foundational the protocol, the more globally unified it is, while the application layer protocols are more diverse. For example, there are over a hundred application layer protocols on the internet, and in the future, there will also be over a hundred application layer protocols in blockchain. The explosion of application protocols is essentially the explosion of applications, which is the explosion of blockchain business, so we look forward to the arrival of blockchain in 2025.
