The value logic and path selection for lowering the threshold of Web3

Authors: Jerry, Cherry, MetaJames, BeeGee, TheprimediaDAO

We are entering the Web3 application era of "technology and industry integration," and there is no need to elaborate on the value research and investment opportunities in this track at this stage. However, we must start by addressing the core issues because if we cannot solve the following problems, Web3 will not be able to unleash the potential of "technological transformation of industries."

1. Lowering the threshold for users to enter the Web3 world;
2. Strengthening the circulation and management of users' data/assets/tokens across various application systems;
3. Improving the convenience of user interoperability between different application ecosystems.

To this end, we are conducting a series of content planning themed around this topic, including Twitter Space discussion salons and research articles; this article is the first in the series, collaboratively created by TheprimediaDAO. After the second stop of "Finding the Next Bull Market" - a discussion salon on breaking the three major obstacles of "Web3 technology and industry integration," we supplemented our interview with SafeTreasury, an on-chain asset management platform focused on providing asset management services for Builder users in Web3 and DAO and promoting collaboration among Builder users. Stay tuned for Breaking the Topic II.

I. Value Logic

Although early decentralized preaching was filled with too much hype and harvesting in the crypto circle, it is still necessary to establish a belief—user information data in the Web3 world is valuable, and individuals have the processing rights to all identity elements/digital assets. On this basis, combined with DeFi, GameFi, NFT, DAO, and various Web3 applications, we are entering the construction of grand future scenarios such as DeSoc and the Metaverse.

The narrative of this construction concerns every user, which is the charm of Web3. We believe that the value logic of Web3 lies in how to achieve the grand vision of industrial ecological iteration, economic relationship reshaping, and even the evolution of the Metaverse society in the context of the "user Builder economy." This historical process is an experience that humanity has never had before; previous social iteration processes came from top-down designed frameworks, while the social practice of Web3 is composed of bottom-up, voluntary contributions and constructions by Builders.

The practice of DeFi has successfully demonstrated the charm of the "user Builder economy," but classic designs like liquidity mining are still limited to investment/speculation. For Web3 applications to be accepted by the general public, the most crucial stage is de-financialization; it needs more business scenarios beyond financial tools, such as social, payment, and creator economies. These business scenarios will inevitably carry a large amount of user data and user requests, as well as the most basic low RT (request response time).

Therefore, the foundation of this article discusses lowering the threshold for users to enter the Web3 world. For a long time, in the world of Web3, decentralized technology and application value could not coexist. This has led to the paradox of the grand aspirations of Web3 and the stagnation of real ecological construction, even penetrating the process of crypto ecological construction with the wealth desires of the crypto circle. However, after the Builders have forged ahead through this round of bull-bear transitions, in the narrative of Ethereum's transition to POS and the collaboration between Layer 1 and Layer 2, we have the opportunity to choose a path into the Web3 application era, and thus we can explore the value logic within.

1. Social products are the cornerstone of the Web3 application ecosystem; their strategic significance is more prominent than that of Web2 social applications in the internet system—Web3 social applications will combine with DID to form the "social graph" of the Web3 world/DeSoc/Metaverse, and the corresponding user identity, contributions, assets, and reputation related to the value logic of the "user Builder economy" can only be established.

Of course, we need to clarify the concept of Web3 social by negating the hype-ridden SocialFi. SocialFi "social mining" stimulates users to use products with tokens, and its activity relies on generating information, importing traffic, and expanding data, which is destined to fail in achieving the transformation of "function > hype" that meets real user needs.

The Web3 social graph, i.e., the "graphing of social relationships," should be understood in the iterative process of Web2 social websites: in existing social networks, there is a phenomenon of reverse flow of information and data—information flows bidirectionally between users, but the underlying data is not synchronized; information flow between individuals forms "centralized" nodes during dissemination; data flow monetization is monopolized by platforms, equivalent to an invisible legal "exploitation" of individuals by platforms.

In the Web3 "social graph," information flow and data flow move in the same direction, and relationships can be tokenized, with no central nodes (decentralized social applications should be componentized, allowing me to exist as both a marginal node and a central node in different groups), and the weight of DID obtaining value returns based on contributions is indistinguishable; additionally, the "social graph" can be cross-chain and interactive, naturally dissolving content centralization. The "social graph" can also combine with DID to form an upgraded privacy system, the "on-chain credit system," providing value assurance for the crypto economic ecosystem based on Web3 applications.

For example, Metahub, based on programmable credit expansion, proposes a programmable credit consensus mechanism for protocol market makers (PMM), achieving a credit expansion curve from point to pool (NFT: FT), encapsulating FT tokens into NFT dynamic credit through automated clearing and settlement (AMO); through the continuous adoption of NFT dynamic credit, it promotes NFT credit expansion, embedding dynamic credit into Rebase contracts to obtain positive external income and enhance dynamic credit.

2. The value of Web3 lies in the return of creative rights to individuals, thus "the creation itself" begins to surface. With the creation itself as the purpose and on-chain retention as the value orientation, such a Web3 creator economy is worth looking forward to.

For instance, a content monetization/ownership platform, Crossbell, returns the data sovereignty of individual creative content to creators, and the information generated from social activities will be the initial form of user data ownership on Crossbell. It changes the rules of the game through built-in capital design, authorizing users to reclaim their data ownership.

Here, it is necessary to further emphasize the value of NFTs in the Web3 application era of the "user Builder economy"—NFTs can exist widely in GameFi, the Metaverse, and DeSoc, with content monetization as their functional direction.

For example, Polygon has released a new NFT Minter that allows users to create NFTs using custom programs without gas fees, encouraging more users to participate in the "Builder economy."

On this basis, content monetization can be understood as the tokenization of individual value. As more users frequently and widely enter the Web3 application world, the basic rights of the "user Builder economy" will be guaranteed.

3. From To business to To Builder, this is also the iteration of SaaS services in the Web3 world compared to the Web2 era. The change in the target users reflects the upgrading of production relationships and the evolution of economic forms.

Taking Dune and Nansen as examples, such tools are more easily "infrastructured." Dune and Nansen do not need to include trading functions; users can customize functional modules. Essentially, this is a pipeline device, and as users accumulate data through continuous queries, they naturally cultivate good habits, and the traffic inherently possesses commercial value.

Another example is Skiff, a decentralized email and cloud document office suite service, where all records of email communication and cloud document collaboration between the two parties are directly stored on IPFS without going through centralized servers; this service can be used for personal daily writing and communication, and can also replace Google's workshop office suite, fully implemented based on IPFS.

In the social graph and creator economy based on the "user Builder economy," SaaS has a universal application demand in the Web3 world, and because DID empowers the social graph and creator economy, this To Builder SaaS service scenario iteration will inevitably bring value opportunities.

II. Implementation Path

Currently, many Web3 projects lack a sense of reverence for users, believing that users should do things this way and teaching users what to do. The technical differences between Web2 and Web3 products are only two: 1. Login authentication has changed from centralized account/password verification to wallet connections without third parties; 2. The database has changed from table-style MySQL to chains. However, current Web3 products blatantly display these technical differences to users, and users even have to bear the risks to data and assets brought by imperfect technology.

If we need to lower the threshold for users to enter Web3, these technical details must be perfected and guaranteed by underlying technical infrastructure. Therefore, foundational infrastructure tracks such as Layer 0, Layer 2, DID, smart contract wallets, and zero-knowledge proofs need sufficient development. Cherry, a co-creator of this article and a technical developer, has some personal insights: the technical implementation of applications is not to challenge developers but to think from the user's perspective about their pain points.

1. We need to cover up the cumbersome public and private keys that users are unaware of, through account abstraction, allowing users' wallets to be managed by programs. The vision of Ethereum developers has always been, and is now gradually being realized, through smart contract wallets, where users do not need mnemonic phrases, and all EOA account interaction details are handled by programs.

Account abstraction can achieve smart contract proxy wallet interactions; however, we still need a more convenient solution for wallet recovery than social recovery, such as MPC + cloud storage of private keys. Bitizen and Unipass have both done well in this regard, allowing users to log in/create accounts and recover accounts using social accounts; the former is an MPC wallet, while the latter is a smart contract wallet that uses MPC technology.

2. Transferring tokens held by users on one public chain to another can be quite difficult—the choice of which chain an application uses is like choosing between MySQL and Oracle databases; it is a matter of the data layer and should not be perceived by users. Layer 0 cross-chain bridges have become the solution for interactions between public chains.

[Stargate finance](https://twitter.com/StargateFinance) is the first product launched by Layer0 Lab, allowing users and dApps to transfer native assets across chains while accessing a unified liquidity pool of the protocol, ensuring finality in real-time.

3. High gas fees and long waiting times stem from the high computational costs of on-chain operations, but these computations can be handled by an independent layer, with only the final results recorded on-chain. Thus, Layer 2 is the solution to this problem (everyone is familiar with Layer 2 solutions, so no case demonstration is needed here); in terms of application direction, hiding smart contract wallet interactions in the program in API form allows many steps to be replaced by the program itself.

The NFT wallet + social platform [DTTD](https://twitter.com/dttd_nft) developed by a Hong Kong team is a mobile L2 wallet + social platform. Users' deposits/NFT transactions/transfers are all completed within the mobile program, which interacts with smart contracts through APIs, and users can even pay gas fees with any token.

4. The addresses of the information sender and receiver are a long string of public keys, and without some records to remind them, users find it difficult to know who the other party really is. At this point, a tag is needed to mark this public key's information, similar to ENS. There are many people in the world named Cherry, and this information is insufficient to describe a person; it needs to describe a person with flesh and blood, and DID can carry the mission of describing such a user's soul.

The next.id project meets this demand by integrating all Web3 and Web2 accounts into a user's own avatar. Through DID facilities, users can quickly determine who they are interacting with, and their information and addresses across multiple platforms can be managed uniformly.

5. The risks for Web3 users mainly come from the EOA wallet itself and the openness of the public chain. To solve the data privacy issue, we need to leverage the power of crypto to obscure personal information and behavioral data, with only the user possessing the private key to decrypt. When a platform needs user data as parameters for verification, this is no longer necessary under zero-knowledge proofs; users only need to return true or false to the questions asked by the platform.

[zkPass](https://twitter.com/zkPass) solves the identity information leakage problem in KYC verification. Projects requiring KYC verification can publish their KYC verification activity information on zkPass, and users generate ZKP of their identity information on zkPass to gain access permissions. During the ZKP generation process, neither zkPass nor the project party can obtain the user's identity information, alleviating concerns about data leakage.

6. Search and recommendation remain significant traffic entry points and conversion channels, and there is no longer isolation between Web3 products. Users can integrate data and attribute data across various products, with user data integrating payment, social, and search.
   [Lens Protocol](https://twitter.com/LensProtocol) is a middleware built on Polygon, allowing users to register Lens domain names to generate their social graph NFTs and link their published content as metadata to their NFTs. Any developer can build dApps on Lens and access the metadata of Lens user NFTs.

MASK/BAND, backed by Twitter, has seen a significant surge following Elon’s sweeping reforms and the push for Twitter payments.

7. Providing a universal API to feed data into platforms to train models for personalized recommendations.
   The NFT wallet tracking platform [Context](https://twitter.com/context) utilizes Twitter's API to feed user-followed account data, obtaining ENS domain names from the user's Twitter following list and automatically conducting address tracking and information flow delivery, allowing users to seamlessly connect with KOLs they follow in Web2.

8. Based on on-chain addresses for financial transactions, there is a need to understand the identity of the counterpart in transactions without knowing who they are. This requires information verification functions to become infrastructure. Web3 algorithm optimization can make accurate judgments based on credit systems without knowing who the other party is.

Current practices are still limited, but there are traces to follow—contact verification tool Go+ Security allows users to verify over 360,000 tokens on the Ethereum chain, including over 180,000 risk addresses and over 20,000 phishing websites.

9. Security issues: One of the important factors in lowering the user threshold is psychological factors, and one of the key issues is security. Web3 is a value chain that carries real monetary value, so alleviating users' security concerns is particularly important. Since blockchain shifts value from centralized custody to individuals, the concept is good but not applicable to most people. Even OGs in the crypto industry are occasionally hacked. Therefore, there is a need for trustworthy security infrastructure and applications, including auditing agencies, wallets with sufficient risk warnings, and antivirus software similar to that in Web2, all of which need to convert complex professional expressions into easily readable and understandable descriptions.

For example, in auditing, Certik offers not only regular smart contract audits but also SkyNet services for continuous monitoring. MetaMask has improved its risk warning capabilities compared to before. In terms of antivirus software, several companies are already working in this area; MetaShield will pop up relevant warnings if users encounter potential or confirmed risk websites while browsing.

10. In the context of the Builder economy, the management of user contributions in Web3, i.e., "data/assets," is an essential foundational facility. This is also the second topic we discussed in the Space seminar: "Strengthening the circulation and management of users' data/assets/tokens across various application systems." After the discussion salon, we supplemented our interview with SafeTreasury, an on-chain asset management platform focused on providing asset management services for Builder users in Web3 and DAO and promoting collaboration among Builder users. Stay tuned for Breaking the Topic II.

Note 1: This article is based on TheprimediaDAO's planned Twitter Space "Finding the Next Bull Market," the second stop of which is to break the three major obstacles of "Web3 technology and industry integration." The seminar participants also included TheprimediaDAO advisor Dyson, TigerVCDAO founder Peter, NonceGeekDAO Founder Li Dagou; Co-founder of CrossSpace and Type V DAO leoninweb3; Chief Growth Officer of Assure _ pro and Assure Wallet developer Terry.

Note 2: This article is the first in the Breaking the Topic series, collaboratively created by TheprimediaDAO. The co-creators include TheprimediaDAO founder Jerry, TheprimediaDAO Builder and OKDAO Leader Cherry, TheprimediaDAO Builder and Redline DAO Managing Partner MetaJames, and TheprimediaDAO Builder and TigerVCDAO Investment Head BeeGee.