Metaverse DNA World Tour: China
We have some exciting news to share with the Metaverse community! Before we get into the details of the Metaverse DNA World Tour, I am happy to share that Alex Lightman, an expert in digital thought and transformation, has joined the Metaverse DNA team as Global Strategy Advisor. Alex has over 30 years of experience in deploying new and novel hardware, software, communications, and Internet products, platforms, and protocols. He is a recipient of the first Economist magazine Reader’s Award, granted on Oct. 21, 2010 for his contribution to “the innovation most likely to radically change the world over the next decade, 2010–2020”. Alex will be heavily invested in the global roll out of Metaverse DNA technology in key international markets in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has played an important role in advising 20+ blockchain companies on their whitepapers and will contribute to the final version of the Metaverse DNA whitepaper. Alex will be instrumental in the promotion of Metaverse around the world. Please welcome Alex Lightman to the team!
Over a span of 10 days, from October 13 to October 22, the Metaverse DNA team partook in key conferences in 4 stops in China alongside numerous dinner gatherings with Metaverse supporters. Our team visited Zhengzhou in Henan Province, Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province, Hefei in Anhui Province, and Shanghai. Throughout these 4 events, we saw a total of more than 1,000 enthusiasts and supporters come out, and received very heartwarming receptions throughout the tour. We want to thank everyone who showed up as well as the key community organizers in these cities who welcomed us with open arms. Below is a recap of the key events and keynote topics, with many pictures included!
Stop 1: Zhengzhou
On October 13th, we arrived at the Noble International Hotel in Zhengzhou, which was packed with over 200 people in the main conference room. The Metaverse team composed of Ken Huang, an accomplished digital identity expert and Visiting Professor at Zhejiang Normal University, who is a co-founder of Metaverse DNA, and Alex Lightman, a writer of many books and articles regarding the future of technology, who is the Global Strategy Advisor for Metaverse DNA.
After the opening remarks by the event organizers and community leaders, Ken first took the stage to share his thoughts on data, privacy, and identity. He mentioned the current opportunities and problems with big data, including the trillion dollar opportunity that currently does not belong to the users who provide the data. In essence, there is a data ownership problem in regards to who owns our data. Is it really us, the providers of the data? Or do big corporations like Facebook, Google, Apple, etc. control our data? According to the CHNCI Institute, in 2016 the value of the big data industry is $140.3 billion dollars, while by the year 2020 this industry is projected to be valued at $1.03 trillion dollars!
A second problem with data today is the possibility of data loss or leaks. Equifax had 147 million users whose accounts were compromised, totaling $425 million in fines. In 2014, Yahoo had 500 million users whose accounts were also hacked. Redundancy and incompatibility of data is the third problem. When we sign up for accounts on different websites, we always need to fill in our personal information in a repeated manner for each different website. This is redundant. What if we only need to register once and then use a decentralized identity storage to access other sites? Lastly, a fourth issue that Ken mentioned is the fraudulent use of data. There are websites in China where you could buy a fake identity to register for different online accounts. Money launderers can register accounts on exchanges with fake identities in order to pass through KYC/AML screening. All of these are issues facing the state of identity data today.
Centralized identity is the root cause of all of these data problems.
How do we solve these problems? Ken proposed we use decentralized identity. Here are 5 reasons why:
- Decentralized identities are harder to hack or steal than centralized identities, as fragmented data take a lot more work to steal and compile.
- Applications that run on public blockchains will have KYC/AML requirements, and a decentralized identity that passes KYC once will be able to access other decentralized blockchain services, solving the redundancy issue.
- Decentralized identity means the privatization of identity. In essence, for data ownership to return to the users, decentralized identity is a must have, as an individual will hold the private key that can access his or her data. No other corporations and individuals will be able to access this data.
- With data ownership back in control with the users who provided the data, a token economic model can incentivize users and realize the full value of such token economies.
- In order for dApps on public blockchains to scale, a decentralized user reputation model is needed to incentivize good behavior and discourage bad behavior, like in the real world with credit scores. Decentralized identity can provide for decentralized user reputation systems.
Ken explained how Metaverse Avatars and DNA will be able to provide these solutions, such as data encryption for identity data, the return of data ownership back to users, the self control of data, and a transparent reputation system on the blockchain. All of these unique solutions will be possible with Metaverse technology. Decentralized authentication is already possible with Bitident, for example.
Next, Alex Lightman took the stage and gave a very interesting keynote regarding the state of the industry today and where he sees the industry going 10, 20 years down the road. Titled “The Great DeFiance: Stat€$ vs Corporations≋ vs the People ₿,” Alex’s keynote touched on how monetary power is slowly transitioning from traditional nation states to corporations, and how there is a struggle among nation states, corporations, and the people for the control of money.
Countries like China are exploring a digitization of their own fiat currencies, while corporations like Facebook and JP Morgan have publicly issued plans to create their own stablecoins. In the meantime, Bitcoin remains the go to digital currency for the people in terms of payments. All of these developments lead to the potential growth for blockchain in the years to come. Alex predicts that a widespread token economy will be in place with the advent of self driving cars, smart cities, and billions of IoT devices that will be connected through 5G. Therefore, there is still plenty of room for this young industry to grow.
Stop 2: Shijiazhuang
The very next day, we traveled by high speed rail to Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei Province, located about 3 hours drive south of Beijing. Both Ken and Alex gave different keynotes than the day before based off the same slides, showcasing their versatility and knowledge. Like in Zhengzhou, when we arrived at the Intercontinental Shijiazhuang, we were met with an enthusiastic crowd of more than 200 people. Here is a brief recap of their keynotes.
Ken emphasized 5 points that must be fulfilled in order for blockchain to be widely accepted. These 5 points are:
- Digital Identity: blockchains need digital identities, similar to real world where we have our identities to access services.
- Security: blockchains must be secure, otherwise the public will not trust this technology.
- Oracle: blockchains must provide a trusted data source, meaning the data on-chain must be real and legitimate.
- Scalability: blockchains must be scalable with fast TPS, otherwise user experience will be terrible.
- Interoperability: blockchains must be able to communicate with other blockchains to elevate the whole industry and bring about widespread adoption.
Alex Lightman shed more light regarding the “The Great DeFiance: Stat€$ vs Corporations≋ vs the People ₿” topic, mentioning that if Facebook was a country, its total users would be greater than China’s population as a whole. This is why Facebook is issuing the Libra, because with over 1.6 billion users, Facebook has the power to bring digital money across the globe in ways many nation states cannot. Of course, Facebook is getting severe push back from these nation states’ regulators, because the Libra is a direct challenge to the monetary authority of central banks.
How does this relate to DNA? As Alex artfully said:
The Ultimate Purpose of the Blockchain is to maximize government and corporate LEGITIMACY and human machine INTELLIGENCE, and minimize the LATENCY of achieving consensus.
LEGITIMACY is generated by doing three out of three things consistently:
•Seek the Truth
•Speak the Truth
•Practice What You Preach
LATENCY is delay, like a sin tax on bad architecture and infrastructure, a measure in milliseconds of how many hops, errors, or inadequate computing.
Metaverse DNA will have the capability to solve the latency issue with high TPS and fast block times, thus allowing developers and builders to create applications that minimize latency. Once you have the security of the blockchain with the base ETP chain, you can then scale up using DNA, which will complete the user experience through interoperability with other chains.
Stop 3: Hefei
After a brief day of rest, the Metaverse team flew down to Hefei in Anhui Province for the next stop in the China roadshow. We were greeted by the local community leaders with bouquets of flowers. A huge shout out and thanks to Juhui Capital for inviting us to the Hilton Hefei, where more than 300 people showed up from all over China to hear Ken and Alex speak. Ken dove into details regarding identity management and why blockchain based identity systems can solve data misuse by large corporations like Facebook and Google. Alex gave a new keynote titled, “DeFi 2020: Meritocracy in the Age of Decentralized Finance,” which touched on use cases for blockchain across a multitude of industries such as finance, IoT, supply chain, medical data, healthcare, and voting. Audience members asked questions after their keynotes, and both Ken and Alex answered with enthusiasm.
Stop 4: Shanghai
On October 22nd, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics invited Ken to speak at their 2019 Blockchain Technology Innovation Summit. Ken talked about problems facing current blockchains, including scalability (TPS), security, trustable data, and on-chain identity management. He then mentioned Metaverse DNA’s solutions to these issues in front of academicians, professors, industry leaders, and media. DNA will allow blockchain applications to scale and provide a much more seamless user experience than what is currently available in the industry.
Overall, the Metaverse DNA World Tour stops in China were huge successes, as we were able to engage and communicate directly to our communities and end users. We answered questions about Metaverse and DNA, and also took feedback that will allow us to improve our product for all of our users. Thank you to all of the event organizers for your hard work in planning the conferences and dinners. Your hospitality was a big part of the success of this trip. We hope to be back soon to these locations. Next stop, Europe!
To learn more about Metaverse, go to https://mvs.org/
To learn more about Metaverse DNA, go to https://mvsdna.com/
