OWN Insights 03: People, Platform, Web3
Enjoy the latest OWN insights, by our Business Development Manager, Ge Li.
Welcome to the OWN Insights series, where we invite industry leaders to take us on a thought provoking journey through the Web3 space. Throughout this series, industry leaders will be sharing a space, communicating their thoughts, and helping us to better understand the new iteration of the internet. Please enjoy this article from Ge Li, Business Development Manager at Ontology.
In the previous article, we made an in-depth analysis of blockchains, systems, and production relations. Which one contributes more to our real physical world, the production motivation promoted by the institution or the production efficiency accelerated by technological development, will be an ongoing topic. And such thinking can help us better understand the relationship between individuals, social organizations, and technological networks in the development of today’s world. It further illustrates the importance of identity and data-based blockchain technology innovation to the new generation of the Internet, and the Ontology Web3 Network (OWN) is a collection of effective solutions provided by Ontology for the Web3 exploration path.
This article discusses the human relationship with Web3 from a human perspective and the possible organization of individuals and networks in the future.
“The divine law (or truth) can be known, but it may not be the law well-known to you (or well-known truth) Things may be named, but names are not the things.” （Quoted from Tao Te Ching). People gain cognition due to various definitions and are also limited and confused by these definitions. For the same thing, there are substantial differences in individual cognition and feeling. Everyone has a unique personal world that overlaps with reality. Web3 is the general term for the next generation of blockchain-based decentralized network technology, and its essence is to maximize the interaction between the personal world, virtual reality, and the physical world through technology and institutional design. The data and network formed by individuals, and the multi-dimensional universe formed by overlapping and parallel data on the blockchain will become the future form. In a sense, the most interesting part of blockchains is not machine trust and value transparency, it is a magnifying glass. The innovation of cryptocurrencies has inspired people to reshape all kinds of existence in more autonomous ways, from monetary finance, cultural entertainment, and organizational forms, to specific technological products. What really is really magnified is the way human nature and groups choose reality.
Technology and institutions create the fertile soil and environment for progress, acting on both the physical and virtual worlds. As the basic constituent particles, individuals will play a wider role in the network in the process of technological development. Just like in the blockchain, the platform network succeeds through protocols, and in Web3, individuals will succeed by becoming a platform. Currently, we interact with the real physical world by organizing our identities, items, possessions, credentials, personal connections, and more. In the future, we have the ability to express and confirm this key information in a credible way in the digital world, which constitutes an important foundation of Web3.
Just like the coexistence of a large number of L1 and L2 blockchain networks now, we can regard the “metaverse” as a general term for virtual reality networks, in which the production factors of each person’s “miniverse” are flexibly organized under different scenarios and needs. The “metaverse” is a multi-parallel digital universe, and the power it unleashes will far exceed the existing economic and social production model. What kind of society would that be? People can combine their own sovereign data sets more transparently according to the demand scenarios, and the demand side can verify the partners more accurately and quickly. In the first ten years, the token economy has greatly promoted the production and innovation motivation of blockchain projects, and we have seen an iceberg on the water. The next ten years, like Vitalik et al.’s vision of soul tokens and a decentralized society, will be a return to people-oriented state, a recombination of data production elements, and a person-as-platform. These explorations will show us the hidden depth of the icebergs.
In Web3, people are platforms, which is actually an extension and prospect of the concept of decentralization. Although Web3 is still in its infancy, and there are still countless difficulties in technology and scale implementation, we have seen more top talents choose to join this field to overcome difficulties. When people become the platform to personalize the virtual world, the first thing that is needed is the seamless movement of sovereign data between devices and the network. When multiple personal platforms interact, the corresponding data combinations are called, and the network effects of the personal platforms are also obtained. Therefore, individuals will have a better chance to play the role of middlemen in different scenarios. One of the key changes of Web3 is to transfer ownership to individuals through encryption technology, and to build a direct financial incentive channel for individual contributions through token design, such as The Graph and Dune Analytics. Users are the content creators and the distributors. Creation is not only motivated by incentives, but also brings the efficiency of product and model innovation. The fact that data can be mastered by individuals for use, management, or commercialization may only be the beginning of Web3. After that, there may even be enough tools and foundations for users to develop their own protocols and contracts, and interact on the chain completely independently. From this point of view, the boundaries of individuals and platforms in Web3 will become blurred, and the essence is to give users the opportunity to coordinate and organize data, that is, the way to build their own platform.
The blockchain network basically has the characteristics of open source, allowing everyone to contribute and build together. Open source co-construction makes the traditional platform lose its appeal, which is the basis for the formation of the personal platform in Web3. At the same time, the in-depth development of smart contracts also strengthens the call between the established work results and saves the cost of forming a personal platform. The rapid development of the Internet celebrity economy in the past few years is the manifestation of the scale of the personal platform effect in Web2, and we believe that the influence and utility of personal formation in Web3 will become larger and larger. The product portfolio in the OWN infrastructure is our way of looking forward to Web3, which can better help individuals form network effects. In the future, the form of social contribution may no longer rely on traditional institutions. People can participate in the digital society through their own data sets such as credit certificates. In addition, the distribution of rights and interests will be more even and transparent.
On the other hand, identity is an important dimension of information definition in Web3. In fact, no matter in the real or virtual world, a person has a multi-dimensional identity role. If you add a time frame to each identity, it naturally extends the utility of that identity through contribution, outcome, problems, etc. elements of the individual in playing a specific role. On-chain records and definitions of identities and contributions at different stages are indispensable for the organization and collaboration of Web3. These breathing bodies on chains will be ourselves in different metaverses and the keys to our opportunities. The innovation of blockchain applications in the form of DeFi, NFT, GameFI, and X-Earn have promoted the rapid development of the market, and the next round of application outbreaks, we believe, will occur in organizational collaboration scenarios based on decentralized identity data.
One of the visions of Web3 is to eliminate the opposition between platform users and managers and return the platform to users. If the time horizon is extended, it is likely that in the future, it will be a network form in which people are the platform and virtual reality with multiple parallel metaverses. People will be the most important part of it, no matter what the road ahead, what will happen will be exciting, and the existence itself is a miracle, just as you stop and ask yourself: Is everything in front of you real? We create a virtual representation of reality, we understand the whole through the individual, and in the constant opposition and unity, Ontology and you are committed to exploring the innovative road of Web3.
OWN (Ontology Web3 Network) Infrastructure is a series of general blockchain basic protocols and products provided by Ontology for Web3 applications. Basic components including data and reputation, etc., and general-purpose tools such as a Web3 wallet, etc. Web3 applications can choose different basic components according to different scenarios for easy integration. It saves Web3 applications from developing basic functions from scratch, and thus can quickly develop applications. Individual users can also quickly access Web3 applications by using OWN basic products.
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