This is the debut of Mars Finance’s [Peak Fire Desk] column. From today, we invite Wang Feng, founder of Blue Harbor Interactive Group and partner of Geek Gang Ventures, to talk extensively with opinion leaders, entrepreneurs, investors and speakers in the blockchain industry, to exchange ideas and identify the future of the blockchain market. In the first article of
Here is the full conversation.
Token for anything, but not for “currency”
Wang Feng: busy?
Meng Yan: busy, I have not taken a weekend off for a long time.
王峰:我也忙,最近我們约一个時間见面都難以。 It’s really “one day in the cryptocurrency world, one year on earth”? The blockchain market is booming, I feel like the 1990s when China first opened its stock market, how do you see the market now?
Meng Yan: Now the market is flooded with a large number of three no projects, no application scenario, no technical team, no project code. For such projects and the people behind them, we in the industry should hate them more than people outside the circle, because they destroy the blockchain as a signboard and seriously hinder the development of blockchain in China, and the regulatory authorities should step in to crack down on them.
There is a story circulating in the circle about a business manager of a blockchain company who found a reliable business application scenario and ran over to report to his boss excitedly, saying that it could help pull the market value. But the boss said, “No.” The business manager asked why. The business manager asked why? The boss retorted, “If I can pull 1000 times by speculating on air, why do I need to do specific projects?”
Wang Feng: historically every big market up, will go through this stage.
Meng Yan: That’s right. 90% of the projects in the market today, focus more on their various relationships, said their own brand, technology may only account for 10% or less today, but in the future, I think technology is still the most important, can be landed, can be applied, supported by industrial resources technology, will be increasingly valuable.
Wang Feng: We people have to keep digging for good projects, and use good money to expel bad money. Now look, a variety of digital currency exchange has now become the center of the entire blockchain project, some people compare digital currency exchange with NASDAQ, do you think it is possible?
Meng Yan: In the decentralized blockchain world, how can the Tokens between the chain and the chain, end up doing the exchange through a centralized place? This is definitely not reasonable. In my opinion, the digital currency exchange is a historical stage. In the era of truly decentralized blockchain token, all kinds of tokens must be able to exchange with each other at a cost close to zero, which is very lubricious. Those of us who want to dry into decentralized exchanges.
If WeChat is a decentralized WeChat, then it can access multiple digital currencies, I issue a token myself, and then do an intermediary exchange, in effect I am opening an exchange through WeChat.
Wang Feng: Take history as an analogy, I think the blockchain era is more like the Spring and Autumn Warring States era, not the unified Qin Dynasty, not the Han Dynasty, but you do your own, I do mine, no one becomes the absolute center.
Meng Yan: Yes. The decentralized blockchain infrastructure and the emergence of more and more Tokens that make it more and more difficult for at least a few people to manipulate the market for a long time has been a very remarkable progress.
Wang Feng: Speaking of which, do you think a national institution like the Federal Reserve will emerge in the future to directly issue a national sovereign digital currency?
Meng Yan: I have no doubt about it, the country can not and will not ignore this technological progress. The Token can represent all kinds of proof of rights and interests, but it is difficult to represent only the currency, which ultimately needs to be authorized by the state. The main problem at present is that many countries have not yet sorted out the development of blockchain. Countries like Japan and Singapore have a relatively open attitude towards blockchain. In Japan, for example, in April 2017, the Japanese government revised the Funds Clearing Act to recognize bitcoin as a legitimate payment method and set a series of standards and rules for exchanges. Today, the Japanese yen has become the primary fiat currency for bitcoin pricing, with yen/bitcoin trading accounting for 65% of bitcoin’s global trading volume. I’ve also heard from some friends who are more knowledgeable about Japan’s blockchain industry policy that there is indeed a segment of the Japanese policymaking community that wants to see if blockchain can help Japan achieve a “comeback.
Wang Feng: many countries and the U.S. dollar “dark war” for many years, after the arrival of the blockchain era, perhaps suddenly one day will find that the blockchain currency has become a unified currency. For everyone, this is a new game.
Meng Yan: there is this possibility, in fact, Russian President Vladimir Putin has seen this trend, he proposed not long ago, the BRICS and Asian and European economies countries to come together to initiate a blockchain currency for trade settlement between countries. I know some third world countries are having similar plans.
Wang Feng: If the country issues a sovereign digital currency, perhaps it can refer to the model of the Hong Kong dollar, which is overwhelmingly issued by commercial banks in Hong Kong, but each commercial bank will be regulated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Meng Yan: It is possible that in the future, if the central bank issues digital currency, it may not run on the blockchain, but in the data of the central bankMind run.
Wang Feng: the national team will definitely come in, either early or late. As long as it is easy to regulate by issuing a license, the market also needs to be legalized by regulation.
Meng Yan: the regulator may also have found that the blocking is not blocked, but rather easy to get out of control after the blocking. If a license is announced, rest assured that all the companies will squeeze their heads to get a license, you various compliance requirements, everyone will try to meet. If it is all blocked, many people will go overseas to do it.
Token is not a token, it’s a pass
Wang Feng: Who first translated Blockchain into “blockchain” in China, is it Mr. Yuandao?
Meng Yan: It was Mr. Yuandao who proposed this.
Wang Feng: so cow, I was thinking that the translator should be an academic person, and then I realized that Mr. Yuan Dao is Chen Sheng of CenturyLink, we are actually old friends, we often deal with each other in Zhongguancun more than ten years ago.
Wang Feng: so cow, I was thinking that the translator should be an academic person.
Meng Yan: originally translated as “block chain”, he first proposed the “block chain” in March 2014.”
Meng Yan: originally translated as “block chain”, he first proposed the “block chain” in March 2014.
Wang Feng: Good translation, these three words are very corresponding to the “Internet” of that year. You know the Internet early called ”Internet”, called for many years, from 1998 to 2000, the mainstream media at that time is said to be the Internet, and finally the country came out with a policy called the Internet, after 2000 all changed to called the Internet.
Meng Yan: the name is right.
王峰:陈升做理事主席的機構叫什么?
Meng Yan: Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance. The Zhongguancun Blockchain Alliance was initiated by Yuan Dao in the chain circle era, and he was a pure chain circle person at that time, who could not see the speculation of coins. He also saw the rise of the cryptocurrency circle at the beginning of last year, the market is so hot, after a painful reflection, then he recognized some important logic of “coins”, but also think that many practices and ways of thinking in the cryptocurrency circle are biased, so later we discussed the collision together, and finally adjust the thinking to the pass-through this piece.
王峰:那是何时?
孟岩:October 2017, it’s already relatively late.
王峰:Now the Zhongguancun Blockchain Alliance, an organization that still carries the flag, is it?
Meng Yan: Yes, it is still the most recognized blockchain industry alliance. But we are now also initiating the formation of a new industry community of thought, and yesterday we already announced at a conference the pass-through faction.
王峰:Token does need a more reasonable translation, the word “pass-through”, did you translate it?
Meng Yan: It should be the result of mutual inspiration between me and Mr. Yuandao. We had been discussing this issue over and over again for several weeks in WeChat, and suddenly the word “pass-through” came to mind, which means “negotiable crypto digital proof of interest”. It’s easy to issue cryptocurrencies on a platform that can run Tokens. But to translate Token directly into token is definitely wrong. Because Token can represent everything that is proof of interest, even everything that is credential, not just currency.
So I’m against translating “Token” to “token” and I’m very adamant about it.
Wang Feng: Great translation. The imagination of “pass-through” is so huge. Passes can represent all the proof of rights and interests, ID cards, academic diplomas, stocks, bonds, notes, points, card vouchers, etc. All the proof of rights and interests of human society can be represented by passes. Pass-through certificates, not tokens, are awesome. “Coins” is really a sensitive issue, involving many red lines.
Meng Yan: Yes. In fact, the pass-through is the most characteristic application of blockchain. In my opinion, the pass is divided into about three layers: the first layer, the basic tokens, ETH, BTC, belong to the basic tokens; the second layer, the standard pass; the third layer, the non-standard pass, which corresponds to non-standard goods and services, each commodity is different, and each service is different.
Every individual and organization can make their own non-standard pass without access, as long as you issue a pass that sells for a price, especially a cluster of cashable, tradable goods and services. How much do you think this non-standard pass is worth? The value is different for different people. For example, if you Wang Feng initiates a small discussion about blockchain, you can only participate if you hold one of your passes. Is this pass worth anything? It may be worth a lot to me, but to someone who doesn’t know anything about blockchain, it may not be worth anything. A non-standard pass is similar to a prepaid membership card in traditional commerce, which is allowed in this country.
Non-standard pass-throughs are further away from legal tender, so applications based on it might come first and then be denominated in base tokens. For example, if someone issues a pass on a company, it’s actually denominated in Ether, not directly in RMB, because it’s inside the blockchain world and only knows what the price of Ether is. So, it must be based on digital currency.
Now look, the deeper we think in accordance with the core logic of the pass-through, the more confidence we will have.
王峰:你说的非标通证确实更可能先落地,你知道目前有什么新的进展?
Meng Yan: Pass-throughs help develop a modern society with a multi-dimensional value scale. I heard a while ago that Xiongan New Area may issue a kind of points to its citizens to reward them for ‘good’ social behavior, such as cycling to work, garbage sorting, and so on. Many people are now realizing the significant incentive effect of the pass-through economy on human beings, which gradually transforms the past gaming relationship into a collaborative one, and this thing is significant.
Super pass market: the next blockchain value depression
Wang Feng: back to the blockchain itself, the future like bitcoin, ethereum and so on the bottom of the public chain, will become the master of the blockchain world, or will become a class of public welfare organizations?
Meng Yan: This is a very good question, I think, at present, bitcoin and ethereum are not enough to carry the market of future pass-through economy and digital currency.
Bitcoin can process up to 7 transactions per second due to the block size limitation, and in fact it can often only process 3 or 4 transactions per second, and the transaction fees are also massively expensive; Ether can process up to 30 transactions per second, which is actually 13 or 4 transactions per second. The advantage of the coalition chain is that the processing speed is very fast, there may be several head of the coalition chain, its coins to the outside everywhere, everyone take these coins, can be in the coalition chain decentralized trading market, to exchange with each other.
Xunlei playmaker coin itself is a private chain, all the nodes are in their own hands. It’s possible that when they did it they wanted to keep it as simple as possible and didn’t think very complicated about this block. If they had discussed this idea in the blockchain circle beforehand, they would have been scolded to death, because everyone thinks that private chain is a rogue. But they probably didn’t discuss it with others and just did it with their hands up. As a result, the market recognized it. Of course, there are still people scolding them, so they also made a few long articles to defend themselves, but after I read them, they are not very powerful. In fact, there is no need to defend, because the market response has proved that from the perspective of the general public, they do not care whether the chain is a public or private chain, or a union chain, as long as the coin is a digital currency, everyone can play the coin on their cell phones. Xunlei has actually explored a new model that is very inspiring.
王峰:基于以太坊等主链的区链项目,未来发展局面怎样?
Meng Yan: The processing speed of Ethernet is too slow, we came up with the way of “cross-chain pass-through”. For example, if the EOS platform is mature in the future, the pass-through projects bound to Ethernet smart contracts can run across Ethernet and EOS while keeping the total number of issues unchanged. Cross-chain pass can greatly enhance the practicality and applicability of the system, but more importantly, every cross-chain, is a good time for system upgrade and system innovation.
Not long ago, the new social media site Steemit announced the issuance of a new pass, Pocket Token, on its Steem chain. each letter of the alphabet has its meaning (The Proof Of Concept Electronic Token), which is a digital currency attached to Steemit’s digital currency and uses the Steem blockchain to operate.
王峰:现在开发最核心、最底层的区块链公链,价值还大吗?
Meng Yan: If there are no new ideas, the value will not be too big. From the perspective of those of us who do pass-throughs, the underlying chain is actually not important, what matters is to do a good job with the pass-through.
Wang Feng: If the era of public chains is coming to an end, what will be the next blockchain value depression?
Meng Yan: Super pass market, all coins and non-standard passes are traded in this market. I think the super pass market must be a very important traffic entrance or a very important application in the future blockchain world, but whether this super pass market is central or decentralized, the people don’t care that much. If you make a centralized marketplace with a very good experience, you may be able to become the dominant player in this industry for a while.
Wang Feng: we talk about the center and decenter today, from the industrial environment, to a large extent based on the entire industrial logic, because the blockchain can not leave the information Internet, and in the information Internet has gained a large enough entrance concern, it has a first flow advantage, in fact, or built on the basis of the centralized system, how do you see this problem?
Meng Yan: I learned a very important theory in IBM, called “mass brain”. The “mass brain” is not each of our brains, is the common consciousness of all people, it has several characteristics: First, the memory is particularly poor. After a news event appears, hot after a period of time, immediately forget. Second, especially extreme. Very irrational. Third, in any category, only 3-7 brands can be remembered, whether it’s shampoo, or computers, or operating systems, but why does the head finally appear? Not because of the competition, because the public brain can only remember 3-7 brands, or even 2, and finally lead to each category will only appear so many head brand.
A category if there is already the first, the second, you should not go inside, because you hope to squeeze the share of the public brain is very difficult, rather than to squeeze the share, you might as well open up a new category.
Wang Feng: this view comes from 15 years ago Truss’s “positioning”, I also read, inspired. From the perspective of sociology and ethics, human nature itself is towards centralization, and the essential thought of human is awakened by centralization. Therefore, in the era of decentralized blockchain, whoever occupies the mind first will be able to gain the benefits of centralization.
Meng Yan: That’s right. As long as we are still human, not robots, we will not look at all issues equally, and decentralization must coexist with centralization in the long run.
Media and community will regain a new life in the blockchain era
Wang Feng: How do you see the media piece? We have seen so many years of portals, leaving aside the new media of video and pictures, from the era of the three major portals, to the later machine distribution and machine learning, all are portal models. But you have never seen an industry overlay pressed over and all-encompassing. The blockchain portal, which looks like a vertical portal, actually covers everything.
Meng Yan: That’s right, take the group of blockchain self-publishers that are rising now as an example, they have already created the highest advertising price for self-publishers in China, and some people are said to be earning up to 50 bitcoins (note: about $500,000 at the current market price) for a single piece of soft copy.
All along, VCs have been reluctant to invest in two types of organizations: one is media and the other is community. Everyone thinks that a big wave just came, the media and community can quickly up, but after a few years found that the cash can never be solved.
But I think that when this wave of blockchain comes, both media and community will become the most profitable business, especially community. Why didn’t the community and media make money in the past? Because although they gathered a lot of people, but the relationship between people is weak connection, nowIn blockchain, the community and media become an economy, and the relationship between people becomes strong collaboration, for example, CSDN, with more than 22 million programmers, why can’t we make much money? Because the collaborative relationship in this community is too weak, not much better than the rabble. If we use blockchain to organize them into a strong collaborative community, what is that concept? The power of this is far greater than any company.
王峰:我的看法,区块链的社区业态最好还是依托于社交工具,不会是基于原来的BBS模式,未来区块链社交工具可能呈现万马奔腾,热火朝天的竞争局面。
Meng Yan: Yes, in fact, CSDN is also doing a thing, plans to use Token mechanism to stimulate developers more value. the participation and contribution of the entire community of CSDN are technical assets, users spend a considerable amount of time in CSDN, in order to make these time and value correspond to create more value.
Our upcoming community on blockchain will hopefully allow more people to get involved. Technical people are usually more logical, but less knowledgeable about bitcoin, finance, and economic systems. We want more technical people to experience the technology of blockchain and the ease, even the frenzy, of digital currency to see the value of blockchain technology, the pass-through economy, and new ways of collaboration for the future of society.
In addition, we will launch a set of training courses. There is such a shortage of talent in blockchain. Through training, we also hope to bring people with high level, ideas, resources and technology together to do projects, which need to be laid out in all corners of the blockchain as soon as possible, without leaving too many gaps.
Wang Feng: the organization of the blockchain industry is very important, although every company may do code interface based on development, but community organizations like CSDN have a great front advantage and can integrate the resources of all parties in the future.
Meng Yan: Our current thinking is particularly simple, CSDN do a monitoring, if you provide code to other people’s projects, once found that you submit the code or the other party accepted the code, the other party does not give you coins, we give you coins. To make an analogy, if anyone contributes code to EOS, even if EOS does not give you coins, we can give.
We want as many people as possible to be stakeholders within the community, and once there are a lot of people who are stakeholders, a lot of things can run themselves. That’s really what blockchain or pass-through is all about, changing the collaborative relationship between people. Once I hold a certain coin, I become a member of this coin economy, and I will help him with my practical actions. The reason why we think the community will be a big business is because originally we had no way to motivate the contributors in the community, and in the future this can be solved through blockchain technology.
Wang Feng: Early communities were purely about building connections, but blockchain communities also provide a transaction system. So, I boldly predict that communities will most likely also integrate digital currency exchanges in the future, or some variation of exchanges.
Meng Yan: Deeply shared! The blockchain is currently at a node of industrial change, and there will definitely be more new changes to look forward to.