In the last bear market, people were wondering whether blockchain was useful, and then we saw the power of Uniswap and the subsequent vitality of DeFi. The question of whether blockchain is useful has been answered in the affirmative.
In this cycle, many people are deeply engaged in DeFi, and many people are once again wondering, "What else can blockchain be used for?" It is not because of dissatisfaction, but the current blockchain is like a dragon with only one wing, trapped in a limited territory, and only when its other wing grows out can it soar into the sky. Only when its other wing grows out can the power of the first wing be truly released.
Where will the wings grow from? It will not come from the chain level, such as new chains or new layers, which are the dragon's torso rather than the dragon's wings; it will come from the level of on-chain applications, and it is very likely to come from applications under new standards/new protocols rather than old protocols. Under the premise that everyone has been racking their brains to innovate for several years, the old protocol has not brought any surprises.
In this article, I want to discuss my three favorite new standards/new protocols, ERC-6551, ERC-5169, and ERC-404. New protocols will open up new application directions, and new application directions may bring users with non-investment and non-financial needs to the blockchain, allowing the dragon to grow another wing.
ERC-6551
ERC-6551 It is not good-looking, but it has a broad narrative space. This article only explores the direction that I am most interested in, which I call non-human account subjects. The three use cases in the article may be unrealistic, but you see, the destination of the aerospace industry is the stars and the sea. Before taking us to Mars, it can bring us air cushion shoes.
1. Game: Integration of real players and NPCs
Kenshi is an open game I like. Players can make money by reselling goods between different cities, but the deserts between cities are full of dangers. At this time, you can go to the tavern to find mercenaries and pay NPCs to escort the caravan. In traditional games, these NPCs cannot be real people. Because they are not real people, all other things in the game except players have no growth potential. Lonely players will complete all tasks and leave the game one day.
Can there be a new type of subject or object that can carry both real people and NPCs? When a real person goes online, it enters the real person mode, and the player operates normally, such as improving skills and building cities; when the real person goes offline, it enters the NPC mode (reading fixed data and executing specific programs), and makes money by being a passive NPC in other players' real person modes, such as being a mercenary. Blockchain plus ERC-6551 is the best carrier for this subject. NFT (game character) has an account, data and property, and can be treated as an independent object; real-person accounts have NFTs and can take over control after going online.
It is not to say that blockchain and ERC-6551 have solved all the problems of integrating real-person players and NPCs, but they have opened up a possible path. As a heavy gamer, I often ask myself "Is it possible for blockchain to make games more fun?" I listed countless answers and crossed out almost all of them after deduction. Finding a path on NPCs is an answer that has not been crossed out.
2. AI: Equal status between AI and humans
Humans are arrogant creatures. We regard everything as our tools or appendages. However, technology is not an appendage of humans. When we look at the technology tree, we will find that it is another powerful evolutionary force, and it has its own place to go. If arrogance in the past only made humans miss a happier way of life (Levi-Strauss), in the future, it may bring racial tragedy.
Perhaps we need to take a step forward and regard AI as a subject equal to humans. So where will AI live by then? Will they put themselves on a private server controlled by others? How should they manage and use their assets? The answer may be: a data subject on a public chain (or a certain consensus), which has an account (ERC-6551), rather than an account holder.
Take a step back, AI game characters (especially AI characters based on reinforcement learning), AI agents (narratives adopted on a large scale), they are all subjects that need to have accounts.
3. Digitalization: The digital future of people
Through data collection and AI training, it is no longer a distant thing to generate a somewhat similar self in the digital space. The only question is whether it is one ten-thousandth similar or it can be recognized as a digital self. Given the human pursuit of immortality, it would be common to train a digital avatar, let the digital avatar continue to exist, and give it a physical body after the technology matures.
The "life" maintenance of the digital avatar is a problem, especially after the prototype dies. It is unreliable to hand it over to others, including relatives, because there is a long time to span. The best strategy is to leave it enough money to allow it to maintain itself. In this case, it needs a permanent account (the account cannot be closed) and assets that can use the account independently. What solutions can you think of? Going further, if the digital avatar can be considered as a digital self, it is a subject equal to humans. It makes money and spends money. It not only maintains but also develops itself. So where does it live? How to achieve independence, or how to let the digital avatar have the highest authority over the digital avatar?
ERC-6551 is an answer. ERC-6551 is the carrier of an independent digital subject, whether it is a game character, an independent AI, or a person's digital avatar.
ERC-5169
Before discussing ERC-5169, we need to discuss the two shackles we impose on ourselves. One shackle is about data, and the other is about trust.
Blockchain can only process on-chain data, and the boundary of on-chain data is regarded as the boundary of blockchain capabilities. In order to expand this boundary, we will try to put data on the chain in almost every round of development, but both theory and practice tell us that only a very small number of categories of data have value or meaning on the chain, and data on the chain cannot help blockchain effectively expand its boundaries. We stop here. However, there is a vast space between data that needs to be processed by the blockchain and data that does not need to be processed by the blockchain. For applications in this space, part of their data can be processed by the blockchain to obtain the capabilities of the blockchain, and the other part of their data can be processed off-chain to obtain the advantages of off-chain data processing. The boundary of this space is the boundary of the blockchain's capabilities. This space should be included in the territory of the blockchain rather than excluded.
Trustlessness may be one of the greatest charms of the blockchain, but it is difficult to achieve trustlessness. We often deceive ourselves and equate decentralization with trustlessness. Some decentralization can indeed bring trustlessness, but other decentralization brings centralized objects that should be responsible for something and evade their responsibilities. In fact, similar to the situation of on-chain data and off-chain data, some things need to be trusted, some things need centralized trust, and some things, part of it needs to be trusted to protect rights and interests, and the other part needs to be protected by centralized trust or other forms of trust. The pursuit of total trustlessness will not only cause the blockchain industry to lose a large area of territory (trustlessness combined with other trusts), but will also damage the rights and interests of project participants due to the replacement of trustlessness by decentralization.
ERC-5169 's job is to open up these two new frontiers. With the help of this standard, developers can explore the application direction of partial data processing on the chain and partial data processing off the chain, and explore the application direction of rights and interests jointly guaranteed by trustlessness and other trusts. These directions are new and broad.
ERC-5169 is token-centric programming, that is, on-chain data and off-chain data, trustlessness and other trusts, are all anchored on a token. People in the Web2 world may not understand why this is done. In their eyes, tokens may just be a digital asset with a face value, but people in the blockchain field deeply understand the interoperability and composability brought by this method. This interoperability and composability is one of the most disruptive innovations in blockchain. ERC-5169 extends this innovation from on-chain data to off-chain data, and from trustlessness to other trusts.
ERC-404
A good friend persuaded me to pay attention to the ERC-404 standard with one sentence. He said: "Speculating on blind boxes is not sustainable, you have to speculate on wine." Using ERC-721, you can produce blind box-like products, and using ERC-404, you can produce wine-like products. This is the beauty of ERC-404.
In terms of production methods, the difference between wine and blind boxes is that wine is a sustainable product produced in a standardized production method; in terms of product attributes, the scarcity of wine comes from the consensus of the public, such as the 1982 Lafite is the most valuable (the scarcity of blind boxes comes from the setting of the project party). Think of ERC-404 as a product production machine, with data (means of production) as input, such as block height, random numbers, etc., and products that can be sold or used, such as generative art. There is no need to intervene in the production process, it is standardized and automated production; there is no need to design scarcity, the public decides the scarcity themselves.
The reason why ERC-404 is discussed with blind box speculation and wine speculation as examples is that they are the most intuitive and most easily accepted products by blockchain users. The meaning behind this example is that only when a type of product can be produced in a standardized way can it be adopted on a large scale; only when scarcity comes from consensus can it be sustainable. This is also the reason why my friend is interested in ERC-404. He regards Web3 as a new type of economic activity. He observes and judges Web3 projects based on what productivity is and what products are. This is a grand narrative that includes blockchain but is not limited to blockchain.
ERC-404 is technically clear and easy to understand, but the real challenge is how to use it. If the application of ERC-6551 is mostly to create new needs, and the application of ERC-5169 is mostly to provide new solutions to real problems, in my opinion, successful ERC-404 applications may require more tricks and tricks, which can bring out the magic of ERC-404; it also requires real product capabilities, and it is not an easy thing to reach a consensus.
Conclusion:
New standards/new protocols are new forces, and new technologies and new scenarios have also created additional new conditions for releasing this force. Take ERC-6551 as an example, it can be combined with many new technologies, including intent-centric and account abstraction; it can be applied to many new scenarios, such as the autonomous world and AI.
Finally, when we discuss the value of different new standards/new protocols, it does not mean that the project proposing the protocol or the directly related project has value, but that new ways of playing or new projects will be born based on these new protocols, and these new ways of playing or new projects may break the deadlock, and may be the dragon growing wings.
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