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Sep 17, 2021

Elastos 4th Anniversary WeChat AMA|Mark Xing, Member of the 2nd Cyber Republic Council

On August 30, Mark Xing, member of the 2nd Cyber Republic (CR) Council, was invited to share his ideas with the Elastos community at the, “Elastos Web3 4th” with the Chinese Community. In his talk, Mark Xing spoke about sustainable cooperation with Elastos, and expressed that he plans to contribute both capital and technology to support the Elastos ecosystem going forward.

Mark Xing’s talk is translated below in its entirety:

Hello everyone, I am Mark Xing, Managing Partner of the Capital6 Eagle Fund and co-founder of Bit University. Today, as a new member of CR, I would like to speak with you about the opportunities Elastos has in Web 3.0. Web 3.0 has been very popular this year, but for old hands like us, we still have to look at its essence without becoming too impulsive. Let’s take a brief look at the definitions from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0.

Web 1.0 is a one-way mode of communication based on the transmission of information and content. It originated from the early phase of the Internet, during which the bandwidth ordinary Internet users had access to was only 56K. At this bandwidth, users could only send emails and watch Yahoo news over the Internet. Internet users were passive receivers at that time. Of course, you could choose not to receive or to only receive information from specific websites. In the early days of the Internet, there was a spirit of free sharing.

Web 2.0 refers to a two-way interactive mode of communication in the form of an application network. When almost every Internet user can get access to a bandwidth of 100 megabits and – with the popularization of LTE – Wi-Fi and smart phones, network applications became ubiquitous. In this model, users interact with each other in various ways on the Internet. With users increasingly depending on the application network, the network itself has become more and more centralized and oligopolistic. Users exchange their own data and information for free services which eventually evolve into paid services they cannot escape from. Many Internet veterans lament that “the Internet spirit is gone!”

Web 3.0 is an individual-oriented network of value exchange. The relationship between users and applications is equal. Network applications may use the data of their users at certain costs, but they cannot see the data. Various resources in the network can be used in combination, and the network is free to connect and will not be trapped by access service providers. Values are transferred and traded both Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) seamlessly.

Believe it or not, I met Mr. Chen Rong by chance. He was an experienced employee from Microsoft, and we all lived in Redmond. In 2018, I organized Techstar Entrepreneurship Weekend in Seattle, the theme of which was blockchain. At that time, Mr. Han Feng also participated in the event. I very much agree with Mr. Chen Rong’s viewpoint, which is that we should pay attention to every detail. For example, we are now using the computer Internet, while Web 3.0 is an Internet computer or a value application network computer operating on top of blockchain.

Elastos is currently the only blockchain operating system with the thinking pattern of an operating system. To put it simply, we need to exchange value in Web 3.0 to create an Internet of Value. According to computer theory, it is impossible for one application to trust another. In other words, Bitcoin can never trust Ethereum, and the two are different applications. However, Elastos is not a simple application. Instead, Elastos is developed from the perspective of a blockchain operating system, and every single application trusts the operating system, which is also why I think Elastos has great potential. Elastos has very strong positioning, and has a clear vision of its development.

Next, let’s talk briefly about our opportunities in the future. We must be fully prepared for Web 3.0. We need to tokenize all network resources. I would like to call it a blockchain resource network. Mr. Xiao Feng agrees with this statement. Since Web 3.0 is a value network facing individuals, it is necessary to determine proper valuations. I usually classify the values generated on personal devices into 4 categories: computing, storage, data, and network. These four types of resource values constitute the Internet application.

Blockchains try to build trusted ledgers among strangers, and the underlying problem of fair bookkeeping for personal resources can be solved through the blockchain. That is to say, the computing, storage, data, and network resources of each device are tokenized to realize a pay-as-you-go model. Such a model not only reduces the wasted network resources, but also provides users who contribute resources with corresponding value. By stimulating users to utilize their own resources, a balance between supply and demand can be achieved in the Internet of Value. Web 3.0, as an ecosystem composed of every node, must be open and inclusive.

When the above 4 types of resources are tokenized, data resources will still be able to be copied and transferred, which is a potential danger to individual users. The negative impacts of leakage of individual user data range from damaging users’ interests to threatening their safety. Private computation has provided great solutions. Through sandbox computing, federated learning, multi-party computing, and zero-knowledge proofs, user data becomes available while remaining invisible. However, many current privacy computations have not been extended to personal devices, and there is still the risk of data leakage in the link from personal devices where data is generated to the private computation environment. It is also difficult to verify the authenticity of personal data. As far as I am concerned, private computation will gradually approach personal devices, which serve as the primary source of data that users generate.

There is a problem when private computation is completed on the same personal devices from which data originated. Whose private computation should we use? The best policy is to use everyone’s private computation, which means that users need a blockchain database for their own data, and that every private computation service provider is a user as well. In the computer world, it is generally recognized that one application cannot trust another application, but applications trust operating systems by default. Hence, it is of great significance to build a trusted operating system for personal data. Since China is currently restricted by some advanced countries in chip technology, it is more effective to build a trusted computing environment via an operating system. The trusted computing environment I mentioned here includes Elastos. It should be pointed out that all economies will be node economies in the future. However, every node is currently self-contained, rather than open and robust. To put it simply, any device in your home can become a node that can participate in various tasks with the help of special equipment. The robustness here refers to simplicity and ease of use.

Therefore, in a previous CR proposal, I didn’t vote in favor of Elabox, because it is too expensive. A small box costs $300 dollars. I would rather use my old iPhone at home, and I hope Elastos can run on more small devices. The exciting news is that I’ve reached a verbal agreement with Mr. Chen Rong this month. In our blockchain project in China, there are 3 million household nodes, and we will allow all 3 million household nodes to run Elastos and its dApps. This may be the first time in human history that millions of nodes participate in consensus.

I plan to return to China in September to work with my friends at Elastos, and I plan to run more dApps on these nodes. Together, my team and I intend to cooperate with Elastos in the long run, and we will closely integrate our capital and technology with the Elastos ecosystem. I believe that there will be many more exciting announcements in the future.

Thank you again for your time. If you have any questions, please feel free to send them my way. My contact information is available on the CR website.

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