One: What is an authentic web3 project?
The biggest problem with the current web3 projects is that the core data or code is stored on the web2 infrastructure. Just imagine, if the platform server is turned off, can the project still exist? No matter how decentralized the protocol is, the centralized infrastructure will nullify all efforts. If the government forces the platform to surrender all information, the platform has to follow and hand over the data to the government, regardless of whether there is a client privacy protection agreement. If the database of the platform is set up with a back door (which is not uncommon), or is hacked, all customer data is also in danger. Imagine that your WeChat chat or instagram records in the past 20 years are gone. Do you feel like your life being stolen? Therefore, to make web 3 complete, it is essential to bring in web3 infrastructure and architecture. Only the person owning the data and with the key can access the data, and no one else can access or manipulate it.
Two: Who will be the winner of web3 storage architecture, arweave, filecoin, or greenfield?
There are numerous projects providing web 3 storage solutions such as arweave, filecoin etc. In our view, the final winner will be Binance's Greenfield. Currently, Filecoin stores too much invalid data due to the concept of “storage to earn”. Database contains valid data and invalid data. Currently, you can ask which web 3 projects store valid data on filecoin, almost nothing. The projects which stored data on filecoin are projects “pulled” into the ecosystem by token incentives, not by real demand. It is difficult for projects to deploy on Filecoin just for decentralization purposes.
Multichain deployment has higher cost and bears more risk. BSC and Greenfield by nature can be integrated seamlessly. There is significant benefit (cost and time) for developing and deploying protocols within the same ecosystem.
If so, why is Filecoin still considered as the market leader for web 3 storage solution? Firstly, Filecoin has a first mover advantage. People pay for the new concept. Nevertheless, the complexity in the storage solution makes Filecoin hard to succeed. 1)Giant players such as Amazon and Google employ tens of thousand tech people to develop and maintain massive storage networks every year. This is not something that a small company can handle for a long time. 2) By nature, Filecoin is still operating as a Defi project (by using storage to earn model) instead of storage solution. Not many projects used Filecoin to save data. Instead, Filecoin price pumped alot due to hype and better narrative. Pumping price sometimes is considered as valuable unfortunately but is not sustainable in the long run.
Three: Public chain war
We can take the public chain competition as an analogy, BNB chain got fast traction in the Defi summer with many star projects developed on BNB chain. On the contrary, Huobi and Okex chain ecosystem did not really take off even though CEX injected huge capital to develop the ecosystem. BNB chain will siphon projects from other chains.
Why is the new chain hard to get mass adoption? The answer is lack of token incentive. BNB chain security is maintained by nodes which are incentivised by BNB tokens. Security and token incentives will drive dapps developers to deploy projects on the BNB chain. In this regard, the Greenfield token economy is the same as the BNB chain. BNB is the only gas fee used in the BNB ecosystem. Another big edge of the BNB chain is its stability. It is battle tested. Other new chains are not yet proven in the market. Existing chains (except for Eth) already underperformed either due to lack of adoption or technical bugs. All BNB Chain projects will be saved on Greenfield. This is another edge for Greenfield adoption, thanks to the large user base on the BNB Chain ecosystem.
Another point we would like to highlight is not to underestimate exchange backed chains. Top exchange by nature can attract good projects into the ecosystem. Application first and then technical superiority. Take web 2 cloud service as example, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, AWS Cloud, and Tencent Cloud all derive from the main business of the giants. Cloud services are such strategically important and profit making businesses. No major player will hand over to 3rd party service providers.
Also, due to global demand on data availability, only global players can afford to deploy global networks, which cannot be done by small players with financial constraints. As the top exchange in the market, Binance definitely has its own edge.
Four: Old topic - Why did all key companies exit IOE products ten years ago?
Why were almost all manufacturers de-IOE ten years ago? IOE refers to IBM, ORACLE, EMC. IBM makes operating systems, computers, and minicomputers, and ORACLE renders databases service (e.g. GREENFIELD is a database service). EMC is in the storage business.
In the past, small and medium-sized enterprises were built under the entire IOE system, because IOE is a general brand. Over time, IOE cannot meet all SME needs. What small businesses need is a set of services tailored to the industry, not general service. In addition, IOE services are very expensive. From my own experience, in the past, the team was small, and I paid 5,000 yuan to rent a small office, which was acceptable to me. But my team has reached tens of thousands of people, 5,000 yuan per person would be way too expensive. It's better to build an office tower by myself at a much cheaper cost. By the same implication, those big enterprises are unwilling to use 3rd party services especially IOE and instead build their own proprietary solution.
Therefore, all cloud services are now the result of de-IOE. Strictly speaking, it is not the removal of IOE, but the bottom layer. The cloud service uses its own operating system, its own database, and its own storage system. In fact, the set of standards of IOE is still practical. Just don't use the IOE brand anymore. And a more important reason for de-IOE is the need for privacy protection.
Five: Since the privacy issue is the core concern of all enterprises for the use of public services, how does Web3 solve it?
The files of small and medium-sized enterprises are saved on 3rd party web2 cloud servers. If the files are taken away by the platform, the ideas will be stolen. The core problem of web2 is that all companies that publicly claim to be safe, and companies that publicly claim that they will not steal user ideas or information, are not verifiable. Because their code is not public, their corporate operations are not public, it's a black box.
Protecting the intellectual property and trade secrets of enterprises is a grand narrative. It's like renting a small room in this office building when the company first started its business. Whether it uses iaas (infrastructure as a service) or saas (software as a service). (The iaas mentioned here means renting a computer room, installing the operating system by yourself, and putting a file storage server by yourself. Saas is like using google docs directly on the Internet). As long as you use 3rd party infrastructure or service, the content is under the monitoring from the very first time the content is created on the platform. It is completely transparent, even if the 3rd party service provider promises that they will not look at your data. Because users don't know whether these platforms are doing evil or not.
Google Don't Be Evil might just be PR. The attributes of Web2 company determine that it is impossible to disclose all of its codes or operations to the public.
On the other hand, in the web 3 world, If the metadata about the content is protected by smart contracts with open source code. Everyone can examine, audit and test the code. Code will govern the access right, user right, and reference right. Code is law.
Now with the smart contract of web3, it can definitely gain public trust. There is an English sentence called “Don't do evil” becomes “cannot do evil”. Why are there so many controversies about equity/legal disputes, but there is no problem with ICO. because it has a smart contract, the rules are transparent and checkable.
Once web3 brings smart contracts to the storage field, that is to say, the SaaS standard protocol of storage services is open source, and users can view the code of the web3 application and check whether the application's operation is compliant with the policy or protocol with 100% transparency. This really solves the problem of the user's privacy and content being potentially abused..
The web3 storage service provides small businesses with the opportunities to protect private data. It is precisely because the protocols of web3 storage services are open source, transparent and 100% auditable. If a 3rd party wants to access users files, they can only access them through the access key, and no one can access users files without the access key. Upon owner's approval, the 3rd party can pay a fee to access the owner's data.
Web 3 smart contract truly protects the privacy of users, and empower users to own and monetize their own data. Number one pain point for content creators is piracy, illegal usage of the content freely. By activating the data market, data users can only access other owner’s files by paying the fee. In this way, the entire music industry, game industry, and NFT market (content creators, Patent holders) will become more dynamic.
Another information abused resides in social media. Platform operators can access and misappropriate user personal data for its own benefit (e.g advertising) without data owners agreement. Web 3 storage will help address the issue by returning the data ownership and benefits back to data owners. Therefore, Web3 storage is a grand narrative, and all industries related to storage on web2 can be revolutionized again. Data sovereignty is finally back in the hands of users. No platform can access and misappropriate it.
**Six: Once the user claims back the data ownership and control, will AI benefit and serve mankind better? **
AI is generally composed of two parts, one is the algorithm and the other is the content. Content plus algorithm equals AI. Basically all algorithms are the same. Is there anything special about the current training method? No. The important thing is the data, whoever owns the data is powerful. Why is China's AI technology powerful, because there is a large population with data sea.
What is the nature of AI? It is a large model training data. In order to train data, big factories leverage their advantage as platforms who host data without ownership. For example, user data is placed on Tencent, which is user data, not Tencent's data.
Therefore, there is another misunderstanding of investing in AI. Why is it wrong for investment institutions to pay attention to AI? Because the key to the success of AI is for users to share data, but user’s data ownership and incentives for users to provide content could not work without web3 storage infrastructure.
In the future, with the storage architecture of web3, all data sovereignty will return to users. When a user uploads a photo, others have to pay for browsing the photo, using the photo for AI recognition and adoption. Anyone who wants to train their own model with the user's photos has to pay. The platform has its own value, so 10% of the profit is given to the platform, and 90% is given to the users. The platform has no free lunch on abusing user data.. Even violations of portrait rights and police access to videos can only be done through the user's access key. It is even possible that rights management will become an industry in the future. It specializes in helping users manage various permissions on various platforms and helping users collect money.
Conversely, our previous assessment of Musk's purchase of Twitter was shallow. We used to think that Musk bought Twitter because he was taken advantage of, but now we find that we are one-sided. Now look at everything on twitter, it's a message field. It is said that we human beings are just the bootloader of ai, and all aigc content of AI is developed based on our (Web3 storage platform) controllable content production and profit-sharing language. . And with the blessing of smart contracts, it can also ensure long-term profits for human beings.
In fact, many companies have realized this. Opportunities only favor prepared mind.
So, storage for web3 is not just changing the web3 industry but the entire tech industry because the basis of AI is data. how to control AI to obtain data can only be completed by access control at the web3 level, and the economic model. The AI mastered by humans is the AI that is truly useful to humans. So this is a groundbreaking opportunity.