I am very pleased to see that in these trend outlooks, there are arguments such as "explosion of landing applications, popularization of Lightning Network, and little fluctuation in halving market".

On the other hand, last year, more voices were discussing whether the bull market will come and when the bear market will end, which one will be the next 100 times coin, how to get rich and so on.

This means that the blockchain industry is gradually shifting from a pure investment speculative market to a value creation market, at least in terms of values.

In fact, since the 1024 countries positioned the blockchain as a breakthrough in core technology, the world of blockchain has launched a protracted trend of thought.

From top-to-bottom regulatory policies, to the continuous suppression of illegal small and medium-sized exchanges, and to the successive thunderstorms of altcoins in the air, the market began to show signs of reshuffle of good coins driving out bad ones.

Some media have also made drastic "de-coinization" and turned into a clean stream. People's philanthropist Mr. Sun Yuchen can "rest" (weibo was blocked three times in 24 hours) for a while, and finally he does not have to risk the recurrence of kidney stones and worry about the suffering of people's livelihood.

Everything in the past is a prologue.

Everything in the past is a prologue.

secondary title

In the past 10 years, the first element driving the development of the blockchain industry is "technology". Industry practitioners have been continuously optimizing iterations around TPS (system throughput), expansion, and speed-up to seek better technical solutions.

The result is a small step forward in "technology" and a big step behind "market".

A small number of geeks are excessively pursuing the ultimate technical performance, while ignoring the fact that technology is ultimately verified by the market. Efforts to smoothly integrate technology into the market are obviously insufficient, as shown in:

1) The ultimate pursuit of "decentralization", ignoring the user entry threshold

It is important to build a "decentralized" product soul, but it should also troubleshoot the troubles that may be encountered during the entire use process such as user private key generation, storage, wallet generation, transfer, and cash withdrawal, so as to lower the user's threshold for use.

I have expressed similar views in interviews. At present, most blockchain products completely delegate "private key management" to ordinary users. It seems that the product is "decentralized", but there is no corresponding user-guided product design, which not only keeps some novice users out of the door , It also made some users bear the loss of digital assets such as improper private key generation and loss of private key storage.

In the next three to five years, how to balance the gap between "decentralization" and "private key management", and how to educate and improve user awareness will become the next step of "market penetration". Only by crossing this step can the blockchain industry introduce new incremental users and add new vitality to the development of the industry.

in the previous article

in the previous articleThe Fetters of Blockchain:There will be a final battle between the public chain and the alliance chain"In it, I said that most public chains are unable to solve the paradox of decentralization and efficiency. Some friends reported that a certain public chain has solved the impossible triangle problem. I explained that because the market demand has not come up, the system requirements for running a thousand transactions on the chain and 100 million transactions are completely different. Some chains are in the experimental state and the actual transactions are few. The premise that they have solved the triangular problem Well, you can't say he's wrong, but who can say he's right?

The laboratory TPS test that is separated from the real market demand has certain significance, but the value depends on the market. EOS's so-called million-level TPS once gave the market great confidence, allowing everyone to see the possibility of blockchain electronic transactions replacing VISA cards and Alipay penetrating everyone's lives. But a cruel fact is that the acceptance of Alipay by hundreds of millions of users does not depend on its high concurrent processing capabilities. Users don’t care about the transaction processing speed of 100,000 or millions per second. Users only consider whether it is more efficient and convenient to use. up.

In the next three to five years, while pursuing high concurrent processing capabilities, the public chain must consider various possibilities of real user needs, and then continue to improve in the verification and feedback of the market. Recently, Ethereum has been blocked for a while due to FairWin funds, and EOS has also been blocked due to EIDOS airdrops. It is the result of not fully considering the needs of users.

In fact, excessive pursuit of technical barriers will only push the industry into the abyss of "niche", far less long-term value than tempering maturity in the continuous feedback of market demand.

Whenever a friend asks me about the concept of blockchain technology with a thirst for knowledge, I will say in a pretentious tone at first glance, "Blockchain is not a technology, forget about "asymmetric encryption, hashing, etc." Algorithms, decentralization, mining” and other obscure technical concepts, just remember a few key words such as “trust connection, privacy protection, digital development wave” at the bottom of the blockchain.”

I am not pretending. Blockchain technology is just a combination of existing cryptography asymmetric encryption, distributed data storage, and P2P transmission. There is no so-called cross-age technological breakthrough. To fully understand the blockchain, it is necessary to let go of its obscure technical side and directly attack its essence of "production relationship".

Just like the Internet is highly popular today, there are a few people who understand the working principle of the HTTP World Wide Web protocol. We only need to know that networking can obtain useful information.

People tend to fall into their own inherent cognition, and then "stay away" from things outside the boundaries of cognition.

secondary title

In the past 7 years, the second element driving the development of the blockchain industry is "Token" (token-equity circulation certificate). Speaking of this, many people's eyes are brightened. I believe many people will explain the blockchain to me. They scoffed at the growth logic of the chain industry. In their view, this industry seems to only have the logic of making money, and everything else is nonsense.

The result is that success is also Token, and failure is also Token.

The Token incentive model is a pioneering work that perfectly integrates market mechanisms into technical applications. It combines finance, economics, sociology, and even the weaknesses of human nature, making the entire Bitcoin system a near-perfect existence. It is not an exaggeration to award Satoshi Nakamoto a Nobel Prize in Economics.

Bitcoin is a public ledger. In order to call on everyone to actively participate in bookkeeping (mining), Satoshi Nakamoto designed Token rewards for each packaged block to encourage miners to continue to participate in bookkeeping.

The logic is clear, incentives are the means, and bookkeeping (contribution) is the purpose.

In the years after the popularization of Ethereum smart contracts, large and small public chains, mining pools, and DApp applications have built their own system operation mechanisms around the Token model, but most of the projects have put the cart before the horse and regard Token incentives as their goals, as shown in:

1) Token is originally an innovation of investment and financing model, but it has broken away from the value anchor scale

Entrepreneurship is bound to require financing. Traditional Internet projects usually rely on business plans to raise angel rounds from investment funds. Then, based on project growth and market data performance, further completion of Pre-A, A, B, C, until the listing process. The ICO model creatively reverses the order of traditional investment and financing. At the beginning of the project's establishment, it is equivalent to ringing the bell and listing, and selling its Token to the market.

This model innovation has activated the enthusiasm of the public for entrepreneurship and innovation, and also lowered the threshold for entrepreneurship. for a while"After the white paper was written, the industry chain such as Token issuance, exchange listing, public offering, private placement, proxy investment, etc. became lively. However, the value and quantity of Token entering the market did not strictly anchor the phased value of the project. Some projects are valued at hundreds of millions or even billions as soon as they enter the market, and issue tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of tokens. The Token pool is too large, and there are few currency holders. In order to increase the liquidity, a hype atmosphere has been formed, making the original road of innovation based on Token smooth and foggy.

2) Token was originally a certificate of contribution and distribution of rights and interests, but it has become an object of "speculation and speculation"

The value of the growth process of the traditional Internet cannot be quantified. Many users who contributed a lot in the early stage cannot share the growth dividend after the project is successful. The growth process of the project also requires continuous burning of money and subsidy support, and the cost is very high.

The introduction of the Token mechanism can use airdrops to attract early user participation and help the project achieve a hot start. In the process of market operation, Token can also be used to distribute rewards to active users who have made contributions, allowing users to spontaneously join the queue of promotion projects, driving the rapid growth of the project.

The entire process of new product introduction, activation, retention, and growth can be perfectly matched with Token distribution and repurchase operations.

However, value precipitation does not happen overnight, but speculation and hype only seize the day. Before the incentive value of Token is highlighted, its side effects that are easy to be manipulated by hype appear first. The project market originally wanted to rely on Token to expand users, expand the market, and accumulate brands, but now it is dragged down by Token, falling into the abyss of death if you don’t pull the market.

It is foreseeable that in the next three to five years, the non-coin blockchain and compliant currency blockchain projects will become the protagonists, and the issuance and market flow of Token will also be constrained by corresponding value anchoring standards. Only in this way can the token economy establish its position in the era of blockchain applications.

Token is essentially the digitization of equity distribution and the quantification of value flow. Tokens that lose their anchor value, like duckweed without roots, will eventually be silent in the dark stinky ditch.

Saying this in this way is bound to discourage some people with a speculative mentality, and it always feels like blocking other people's dreams of getting rich. However, a cruel fact is that the era of blockchain relying on Token hype to get rich may really be over.

In the process of Internet development, there are many "certain" opportunities for entrepreneurial success. For example, early domestic Internet projects move projects that have been proven by the market in Silicon Valley to China, and there is a high probability of success; now, when a business model is in the first and second tier When the competition in the urban market is highly saturated, new opportunities can be found by deploying the sinking markets of fourth- and fifth-tier cities.

Since the development of the blockchain ecology for 10 years, there are also such "high probability" investment opportunities, such as investing in Bitcoin when the price of Bitcoin is very low, joining the mining industry five years ago, and doing project development in 2017. Token, looking back, no matter how stupid people are in that era, it is possible to succeed.

Now you want to do something in the industry, and you find that: the Token model has been played badly, the price of value investment targets such as Bitcoin is too high, there is a lack of mature demand and market promotion for product applications, and model innovation will inevitably be blocked by the wool party It's a mess, even the uncles and aunts who you think have never been exposed to the blockchain, have been harvested in advance after the fund sinks. It's too difficult for wives and wives!

I often tell my friends that the logic of investment is not to look at the upper limit, to keep the bottom line, and to make use of the existing industry's cognitive investment "certainty" as much as possible. For example, buying bottoms is much less risky than chasing ups. It is much better to get out of the car in time after floating profit than to cut the meat and stop the loss.

Our purpose of improving industry awareness is to explore the underlying passwords that drive the development of the industry. Even Bitmain has guaranteed the market price of 5,000 dollars. You still think that Bitcoin can fall to 2,000 dollars. The building is about to fall, and you still expect them to rise back.

secondary title

In the past three years, the third element driving the development of the blockchain industry is "ecology". "Ecology" and "industry" seem to be the same, but the logic behind them is completely different. "Ecology" pursues closed-loop operation, and "industry" pays more attention to system division of labor and cooperation.

The result is that "ecology" builds a small world, while "industry" builds a big world.

It's a bit abstract to say so, and you must say that I am playing tricks. For example, in the current Internet world, Apple has built a hardware + software ecosystem based on the closed nature of IOS. We buy Apple's series of hardware and download software from the AppStore, all of which are inseparable from Apple. On the surface, Apple has obtained most of the market profits through system monopoly, but it also makes it difficult for it to fight against periodic market risks. Once the era of smartphones is subverted, Apple is likely to fall behind as quickly as Nokia in the past.

And Google has built a smart phone hardware ecosystem based on Android's open source. Any mobile phone manufacturer can transform its own proprietary system based on the Android system, adding bricks and tiles to the Android building, and Google is constantly striving to expand new tracks. , engage in wearable devices, unmanned driving, quantum computers, etc. Apple relies on the power of a small ecology, while Google more skillfully utilizes the comprehensive power of the trend of the times, emphasizing the combination, division of labor and collaboration of industries.

The blockchain itself is a small ecosystem that is relatively "closed". For example, Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, etc. are all independent public chains with their own closed systems, including miners, super nodes, developers, audiences, etc. This ensures the security and stability of the system, but it makes the data islands between the chains, the user's use threshold becomes higher, and the experience is relatively poor.

In the next two to three years, the industry will gradually work towards side chains, layer 2 network extensions, and cross-chains. Expansion and application on the basis of more mature public chains will be the mainstream trend. Taking the current hot DeFi scene as an example, based on Ethereum smart contracts, entrepreneurs can combine various interesting models such as lending, derivatives, prediction markets, stable coins, and DEX to build their own new financial products. That's right, only "combined" innovation is enough. The market has mature media, professional security companies, and authoritative technology outsourcing companies to help you get everything done.

I often tell my friends that the Internet era has one outlet after another, such as smartphones, Internet+, O2O, live video, etc., but there is only one outlet in the era of blockchain technology: integration, substitution, and digital integration. With the opening of the economic wave, you will find that the bottom layer of blockchain technology is quietly building up in all walks of life. There are too many entrepreneurial opportunities here. Of course, I advise you not to issue Tokens on the public chain. It is enough to make industrial combinations and model innovations based on the existing ecology, because this is the next wave of big dividends, and even pigs can fly.

If you're still crying about missing the sun, you're also missing the sky full of stars.