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About the author: Wang Dejia, PhD in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, member of the Jiusan Society, and senior engineer； Inventor of space-time code, author of "Identity Crisis" and "Digital Identity" ； Was responsible for overall design and product development in ORACLE, VISA, IBM and other enterprise departments ； In 2011, he returned to China and founded Tongfu Shield Company, serving as chairman and CEO. From open source to decentralization Android: mobile Internet operating system Android was born in the mobile Internet era. It is a mobile operating system based on the Linux kernel and occupies half of the current mobile operating system market. In 2002, handheld devices with mobile phone functions had begun to take shape. Although it was still the era of Nokia green-screen mobile phones, Andy Rubin, an American engineer who taught at Stanford, keenly captured the prospects of smartphones and came up with the idea of developing an operating system specifically for smartphones. Soon after, the Android company was founded. The advent of Android was not smooth sailing, let alone a blockbuster. Andy, who was an engineer, was good at research and development, but not good at management. After a few years, the company had reached a difficult point. The turning point occurred in 2005, when Google invested $50 million and part of its equity to buy out Andy and the entire Android team. In 2007, Google joined many hardware manufacturers, software development companies and telecom operators to form a global organization called the "Open Mobile Alliance" to jointly develop and improve the Android system. Google subsequently released the Android source code under the Apache open source license. In 2008, the first Android phone came out, ushering in an era. After more than ten years of development, Android has become the most mainstream mobile operating system. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, mobile phones have become daily necessities, and the use of Android systems has reached an unprecedented scale. According to relevant statistics, Android is the operating system with the highest market share in the world, with a market share of more than 70%, while iOS ranks second with a market share of nearly 25%. In China, according to Insight's "2021 China Mobile Operating System Industry Research Report", Android's domestic market share reached 88.9% in 2020. With more than ten major version iterations from Android 1.0 to Android 14 (Android U), the leading iteration efficiency of the Android system has allowed it to occupy a leading position in the markets of various countries. Android's success is inseparable from the "open source concept" and open ecology. The Open Handset Alliance, led by Google, includes more than 13 mobile operators, 20 semiconductor and hardware manufacturers, 34 mobile phone and other terminal manufacturers, and dozens of software suppliers and commercial companies from various countries around the world. The Open Handset Alliance maintains a high degree of openness, allowing any mobile terminal manufacturer to join the alliance. During its more than ten years of operation, it has spawned many open source communities and developer organizations. A rich user base has brought a wealth of applications. Currently, there are more than 600 Android application markets in the world, and the number of applications exceeds 2 million. An open and rich application ecosystem has become Android’s trump card to win the market. Ethereum: The next generation of global digital computer Decentralization is the ultimate embodiment of open source thinking. From open source licensing to permissionless, this libertarian concept has become the core of the next generation Internet. Ethereum originated in the early days of the blockchain era, just a few years after Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper. Through the successful application of Bitcoin, the world has realized the huge potential value of blockchain and decentralization. Ethereum is an upgrade to Bitcoin to a certain extent. It provides powerful programmability for decentralized networks through elements such as the Ethereum virtual machine and smart contracts. The founding vision of Ethereum is to build a global distributed computer based on the bottom layer of the blockchain and realize global trust computing. In the field of blockchain, Ethereum also has development potential similar to Android in the mobile Internet. Like the Android operating system, Ethereum is a public, permission-free open source method. Its scalability, ease of development, and decentralized mechanism continue to attract a large number of developers to develop decentralized applications through smart contracts. The most powerful and top ecosystem in the cryptocurrency field has been established around Ethereum. Ethereum just copies the importance of the operating system in the mobile Internet field to the blockchain field, repeats Android's path and opens up another battlefield in the blockchain world, and is expected to eventually become the underlying operating system of the blockchain world. At present, Ethereum is already the most used public chain in the world, with 160 million users, more than 500,000 daily active users, and a daily transaction scale of more than 30 billion US dollars. The market value of Ethereum's native token ETH exceeds US$170 billion, making it the second largest cryptocurrency in the world by market value. The digital U.S. dollar issued based on Ethereum has become a de facto currency, and stablecoins such as USDT and USDC issued anchored to the U.S. dollar have become the most common settlement currency in digital economic activities. Financial lending, trading, entertainment, insurance and other industries on Ethereum have formed a relatively independent economy with strong public influence on a global scale. The volume of the encrypted financial economy supported by it is expected to exceed 6.4 trillion US dollars, surpassing Japan on a national basis to become the world's third largest economy. The rise of the Metaverse based on Ethereum has social subversive capabilities in the fields of entertainment, education, and social interaction. By providing infrastructure for the Metaverse, it has created a series of disruptive applications such as blockchain games, virtual humans, and Metaverse communities, providing the technical cornerstone for humans to build basic social forms in the digital space. From application to protocol Although Ethereum and Android share the same open source philosophy, there are still major differences in their business models. Xiao Feng, Chairman of Wanxiang Blockchain, mentioned the difference in business models between Web2 and Web3 at the 2022 Blockchain Global Summit. Web2 is a thin protocol and fat application: the value lies in the application layer. ； Web3 is a fat protocol and fat application. The protocol layer can also reflect value because of the incentive mechanism. The fat application of Web3 has not yet arrived, but the application layer will definitely have great value. Android is currently in a mature application stage, and it is difficult for the protocol layer to obtain greater value through innovation. Ethereum is completely different. After several years of development, Ethereum, including the entire blockchain, is still in an active stage of technological innovation. Innovations at the protocol layer are endless and can often inspire new waves of value. Taking Layer 2 as an example, Vitalik (the founder of Ethereum) once mentioned that one of the core concepts of Ethereum's founding is to make the core as simple as possible and complete as much work as possible by building protocols on it. The Layer2 concept is the best practice. Layer2 refers to the second-layer network, which is a relative concept to the first-layer network (the Ethereum network itself). Although all blockchains can have Layer 2, Ethereum occupies the highest market share due to its dominance, and other public chains often have some Layer 2 functions from the beginning to differentiate themselves from competition. Therefore, when we discuss Layer 2, the default is usually Ethereum’s Layer 2. Currently, the Layer 2 ecosystem is active and prosperous, with a total market value of projects exceeding RMB 200 billion, including many star projects such as Arbitrum and Optimism. The basis for the release of value at the Ethereum protocol layer is the incentive mechanism. Blockchain technology provides a unique incentive mechanism for ecological participants. Through Token projects, project parties can obtain financing and benefits more quickly and efficiently, and it also allows developers to collaborate more closely around the same goal on a large scale. From enterprise to DAO The developer ecosystem is the trump card of Android, and it is also the driving force behind the development of Ethereum. To a certain extent, the Ethereum developer community is more active. For example, global developers gather together every year to organize a developer conference-EDCON. EDCON is a non-profit global Ethereum annual conference held in a different country every year. As one of the Ethereum and blockchain community events, EDCON is committed to serving the Ethereum ecosystem by strengthening global communication and interaction in the Ethereum community. EDCON 2023 will be held in Montenegro starting on May 19. The conference pays close attention to the possibilities provided by Ethereum for cryptocurrency and other fields, attracting the developer community from all over the world. In terms of developer organizational form, Android and Ethereum are fundamentally different. Most Android developers belong to a certain company and are restricted by country and region. With the advent of the decentralization wave, a new form of human organization has emerged, and has gradually become the norm for developer organizations in Ethereum and the entire Web3 ecosystem. This is the DAO - Decentralized Autonomous Organization (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). A more detailed interpretation of DAO will not be elaborated here. Simply put, the existing organization or management models are pyramid-shaped, and only a few people can have a say in finance or decision-making. The emergence of distributed autonomous organizations is to eliminate this hierarchy and achieve complete decentralization and non-bias. By holding tokens recognized by the organization, members of each organization can influence the management and operations of the organization through voting, achieving a completely democratic governance method. DAO is an emerging organizational model, but it is developing rapidly. In 2020, when the price of ETH was about US$230, DAO hardly received much attention, and most DAO only held assets worth a few thousand US dollars. When the blockchain entered the bull market, only one year later, millions of users joined the blockchain industry, and DAO also received more attention and development. As of April 2021, some DAO assets have exceeded $50 million. After explosive growth throughout 2021, according to DeepDAO statistics, there will be a total of 4,833 DAOs of various types by 2022. These DAOs have approximately 2.1 million users, of which there are approximately more than 580,000 active users. These DAOs hold a total of around US$11.4 billion in liquid assets. There are 34 DAOs with assets exceeding US$50 million, a nearly tenfold increase from a year ago. Currently, the largest DAO is Uniswap, which has approximately US$2.3 billion in liquid assets, has nearly 320,000 members, and has over 3,000 daily active members. For developers, the biggest advantage of DAO compared to traditional companies is that it shortens the decision-making chain and interest chain. For traditional Internet companies, developers often have little or even no say in decisions about products and company strategic directions. In DAO, developers can be more involved in the decision-making process through a more decentralized governance model. From the perspective of the interest chain, traditional companies have a shareholder model, and company profits basically belong to shareholders. Most developers, as ordinary employees, can only receive fixed salaries as incentives. ； In DAO, a stakeholder model is pursued. Developers’ so-called core stakeholders of DAO can obtain considerable and more reasonable incentives through reasonable tokenomics. Since 2020, more and more traditional developers have turned to the DAO development community. For project parties, one of the governance advantages of DAO compared to the company model is that it can bring together outstanding developers from around the world without being restricted by country or region. Especially in the three years since the epidemic, the popularity of remote working has also promoted this emerging digital collaborative office model from one side. Even some traditional companies have begun to incubate or cultivate DAO-like projects internally to recruit global talents in a more attractive way. Ethereum’s “Hongmeng Moment”? It’s hard to mention Android without mentioning Hongmeng. Although the wave of globalization is the general trend, and the trend of decentralization is increasingly diluting national and regional boundaries, international competition objectively exists. In the context of the competitive relationship between China and the United States, there is an urgent need for localized operating systems, and the "Hongmeng" system is an active attempt to localize the operating system. Although it is a localization attempt, for the sake of ecological compatibility and technical stability, the "Hongmeng" system fully inherits the core technology of the Android system, and conducts research and development on the core layer and application layer of the system in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Huawei's rise from the trough to nirvana has verified the effectiveness of the Hongmeng model to a certain extent. In the next wave of the Internet, sovereign states will still be the key force driving market development. The United States opened up to the blockchain field earlier and has a first-mover advantage. It has invested heavily in stablecoins, exchanges, investment institutions and other fields. However, regulatory policies have been swinging in recent years. ； China's early policies were strict, but as Hong Kong actively competes to become an international Web3 center, it is the first to experiment, and with its abundant talent pool, it has the tendency to catch up from behind. In the field of blockchain, the concept of "sovereign public chain" has been mentioned many times but has never achieved significant results. However, it is foreseeable that as international competition intensifies and geopolitics becomes more complicated, global digital competition will inevitably (actually already) be fiercely carried out in the digital economic engine of the next generation Internet. So will Ethereum usher in its own "Hongmeng moment" in the future? What will a "Chinese version of Ethereum" look like? We did some internal discussions and reflections a few years ago, and I would like to share some of them here to spark some ideas. 1. The Chinese version of Ethereum will fully inherit the technical route of Ethereum and create an open public chain. Ethereum has been running for 9 years and has experienced several technology iterations. The technology has become mature and stable, and the application ecology, business form and economic model have been verified. The Chinese version of Ethereum can make full use of existing technological achievements and combine its own advantageous technologies to build a global digital infrastructure with Chinese characteristics. Inheriting the technical route of Ethereum can greatly reduce the difficulty of compatibility and acceptance of the existing Ethereum ecosystem. 2. The Chinese version of Ethereum needs to gather national-level industrial resources and integrate the domestic alliance chain ecology. The Chinese version of Ethereum provides ecological support for the launch of the Chinese version of Ethereum by providing unified standard specifications, ecology, platforms, and systems for blockchain applications and integrating existing alliance chain resources. 3. The Chinese version of Ethereum needs to focus on attracting the international ecosystem, attracting international users through open technology and unique business formats, and supporting the globalization of trade. The construction goal of the Chinese version of Ethereum is to become a global digital infrastructure. It needs to attract international users to participate in the ecological construction of the Chinese version of Ethereum through open source technology, ecological incentives, and special business formats. 4. The Chinese version of Ethereum needs to make full use of its own technological advantages, combine unique technologies, and create national characteristics. “The construction of the "Hongmeng" system makes full use of China's deep industrial foundation in 5G, smart devices and other fields. The Chinese version of Ethereum should combine China’s technical expertise in fields such as quantum science and digital supervision to achieve security and control and build a unified global digital market led by China.  END  11 Smart Account: The Basic Unit of the Digital Age 10 Where is Digital Finance Basel? 09 Reflecting on the problems and opportunities of the Web3 track 08 A new generation of encrypted communication system based on quantum key distribution and blockchain technology 07 Certificateless public key cryptography system builds next-generation digital identity infrastructure 06 Safety Bull "Interview with Experts" | Realization of marketization of data elements and security thinking 05 Smart contracts are the neural networks of digital society 04 Blockchain is the key variable to start the era of artificial intelligence 03 Blockchain custody reshapes the data element rights distribution mechanism 02 Trust machines power digital civilization transportation 01 The end of device fingerprinting is distributed digital identity   Click on the original text for more information! |
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