New ERC, new future

Original author: Li Hua

In the last round of bear market, people wondered whether the blockchain was useful, and then we saw Uniswap The power of , and the consequent vitality of DeFi. The question of whether blockchain is useful has been answered in the affirmative.

In this cycle, many people are deeply involved in DeFi, and many people have doubts again, "Blockchain can also be used for other things." What". It’s not because of dissatisfaction, but the current blockchain is like a giant dragon with only one wing, trapped in a limited territory. Only when its other wing grows out can it soar into the sky. Only when its other wing also grows can the power of the first wing be truly released.

Where will the wings grow from? It will not come from the level of the chain, such as a new chain or a new layer, which is the body of the dragon rather than the wings of the dragon; it will come from the level of the application on the chain, and it will most likely come from the new standard/new protocol. It is not an application under the old protocol. After everyone racked their brains and innovated for several years, the old agreement failed to bring surprises.

In this article, I would like to discuss three of my personal favorite new standards/protocols, ERC-6551, ERC-5169, and ERC-404. The new protocol will open up new application directions, and the new application directions may bring users with non-investment needs and non-financial needs to the blockchain, allowing the dragon to grow another wing.

ERC-6551

ERC-6551 It looks ugly, but it has a broad narrative space. This article explores only the directions that are of most interest to individuals, what I call non-human subjects of accounts. The three use cases in this article may be fanciful, but you see, the destination of the aerospace industry is the stars and the sea. Before taking us to Mars, it can first bring us air-cushioned shoes.

1. Game: Integration of real players and NPC 

"Kenshi" is I like an open-ended game where 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, and because they are not real people, everything else in the game except the players has no growth potential. The lonely players will one day complete all the tasks and leave the game.

Could there be a whole new type of subject or object that could host both real people and NPCs? When the real person comes online, the player enters the real person mode, and the player operates normally, such as improving skills and building a city; when the real person goes offline, the player enters the NPC mode (reading fixed data and executing specific programs), and performs passive actions in the real person mode of other players. NPCs make money, such as being mercenaries. Blockchain plus ERC-6551 is the best carrier for this kind of subject. NFT (game character) has an account, owns data and property, and can be treated as an independent object; a real person account owns NFT 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 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 have 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. It has its own place to go. If arrogance has only made humans miss a happier way of life in the past (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. Then, where will AI live? 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 some kind of consensus), which has an account (ERC-6551), rather than an account holder.

Taking 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 not far-fetched 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. In view of human beings' pursuit of immortality, training a digital avatar will be a common thing, allowing this digital avatar to exist forever and giving 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 it will take a long time. 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 be used independently in the account. What solutions can you think of? Furthermore, if the digital avatar can be considered as the 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 in other words, how to let the digital avatar have the highest authority over the digital avatar?

ERC-6551 is one answer. ERC-6551 is the carrier of an independent digital subject, whether the subject is a game character, an independent AI, or a person's digital clone.

ERC-5169

Before discussing ERC-5169 , we need to discuss ourselves first Two kinds of shackles imposed on oneself. One shackles are about data, and the other shackles are about trust.

Blockchain can only process on-chain data, and the boundaries of on-chain data are regarded as the boundaries of blockchain capabilities. In order to expand this boundary, in almost every round of development, we will try to put data on the chain. However, both theory and practice tell us that only very few types of data have the value or meaning of being put on the chain. Data on the chain does not help. Blockchain effectively expands boundaries. We stop there. However, there is a vast space between data that completely needs to be processed by the blockchain and data that does not need to be processed by the blockchain at all. For applications in this space, part of their data can be handed over to the blockchain. Processing to obtain the capabilities of the blockchain, another 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 blockchain capabilities. This space should be included in the territory of blockchain rather than excluded.

Removing trust may be one of the biggest charms of the blockchain, but it is difficult to achieve trustlessness. We often deceive ourselves and others, equating 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, the situation is similar to the data on the chain and the data off the chain. Some things need to be trusted, some things need centralized trust, and some things need to be trusted to protect rights and interests, and the other part needs to be trusted by the center. trust or other forms of trust to protect rights and interests. The pursuit of total trustlessness will not only cause the blockchain industry to lose a large territory (trustlessness combined with other trusts), but will also damage the de facto rights and interests of project participants due to the replacement of trustlessness by decentralization.

ERC-5169 ’s job is to open these two new territories. With the help of this standard, developers can explore application directions where part of the data is processed on the chain and part of the data is processed off the chain, and where rights and interests are guaranteed by trustlessness and other trusts. These directions are new and broad at the same time.

ERC-5169  is token-centered programming, that is to say, on-chain data and off-chain data, trustlessness and other trusts are all anchored on a certain token. People in the Web2 world may not understand why this is done. In their eyes, token may be just a digital asset with a face value, but people in the blockchain field deeply understand the interoperability and composability brought about by this method. This interoperability and composability is one of the most disruptive innovations of 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 convinced 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 Lafite in 1982 is the most valuable (the scarcity of blind boxes comes from the setting of the project party). You might as well think of ERC-404 as a product production machine, the input end is data (means of production), such as block height, random numbers, etc., and the output end is a product 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 by taking the 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 about creating new demands, and the application of ERC-5169 is mostly about providing 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 easy 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. Taking 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.

The last thing I want to say is that when we discuss the value of different new standards/new protocols, it does not mean that the projects proposed by the protocol or directly related projects have value, but that based on these new protocols, new products will be born. new gameplay or new projects, and these new gameplay or new projects may break the deadlock, it may be that the dragon is growing wings.

Original source