Hello everyone, wish you a happy new year and a good fortune in the Year of Dog.

Preparing the dough (t/n: dumplings are a traditional must-have dish during the Spring Festival.)

Instead of something dry, let’s switch it up during the festival. I’ve prepared a short article and hope you enjoy reading it.

Metaverse is a public blockchain started in 2016 and developed in China. In 2016, I joked that Metaverse and AntShares (now NEO) were in a love-hate relationship because at that point of time we were the only two large public blockchain projects in China, although presently NEO has greatly surpassed Metaverse. This year, the phrase “China’s Big 3 public blockchains” has been floating around, but I shan’t name each one — just as how China’s often said to have three top colleges, when in reality there are five. To borrow a line from God of Cookery: “What’s there to argue over? Everything will be mixed into meatballs in the end.”

Hence, I’ll be talking about public blockchain development in this article.

Rolling out dumpling wrappers

To be honest, I didn’t quite understand Eric when he kept repeating that digital assets and digital identities were the two pillars of blockchain two years ago. Looking back on our conversations, I must acknowledge Eric’s foresight: he has accurately predicted the direction of blockchain technology’s development since then, just phrased slightly differently. He’s pretty much the Stanley Kubrick of the blockchain industry. (After Eric read this, he accused me of sucking up, to which I say: next time I’ll publish a critical essay.)

I do feel that the terms “digital asset” and “digital identity” are not too intuitive as compared to the term “Tokenize”, used by foreigners. The first time I heard the word I was amazed by how a single English word could capture the essence of digital assets so accurately.

The staggering number of blockchain projects around cover areas from gaming to education and copyright, but they ultimately boil down to economic behavior: since assets and transactions form the core of economic behavior, the resolution of these two issues allows a plethora of more targeted projects to emerge. We then call this emergence process “Tokenization”.

Hence, I feel that “Blockchain Thinking” refers to the use of blockchains as a tool to facilitate the circulation of previously illiquid assets. The concept is similar to asset-backed securitization, but never before has a tool brought this level of convenience and safety this cheaply.

In 2016, many dreamed of “blockchain omnipotence”, but reality has proven otherwise. What is possible, and what is not? The core of a blockchain is the ledger — in other words, tokens. Anything linked to tokens can be classified as possible. If that’s the case, which financial concepts are most relevant to token accounting? Assets and transactions!

Mixing the stuffing

There are two projects in the industry that I really like: Ethereum and EOS. I particularly enjoy watching them tussle.

These two projects separately represent two extremes of the blockchain: the first is a completely decentralized open technology platform, while the latter is a centralized, highly efficient platform. They also showcase the differences in the way Vitalik Buterin and Dan Larimer, the creators of Ethereum and EOS, understand blockchain.

These two projects also represent two facets of distributed systems. Decentralization inevitably results in a less efficient computing system, whereas more centralized solutions require one to trust the parties maintaining the system. Users are free to choose between the two, very much like gambling, where you place bets based on subjective judgements.

We can understand the architecture of these two projects as being diametrically opposed to each other. ETH built a cannon atop a horsecart, whereas Larimer built just a car. One competes on the strength of its projects; the other is fast.

Still, I feel that the market needs both types of blockchain. Currently, Vitalik must worry about Ethereum’s network throughput, an issue that Larimer laughs at. Yet Vitalik is backed by a solid ecosystem that EOS lacks. Hence, we can see Vitalik rushing Ethereum 2.0 to upgrade network throughput while Larimer rushes to get EOS online and establish an ecosystem.

In my point of view, both ETH and EOS above actually have a misunderstanding that smart contracts is the future development of the blockchain. I used to say in the Metaverse official Wechat group that even the whole world thinks the future development direction of blockchain is smart contract, I will disagree with it.

In my opinion, both ETH and EOS have erroneously judged that smart contracts are the future of blockchain development. As I previously mentioned in Metaverse’s developer chat, even if the world says that smart contracts are the future, I disagree.

Let me raise an example and compare the development of blockchain technology to that of computing tech. Bitcoin is analogous to an assembly language — with it, we can enable basic payment functions. On the other hand, ETH and EOS would be high-level programming languages that provide more generic and convenient functions.

However, if one were to propose that the future computing technology lies in programming languages, I believe that the majority of tech workers will disagree. Technology is all-encompassing; programming languages are merely one tool among many. Moreover, the popularity of a programming language is determined by the diversity of the application ecosystem that the programming language framework can support. Instead of the programming language, it would be more accurate to say that the direction of future development lies in common libraries/frameworks for these programming languages.

Nowadays, no one creates a front end from scratch. Vue, React or Angular are used. Even for modern C++, no one is able to grasp the code immediately. Hence, Metaverse is written with jsoncpp, Mongoose and Boost. I personally often reach for Python during development for its efficiency.

Making the dumplings

Going back to the point, I’ve mentioned that the future of blockchain development is not smart contracts, and have compared the development of blockchain and computing technology. Ultimately, I’m trying to express that the standardization of smart contracts is what will pave the way for blockchain technology.

You’ve probably guessed it: I’m referring to ERC20. Does everyone know what they’re discussing as they talk about ERC20?

ERC is short for Ethereum Request For Comments, and is Ethereum’s version of RFC (short for Request for Comments, a series of documents that have helped determine Internet standards upon which the modern Internet is built). Therefore, ERC20 refers to Ethereum’s 20th proposal document, and its full name is ERC-20 Token Standard.

I wonder if anyone know about ERC55? (ERC-55 Mixed-case checksum address encoding). I do not know what it is either. Think about this question, why is ERC20 is so widely known but not ERC55?

Well, let’s go back to the basics. What is the core content of blockchain? — Digital assets (Tokens), i.e., assets and transactions.

The reason is because ERC20 resonates strongly with the core content of blockchain, that is why it is well known and popular, while ERC55 is only a form of technology that is below the standard and therefore it can’t be used universally.

Then, how do we design a new smart contract template that is similar to ERC20 Token Standard? The answer is, there is no need to do that. You only need to enhance ERC20 Token Standard, which is what Vitalik is doing right now.

With so much being said, I emphasized that the smart contract standard is the development direction of the future blockchain. Then, must the smart contract standard be built on Ethereum?

I don’t think so and that’s why EOS exists, and Qtum and NEO. NEO has established its own NEP-5 Token Standard for the standardization is the most direct and effective way to strengthen its ecosystem. So, we must utilize blockchain technology, like using dumplings and turn it into a set of smart contract standards.

Boiling the dumplings

Then, why doesn’t Metaverse have its own Token standard? In fact, we have it and we are currently working on it. (refer to: https://github.com/mvs-org/mips). The Metaverse team has created a full set of MIP to support the Metaverse token’s internal set of smart contract standard.

Currently, we have designed mip-002 and mip-006, and more upcoming mip will transform to a mip group, named MFT (Metaverse Family Token Standard). Some internal documents haven’t been released yet. For example, I also designed the workflow developed on Metaverse digital identity under real-time identity authorization mode and permanent authorization mode. These will form another set of MIP group, named MID (Metaverse Identity Standard), they will be released together after organizing everything else.

This is the last advertisement by me, I will attend the Geek Time livestream of Geekbang to talk about blockchain and everyone is welcome to watch!