Produced | Tiger Sniff Financial Group
The author | Zhou Zhou
The head art | Visual China
Ali, Tencent, and Byte, the three major Internet giants, invariably threw a pathfinder stone, making the lifeless Internet ripple.
Recently, Alibaba acquired The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's highest-selling English-language newspaper, and founded an NFT company, Artifact Labs. Coincidentally, Tencent also invested in Australian NFT startup Immutable this month, which is currently valued at $2.5 billion and is newly promoted as a unicorn. This also means that the two giants have officially entered Web3.
Tiger sniffed and observed: Although Ali and Tencent have been laying out the blockchain for a long time and have their own digital collection APP, it is the first time that an NFT company with financial attributes has invested in and entered Web3.
It is worth mentioning that TikTok (ByteDance Overseas) predates Ali Tencent and has been laying out the overseas Web3 industry for a long time. In addition, it should be pointed out that Ali and Ant Group have not yet officially laid out NFTs overseas, only in Hong Kong, China, but the momentum of entering overseas has initially emerged.
NFT (Homogenized Token), which represents a digital asset. Based on blockchain technology, it allows you to trace the origin of every WeChat, every painting, and every piece of music you create online (unique) and become an asset. If payment is the natural traffic entrance of the Internet industry, then NFTs may be the natural entrance to the next generation of the Internet.
What roads can this entrance lead to?
Nike hopes to continue to "sell shoes" in the virtual world (metaverse) through this entrance, and it has acquired RTFKT, a company focused on making NFT sneakers, at a cost of $200 million according to the New York Times. Nike is not the only company that has the same idea. Facebook founder Zuckerberg also believes that the clothes worn by virtualization in the metacosm can become NFTs, and he recently expressed his hope to introduce NFT technology to the Instagram platform this year.
Buying a pair of virtual shoes in the metaverse for more than 100,000 yuan is very exaggerated in the eyes of many people. However, in the eyes of some investors, NFT is an asset, and the real world speculation into the sky-high price of the painting, the price is only related to the market; in the eyes of gamers, NFT can become the game's "hard currency", playing an inappropriate example, you buy gun equipment in the peace elite, not only through AI technology adapted to CF gunfight games, but also adapted to all other gunfight blockchain games.
Humans are born to be a storyteller and a story-loving species, and according to Yuval Harari, author of A Brief History of Humanity, billions of humans can work together because people bring together people who believe in the same story, and NFTs show people a very big world. Whether or not this story can be successfully told, in order not to miss the tickets to the future world, a group of giants have taken action.
The Big Three "Overseas Battle" Web3
The development of domestic Internet giants, from e-commerce, social networking to payment, has been deeply influenced by foreign technology companies.
In March, the environment at home and abroad underwent drastic changes. Under the disturbance of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, some new technology forms and industries have intensified changes, and Web3 is one of them.
In this Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the Web3 industry seems to be more actively involved in the war than any other industry. Unlike the forms of war that we are familiar with before: such as thermal weapons reinforcements, Swift and other financial sanctions, in this Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Web3 has adopted a completely novel form of war, such as NFT fundraising, cryptocurrency sanctions, And the Ukrainian DAO. Through the technical support of (mainly) American Web3 companies, Ukraine bypassed the cumbersome international banking settlement system, and within two weeks of the war, it has received more than $100 million in cryptocurrencies, almost all of which come from businesses and individuals, and most of the crypto assets have also been quickly used in military operations. The war, known as the first "crypto war" in human history, has also sounded the alarm for countries around the world: a country can not own cryptocurrencies, but it cannot fail to master the Web3 technology behind cryptocurrencies.
The powerful influence displayed by the American Web3 company in the "invisible war" has made countries look sideways. Enterprises in South Korea, Japan, Switzerland and other countries have accelerated the development of their own Web3 companies, and it is at this point in time that Ali and Tencent began to "quietly" integrate with foreign NFT companies and lay out Web3.
On March 7, 2022, Australian NFT game company Immutable completed a $200 million financing, and Tencent and a number of international capitals such as Temasek, Mirae Asset, etc. participated in the investment, with a post-investment valuation of $2.5 billion.
Tencent's investment is based on Web3 technology. Immutable's goal is to develop blockchain games that allow players to truly own game assets.
Games are an important source of business and revenue for Tencent. However, there are also some problems in current games, such as players buying equipment that can only be used for their own use, not bought and sold; they can only be used in a single game, not in multiple games.
Web3 games, on the other hand, are dedicated to making every item purchased by each user in-game an asset that can be resold. Immutable co-founder Alex said, "If you spend $100 on an in-game item, we believe you should be able to resell it when you're done (just like you can sell any physical asset you buy). NFTs are a great solution to this problem as they allow digital assets to be scarce and tradable without the need for a third party, such as a game studio, to be the middleman/ledger/source of truth for every transaction. ”
It is worth mentioning that ByteDance also joined Immutable X early. Last year, TikTok placed NFTs on dedicated sites supported by Immutable X to avoid blockchain energy issues.
Compared with ByteDance, Ali and Tencent not only began to lay out Web3, but also tried to sinicize Web3 in China.
In the second half of last year, Ant and Tencent paid attention to the foreign NFT boom, and successively made two digital collection APPS with reference to foreign NFT products. It is reported that the users of whale detection and phantom core have exceeded 10 million, according to the latest data show that each NFT of the phantom core has attracted the participation of more than 100,000 users, and the NFT of whale probe is also in short supply.
In a strict sense, although both Whale Detective and Phantom Core are based on blockchain technology (AntChain and Tencent Zhixin Chain), they are still essentially Web 2.0. The biggest difference between Web 3.0 and Web 2.0 is: ownership. Foreign NFTs, once purchased by users, belong to user assets and are recognized by the whole network; domestic NFTs have more uncertainties: for example, the company will not fail, the company will not prohibit transactions, the company will not issue NFTs, and only the company that issues NFTs will be recognized.
However, in the case of a clear ban on NFT speculation in China, the sinicization of Web3 has become a road that has to be taken.
China needs a new "VIE architecture"
The Internet industry has reached a "critical point", jumping over, a smooth road; can not jump over, a pool of stagnant water, no longer the previous thousand regiments war, frequent listing bells of the grand scene.
Jumping from the Internet of Web 2.0 to the Internet dominated by Web 3.0 is not only a frequent discussion issue by a group of Internet geeks, but also a topic that is often mentioned on the desks of governments.
Tiger Sniff learned that the Web3 industry has received the attention of many academicians of the Domestic Academy of Sciences a few years ago, and has conducted many small-scale organizational discussions. As a result of the Russo-Ukrainian war, more government officials at home and abroad have also begun to switch from private exchanges to public voices.
In February, Russia's former finance minister publicly endorsed the Web3 industry behind cryptocurrencies, comparing it to the Internet. On March 17, Yao Qian, director of the Science and Technology Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, expressed a similar view in China Finance, publishing an article titled "Web 3.0: The Approaching New Generation of the Internet", sharing his thoughts on Web3 in more detail.
He said in the article: "After 30 years of development, the Internet is now at an important point in the evolution of Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. ”
Tiger Sniff observed that at present, whether it is China, the United States, Russia and other big countries, or South Korea, Ukraine and other countries, there are some government officials or financial executives who attach great importance to the development of Web3. Of course, there is no shortage of strong opposition to cryptocurrencies, but there are few against the Web3 industry.
From the current point of view, Web3 has penetrated into all walks of life in the United States, clothing (Nike Adi's virtual shoes) food (Coca-Cola McDonald's NFT collection) live (Sandbox) line (BMW Ferrari and other virtual cars) ... NFTs spread in traditional industries at an incredible speed, and tried to change the creation and marketing models inherent in traditional industries, and even created billions of dollars in revenue directly for clubs in the sports industry (NBA, Super Bowl), resulting in no small disruption.
In the last wave of the Internet, the two countries that benefited the most in the world were: the United States and China, while the countries that did not catch up with this wave were countless: Japan, Britain, France, India...
There are many reasons why China has been able to catch up with the Internet wave, one of which is that we have introduced the VIE architecture. This structure connects Chinese startups with U.S. capital, driven by capital, and generous and perfect incentives, allowing the entire Internet industry to develop rapidly. While developing rapidly, the local financial industry is still at a distance from the foreign financial industry, which makes the domestic wealth not being looted by the more developed foreign financial industry.
Nowadays, the next wave of the Internet is coming, and we need a new "VIE architecture" to let the Web3 industry have a complete set of incentive mechanisms while protecting the domestic financial industry.