Encounter the "Poison Pill Project"! Elon Musk, who can't see Web3, launched an acquisition of the traditional Web2 media giant Twitter, but the Twitter board did not buy it, and yesterday it came up with a cruel "poison pill plan". It's unclear whether Musk will eventually give up on the acquisition because of the poison pill, but why doesn't Musk think about the new form of the next generation of social networks without the first principles he is good at? The emerging SocialFi, represented by MetaLife, has begun disruptive innovations in traditional Web2 social networks.
Musk once said: "If you really want to do something new, you have to rely on the methods of physics." Musk attributes today's disruptive innovations largely to the use of "first principles." But he seems to have forgotten to apply "first principles" in the acquisition of Twitter. In a public speech after announcing the acquisition plan, Musk said that he did not buy Twitter to make money, this decision is entirely for the future of Twitter, for the future of human civilization!
But how can the future of human civilization flourish on twitter, a centralized data well, on social media? Whoever controls Twitter will try to control it in what they think is good, but can one controlling shareholder represent everyone's ideals? Will the ukrainian people and the Russian people simultaneously raise their hands in agreement? This is a drawback of traditional corporate and centralized social media, and it is not something Musk can change on his own, even if he privatizes Twitter.
The contradiction between the data and rights of users and the rights and interests of platforms in the Web2 world has a long history, and Web3 is the antidote and the future of human civilization.
Musk once said in an interview: "I prefer to see the world from a physical point of view. Physics taught me to reason using first-principles thinking, rather than analogous thinking. ”
In the view of Wang Qiheng, the originator of the Web3 concept (2003), the founder of SmartMesh and the consultant of MetaLife, Musk really needs to apply first principles to the disruptive innovation of social media. Wang Qiheng, who received a full scholarship to study in the Doctor of Astronomy and Physics program at Northwestern University in the United States, is no stranger to physics, which is why he defines the fifth generation of IT architecture of the Internet of Value as a HyperMesh architecture with more distributed hardware. While Twitter is still using centralized servers to store and control profiles and data for all users, Web3 has returned the data to the user, along with the value of the data.
Musk says you can't see Web3 because the projects that now call themselves Web3 are actually just Web 2.5. What is Web 2.5? Perhaps in Musk's view, Isn't Web 2.5 an incentive for Twitter plus the so-called decentralized Dogecoin? So, Musk will stick with buying Twitter.
But the real first-principles thinking of Web3 is to eliminate all of Twitter's servers, and the user's information is stored on the user's own mobile phone, computer, and wearable device. From the first principle of physical nature, this is the beginning of true decentralization, and it is the real disruptive innovation of social media.
The idea of distributing Twitter, which can only run on powerful centralized server clusters, into phones with limited user performance that both protects privacy and can communicate offline sounds crazy, doesn't it?
The late Clayton Christensen described this type of innovation as: All but one dimension is bad, but that dimension eventually becomes very important (and then over time, as the innovation becomes widely adopted, the other aspects get better).
The most typical example here is the personal computer (PC). The first PCs were worse than all the minicomputer servers of the time. They store less, have less software, have a slower CPU, can't multitask, and so on. But they do better in one respect: they are cheap, which is very important for those who don't have a computer. It is this strange combination that causes existing computer manufacturers, from mainframes to microcomputers, to ignore personal computers. They focus only on all the bad parts and ignore the positive aspect, in addition to IBM, these mainframe computer server giants have also gone out of business or been merged as a result.
In comparison, blockchain is arguably a worse database. It's slower, requires more storage and compute, has no customer support, and so on. However, it has a dimension that is completely different – no one entity or a small group of entities controls it, and people try to express this by saying it's "decentralized," albeit badly.
The emergence of new technologies is always accompanied by shortcomings. Trains, for example, when they first appeared, were teased by horse-drawn carriages, traveled slowly, and needed to spend a lot of money to lay tracks. Electric lights, not only expensive, but also need to endure the roar of the generator. However, their advantages are unprecedented, and their technological potential can break the boundaries of the times. As for their shortcomings, there is still a chance to slowly improve.
So what are the milestones of this dimension of the Web3 world? It is MetaLife.social, a decentralized social networking protocol and application that completely decouples centralized servers. In MetaLife's decentralized Web3 architecture, all data and business logic is stored and executed on the user's mobile device. Users' devices do not rely on centralized servers, but are hosted on the front end, middleware, and back end of the MetaLife ecosystem. Yes, mobile phones are both clients and servers, which makes MetaLife's design extremely challenging and complex, but what it brings to human beings is liberation, freedom and value.
The backend is at the heart of the MetaLife social networking protocol. Compared to many other social networks, the MetaLife protocol is very comprehensive and covers every element needed for a Web 3 social network, from communication protocols and social networking protocols to user data and content. Other common features, such as wallets, identities, and cryptocurrency exchanges, are also available as APIs on devices.
The front-end is available to users as an application that allows users to use all MetaLife features including but not limited to creator economy, NFT marketplace OpenGalaxy, internet-less communications, and offline payments through their phones. This mobile-first decentralized architecture frees users from servers and the internet and enables users to determine when they want to use their data and how to use it to access their data.
Okay, so what's the difference between that and the cheaper feature of a PC? This is important for some people. Why? Because most of the power that big companies have comes from operating and controlling databases. Only Twitter and Facebook can decide who can read and write from their database, and who can see which parts of the database, and only they can make modifications to this database. It is recognized as the source of power for Twitter and Facebook in the world. Many people can take for granted that this power has become a problem, but they don't see how the structure of primitive network technologies directly contributed to this extreme centralization.
The oligarchic pattern of the traditional Internet has been formed, and the formation of the oligarchic pattern, the infringement of the rights of the people may be more unscrupulous, these Internet oligarchies, that is, the empire on the Internet, users in the empire, only the right to use, no voting rights.
Musk now wants to take that power back, and he even shouts directly to Twitter shareholders with a little "murderous" spirit, "(If investors don't buy it) Theoretically, I have the money to buy out all of their shares." Although Musk is menacing this time and has been in the city, Twitter does not seem to want to surrender immediately and commit to the "Ma Family Army". Just yesterday morning, Twitter officially released a statement saying that Twitter's board of directors has unanimously approved a shareholder equity plan that can be exercised in the event of a disagreement between the controlling shareholder and the company's board of directors to ensure that all other shareholders realize value, valid until April 14, 2023. The plan is also commonly known as the "poison pill plan".
In the history of Web2 and corporate systems, we have had this kind of power struggle not uncommon. Musk thinks he has regained power over Twitter for the people, but in fact the user's data is transferred from one board to another. And the future of human social networking is to return data and value to the people of Web3.
The real Web3 represented by MetaLife is such a big innovation, and it can't be described in words. Fundamentally, we cannot develop without disruptive innovations of first principles. Again, it's not that Web3 can solve all problems at once. It certainly won't, and may even create new problems of its own. But if properly developed, coupled with sound governance and proper regulation by the DAO organization, Web3 can provide a meaningful shift in power that brings power back to individuals and communities, a huge leap forward for human civilization.
Why doesn't Musk make a Web3 decentralized social network that is a hundred times larger than Twitter at one percent of the $43 billion purchase price? To say that Web3 decentralized networks are a hundred times that of Twitter is far less, and that the Internet of Everything and open metaversae covered by Web3 are beyond the reach of a data well "company" like Twitter. Is $400 million too little to do a Web3 decentralized network? No, because it's a network of peoples, where everyone's data and value is stored, and when this network belongs to each user himself, he will connect the world's 7 billion people in just a decade, including the other half of the users who don't have access to the Internet right now, which is also known as the interstellar social network, because it can also connect everything through point to point in areas where there is no Internet (the surface of the Earth, the underground, space, Mars, other galaxies).
Twitter's Web2 century battle with Musk has already begun, and it is foreseeable that this battle will not end immediately, and Web3, represented by MetaLife (https://metalife.social), has quietly begun.