Fire all over the country, Web3 fanaticism and reality

Author | LIU Yan, WANG Qiang

Interview guest | Weili Yang, CTO of Kaiyun Labs

Web 3 in one article.

In the past two years, the concept of "Web 3" has grown rapidly in the IT industry. In the past 2022, Web 3 can be said to be on the cusp of public opinion, which is really hot.

But to this day, many people still face this term with a cloud of clouds, not knowing how it is similar and different from existing Internet technology. On the other hand, Web 3.0 evangelists believe that this technology will become the infrastructure for the next generation of the Internet, and many companies have begun to invest in early research and development in related fields. In addition, the relationship between the metaverse concept of the fire and Web 3.0 also makes people curious.

InfoQ recently interviewed Wiiliam Yang, CTO of Kaiyun Labs. Kaiyun Labs is a startup with the ambition to build a trustless database for Web 3. In the interview, Willy Yang shared his many views on Web 3 as a technology, describing a blueprint for a new generation of Internet industry based on Web 3.

Web3 craze

InfoQ: Could you please explain in plain language what Web 3 is? Is there a universally accepted definition of this technology at this time?

Willy Yang: From a technical point of view, we usually think of Web3 as a new generation of Internet ecosystem with decentralized technology as the core. Web3 is based on blockchain technology as the core, build a new generation of decentralized Internet components, and then build the services and applications we want to provide based on them. The purpose of building these network components with blockchain technology is to enable users to truly own the Internet, let the identity and data of Internet users be our own, and let us become the masters of data. We can display personal data through this network and use it to trade and monetize.

From another point of view, in the Web1 era, we can only read data, read information and information through browsing the web. The biggest change in the Web2 era is that each of us Internet users has become a creator of content, and we are constantly exporting content to the Internet.

In this process, we first used the browser operation on the computer, such as opening a blog page to write articles. With the maturity of the mobile Internet, we are now accustomed to operating on mobile phones, and a large number of mobile applications have emerged, and Internet companies have begun to record personal content and data.

The difference that Web3 brings is that we can make our own decisions about the Internet. For example, Weibo is a product pushed to us by Sina, and all data information is centralized under Sina's management. Web3 is a decentralized network, without this single point of control or management, what these resources in the network should do will be decided by a mechanism similar to public voting. We can also make complete decisions about how the data posted by individuals should be managed and who has access to our data. At the same time, Web3 resources can always be accessed, and there will be no problem that a manufacturer's server cannot be accessed if it fails.

Web3 is an internet ecosystem with decentralized technology at its core. We can compare the ecology of the earth we live in now, and the Internet will also have these necessary elements. We may only be able to do a limited number of things on the Internet now, but in the new generation of Internet ecosystem, it can meet these traditional needs of our current Internet access on the one hand, and at the same time meet some needs that are getting closer and closer to our real lives. For example, the concept of the metaverse means that the Internet is more like a virtual world, bringing us better and better experiences.

InfoQ: From a historical perspective, do you think the Internet has evolved to the stage of Web3?

Willy Yang: We are still in the early stages of the third iteration. The first consensus is that blockchain technology is the core of the third iteration, this technology has been proposed for many years, and there are many excellent products and projects launched. However, from the perspective of end Internet users, these products, as Web3 infrastructure, are not enough to match the Internet products we use every day, from user experience to performance, all aspects are different from Web2 products. In order for the third iteration to enter a more mature stage, it must first rely on the further improvement of the underlying infrastructure. For example, like the very important distributed storage technology, although we see a lot of promising products, but compared with these existing storage services, the current Web3 products need to be better improved.

In addition, for the entire Web3, these products need to redefine the economic model and user behavior of the Internet in the future. Web3 considers a user's personal data to be valuable, for example, a Weibo post or a video posted by a user, which is valuable in itself. How does this value manifest itself in Web3? We can think that readers need to pay, which may sound subversive to everyone's usage habits, but this may be the future Internet user behavior pattern. It takes a long time for the developers of enterprise products and Internet users to continue to practice and adapt to the new economic model.

InfoQ: The concept of Web3 has probably started to catch fire in the last year, but it's not particularly new. So what do you think is the main reason for its sudden surge in popularity in the past year?

Willy Yang: The concept of Web3 has been particularly popular in the past year, and I can boil it down to two aspects. On the one hand, because of the concept of the metaverse, on the other hand, NFT. After these two concepts became popular, everyone began to pay attention to, explore, and feel the concept of Web3 behind it.

What exactly is an NFT? Why is everyone so interested? That's because NFTs allow us to see the so-called digital assets, that is, personal data on the Internet, such as articles and pictures, and have a channel for monetizing value in Web3. It gives us a possibility. We may have become accustomed to using various applications on the Internet every day to communicate, post articles, pictures, videos.... But we may never have imagined that NFTs can turn the content data we keep on the network into value. NFT identifies the uniqueness of user assets, for example, Xiaoming's book is the only one, is Xiaoming's, then I define this book in the form of NFT, recorded on the blockchain, maybe it has some special value, so that we can monetize it through the channel of NFT.

In addition, the epidemic has made great changes in our lifestyles in recent years, which has ignited the concept of the metaverse. The meta-universe gives us a possibility of virtual office, entertainment and life, and when we go to understand NFTs and meta-universes, we finally find that the very big concept behind it is Web3, which is why Web3 has become more and more popular in this year.

Web 3.0 infrastructure construction

InfoQ: What are the differences and advantages of Web3 over Web2?

Willy Yang: The biggest advantage of Web3 is that Internet users have ownership of their data. A lot of our personal data is stored on the servers of internet companies that fully own and control our user data. Although we use these apps for free, businesses always need to make a profit, where does its money come from? A large part of it comes from marketing and advertising based on user data, which makes money in this way. In this single data storage and enterprise side model, there are some privacy issues of personal data, and we cannot fully control the use of personal data by these enterprises, nor do we know whether they have modified these data, etc.

It's important to note that in the Web2 era, we can't guarantee that our personal data will be accessible at all times, because there is a possibility that companies may cut off access to some resources for some reason. For example, if we upload an image, the server may be shut down and it will no longer be accessible. In the age of Web3, data is not owned by a single company, it is securely encrypted and stored on the network. When a party needs access to our data, the user's authorization is required so that the user can securely manage the personal data. There will be a concept of key management in between. The user has his own key, he can decide whether the data can be accessed by other services, this ownership is given to the user, this is the ownership of the data.

On the other hand, there is the change in the user's identity mechanism. With the development of Web3 technology, decentralized identity has become possible. Decentralized identity is the ability for users to fully manage their identity and data in a decentralized manner. Because blockchain technology provides unremittable and ledger functions, it is distributed, so users can prove themselves through cryptographically verifiable digital identities, which is a very secure way to prove without revealing our personal information.

Another very important difference is the form of organizational governance. The organization of Web3 will change radically. At present, the mainstream organizational form is the company, the company needs to be registered, there will be employees, different roles, and the management is responsible for the future development of the company according to the company's system and their decisions. Web3 is a decentralized autonomous organization, in this form of organization there will be no CEO, replaced by token holders. The organization will pre-set its architecture and rules, define them in the form of smart contracts, publish them on the network, and all the rules will be strictly enforced. In this way, there will be no privilege of a small number of people that make corporate decisions that cannot be made or implemented in a democratic form, promoting the democratization of Web3 organizational management.

Finally, because there is no single subject entity in Web3, all architectures are decentralized, so on such an ecosystem, data and services can always be accessed and cannot be blocked, and transaction data is all stored on the blockchain and cannot be tampered with. The above is the biggest difference between Web3 and Web2.

InfoQ: Will Web3 live in symbiosis with Web2 next, or will it completely replace the latter at a stage?

Willy Yang: I think it depends on how we define Web3 and Web2. From a technical point of view, Web3 and Web2 take full advantage of human achievements in computer science and non-computer science, they just show different user experiences for Internet users, define different roles for users, and serve users. In Web2, we can think that users are only using some functions given to us by the Internet, and do not really fully own the Internet, and personal data is not completely used for themselves, cannot monetize its transactions, and cannot reflect its more value.

When the Internet evolved to Web3, users had different roles, and we became the owners of this data, and we could do some of the things we wanted on it, or even sell it. From a technical point of view, Web3 is not the opposite of Web2, so it does not mean that with Web3, Web2 is subverted, there is no more. Web3 has not yet appeared subversive new technologies, more still using some of the more mature technologies and concepts in the Internet now, has carried out a certain amount of innovation and reorganization, and brought a new concept to the Internet. The Web3 community has also borrowed a lot of Web2 technical achievements.

In the not-too-distant future, we should be able to see a large number of innovative products launched by entrepreneurs in the Web3 space. For example, decentralized blogs in Web3 are always accessible, even if one or two host servers in the network are shut down, or even permanently leave the network, it does not affect our access to these articles. From the user's point of view, we will see some Internet application products successfully copied from 2.0 to 3.0, as for whether the game between them eventually leads to the demise of 2.0 products, it will take time to tell. There is a very high probability that they will still coexist, it all depends on the user. If our users can adapt to different economic models or user behaviors, this model is likely to coexist.

InfoQ: In the face of the current boom, how should Web2 companies deploy Web3?

Weili Yang: A large number of Web2 companies are already paying attention to this emerging field. To start the layout in this field, the first thing is to do research based on the company's own business model, at least to understand what Web3 is and what different experiences it can bring to the company's users. The company should once again think about user value from the perspective of users and help users realize value flow. At the same time, after all, Web2 companies provide users with services and products to make profits, so we have to consider how to earn the same money under the new technical architecture and business model. In the Web3 era, businesses can no longer control all user data, so can advertising still be done? Does this channel still exist, and if you can't make money in this way, how can you make money? This is a very important point that Web2 companies must consider.

We believe that companies should actively investigate the feasibility of blockchain technology in their business and consider how to reconstruct our business model. One of the next shifts needed is to provide a platform for trading and monetizing users' data through blockchain, earning service fees for it. Or take the blog system as an example, in the era of Web3, the articles posted by bloggers may already have value, and users naturally have to pay to read his articles, so that bloggers can earn profits. So how does this profit go to this enterprise? The publisher of the blog system can collect a fee from this transaction to make a profit. Of course, whether this revenue situation can support the company's operation and ensure that the company makes money, this is also what Web2 companies need to investigate.

On the other hand, many Web2 companies are originally engaged in Internet infrastructure, and it is necessary for such companies to lay out Web3. Because Web3 originally had a very big goal in decentralized storage and distributed storage, Web2 companies can use the existing mature technology and experience to quickly cut into the Web3 field, in this field, as a pioneer to earn the first pot of gold, establish their own industry position in this field.

InfoQ: Decentralization is considered to be the core feature of Web3, can you explain to us in detail how Web 3.0 makes the Internet decentralized?

Weili Yang: Web3's technology stack can be divided into five layers from the bottom up. The first is the infrastructure and network layer, which provides the communication mechanism, interface, protocol, etc. of the entire Internet, and the most famous is P2P, a point-to-point network protocol. Blockchain technology is also based on P2P, which provides a decentralized foundation for Web3 from the very bottom. Above it there is a layer called the middle layer, or the lower chain, and then the protocol layer, which can also be called the upper chain layer. The purpose of the middle layer is to solve the scalability and performance problems of the protocol layer, and to solve part of the computing work from the top of the blockchain to the off-chain. Above these three layers are the API layer and the application layer, which provide the access interface of the blockchain for developers and ordinary Internet users, respectively. These layers provide us with a decentralized mechanism layer by layer, thus realizing the decentralization of the entire Internet.

InfoQ: Blockchain is the key technology behind Web 3.0, why is blockchain at the heart of this Internet iteration?

Willy Yang: When we define Web3, we expect the Internet to change again, to allow users to really own their data, and to determine the shape of the Internet. We found that decentralization can achieve this goal for us, and decentralization is exactly the product of blockchain technology, so blockchain has become a very core infrastructure of Web3.

Blockchain is an implementation of a distributed database, once the data is connected to the chain, it cannot be modified, so it also solves the problem of data exchange between different websites. There is only one copy of user data, stored on the Web3 network and stored on the blockchain; Different products and different applications need to access the user's personal data, which requires user authorization. But the data is such a copy, as long as it can be authorized, it can use its data under the user's authorization, which also solves the data exchange problem between websites or applications to a certain extent.

InfoQ: Is the only technical support for Web3 to implement blockchain? What role do AI, machine learning, cloud, and more play in the Web3 world? Is Web3's infrastructure building now in a mature stage?

Yang Weili: Blockchain only provides a means of decentralized distributed ledger, and the necessary core components of Web3 include storage, computing, and network, so blockchain can solve some problems for us, such as storage, and may also solve some computing problems. At present, decentralized storage is taking shape with the development of IPFS technology, but it has not finally reached the level of vision and needs to be further developed.

Next is the calculation. Smart contracts bring us computing power, developers of Web3 applications can define business logic based on smart contracts, smart contracts help to do specific calculations and implementations, support Web3 applications. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud technology are relatively higher-level applications, and they will also be applied in Web3. For example, AI can distribute data more efficiently and intelligently and optimize network performance. Behind cloud computing is a distributed technical architecture, which is not particularly different from Web3 in technology. Now these mature cloud vendors have a lot of experience and technology accumulation, which has a great role in promoting the development of Web3. At the same time, these cloud service vendors are now very likely to play a pioneering role in the Web3 field, and they may be the first to usher in industrial changes.

In terms of infrastructure construction for Web3, from the perspective of five-layer architecture, there are star products in each field. Web3 is still in the early stages of development, so artificial intelligence and cloud technology can be applied to the field of Web3. There are no disruptive new technologies in the Web3 field, it is more about the integration of mature technologies and achievements to solve some pain points in the Internet.

InfoQ: What is the current state of application development for Web3?

Yang Weili: The current development work is mainly divided into two aspects, one is based on some innovations of decentralized technology, which are still in the prototype stage to a certain extent, and there will be relatively few people to use or try in this regard.

Another general direction is to move the mature products of Web2 to Web3, such as Youtube and Facebook, which have competing products in Web3. Because the Web3 community ecosystem is very active, developers are also happy to put these mature products and concepts on top of Web3. This in itself is very important for the infrastructure development of Web3, because the needs of users and the functional requirements of the product can reflect the lack of infrastructure, so as to promote the further development of the infrastructure, which is a very good promotion for Web3 itself.

InfoQ: What is the employment situation in the Web3 space?

Willy Yang: In the past year, the entrepreneurial boom of Web3 has been heating up, and there are indeed a large number of Web2 engineers who have transformed to Web3, and this trend definitely exists. As for more and less, this is indeed a relative concept, which is not easy to measure.

There are also many teams working on the research and development of Web3-related technologies in China, but there is still no formed ecosystem of Web3 in China. On the other hand, how to define Web3 practitioners is also a problem. We can't say that someone is working on blockchain, he is a Web3 practitioner, this definition is not clear.

InfoQ: If there's an engineer who wants to become a Web3 developer today, what skills should he learn?

Willy Yang: In the Web3 field, especially the blockchain, the entire community prefers programming languages, one is Go and the other is Rust, which are also the preferred languages in development. Web3 developers' programming skills in this area are important. JavaScript also has a good usage ratio. Of course, as a developer, basic computer science knowledge is a must, and data, structure, algorithms, and networks must be familiar. Also learn about distributed systems, blockchain technology, smart contracts, these areas.

InfoQ: For today's technology companies, since Web3 is the future form of the Internet, should everyone be conscious from now on, more or less start to prepare for the future?

Willy Yang: Yes. Technology companies should look at Web3 technology from the perspective of user value, to see what kind of user experience it can bring to users, including data integration, personal privacy data protection, high security, etc., blockchain These technologies are very important, but not the highest priority. After all, technology companies still consider corporate profitability and business models, so they must think about what role blockchain technology can play in the business model, what changes other components in Web3 can bring to the business model of technology companies, and what form the company's products will be provided to users in Web3.

Then there's the topic of marketing. At present, marketing is still a very important channel to acquire customers, and Web3 will be different. The focus in the Web3 world is to build a community of consumers and customers that drive new customers by incentivizing the first users. In the Web3 era, this is something that all businesses need to consider.

The Next Generation of the Internet?

InfoQ: As the next generation of the Internet, Web3 is now in its infancy. So will there be anything iconic about its true realization?

Yang Weili: It should be difficult to have a clear sign, event, and time point. The consensus we can reach on Web3 is that Internet users can really own personal data, which is a very different Internet ecosystem. Then as we feel more and more changes in the permissions we have in our daily Internet use, we may gradually be able to feel the arrival of Web3.

Another very important point is the value of the user. In the era of Web2, we may not experience this concept. We now use the internet without paying, and most apps are free to use. It is very likely that in the Web3 ecosystem, we have to pay for the Internet, which is very different from the current usage habits, but this is likely to be the reality in the Web3 ecosystem.

So how do users earn revenue to pay for this? In Web3, it is very likely that everyone is valuable in the Internet, and we can create value in this virtual world, and everyone's value is not only reflected in offline work, but also online. We can monetize our works if we have writing skills, we can monetize our music works if we are good at music, and everyone in the Internet not only consumes content, but also has the ability to monetize our own value. Specific to paid channels, Web3 also has digital wallets, digital wallets can facilitate the management of our digital assets, personal identities, and things that seem troublesome now will have a very convenient solution at that time.

InfoQ: What are the differences and connections between the concepts of Web3 and the metaverse?

Willy Yang: Web3 and the metaverse are not necessarily connected. The reason why they are often compared is because the metaverse and Web3 have a lot of intersection at the core technology level. However, the metaverse emphasizes the concept of virtual reality, mainly to allow users to interact with each other virtually. Web3 is not limited to this direction, it is a decentralized network based on blockchain technology. The metaverse will use some very important technologies and infrastructure in Web3, so we can see the metaverse as a manifestation of Web3 to a certain extent.

On the other hand, many giants are betting on the metaverse field, so how decentralized are these metaverse products or concepts they launched? This is a question worth pondering. If they were still making a very centralized product, it would be very different from Web3. From this perspective, it is also difficult to define the future of the Internet as the metaverse. What route these companies hope to take in the field of Web3 and metaverse must also follow their own research and decision-making. It is difficult to say that they will definitely go all out in this direction in the future.

InfoQ: Why did Kaiyun Labs decide to lay out in this direction? What is your company doing around this strategy?

Willy Yang: Kaiyun Lab has been doing research in storage and computing for a long time. We are also optimistic and recognize the decentralized distributed storage and computing fields, believing that they are the two cornerstones of Web3. Because we are also optimistic about the future of Web3, we have done long-term research in this field and finally determined the main battlefield of decentralized storage.

In this field, we also found that decentralized storage still has a long way to go, so we have invested a lot of R&D resources to improve the scalability of storage and retrieval in the form of open source solutions, and then combined with decentralized databases and decentralized computing to provide computing power for the entire storage, hoping to provide data processing capabilities for decentralized networks and make data truly useful.

What we're focusing on is a Web3 database with ledger capabilities designed to provide storage and compute solutions for Web3. From the current development point of view, because the entire Web3 ecosystem is still a bottom-up layered architecture, we should first consolidate the bottom layer and then gradually develop to the application layer. With a sound infrastructure, we can provide a perfect user experience interface.

Controversy and the future

InfoQ: There are also some objections to the Web3 concept, and many articles say that it is a scam. What do you think of some of the skeptical voices that exist today?

Yang Weili: First of all, this concept is very popular, and because Web3 is gradually in the process of improvement and maturity based on some technologies we now recognize, there will be a small number of people who take advantage of technical and regulatory loopholes to carry out so-called leek cutting. Of course, I think that the emergence of these scams and problems is itself an education for the public. The Web3 ecosystem is certainly not a scam game, and the emergence of these scams or problems reflects some of the current problems in Web3. Market feedback can help Web3 mature and develop, and this so-called leek cutting behavior will become less and less.

Specifically, from the perspective of Web3's economic model, the rules of the game of this ecosystem are not perfect, and these illegal people use these loopholes to carry out some leek cutting behavior. Just like in our early process of making software, there will be many fatal flaws and vulnerabilities in the IT industry. It is through the feedback of the market and users that we find these vulnerabilities, so that we can continue to develop the technology field of the software industry, and then close these vulnerabilities to provide better products, and I believe Web3 will go through the same process.

Finally, there are still many areas to explore in the development of Web3. The reason why the mainstream of the Internet is now centralized technology is also because the technology itself is not enough to make these platforms decentralized. Since it's still centralized, it still has content that we can explore. Web3 practitioners can think about how to turn it into a decentralized architecture. At present, many organizations around the world, including domestic industries and universities, are actively exploring, researching and trying technologies in the Web3 field, and there are also many innovative achievements.