Zhang Zhongnan, the co-founder of AlphaWallet, shared the combination trend of NFT and DAO, and introduced the application scenarios of the new project AlchemyNFT.
Original title: “Wanxiang Blockchain Honeycomb Academy | Zhang Zhongnan: How does the integration of NFT and DAO empower Web3.0? 》
Written by: Zhang Zhongnan, Co-founder of AlphaWallet, Project Leader of AlchemyNFT
In the 55th issue of Wanxiang Blockchain Honeycomb Academy, Zhang Zhongnan, the co-founder of AlphaWallet and the project leader of AlchemyNFT, was invited as a guest in the live broadcast room to deeply share the integration of NFT and DAO and how to empower Web3.0.
Good evening, friends from Hive Academy! Today I will talk to you about NFT-related topics. I am not an expert on DAO, but I can share the role of NFT in DAO. First introduce myself. I am the co-founder of AlphaWallet and the project leader of the newly incubated project AlchemyNFT.
Today’s sharing is mainly in three parts:
The first part introduces what is a Non-fungible Token from a perspective that everyone has not paid attention to before.
In the second part, talk about the combination of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).
The third part introduces the new project-AlchemyNFT.
Let me talk about NFT first. We have been talking about the same thing since 2018, but the market has become more interested in NFT recently, so I can talk about it again.
In fact, the things that Tokens and smart contracts on the blockchain can do are very simple. They can register the ownership of certain tradable rights and interests. At the same time, smart contracts can be used to define what rules need to be followed when the form of ownership or the owner changes. This is what smart contracts can do.
As for what type of equity does Token refer to, and what exactly is the equity itself? This cannot be determined by a smart contract. Basically all digital services and all Internet services provide you with services and build markets based on equity information. Equity information may include what you own, or what you have done in a certain system, or something like It is the ID tag for you. It is basically information related to the user. This information can be used as the basis for different services and different systems to provide you with corresponding functions and corresponding services.
All kinds of transactions and purchases you make online are all tradable rights and interests. Just like you bought a cup on Taobao, at the digital level, what you buy is the right to get a physical cup, which is recorded in the digital world.
Therefore, the Internet can provide services and build various markets, all based on digital rights information. With the cryptography technology and blockchain, these digital rights and interests information can not only be recorded on a centralized platform, not only be verified and used by the centralized platform, but it can be tokenized. In other words, this type of digital rights information can be separated from the developer, or other centralized platforms, and be directly verified and used by a third party.
This is a very meaningful thing, because leaving the centralized platform to verify the use of equity information brings the greatest benefits in two aspects.
On the one hand, if these types of equity information are tradable, the subsequent cross-platform and cross-market will be very smooth, because there is no longer a need to cross-validate across countless central nodes, which is equivalent to building with very low friction Market.
On the other hand, if the rights and interests information can be separated from the centralized platform and directly verified between the user and the service provider that provides you with the service, it is equivalent to you having the opportunity to directly use the rights and interests information generated on other platforms. On any third-party platform. At the same time, the original issuer’s consent is not required. This greatly facilitates users and opens up the server market completely, so there are many benefits in this area.
Let’s take a look at the rights and interests information processed through cryptography technology and blockchain technology. They have become so-called tokens.
The rights and interests information represented by NFT and Non-fungible Token is non-homogeneous, which means that the rights and interests must be presented intact when used.
For example, if it is a ticket, it cannot be said to use half of its equity, because half of its equity cannot be used for admission, so half of the equity is meaningless. Or if it’s an artwork, you can’t say to tear the artwork in half, just look at half of it, and the other half will look at the other half. This is meaningless.
There is another aspect of non-homogeneity. It is not just that it cannot be divided. There are also some non-homogeneous rights that are completely unique in themselves, that is to say, there is only one, completely different from other rights. Therefore, the token used to refer to non-homogeneous rights and interests is NFT, Non-fungible Token.
Here are a few simple examples, such as identity-related rights and interests, such as the identities you get on various systems, such as your Facebook ID, WeChat ID, Twitter ID and other various identities , These things are non-homogeneous, and are related to you, are valuable information, and belong to the information of rights and interests. Although this information is not transferable in most cases, it can be used in different places across platforms, so it is meaningful to use Non-fungible Token to refer to this information.
Currently, about 90% of the non-fungible tokens on Ethereum are basically collectible rights and interests, which is equivalent to some kind of tradable rights derived from IP, which is referred to by the Non-fungible Token on the blockchain. There may be some big IPs, such as NBA projects, or there may be some small IPs in them. Small IPs refer to personal IPs, not to mention low value. Like artworks produced by artists themselves, or the so-called “fan economy” of some celebrities, collectibles derived from celebrity IP, these things are all IP-related non-homogeneous rights and interests.
There are two points worthy of everyone’s attention. When you buy NFT, or when you collect NFT and own NFT, what exactly do you own? First of all, you own 100% of the Non-fungible Token booked on the blockchain, which means that the ownership of this Non-fungible Token must be yours.
In addition, you have to look specifically at what kind of tradable rights and interests Non-fungible Token refers to? If it’s a piece of art, whether it’s a digital artwork or a physical artwork, does the Non-fungible Token you buy have a corresponding artist’s personal commitment, or a corresponding legal clause, or a corresponding The technical means (if it is a digital artwork) to ensure that the NFT you buy refers to complete ownership.
This area is quite interesting. If you look closely at most NFT distribution platforms, there are no special guarantees here, especially things like pictures, digital art, video, and audio. It is not necessarily the complete ownership of the video, the picture, the sound, and the IP.
In other words, from a legal point of view, after the artist sells this item to you, it can be re-sold, and it is entirely possible to re-use this item for other commercial purposes, because the one you bought is not It is not an NFT representing complete ownership, and dozens of different other types of tradable rights may be separated under complete ownership.
Another typical one is the very hot NBA TOP Shot. Not many people can tell exactly what you are buying. To put it bluntly, what you bought is related to the NBA IP, which is uniquely produced by the NBA official, and has no other purpose other than visual presentation. It is the ownership of a tradable right.
In other words, you do not own the so-called complete IP ownership of that video. This means that if you use that video to watch it on your mobile phone or on your own website, if you use it in other commercial situations, the NBA can sue you because you bought it. The thing does not contain the complete IP rights and interests of that video. What you buy is an abstract collection right with almost no use value.
For those who are willing to collect IP-related things, you need to know exactly what you are buying. What are you buying IP ownership? Are you buying a certain sub-equity under IP ownership? Or do you buy the collection rights that I said without any additional use value?
NFT can be used for various other rights in addition to the hot non-homogeneous rights and interests produced by IP. If you look at it abstractly, IP is just one of all products and services, and there are many other types of products and services. These products and services can be tokenized by using Non-fungible Token to Tokenize the corresponding products. And service use rights and ownership.
Just like NFT tickets, it refers to very specific rights, such as a football game. It means that the rights you buy are the rights that you can sit in this specific position to watch the game during a specific time period. , Is a redeemable right. For example, other types of products and other types of services can be tokenized through this redeemable and consumable Non-fungible Token. The imagination here is unlimited.
Tokenizing these things, everyone can directly see the benefits is that the suppliers of products and services have the opportunity to directly participate in the new financial system based on the blockchain.
Just like last year, I did an experiment with the local community government in Australia to help small businesses such as community-based small businesses (coffee shops, bakeries). Non-fungible Tokens are issued on Ethereum. These Non-fungible Tokens can be imagined as exchange vouchers. Each Non-fungible Token can be exchanged for a real cup of coffee in the store for drinking. In this way, not only can the exchange voucher be pre-sold, just like other paper voucher, it can be pre-sold. More importantly, we have deployed another set of contracts to help the coffee shop convert the NFT coffee voucher into Fungible securities for financing.
For example, you can mortgage the exchange voucher covering the coffee shop’s coffee production capacity in the next year into the contract, and add the interest that he is willing to pay to the mortgage. What is the interest rate for one year, and a fungible bond will be generated on the other end. If investors, communities, or people in other places are willing to support investing in coffee shops, they can buy new securities for coffee shops in addition to banks.
The good thing is that these coffee shops themselves issue NFT redemption coupons as long as they accept the matter themselves and are not subject to securities supervision. With NFT, coffee shops can convert NFT coupons into securities through any third-party contract and participate in the DeFi world of Ethereum.
I briefly talked about what NFT is and what it can do. Now talk about NFT+DAO.
Why do we separate the identity related? Because this part is easier to integrate with DAO. Let’s take a brief look at DAO. Digital rights are transformed into tokens through cryptography and blockchain technology. Later, there are non-homogeneous tokens and homogenous tokens. Everyone is more familiar with ERC20 on Ethereum. Tokens, they are homogenized tokens, and represent homogenous rights.
In the DAO, these tokens represent the basic voting rights. If the weight of your vote is determined based on the number of tokens you own, the token itself refers to the simplest and direct voting rights, used in decentralized autonomous organizations , Equivalent to constitute the simplest DAO. Of course, DAO can do all kinds of things, based on voting, based on community consensus, the other end can be connected to a smart contract or connected to other things, which can automatically perform some things, as for what it performs is not discussed in detail.
Talk about the combination of identity-related NFT and DAO.
Most of the current DAOs are extremely rudimentary, and many of them are very simple to determine your voting rights based on the number of tokens you own. In many cases, this design is unreasonable. In addition, most DAO systems and most smart contract systems basically use the wallet address as the only way in the system. The only way to identify users or to identify you is the wallet address. In fact, it is very easy to attack it, because you can create 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 addresses to vote. This is all right, it’s all right.
These two pieces are NFTs, or problems that NFT-based identification can help solve. If the NFT representing your identity or the NFT representing your identity is used in DAO, you can adjust the weight of voting based on various identities, which is equivalent to bringing a reputation system to DAO to a certain extent.
To give some simple examples, suppose there is a DAO like this, it especially hopes that users who are active on Twitter, if there are 100 followers, the weight is “1”, if there are 1000 followers, the weight is “2”, if If there are 10,000, the weight is “3”. If there are 100,000 or 1 million followers, your vote will take a lot of weight. This is equivalent to if you have a way to take out the user ID in the Twitter system, use it on the blockchain, and use it on DAO, then DAO can achieve the functions I just mentioned.
It’s also like doing some simple KYC, because it is very easy for you to create countless additional wallet addresses, but it is not very easy for you to create a so-called Twitter address with a certain degree of activity. This kind of attack can be prevented to a certain extent.
These two pieces are the help that NFT can bring to DAO that I can directly see.
As for how to use these digital identities on the blockchain, most of the identities are generated by different Web2 systems, just like you have an identity in the Twitter system, which is your Twitter ID. , You also have an identity in the WeChat system, which is your WeChat ID, and you have an identity in Facebook, which is your Facebook ID. This is your identity in different systems and IDs in different systems.
How can it be used on the blockchain? We released the Blockchain Attestation paper in 2018, which can realize ID Attestation. It is equivalent to improving the traditional Attestation technology so that Attestation can be used on the blockchain. There are three main problems to be overcome.
Traditional Attestation has been used in various digital systems for decades. But most digital systems are not the same as smart contracts. If you verify Attestation on it, only he himself knows that it is closed and will not disclose the content of verification. But the smart contract is different. If you don’t make any improvements at all, if you use the traditional Attestation in the smart contract, all verification content will be leaked while verifying.
In addition, when you think of the same Attestation as the identity used on different smart contracts, you must also ensure that it is not related. Suppose you use it on 5 different smart contracts. If these 5 smart contracts After use, if they all point to the same point and point to the same Attestation user, the more you use, the easier it will be for others to find you. You can use the content you use on different systems and add some additional information. You find out.
In addition, the smart contract should be kept atomic when verifying Attestation and Transaction. That is to say, attestation verification passes and Transaction occurs at the same time, and verification does not pass Transaction does not occur. It is atomic at the same time.
It is necessary to ensure that these three points are reached, so that Attestation can be used in smart contracts. We improved Attestation’s data structure, and implemented Attestation’s zero-knowledge proof verification in smart contracts. The most recent use was on the Attestation ticket system that we cooperated with the Ethereum Foundation. Their smart contract for the ticket system uses e-mail ID Attestation as the identifier of the system user, and it is used for e-mail ID Attestation verification. With the zero-knowledge proof method, we have optimized the gas consumption to basically the same as doing ERC20 Token Transfer, which is completely usable.
The above is about what NFT is and the possible combination of NFT and DAO I want to share.
After that, I will briefly introduce the new project that also uses the blockchain Attestation, including ID Attestation-AlchemyNFT.
Like what I said earlier, AlchemyNFT supports Web2 ID Attestation, which means that AlchemyNFT can identify all kinds of Web2 ID, your e-mail, your account in different systems, and you are in various forums. The account number, all kinds of Web 2 ID are available. The method is to convert Web2 ID into Web 2 ID Attestation, so that Attestation can be used in the AlchemyNFT smart contract.
Including the first AlchemyNFT-based product that will be launched in May, called AutographNFT. Allow users to take your NFT and ask for Autograph signatures from others. The signature is achieved through Twitter ID Attestation. When the other party signs you, you can imagine that he signed with Twitter ID. Here we use Twitter ID Attestation. technology.
The advantage is that you can know to a certain extent that the person who signed you is indeed the person you want to find, because most of the Twitter ID is associated with the real person you want to find, at least it is the owner of the Twitter ID. .
Another point is that the party giving the signature, because the contract system not only uses the wallet address as the identity identifier, but also uses the Twitter ID Attestation as the identity identifier. What can be achieved is that it doesn’t matter whether the person has a wallet or not. If there is no wallet, create a new wallet for you. You can use a different wallet each time you sign. As long as his Twitter ID does not change, there is no problem.
Attestation can be used not only on ID, but also in other places, just like AlchemyNFT contract can realize NFT issuance based on Attestation. Simply put, you can imagine that you can issue NFTs without paying gas fees, and you don’t need to pay gas fees when you sell NFTs on the primary market. There are also complex transaction models based on Attestation. You can write complex transaction logic in Attestation, imagine it as an attachment attached to the Transaction you submit, so that the smart contract can understand the complex transaction mechanism you write in Attestation , Will execute the corresponding transaction and execute the corresponding offer according to your requirements.
In addition, the AlchemyNFT contract also provides a function, which is also discussed by everyone now, which is the Wrapping function of NFT, which locks an NFT to generate a new NFT, or locks several NFTs to form a new one, or It is to lock fungible Token to generate NFT, or mix fungible Token and Non-fungible Token to lock together to generate a new NFT. In principle, some data structures are defined to map the relationship of these tokens.
At the application level, you can use such a contract to achieve something similar to the derivative and re-creation of NFT, such as you add a sound to a picture, you add a picture to the music, and you put together several groups of different NFTs to form a collection. , You put together a few NFTs and a few fungible Tokens together to make a new NFT, and you invite others to recreate on your existing NFT artwork, such as the first small product we are going to launch, AutographNFT. The simplest creation is essentially to take your NFT and let others sign on it and give you a Twitter ID Autograph. This is equivalent to the simplest creation, adding extra value to the original NFT. These functions are provided by the contract in AlchemyNFT.
AlchemyNFT also includes the TokenScript framework that we have done for more than three years. This part has also received more and more attention recently. We have received a lot of inquiries from institutions and individuals.
The simplest description of using TokenScript on NFT is that it can add a variety of available rights to the NFT, or simply imagine that it can add various functions to the NFT, not just looking at a picture, listening to it You can use it to open the door, you can use it to enter the game, you can use it as a discount card, you can use it to enjoy the additional information of NFT, you can use it After communicating with the NFT issuer, the NFT issuer can continue to inject various functions into the NFT, and third parties can also. In addition, it is equivalent to allowing any third-party product/service to directly understand what rights and interests the NFT represents, what it does, and how to operate it, so that Non-fungible Token can be used in various places.
For a slightly easier to understand example, just like the recent digital art market, many digital artists have given us feedback that their creation has been limited by the platform’s ability to present, because they used to sell most of the digital art It is a USB flash drive. There are only original files in the USB flash drive and the environment required for the original file to run and present. The digital artworks they create are not simple photos, pictures, sounds, and videos. Rather, it is similar to the constant change over time, or the constant need for additional input from the artist, which can be imagined as a complex, living digital artwork.
This kind of thing can’t be presented in various Wallets (except AlphaWallet), or marketplaces such as OpenSea, or other types of websites or platforms. The only place that can be presented is to go back to the platform used by the artist for distribution, or download the corresponding software used by the artist, so that you can see and hear it, and you can receive the artwork through your senses.
This is equivalent to restricting the possibility of artists using NFT to refer to the ownership of this type of artwork, because even if it refers to it, you can’t do anything after you buy it, because you do have NFT in your wallet, but apart from watching There is nothing other than the NFT name, no pictures, no sound, and if you want to sell it to others, no one else knows what it is. This part of the problem can be easily solved by TokenScript.
Those who are interested in learning more about the AlchemyNFT project can communicate more later. Let me share today, thank you for your time.
