“What Mask Network wants to do is a collection, a bridge linking Web 2.0 to Web 3.0.”
Original title: “Interview with Mask Network: Let more people experience a more open Internet | Spark Interview”
Interviewee: Suji Yan, founder of Dimension.im
Finishing: X-Order
1. Mask Network recently developed a new feature for convenient trading of cryptocurrencies on Twitter, which has attracted the attention of many people in the circle. I would like to know why you developed this partial trading function? Because before you were more focused on encrypted information and DID (decentralized identity) in social networks?
Suji: We are actually building a decentralized ecology. Now everyone is making new things, Web3, NFT, DAO, DID, DeFi, but no one connects the new world with the old world.
We talked about this concept last year. We think the biggest enemy is the giants in the centralized world , including Facebook, Amazon or other giants. From last year to now, we have also seen many changes. For example, Twitter’s CEO Jack stated that “ agreement is required, no platform ” and he is ready to decentralize Twitter. One year has passed since this matter. Of course, Twitter still has a lot of secret things to do (Twitter CEO: ), but this thing is very important.
In addition, we have also seen a lot of new things in this new industry, not just open finance; but overall, I think this circle has not expanded. If you look at the MetaMask download data, it has always been 1 to 2 million, and there is no further growth. We and Dan, the co-founder of the MetaMask team, are old friends. In fact, their downloads exceeded 2 million in 2017; and now in the industry It is equivalent to a bunch of geeks and programmers speculating on new concepts . Maybe Old Money or sovereign wealth funds will only buy Bitcoin, and new projects lack the possibility of getting out of the circle.
In this case, we still have the same idea as before: Can Mask Network connect the new world with the old world?
What we have been doing before is the first step, that is, can we connect the information on the Internet with the decentralized identity? Because if you don’t have a decentralized identity in the Internet world, you don’t have a cryptographic public key, you can’t encrypt messages, transfer encrypted currencies, and you can’t play anything in the new world.
For example, on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, you don’t really have your own identity. Your original identity is an asset of Facebook and Twitter, and they can handle your identity whatever they want. If this is the case, let alone open finance, no decentralized company can develop. Therefore, the first step in Mask Network’s selection is to make an encrypted identity.
Red envelope applet
Our relationship with decentralized finance is actually very deep, much deeper than most Asian projects. In February of this year, we reached a cooperation with Maker, which specifically created a payment function to allow users to send and receive red envelopes directly on Twitter. We did not publish data for the “Red Packet” function at the time, but what can be confirmed is that it is Maker’s largest traffic source besides DeFi.
We have verified a piece of data. Maker’s stable currency is DAI. Now it has 80,000 to 90,000 Holders, while there were only 40,000 Holders before “312”. Among these 40,000 people, after on-chain analysis, you will find that only With 20,000 living people, the rest are basically trading robots.
I am actually surprised that Maker has so few users. After all, DAI is a very important project in decentralized finance. We have communicated several times with their founder, CMO, and domestic leader Pan Chao, and we are very grateful for their support for our cooperation activities during the Chinese New Year. According to statistics, the red envelope activity of Mask Network & Maker alone attracted more than 1,000 real users (equivalent to live users with an increase of more than 5%), and also attracted the participation of Ethereum founder Vitalik.
Of course, these people may not use DeFi to do a lot of things, because the user experience is still more complicated, but this proves that the Internet/Web2.0 platform is the entrance, and this entrance needs a bridge, even if it is Ethereum, Maker Such a successful project also needs this bridge.
This incident has strengthened our confidence that no matter how big the decentralized Internet industry seems to be at present, if we can use our infrastructure to let this new world have more users, it is very valuable, and all All projects require Mask Network.
Maker had a market value of US$500 million at the time, or many projects with a large market value in the industry. They may have achieved this market value through TVL’s asset pool size and favorable secondary market. But we also believe that there is a bubble in the industry, and we also agree that bubbles are additive to the industry, because everyone needs bubbles to encourage the industry and encourage projects. But thinking about it carefully, Twitter’s decentralized red envelopes can attract many users, which shows that the connection from the old Internet to the new Internet is ignored by many people.
So, not just red envelopes, can contracts and applications be spread on Internet platforms? So we cooperated with Gitcoin and made a donation function, see Decrypt for details.
Now that foreign countries are affected by the epidemic, many organizations and people need to donate and raise funds, not just for medical supplies, such as “Black Lives Matter” events. Due to the epidemic, these people and organizations cannot accept offline donations. They I dare not post Paypal QR code on Twitter to collect payment. So we developed a plug-in in cooperation with Gitcoin that can make donations directly on Twitter.
This is also the first time that these disadvantaged groups have been able to raise decentralized tokens . In addition to this, Gitcoin and the Red Cross, as well as some non-governmental organizations of the United Nations, have cooperated. They can also use this tool for public welfare activities, supported by Mask Network.
We have developed a system for each of the above functions. Anyone can develop a small program or small application through the technical framework of Mask Network.
As we all know, DApp is currently the largest market in the blockchain industry, and both DeFi and NFT can be classified as DApp. There are people involved in development on different tracks. This reminds us of a question: ” Can we make something bigger than DApp, so that the DApp market will expand 100 times or 1000 times? “
So we developed a technical framework called DApplet (Decentralized Applet), which can be directly inserted into Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Simply put, Mask Nertwork can load small programs into Facebook or Twitter, and they won’t know it; or it can be decentralized through our technology, so that social platforms cannot block it. We should be the only team in this industry that has mastered this technical framework and is willing to open source it.
Although many big companies are willing to do it, they can’t open source. In fact, many people are modifying the agreement, including MetaMask, and it is no longer free to use its open source code.
Decentralized storage
After finishing DApplet, the next problem we need to solve is storage: Can a file be sent to the decentralized world and displayed on Twitter at the same time? It will become a very important part of a social network. This year Mask Network and the decentralized storage project Arweave conducted in-depth cooperation, and now it is possible to upload and store decentralized files on Twitter or Facebook.
You may ask, why use Arweave or IPFS? Although IPFS mining machines are being hyped up, in fact, the experience of using these projects is not the best. I don’t think you need to ask why you want to use these functions, as long as this function is easy to use, everyone will use it. Mask Network will make decentralized storage simpler and easier to operate.
Arweave’s decentralized file storage function has been integrated into the Twitter plugin
Quotes + transactions
Recently, DeFi has attracted the attention of many people, including us, but we are curious: Twitter CEO Jack is also a believer in decentralization, but why doesn’t he add some open finance-related functions to Twitter?
After consulting with our internal legal team and some legal professionals, we found that there are many restrictions on the traditional financial secondary market for market functions. A centralized market will have a lot of regulatory requirements. You may need to become a broker or a dealer first, get a lot of licenses to do these businesses, and even have a lot of additional restrictions. This is very important for an international social network. Troublesome.
This gave us an idea, since Mask Network has DApplet technology, can we go further. After discussing with CoinMarketCap and Uniswap, we directly developed a product that allows users to directly see the market on Twitter and automatically identify trading pairs for trading.
You can buy $UNI directly on Twitter
Maybe it’s because we launched it at a better time point, or because this demand is a rigid demand. Mask Network is supported by many practitioners and enthusiasts, including Uniswap founder Adams, MetaMask co-founder Dan, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji.
Everyone was surprised when they saw this feature. Why can I trade directly on Twitter? In fact, it is very simple. Mask Network allows users to directly publish encrypted text on social platforms, so they can also directly conduct transactions. This is just that different functions are embedded in the same product. What can be done in the future requires users to help us. Thinking.
Mask Network is a complex of all race tracks and the largest entrance to the decentralized world, because we are the first bridge to connect to the centralized world-when they talked with Uniswap, they thought this idea was too cool Up.
After all, if compared with Facebook and Twitter, Bitcoin now only has a market value of more than 100 billion U.S. dollars, while Facebook has more than 600 billion U.S. dollars. Maybe Zuckerberg’s assets alone can compare our entire market.
In the final analysis, this industry is still too small. What we have to do now is to attract more people’s attention and enter this industry. Only when we find the rigid needs of users and lower the threshold of using the decentralized world to everyone who is interested in using it, can we attract more people to pay attention to this industry. So let us take the lead to bring together well-known projects in the industry and do some interesting things together.
Whether it is decentralized finance or storage, it is an indispensable function in the decentralized industry. What Mask Network wants to do is a collection, a bridge linking Web2.0 to Web3.0. Now, we are still cooperating with the Polkadot ecosystem. For example, Mask Network is also a member of Web 3.0 Bootcamp; Near and Solana also maintain a good relationship with us.
2. How do you cooperate with so many well-known projects in the circle?
Suji: The projects mentioned above are very powerful in our industry, but compared with Internet giants, they are all too small. Even though the market value of many projects is high, these projects only shake the financial industry a little. Banks may worry about Bitcoin, but they may not worry about the current DeFi, because the industry is still in the learning stage. And social networks or technology giants will not worry about these.
Then can we combine all the power, whether it is Ethereum, Polkadot, IPFS, DeFi, NFT, can be connected to the new world through the bridge of Mask Network?
We think it is possible. Many internal projects in the industry are very powerful, and they use their own understanding to innovate. Although we are still relatively early and small in size, everyone is willing to cooperate with us in depth. The reasons may be two points:
- Mask Network has grown rapidly;
- Mask Network is the most direct entrance, and will become the largest entrance in the future.
By cooperating with Polkadot and the Ethereum ecosystem, we successfully moved Polkadot and Ethereum to Twitter and Facebook. Although we have only made some small plug-ins so far, the subsequent imagination is unlimited. In the world of blockchain, everyone must first have an identity, that is, DID. Without DID, there is no encryption, without encryption, there is no general cryptography, without cryptography, decentralized storage, cross-chain, NFT, and DApp. exist.
It took more than 10 years for Bitcoin to reach a market value of more than 100 billion. As long as Zuckerberg and Bezos work together, it seems that the entire industry can be blocked. Therefore, we must unite and not overly compete with each other. Only when we cooperate together can we truly realize a decentralized world.
Everyone thinks that giants are terrible. China has Tencent and Ali, and the United States has Twitter, but it is a kinder giant. Others such as Facebook and Apple are even more terrifying. And if these giants move casually, the industry’s infrastructure may be suppressed all at once.
So, we learned an early Internet project: Netscape Browser, which was competing with Windows at that time. At the time, Microsoft was a giant monopoly and refused to open source. Even when Bill Gates pre-installed systems for various governments in China, he threatened to refuse to open the code, and that Windows was the only operating system that ordinary users could use. The birth and development of the Internet changed everything. The early Internet was very difficult to use. Linux and programming Terminal must be installed, and the forums could only be viewed by typing in the codes. Perhaps only university professors and geeks were playing. At that time Ma Huateng was a famous forum. Moderator: The early Internet, which was difficult to use, is exactly the same as the situation in the new decentralized world.
Marc Andreessen, the founder of the famous A16Z fund, was a student of UIUC at that time and he learned the spirit of Tim Berners-Lee. Tim made the prototype of the early World Wide Web and a supporting browser in Europe at that time, so Marc said that I would also want to make a browser Mosaic, which later became a very famous company-Netscape.
At that time, Netscape did such a thing. They did not support Microsoft’s approach. Their idea was to allow users to go to an open new world and obtain any information through a browser running in Windows, and the operation was very simple. , There is almost no use threshold. There are so many interesting things in this new world. In the process of gradual development, Microsoft is scared!
Because the browser will grow bigger and bigger, it will eventually become an operating system, and at this time Microsoft will become an empty shell. Users do not need to buy Windows, because it will eventually become a free product. Under pressure, Bill Gates personally decided that Microsoft IE copied Netscape and pre-installed this improper means. Then there was a problem between the two companies. A “war” caused both losses, and finally the US Congress held a hearing, and the Justice Department forced Bill Gates to retire early.
For details, see: “”, suji yan contributed to the Curiosity Daily in 2016
Of course our goal is not so exaggerated. However, the current situation is somewhat similar to before. Ethereum may be like the Internet of the year. Although it is cool but the barriers to use are high; the current Internet giants are very easy to use, but very closed. It can ban users or ban users at any time. It’s forbidden.
So I wonder if I can do something more innovative on the Internet: directly use DeFi, NFT, DAO, Ether, Polkadot and other decentralized projects on modern Internet applications. In this way, we are equivalent to a huge bridge, and this bridge is still decentralized.
3. Will you issue coins?
Suji: Our goal is to continue to promote the development of decentralized networks for a long time, and decentralize ourselves-Ethereum and other governance tokens are some good examples. Of course, it is not convenient for me to disclose the plan now. You can continue to follow our trends.
Mask Network will make many specific attempts in community governance and voting. Speaking of governance and voting-these are very complex economic and political issues. I discussed this with Glen, the author of Radical Markets, and I published a column specifically discussing the future labor of digital assets. In October of this year, CAA-INS will cooperate with CAA-INS of the Institute of Network Society of China Academy of Art. They are an organization that specializes in network society research, and they have also done specific research on voting. I also invited Vitalik, Glen, Arweave founder Sam, EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation, has repeatedly engaged in cryptography-related litigation, including the recent decentralized exchange disputes with the U.S. regulatory authorities in legal battles) director Danny Come and participate together.
There are many other plans for Mask Network in the future, and we will implement them step by step. And doing these things is just for a goal, so that more people can experience a new and more open Internet.
“The governance model of the people, the people, and the people will last forever in the cyber world.”
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