Blockchain technology has come into the limelight with Bitcoin so far, and in just over a decade, the technology has evolved into one exciting new engine after another for virtual assets, digital collections, meta-universes, Web 3.0, and more.
In the past 2023, blockchain and WEB3 were less popular and replaced by big AI models, but the technology of blockchain and WEB3.0 is still evolving, and blockchain & WEB3, and AI are converging with each other to promote each other! Some people even call it “2024 will be the year of AI tokens”.
Some startup start-ups have also emerged around the combination of blockchain and AI. For example, AstraAI is an AI project that leverages data science, deep learning, and big data to provide innovative solutions on the blockchain, and AstraAI’s auditing service will provide comprehensive security and performance analysis for crypto tokens, decentralized applications (DApps), and blockchain networks.
WEB Internet after nearly 30 years of development, to the people’s life and work has brought great convenience, but the business is gradually maturing at the same time, but also exposed the problems of this generation of Internet technology and inherent shortcomings, security issues are prominent, the contradiction between the regulation and development of the increasingly prominent, giant monopoly brought about by the industry border problem, these three major problems if there is no solution, it will seriously impede the industry’s technological development. .
Blockchain technology was originally born in bitcoin, but as a technology itself, its distributed decentralized, statistics-based decision-making system has the reality of the fact that security, bitcoin was born so far, although there is no governing body, but heavy has not been broken, which shows a problem, the theoretical security of the Internet technology is impossible, but based on the reality of statistical blockchain technology security is completely feasible.
Before this, there were also various solutions in the industry, the Internet security of various technologies and investments also rose and fell, and the main direction of efforts is theoretical security, but this has never solved the problem, and the problem is also getting more and more serious.WEB3.0 technology is based on distributed decentralization of the whole set of Internet technology, the basic core idea from the blockchain decentralization, traceability, and statistical decision-making system based on a natural fit with the needs of the next generation of Internet technology. It naturally fits the needs of next-generation Internet technology.
Three areas of potential for blockchain and WEB3:
(1) Digital Currency Goes Through a Tough Quality Period
After several years of development, DeFi’s application scenarios have become increasingly rich, and the data bears witness to DeFi’s growth trajectory. in 2023, total assets on DeFi reached $28.6 billion, an increase of 22.5% in just two months. Over the same period, the Nasdaq index grew by 11.03%.
The future development of decentralized finance, as the first major application scenario, is still immeasurable. with countries testing decentralized financial applications and building a regulatory framework for virtual assets, in the future, decentralized finance will not be guarded against traditional finance, and the borders of the two sides will be gradually opened up or integrated using synthetic assets, etc. The CeFi black swan event of 2022 has enhanced users’ awareness of risk and more users are turning to diverse platforms including decentralized finance. The black swan incident of CeFi (centralized finance) in 2022 enhanced users’ awareness of risk, and more users began to turn to diverse platforms including decentralized finance, and the total asset size of decentralized finance is expected to increase rapidly with the inflow of more assets.
On January 11, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) simultaneously adopted 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs, including Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, Hashdex Bitcoin ETF, iShares Bitcoin Trust, Valkyrie Bitcoin Fund, ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF, VanEck Bitcoin Trust, WisdomTree Bitcoin Fund, Fidelity Wise Origin Six of the ETFs will be listed on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), three will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and two will be traded on NASDAQ.
Bitcoin Spot ETFs are important in two main ways. First, they increase accessibility and popularity, with Bitcoin ETFs serving as a regulated financial product that provides access to Bitcoin for a broader group of investors. With a Bitcoin Spot ETF, financial advisors can begin to direct their clients to invest in Bitcoin, which is significant for the wealth management space, especially for those who have not been able to invest directly in Bitcoin capital through traditional channels. Second, regulatory recognition and enhanced market acceptance. An SEC-approved ETF would alleviate investor concerns about security and compliance as it provides more comprehensive risk disclosure, and a more mature regulatory framework would attract more investment, this regulatory clarity is critical for market participants to help them conduct business in the cryptocurrency industry.
The passage of the Bitcoin Spot ETF certainly puts Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on a new footing in history.
(2) The new WEB3 architecture is taking shape.
WEB3.0 will make the next-generation Internet become a telecom operator (e.g. China Mobile, China Telecom). Internet has been integrated into everyone’s life, the Internet infrastructure and business have become a social public infrastructure, with water, electricity, and public transportation more and more similar to the nature of the Internet infrastructure public infrastructure, Internet business is also the public infrastructure services, the weak commercialization of the Internet will be a long-term trend, and the current Internet companies will be divided into Internet infrastructure technology providers and Internet operators, basic technology providers or commercial operation. The current Internet companies will be divided into Internet basic technology providers and Internet operators, the basic technology providers or a commercial operation, and Internet operators will be like the current telecom operators, with the dual identity of commercialization and public service nature. To achieve this purpose, corresponding technical support is needed, decentralized infinitely scalable to support the whole society’s ultra-large-scale operation, statistical decision-making system based on the construction of an impenetrable security system, anonymous traceability can be achieved to protect the privacy of the Internet citizens and the responsibility system.
The Web 2.0 network faces technical challenges such as security, privacy, transparency, authenticity, etc., as well as the problem that power or interests are heavily concentrated in third-party platforms. Therefore, the “decentralized” feature of the next-generation Internet Web 3.0 is widely recognized.
Large-scale, factual security, anonymity, and traceability are the core features of the next-generation Internet, and the WEB3.0 technology system is exactly in line with the trend in this regard.
A more autonomous, secure, open, and fair Web 3.0 Internet environment based on blockchain starts with the establishment of decentralized identities for users, encouraging active participation, the need to guarantee the security and privacy of transmitted and processed data, and the construction of secure decentralized applications (Dapps).
The decentralized transaction processing of Web3.0 is an attempt to solve the problems of central platform monopoly and imbalance in benefit distribution by using the blockchain’s capabilities of trusted collaboration, distributed execution, data protection, asset transfer, and other capabilities to further integrate the information, business, and value flows, and replacing the existing Internet application services with more standardized and concise on-chain smart contracts, eliminating the dependence on the central institutions. Currently, blockchain technology research is active, and the consensus, scalability, cross-chain, sharding, and other technologies involved are progressing rapidly.
Blockchain is a key technology for Web 3.0 to build trusted interconnections and interconnections of value. As a new decentralized infrastructure, blockchain itself is constantly evolving. Blockchain’s decentralized identity, smart contract, incentive mechanism and privacy protection help realize Web 3.0-based data security sharing, business circulation, and user rights and interests protection, to achieve fairer value distribution and value flow.
(3) Digital Token and smart Contracts (IoT, Digital Collections, etc.) are more widely used
Blockchain is a new distributed infrastructure and computing paradigm that utilizes block-chained data structures to validate and store data, distributed node consensus algorithms to generate and update data, cryptography to secure data transmission and access, and smart contracts comprised of automated script code to program and manipulate data.
NFT will enter a period of rationalization after a few years of violent collision, and will not have a big development, nor will it die out completely.
Blockchain-based Token technology will gradually increase its application in IOT, anti-counterfeiting, and traceability. Zero-knowledge proof technology further catalyzes the maturity of Token application.
Zero knowledge of proof (ZKP) technique is an important privacy protection technique, proposed by S. Goldwasser et al. in the early 1980s, which means that the prover convinces the verifier that a certain assertion is correct without providing any useful information to the verifier.ZKP technique guarantees the validity of data without disclosing sensitive information due to its good reliability, completeness, and zero knowledge. ZKP technique guarantees the validity of data without disclosing sensitive information due to its good reliability, completeness, and zero-knowledge. Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) will also play an important role in the future of cryptocurrencies and the Web3 for scalability and user-permitted privacy.
2023/2024 – Disruption is in full swing as ZKP becomes a major component of product growth.
2024/2025 – Applications utilizing ZKP and ZKP platforms dominate.
