On the midnight of March 1, 2018, ChainNews invited the founder and CEO of the recently popular blockchain project ArcBlock, Mao Zhihong, also known as "Lao Mao", to share insights on entrepreneurship. At the same time, nearly 20 WeChat groups, with a total of over 5300 people, were online listening to this sharing session.
ArcBlock, hailed as the hottest star blockchain project in the blockchain field in 2018, is the world's first blockchain service platform and ecosystem dedicated to developing and deploying decentralized applications (DApps).
The project received early investment from Ding Lei, the founder of NetEase, and Ding Lei also personally served as the project advisor for ArcBlock. After understanding the vision and design blueprint of the ArcBlock platform, Ding Lei quickly made an investment decision, hoping to use his experience and expertise in the previous generation of internet entrepreneurship and promotion to apply it to the next new era.
Blockchain red star "Lao Mao" and ArcBlock#
ArcBlock project founder and CEO Robert Mao, known as "Lao Mao", is a well-known technology innovator and serial entrepreneur in the industry. He has served as a researcher at Microsoft in the United States, as well as an invited expert of the World Wide Web Consortium W3C, and is also a co-founder and the first chairman of the board of directors of the Seattle Entrepreneur Association.
Ding Lei and ArcBlock project co-founder and CEO Robert Mao, from left to right
Mao Zhihong set up ArcBlock with great ambitions, hoping that the project could play a role similar to that of Cisco, AOL, and Netscape, driving the popularization of the internet. It aims to serve as a cornerstone in advancing the internet upgrade through the use of blockchain technology.
In MaoZhihong's view, the current development of blockchain is similar to that of the Internet in 1993 or earlier. At that time, the public was full of expectations for the application prospects of Internet technology, but only a few geeks could go online, lacking visible and tangible application services such as browsers, Email, chat software that mass users could use. At that time, the market urgently needed companies like Cisco to build Internet infrastructure, service providers like America Online (AOL) to enable ordinary users to access the Internet, and browsers like Netscape to allow users to consume online content with pictures and text like reading a magazine. The ArcBlock project provides a future possibility for this goal.
In addition, the innovation of ArcBlock project lies in its unique computing power system.
In this blockchain 3.0 era, the application platform is driven by a token economy system. ArcBlock's "miners" do not rely on mining cryptocurrencies, but rather earn token rewards by contributing computing resources to the platform and providing reusable components, new services, and deployable applications for other developers and users.
Both providing "Blockchain as a Service" (BaaS) for developers, but ArcBlock's approach is fundamentally different from that of other centralized large companies and institutions. It aims to create a blockchain ecosystem initiated by the founding team, ultimately built and operated collaboratively by the entire community for self-growth and evolution.
It is precisely because of the innovative highlights that ArcBlock project has received close attention from the industry and many investors at the beginning of 2018, with great expectations.
Great guests arrived.#
The Chain News Society launched the "Guest Interview" online event for the first time in 2018, successfully inviting blockchain celebrities to participate. Mao Zhihong, the founder and CEO of the ArcBlock project, interacted directly with about 5300 online listeners, including developers and followers in the blockchain field and investors in the ArcBlock project, through the platform of the Chain News Society.
During an hour-long interview, hundreds of fans of "Chain News Society" directly asked questions to Lao Mao. The entire interactive process was simultaneously broadcast to dozens of blockchain online communities.
Lao Mao detailed how the ArcBlock project will help various industries seamlessly connect with existing systems and services to fully leverage the empowering role of blockchain technology in existing business data, users, and processes, promoting the transition of blockchain from concept to implementation. He also specifically discussed his views on blockchain 3.0.
"Lao Mao" says that "Blockchain 3.0 will move towards consumer-friendliness"#
Lao Mao believes that Blockchain 3.0 applications should be able to move towards a "consumer-friendly" state, allowing ordinary consumers to easily use them.
"Whether it's the current popular Bitcoin or Ethereum, these encrypted digital currencies are basically designed for geeks, making them very difficult to use. Most tools and environments are very confusing. This should no longer happen when the era of Blockchain 3.0 arrives," remarked Lao Mao in the interaction.
ArcBlock's incentive mechanism, which many professionals in the blockchain field are concerned about, has also been explained in detail.
In his view, ArcBlock's incentive mechanism is called "Intellectual Mining." ArcBlock encourages developers to share their components on this platform, so some developers can focus on developing a complete application, while others can focus on solving a specific component.
"For example, ArcBlock has an open chain access protocol that can support many different chains. In addition to the chain supported by the platform itself, there may be a new public chain or a particularly good public chain that is entirely supported by developers themselves." He introduced to the ChainNews community, "Developers who focus on supporting new types of public chains should be rewarded. If others use this new chain, they can receive incentives. ArcBlock's incentive system itself will also continue to improve and adjust during the formation of the ecosystem."
A bright future lies ahead.#
In addition to Ding Lei serving as a consultant for the ArcBlock project, a professional international consultant team has been formed. Members include: Salman Dhanani, co-founder and co-president of TeleNav, a map navigation company; Justin Tomboulian, former Chief Information Officer of Microsoft Japan, now Vice President of LiquidHub; Mike Cartwright, Chief Technology Officer of DigitalTown; Lawrence Lerner, blockchain strategist; Maggie Wu, CEO and co-founder of the blockchain investment bank Krypital Group; Violin Wang, COO and co-founder, as well as advisor to Cybermile. They provide consulting and resource support for the application landing of ArcBlock in various industries such as IT, education, travel, health, and smart cities. The structure of ArcBlock's consulting team emphasizes the future commercial landing layout, with members having comprehensive backgrounds in international large companies and startups, reflecting ArcBlock's strategic intentions for the future.
In 2017, ArcBlock completed 80% of the engineering in the first phase, including concept verification, prototype design, open chain access protocols, cornerstone programs, distributed subscription gateways, token economies, and other architecture developments. During this process, ArcBlock team members and the company successively joined a series of standard organizations, academic institutions, and foundations such as the W3C Blockchain Community Organization, IEEE Standards Committee Blockchain Community, Linux Foundation, and Hyperledger Foundation to conduct exchanges and cooperation, and the ArcBlock platform design received high recognition from expert peers.
ChainNews believes that blockchain 3.0, which focuses on developing and popularizing decentralized applications, is expected to penetrate the real business world within a year, promoting the popularization of technology and the implementation of applications.
It is worth mentioning that on the evening of March 1st, the online guest interview jointly organized by Chain Wen Society and ArcBlock project attracted more than five thousand supporters and enthusiasts. In just one hour, the price of ABT also rose during the same period.
In 2018, ChainNews Center will focus on the professional service spirit in the field of blockchain, aiming to help blockchain projects that truly have the potential to create the future and change the world through more direct interaction, giving them the opportunity to interact directly with blockchain developers and enthusiasts, promoting the popularization and application of blockchain technology, co-creating an ecosystem, and witnessing every moment of blockchain changing the era with a professional spirit.
Transcript of dialogue interview#
Host: Please welcome our guest speaker, Lao Mao to say hello to everyone.
Lao Mao: Hello everyone, I am Lao Mao. It is a great honor to participate in this event. I am very happy to see so many friends here attending such a technical lecture close to midnight. I can feel everyone's enthusiasm for blockchain, which is truly an honor. So tonight, I will try my best to share everything I know. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask. Thank you all.
Host: How to determine the entrepreneurial direction of blockchain application platforms? What suggestions do you have for blockchain entrepreneurs looking for entrepreneurial directions?
Lao Mao: Confirming the entrepreneurial direction of blockchain application platform is actually the result of our exploration. When starting a business, everyone knows that choosing the right direction is very important, but in many cases, it is difficult to get it right at once. Many entrepreneurship masters and practitioners in the past have summarized their experiences and lessons learned, and I think one particularly important point is to Fail Fast, that is, to quickly try and make mistakes. Through continuous trial and error, quickly knowing what is wrong, and then the relatively correct will emerge.
For us, our attempts on the blockchain initially started with applications. We always wanted to find a use case to implement blockchain. However, when trying to develop applications, we found that various blockchain platforms, public chains, and tools are still in very early stages. There are countless pitfalls to avoid, and countless problems to solve. In other words, it's a blank canvas.
As a team with rich engineering experience, we feel that since these basic infrastructures are not perfect, we must improve these technical parts, even if this framework is only used by ourselves, we must also ensure that these basic frameworks are well done.
Another very important point is that when you are building the basic framework, you cannot work in isolation. It is very important to communicate with peers. When I have some ideas and frameworks related to the platform, I find peers to communicate together. The result of the communication surprised me. In fact, the lack of such a blockchain development application platform and basic tools is a common problem, not only encountered by us, but everyone has the same problem, and in fact, there are many similar problems.
For example, I don't know which integrated chain to choose; I feel confused about all kinds of underlying chains; I don't know when to make what kind of choice. These are the problems that we solve in building this blockchain application platform, which are actually the problems I faced when I first started preparing to build applications.
After a series of attempts, choosing a direction became much easier, because we ourselves encountered this series of pitfalls, and many peers also encountered them. So if we can create such a platform to help fellow developers solve these problems, that itself is a very good direction.
Host: Once the entrepreneurial direction is determined, what is the first thing to do? What are the special requirements for the team in blockchain entrepreneurship different from traditional Internet entrepreneurship?
Laomao: As I mentioned in answering the previous question, for us, this direction is not something we have determined, but something we have explored. So when we decide to go in this direction, in fact, many things have already started to be done, or even have been done to a certain extent.
I think whether it is blockchain entrepreneurship, mobile internet entrepreneurship, traditional internet entrepreneurship, or what is now fashionable to call "classical internet entrepreneurship", there is not a particularly large difference. Regardless of which way of entrepreneurship, it requires a team with a very strong pioneering spirit, constantly and quickly trying and making mistakes.
Do this, don't hesitate, we have to do everything first. Once you have an idea, rush up, quickly try and make mistakes, quickly discover, quickly reject some unrealistic things. Don't spend too much time thinking slowly or doing things slowly, or doing things presumptuously.
Host: I see your technical background is very strong, and media publicity also points out that blockchain entrepreneurship has very high technical requirements, which makes many entrepreneurs afraid to get involved. What do you think?
Lao Mao: In several interviews I've talked about one view: don't think of blockchain as something very profound. In fact, blockchain and its difficulty are as difficult as any previous Internet startups, artificial intelligence, etc. But they are not insurmountable; it's just that because it's still early for blockchain, many people don't understand the specific details of blockchain. At the same time, the internet is full of all sorts of noise, making many people think it's very mysterious and difficult.
I always feel that blockchain is actually the most basic computer science, and only has some basic requirements for many computer science foundations.
The design of this platform, ArcBlock, is to help more entrepreneurs reduce the development cost of blockchain entrepreneurship to some extent. The positioning of ArcBlock is to create a platform to share our knowledge, our best practices, and the framework we designed. This allows everyone to more easily develop blockchain applications. As more and more developers join our platform ecosystem, we can make the platform stronger and more user-friendly. As a result, the development and entrepreneurship barriers in the blockchain industry will become lower.
Host: Why did Ding Lei invest in the ArcBlock project, and how do emerging projects find the right advisors?
Lao Mao: You should ask Ding Lei about this issue. How this project attracted him to take the initiative to find me, and because of this project, he came to me, participated in the project, and became an advisor to me.
When it comes to finding the right experts, investors, or advisors, I can still share some advice.
The first suggestion, if you are really doing a project, the consultants and investors you find must not be people who just give you a platform, but people who can truly provide you with real help.
If you just want to be a figurehead and use others' fame, that's just a marketing tool that needs to be promoted. But a truly helpful advisor to a project should be able to contribute their own strength and experience, which is very important.
When it comes to attracting good experts and investors to pay attention to their own projects? I think the first point is that you must first make the project good enough to be recognized within your knowledge range. The better the project, the easier it is to gain support from others.
On the contrary, if you only have some very vague ideas, even if you have good relationships, the ability to reach some good investors, good experts, and he sees that your project is not attractive enough, it will be very difficult for him to provide advice and support on this!
If your project itself is very good, your ideas are very creative, then good investors and good advisors should have the vision to discern this. The ability and vision of good investors or advisors can determine the value of your project. So, good projects naturally attract good investors and advisors willing to participate.
During the development of ArcBlock, a lot of time was spent on how to properly write the whitepaper and design the project. We also sought advice from some professionals I respect to hear their suggestions. However, these are purely about seeking opinions and asking others to help us improve the proposal.
The original purpose was just to ask others for some suggestions on our white paper and framework design, without any other meaning, but when others realized it was a very good project during the participation process, some people took the initiative to become our consultants, to be our investors.
So my core advice to everyone is that entrepreneurs should first go all out to improve the attractiveness of their projects and the details of their projects. Once these things are done well, advisors and investors will naturally come, instead of spending too much energy on how to establish relationships with them.
Moderator: In the ArcBlock whitepaper, it is mentioned that there are some core issues with existing underlying blockchains, such as low performance, non-consumer friendly, high cost, platform lock-in risks, etc., which all pose obstacles to the landing of applications. How do you think entrepreneurs should avoid these issues?
Lao Mao: These issues are all problems we encountered when trying to develop applications using existing blockchain technology.
It is precisely because we initially tried to start from the perspective of developing applications, and encountered these problems as developers ourselves, that we clearly understand where the pain points of these problems lie. After having the services provided by ArcBlock, it will become easier to do some basic development based on our framework. So I think entrepreneurs should try to make the most of existing resources at any time. If there is a good platform, then you should try to use this platform as much as possible, instead of reinventing the wheel.
Another point is that entrepreneurs should first focus their energy on their own businesses. For example, issues such as blockchain performance, blockchain selection, and platform lock-in are indeed real problems, but the most important thing for a startup project is still to solve the problems that the project itself needs to solve, and to concentrate time and energy on addressing those points. The underlying issues can be handed over to other specialized platforms and tools to solve. For example, ArcBlock focuses on solving these problems, in order to allow developers to concentrate all their energy on their own business systems.
Host: Please introduce ArcBlock's incentive mechanism to us.
Lao Mao: Similar to many blockchain projects, what ArcBlock has built is not just a software service platform, it is an ecosystem. The so-called ecosystem means that ArcBlock provides an environment for more people to join us in building this platform together.
In order to enable everyone to participate better in such an ecosystem, incentive mechanisms become very important.
In the Bitcoin network, Bitcoin itself serves as an incentive mechanism, encouraging everyone to contribute their computing power to maintain the operation of the Bitcoin network, known as the so-called "mining". So in the design of ArcBlock, we also have a concept similar to mining, but this mining is quite different from Bitcoin mining.
ArcBlock calls it "intelligent mining", we encourage developers to share their components to this platform, so that some developers can focus on developing a complete application, and some developers can focus on solving a specific component.
For example, we have an open-chain access protocol that can support many different chains. In addition to the chain we support ourselves, there may be new public chains or other particularly good public chains that can be supported by developers themselves. Developers who spend energy supporting this new type of public chain should be rewarded. If others use this new chain, developers can receive incentives.
"Regarding ArcBlock's incentive system, we have made some basic introductions in the whitepaper, more details may still need to be constantly improved and adjusted in the process of ecosystem formation."
Host: You have mentioned before that Blockchain 3.0 is the future that ArcBlock is striving to achieve. How do you define Blockchain 3.0?
Lao Mao: The definitions of blockchain 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 originated from a book called "The Blueprint of the New Economy of Blockchain." The author mainly mentions 1.0 blockchain in this book, mainly referring to digital currency; 2.0 blockchain mainly refers to smart contracts, and using this blockchain to express more than just digital currency; blockchain 3.0, its main purpose is decentralized applications.
In my opinion, how the blockchain era is "applied" is very important. Digital currency and cryptocurrency are just one type of application. In fact, blockchain can play a significant role in various fields and industries, meaning that blockchain technology can have a transformative or disruptive effect on almost every industry.
Improving and disrupting various industries, as well as achieving the prosperity of decentralized applications, is the future of blockchain 3.0. So for ArcBlock, it is precisely seeing the possibility of an application that requires extreme prosperity. This is the scene that should appear in the era of blockchain 3.0.
The purpose of our framework is to allow developers to focus on their own businesses, with the opportunity to more easily create a prosperous series of applications.
In addition, I would like to add my personal opinion on "Blockchain 3.0". In the era of 3.0, blockchain applications should be able to friendly reach consumers, allowing ordinary consumers to easily use them. The applications of blockchain, whether it's Bitcoin or Ethereum today, are basically designed for geeks, relatively difficult to use, and most tools and environments are confusing. If the era of "Blockchain 3.0" arrives, I think these confusing situations should no longer exist.
Host: You have started many businesses before. Compared to your previous entrepreneurial experiences, what are the different experiences and challenges of starting a blockchain venture like ArcBlock this time?
Lao Mao: In the era of blockchain entrepreneurship, compared to the past way of entrepreneurship, I think the biggest difference is that in the past, when starting a business, we usually first created products or services, and then gradually found users. At this time, it is a very typical "chicken and egg" problem. Many times, the biggest difficulty in entrepreneurship is being stuck in a closed-loop state. Entrepreneurs create a product, but for a long time, they still haven't developed customers. As a result, when there are customers, they may realize that they have targeted the wrong demand.
In the process of starting ArcBlock, we adopted the currently popular token crowdfunding method in the blockchain era. We communicated early on with potential future users and participants through white papers. During the product development process, we began to form a consensus with each other. Through this token crowdfunding method, we can more effectively form a consensus with future customers and partners early on, effectively solving the chicken and egg problem.
This process demonstrates the three major values of blockchain.
The first value has significantly reduced the cost of validation. Because the cost of validation has been reduced, trust is easier to establish. Now this trust is essentially consensus, and everyone believes in the trust brought by blockchain.
The second value is the reduction of the cost of network formation. Because there is trust, incentive mechanisms, and network effects are easier to form, forming network effects makes costs lower. Everyone knows that in the Internet age, the formation of network effects is almost the most critical factor for the success of a product. The blockchain era makes the cost of a product forming network effects lower, or in other words, in the blockchain era, the formation of network effects can occur earlier.
The third value is also the essence of blockchain, eliminating middlemen. I even think it is more important than decentralization. We no longer need intermediaries to do many things, including profit distribution, trust building, and so on.
In short, I think forming a large-scale customer and ecosystem is very, very important for any product or service that supports product entrepreneurship.
The blockchain era can adopt more advanced methods to reduce the cost of network effects, which is very valuable for entrepreneurs! Therefore, every entrepreneur should consider where there are ready-made places worth utilizing, and make good use of the trend of the times. Whether it is to reduce the difficulty of starting a business or to gain better momentum for your own business, in short, fully utilize existing models and convenient trends to make the entrepreneurial journey smoother.
Host: Time is almost up, less than 30 minutes left, for everyone to interact with Lao Mao, you can start asking Lao Mao questions. Please choose the questions, and respond directly. The next time is yours!
Q1: Is the current outlook for blockchain games very optimistic?
Lao Mao: Today, many people may have been flooded with an article about the combination of blockchain and games. Personally, I think blockchain games, such as the popular "CryptoKitties" that everyone has seen, were very popular recently. This type of game, I would say, is a very beneficial attempt to combine blockchain and games.
The popularity of Ether Cats also indicates that many people are willing to try such a new thing. "Ether Cats" as a game itself, its entertainment value and other aspects are relatively limited, but there are still so many people willing to participate, which is very interesting. It goes beyond the entertainment value of the game itself, with investment and collection of Ether Cats, similar to collecting valuable game cards. This is inseparable from the properties of blockchain itself being closely related to money and cryptocurrencies.
Blockchain and games have been effectively combined, almost allowing every game to have the potential to be directly tied to virtual currency. From a certain perspective, its space is very large. Although the combination of blockchain and games is still in its early stages, it has quite broad prospects, not only in terms of the entertainment of games, but also in the combination of value and points it brings.
Q2: How is blockchain combined with traditional agriculture and poverty alleviation?
Lao Mao: This is a very good meeting point, I even think this belongs to an important track within blockchain applications.
First of all, let's talk about the combination of blockchain, agriculture, and the internet. In the United States, IBM and Walmart have achieved considerable success in applying blockchain to food traceability. Agricultural products, especially organic ones, if they can automatically manage the relevant attributes of products such as origin and packaging through the Internet of Things from production, transportation, to storage and processing, and the details of transportation under what kind of environment, all through blockchain. The management method. Therefore, the application of agriculture, the Internet of Things, and blockchain in food safety, food traceability, and potential food recall events will become particularly valuable. The combination of agriculture, the Internet of Things, and blockchain is a very valuable space.
From the perspective of poverty alleviation and charitable donations, I think that the inherent transparency and tamper-proof features of blockchain can also enable participants who are willing to donate, willing to participate in poverty alleviation, and willing to participate in public welfare to reach consensus and trust in the transparency of charity. This is also very valuable for promoting the development of the entire charity industry itself.
About food traceability and charity should already have some cases, explaining the application value of blockchain in this area.
Q3: Is ArcBlock comparable to NEO or Ethereum? Can it surpass them?
Maomao: Our positioning is a development platform, and as everyone can see, a very important design here is that we use an open chain access protocol.
This design also allows us to not position ourselves in direct opposition to existing public chains in the development of future blockchain applications, but to treat existing public chains as our partners.
Although today's public chains still have various problems, on the one hand, we believe that they are constantly evolving, and we believe that all public chain technologies can advance. It is normal to have some problems now, and everyone is evolving and developing.
From another perspective, the application of chains must be a combination of "on-chain and off-chain", and a complete application is likely to have the need for "cross-chain" existence. ArcBlock's positioning enables us to focus on how to help developers develop complete applications faster and better, while also integrating with mainstream public chains, so our relationship with public chains will be cooperative rather than competitive. From this perspective, we are not seeking to surpass, but rather to seek common development.
Q4: Did you have any accumulation of blockchain before doing ArcBlock?
Lao Mao: Our project is to personally do things, and also want to mobilize more people to lead more others to do this thing. Any technology requires a long process of accumulation, especially for new technologies. I have always been more sensitive and interested in new technologies.
Sometimes, interest in some new technologies does not need to be very purposeful, you may not immediately think about what to do with it, but out of curiosity. Entrepreneurs or developers, they always need to keep their curiosity. Whenever you see a new technology, even if this new technology temporarily has no direct relationship with what is happening now, keeping curious and trying to figure out where it is interesting, what can be done, may make it easier to generate inspiration in the future.
Q5: Have you considered incorporating iOS, Android, and other mobile devices into ArcBlock's development ecosystem?
Lao Mao: This friend thinks very well! Because in the future, it will be more important to have a world of mobile applications. In terms of applications, desktop applications may be less important than mobile applications.
ArcBlock is now positioned as a development platform for applications. There is no doubt that we have put a lot of thought into how blockchain is used on mobile devices, so in the SDK finally released by ArcBlock, there will be a very important mobile application framework, aiming to make it very easy for mobile applications to integrate with blockchain and provide application services.
Q6: As more and more large companies get involved in blockchain, what challenges do entrepreneurial companies like ArcBlock face?
Lao Mao: First of all, I think this should be a good thing. Only more and more people pay attention to this direction. Even big companies, when they come in, may create a certain degree of competitive pressure, but for the entire industry, it is a good thing.
When we started, the concept of blockchain was still unknown, apart from speculation, no one cared about its practical applications. When talking to colleagues or investors, when they heard about blockchain, they thought it was too early and not interested. After experiencing these periods of neglect, compared with the current flourishing state, I would definitely prefer to find more colleagues and people interested in this in this flourishing era to work together.
In comparison, competition is actually not a big deal. Competition can more effectively motivate entrepreneurs to fully walk their own unique path, better stimulate innovation and inspiration.
Another important feature of blockchain is the "decentralization" feature, which requires existing majority of companies, traditional economic model companies, and so-called "classical internet" companies to rethink blockchain correctly. After all, the core of all their business models, the core of their business models, are built on the foundation of "intermediary platforms".
The greatest value of blockchain is decentralization, which poses a significant challenge to many traditional internet companies and businesses. If you go all in on blockchain, it will have a major impact on your existing business model that is essential for survival and generates substantial profits. So what should they do? They need to consider carefully.
For startups, it is a typical "barefoot is not afraid of wearing shoes" state. Companies that innovate and start businesses are more willing to come up with extremely innovative and revolutionary solutions because they do not have a past foundation, overthrowing the interests of the older generation and creating a completely new path. So I think blockchain is a particularly friendly opportunity for entrepreneurs.
Q7: Will ArcBlock cooperate with listed companies? Is there any ambition to enter the top ten?
Lao Mao: I think this issue is actually very interesting. We are about to announce a series of partners, including some listed companies and quite large companies, even some very traditional companies, all of whom have shown strong interest in working with us.
We can reveal that in the upcoming cooperation, there will be several very important industry heavyweights, including some companies listed in China and the United States. I am very confident about whether we can enter the top ten.
Because everyone is counting fingers, as an application platform for blockchain, we are the first project to propose the concept of an application platform. In the public chain category, there are not many projects that can establish a truly robust and colorful public chain. So for us, the real challenge is not whether ArcBlock can enter the top three, but whether ArcBlock can become the first.
Q8: Why do we choose CMT as a partner?
Lao Mao: You may know CMT, CyberMiles is a blockchain system optimized for e-commerce. In my opinion, this is a very interesting idea.
Because now everyone is discussing a problem, what will the future blockchain look like? Will all applications be unified on a few public chains? Or will there be various different chains, each carrying a different application?
In my opinion, in the future, it is unlikely that applications will be limited to just a few public chains, but there will be a situation where a relatively large and diverse set of chains coexist. On the other hand, I also don't think that every application needs its own chain. For a very typical application scenario like e-commerce, having a chain that is specifically optimized for this scenario is very valuable.
Based on this consideration, I think that e-commerce will still be a very important application scenario in the future. Therefore, cooperating with blockchain technology companies like CyberMiles is very beneficial for the interests of us developers in the future, so we have chosen to cooperate with CMT. And this cooperation is conducted in a very advanced blockchain manner, without the need to sign agreements or contracts, but directly establish a deep cooperative relationship by accepting CMT's tokens.
I believe in the future, cooperation between many blockchains can surpass the current protocol-based approach and instead use token exchange.
Q9: TPS may be the key to winning in the blockchain 3.0 of the future! How does ArcBlock achieve hundreds of thousands of transactions per second?
Lao Mao: First, we adopt a new consensus algorithm called Proof of Randomness, which can be referenced in the Algorand series of papers by Turing Award winner Professor Silvio Micali. The Proof of Randomness algorithm can be considered an improved version of PoS, with higher efficiency because it randomly selects a small number of nodes each time to form a consensus, but it is more decentralized than DPoS used by EOS.
The current risk is that Algorand, among others, has not been validated in real-world scenarios and is still in the theoretical and experimental stages, but such improved consensus algorithms are an important foundation for improving the performance of blockchain in the future.
Of course, the algorithm is just a small part of it, there are still many engineering problems that need to be integrated to provide a comprehensive solution.
The scheduled deadline for online interviews is midnight, but Lao Mao still answered the last question carefully in text, and reminded to collect any missed questions as much as possible and respond in writing in a timely manner.
Lao Mao: Thank you everyone. Today, from morning till night, this is already the 8th meeting... There is another meeting waiting for me below. This is the typical life of blockchain entrepreneurship. I have to leave first; otherwise, my friends waiting for me at the meeting will be too late.
Original link:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/PVj6LIB21wloxa5tcYoNeg
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/r99LfTwhpM4rH9Moj-NmXA