The Internet we often talk about refers to the Internet network, also known as the Internet. Through a network of networks and networks, a large network is formed by communication, and a single huge global network is logically formed. The nodes in the network are interconnected by routers, switches, firewalls and other network security devices, and access various servers and computing terminals to provide services, allowing users to use computers, mobile phones and other Internet terminals to access the network to enjoy services.
The Internet can traced it's origin from the US Army's ARPA in 1969, first used for military links, and then connected to four major computers at the University of California, Los Angeles, Stanford Research, UCSB (University of California), and Utah University. The agreement was carried out by Cambridge University's BBN and MA and began online in December 1969.
On the other hand, the NSF Network, originally funded by the National Science Foundation, is designed to connect five supercomputer centers across the United States for more than 100 US universities to share their resources. The NSF network also uses the TCP/IP protocol and is connected to the Internet. The ARPA network and the NSF network were originally for scientific research, and their main purpose is to provide users with valuable resources to share large mainframes. As the number of access hosts increases, more and more people use the Internet as a communication and communication tool. Some companies have also launched commercial activities on the Internet.
With the commercialization of the Internet, its huge potential in communication, information retrieval, and customer service has been tapped, making the Internet a qualitative leap and eventually going global. The emergence of the communication protocol and the www agreement further improved the entire Internet architecture.
After we understand the Internet, what is the value of the Internet?
The emergence of a new thing will inevitably require its best use, honesty and reliability. Nowadays, the Internet can be called the information Internet, and the information is shared on the Internet. In short, in the transaction process, the two parties can understand the details of the products through the Internet, and basically transparent to both parties. There are many understandings of the concept of value, the value of information, the value of real money, the value of property, the transmission of trust between people, etc., now online banking on the Internet, third-party payment platforms, various shopping sites, various The website of the certification body, etc., is actually a kind of transfer of value.
Perhaps in daily life, more concerned about the value transfer of property, but from the concept of the overall Internet, value needs not only a transfer, but more important is the transfer of trust, regardless of information or property, in the process of transfer The trust between them is a problem that exists all the time. The current model is through a large intermediary structure, major banks, major central organizations, etc. as a trust intermediary.
- For example, when you buy an item, the other seller and you are the first to pay the fee or the first transaction, this time you need a third-party intermediary to transfer.
- Or you have a certificate to tell the other party, but the other party can only be confirmed by going to the certification body or by a third-party circumstantial agency. The transfer of value between each other must have the problem of cumbersome process and cost of transmission. This is a question of trust between the two parties.
- So from the perspective of the Internet, your security control in the process of delivery will become a problem that needs to be studied thoroughly. Perhaps there is a tampering in the process of transmission, then the value of the final delivery is inconsistent with the value of the previous commitment. The problem.
- Security on the Internet is a problem. Confidentiality is also a problem. If any technical control in the process of transmission is threatened by security, personal information will be leaked, so privacy is also a problem of value Internet.
- The security and stability issues of the intermediary server, in the event of an interruption, the entire process will be stagnant.
Blockchain, driving the rise of value economy
As we all know, Bitcoin fired in 2013, when thousands of altcoins came out. After the suppression, most of them were forgotten by investors because of lack of innovation, and the real wave of the second wave of price increases was The intelligent contract platform allows many blockchain startup teams to easily issue their own tokens, and then evolved into an ICO boom, which was then stopped by the Chinese government. After short-term adjustment, it continues to ferment continuously on a global scale. And spread.
Then, the ICO project is definitely mixed, but after a deep analysis from the perspective of value economics, it is not so simple.
Below, we look at the value of the blockchain value ecology from the perspective of value economics.
When the ICO was once hot, many people linked the ICO to the IPO and formed a lot of conclusions. But when we go deeper into the analysis, we will find that there are actually many different places.
We know that the corporate system is the cornerstone of modern economic society. As a study of the existence of the enterprise, institutional economics was once popular in the 1990s.
Cos, the Nobel laureate in economics in 1991, proposed the transaction cost theory, that is, there is a set of transaction costs in the external market, which makes the economic activities in the external market completely uneconomic. When the enterprise is small, the division of labor within the enterprise is more Efficient, but as the scale of the enterprise expands, the organizational costs within the enterprise will gradually become larger. When the transaction cost of the external market exceeds the transaction cost of the external market, the re-expansion of the enterprise will no longer be economic, and the organizational cost and the market transaction cost will balance each other. The place is the reasonable boundary of the organization.
According to this theory, if the market transaction cost is low enough, the property rights can be clearly defined, and the enterprise does not need to exist. The individual rationalization behavior will make the whole society reach the Pareto optimality through external market transactions and cooperation.
Let's look back at the blockchain. In the blockchain economy, property rights are clearly defined and fully securely protected, and in a particular blockchain project, all major transactions pass established code or intelligence. The contract has been agreed, and the transaction cost is very low. Therefore, in this established project ecology, the market-based transaction cost based on the certificate is almost zero, and the enterprise organization does not need to appear. The individual chooses the market according to the rules of the game. It can make the whole ecology reach Pareto optimality.
Of course, this matter can be understood from another angle. The blockchain organization can make the internal organization cost nearly zero, so the organizational boundary can be expanded unconstrained until it covers the external imperfection and has higher transaction cost. market. Because the internal internalization mechanism of the organization is also based on code conventions, the expansion of the organization is equivalent to replacing the original market with the blockchain market. In fact, it is a replacement of the market environment.
Recently, some blockchain practitioners have proposed the concept of DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization), which is a distributed autonomous organization.
We believe that the blockchain project is actually an ecology, or an industrial cluster.
Similar to the existing ecological or industrial clusters, each participating entity can be regarded as an economic entity with independent accounting input and output and independent marketization. Everyone through the market-oriented mechanism to generate synergy and interest exchange, this ecology has no unified equity, no unified market value, is completely connected by the interest mechanism and various market-oriented ties.
However, the transaction cost of the traditional market is very difficult to change. To achieve low transaction costs, there must be clear and strict property rights definition, sufficient credit support and efficient and frictionless trading environment. The blockchain system is set by code and smart contract. Clear and low-cost trading rules, through clearing and fully secure property rights carriers through cryptography and pass-through, through the decentralization mechanism to achieve group-constrained credit endorsement, thus constructing a transaction in a specific blockchain system An extremely low cost ecological market environment.
In this environment, there is no need for the emergence of corporate organizations, because any enterprise with organized costs is uneconomical, individuals can completely benefit from market-based mechanisms, and the entire ecosystem is self-supporting without the support of corporate activities. Operation, through the individual interests maximization choice and frictionless ecological intra-market mechanism to achieve Pareto optimal.
To understand this, we can look at the ecology of Bitcoin. All of its participants can be an individual, but participants must run Bitcoin code in the Bitcoin ecosystem and pay the corresponding labor according to the code rules. Get the corresponding return. Because of this simple and effective ecological design, everyone just pursues their own interests according to the rules of the game, and the entire ecosystem has achieved perfect self-operation through the design of the code and the mechanism behind its interests, and has been verified by practice for nearly ten years. .
Therefore, the blockchain value ecology is a new species that is different from the organizational form of the enterprise. It is essentially an open market environment based on code and citation system. In this environment, there is no need for enterprise organization. And even if the existing industrial clusters, along with the development of the blockchain, can construct a blockchain ecology that creates similar value, this ecology will also attract existing high-friction market-based practitioners into the low-friction market. Chain ecology, in order to achieve organizational organization (in fact, to eliminate unnecessary organizational costs), that is, industrial blockchain, in fact, is the upgrading of the industrial market environment.
We know that the company creates value, and thus obtains a return on value, and the income minus the profit generated by the expenditure supports the value of the company's equity, so the value of the company is implemented in equity. Because there is no company in the blockchain ecology, there is no corresponding equity to carry the value. The value of the blockchain ecology is mainly reflected in the ecological operation of the blood, which is the root of the blockchain value ecology and enterprise organization. One of the differences.
Here, we would like to extend the point of view, from the perspective of value economics, the production relationship is actually a set of logic of value generation, and a model of group collaboration to create value. Both productivity and production relationships are created to create maximum value increment services.
The advancement of science and technology, the improvement of technology, and the increase in productivity are reflected in the increase in value increment, the optimization of production relations, and the improvement of collaboration efficiency, as well as the increase in value. Therefore, the progress of productivity and production relations is to serve the value maximization, and the total function is the value increment.
Therefore, there is another inference in value economics: an economy has an optimal solution in terms of production relations under the given conditions of human nature and productivity (technical boundary). That is to say, under the established boundary, based on the maximization of the total value and the validity of the distribution, it is possible to find the best production relationship.
To take a step back, in an imperfect environment, there is at least a reasonable state range for real economic operating rules. If this state is not met, under the benefit-driven, more effective economic operating rules and the resulting industrial clusters will dominate. And then to attract and promote the entire society to move to a better model.
In this sense, the blockchain is an improvement of the production relationship under the existing technology boundary conditions, because based on the code and the pass, the members of the blockchain value ecology can exchange and cooperate better, and the benefits are timely. Feedback can maximize the stimulation of ecological participants, and also allow more people to quickly enter the collaborative state. The improvement of this production relationship is the systemic dividend of the blockchain value ecosystem.