After Musk acquired Twitter, the layoff storm had not yet subsided, and Musk, who had just taken office, started another fire.

Last Wednesday, Musk fleshed out his vision for Twitter in a public conversation on Space. He allegedly envisioned users connecting their online bank accounts to the social media service and integrating payment functions into Twitter. In other words , Twitter has set its goal to be a "one-stop platform" similar to WeChat. That is, from a simple social platform to one that covers more functions, from games to shopping to payment, etc., to carry more needs of users, and payment is the entrance to all extended services. This idea has been put into action recently. On November 10, according to a FinCEN document obtained by The New York Times, Twitter submitted a document last week and has entered the payment business .

However, it is obviously not an easy task to make WeChat in overseas markets. Whether it is Facebook, WhatsApp, or "Kik Messenger", the former enlightenment of WeChat, they have all tried to become super applications like WeChat, but the results have all ended in failure. The outside world also generally believes that Musk's move will probably face many difficulties.

What is the biggest challenge facing Twitter in payment? Can the concept of Web3 empower the payment business of this huge traffic entrance? This article will review the privacy payment protocol and decentralized identity aggregation protocol in Polkadot, and explore the possibility of combining Web2 and Web3.

Difficulties of Payments on Twitter

For Twitter, the pain point of transforming from a single content publishing platform to a comprehensive software may be the issue of data security .

Twitter obviously does not have the privacy of instant messaging today. Instead, it is more like the "Weibo" of overseas markets and more like a content publishing platform. In other words, the exposure of Twitter identity information is no longer limited to the circle of friends of hundreds of people, but a global scope of hundreds of millions of people.

As a public content publishing platform, Twitter's information security is not optimistic . In July 2022, hackers sold the data of 5.4 million Twitter accounts for $30,000 (about 200,000 RMB). This is not the first time Twitter has had a data breach . In January 2019 , Twitter disclosed a security vulnerability that it had fixed, which had caused many users' private tweets to be leaked for more than four years. In December 2020 , the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Twitter 450,000 euros for failing to promptly notify and adequately record the violation in this data breach.

Once Twitter carries financial attributes, hackers' activities to destroy data security will obviously become more rampant. In addition, the consequences of account data leakage and theft will obviously be more serious.

In addition to this, not only payment, but if Twitter wants to become a super APP, it often needs to obtain numerous privacy permissions , which is intolerable to Western users, and is also contrary to the more stringent antitrust laws and privacy protection laws of many European and American countries.

Twitter’s potential in conjunction with Web3 protocols

For Twitter, ensuring sufficient data security and privacy is the key to success in launching its payment business.

Coincidentally, privacy and security are also important components of the Web3 movement . In the Web3 era, users will tend to protect personal data privacy in a more thorough way, which will lead to the transfer of data ownership and value. With the decentralization of applications, when on-chain data can be checked, user behavior, generated data and even application protocols also need to be protected.

From the perspective of technical implementation , privacy protection is multifaceted, including privacy protection of the basic blockchain platform, storage data privacy (distributed storage), user private key management, anonymous protocols, and many other aspects.

In terms of application scenarios, privacy protection is not limited to Web3, and there are also cases of integration with Web2 products. The encrypted communication application Signal announced in 2021 that it will launch a user peer-to-peer payment function in its rapidly growing encrypted communication network. To this end, it has integrated support for the cryptocurrency MobileCoin (MOB).

As Twitter is the most important gathering place for Web3ers, Binance also has a place in this acquisition. In addition, Musk himself has always paid attention to cryptocurrencies such as BTC and DOGE. From the outside world's point of view, Twitter's future reform direction Web3 is not without room for development . After all, the combination of Web2 and Web3, we have seen its development potential and future trends from real cases.

How does Polkadot solve Twitter’s Web2 problem?

As a leader in the cross-chain ecosystem, Polkadot, founded by Gavin Wood in 2016, has always been moving forward with the goal of becoming the infrastructure of the next-generation network. More than a hundred ecological projects are continuously entering the Polkadot ecosystem through parallel chains and other means, and these projects involve multiple fields such as privacy, security, payment, and DID.

Manta Network

Manta Network is a privacy-centric solution for the DeFi and Web3 ecosystem on Polkadot. The platform uses cryptographic techniques such as zkSNARK and Groth16 to provide an end-to-end privacy layer for various on-chain activities.

Manta Network was founded in 2020 as a layer 1 scaling solution. Unlike layer 2 solutions, Manta's privacy protection features are part of the network's core architecture rather than being built on other blockchains. The platform will launch multiple privacy protection protocols in the DeFi space, including MantaSwap — a decentralized privacy trading AMM platform and MantaPay — a decentralized privacy payment protocol.

MantaPay allows users to privatize public assets, transfer private assets, and redeem private assets to public addresses.

MantaSwap is an AMM DEX that allows users to trade while maintaining privacy. MantaPlatform introduces programmable privacy assets, allowing developers to create privacy-preserving applications. For example, creating a privacy auction application to prevent the strategy from being exposed to bidding opponents.

Manta also created a new asset type zkAssets based on ZKP, which supports private transactions between Polkadot parachain assets, as well as homogeneous tokens such as ERC20, non-homogeneous tokens such as ERC721 and ERC1155, and private transactions of soul-bound tokens (non-transferable non-homogeneous tokens).

Compared to existing privacy solutions such as Monero or ZCash, Manta Network provides on-chain privacy protection for mainstream assets such as BTC and stablecoins anchored on Polkadot parachains by leveraging Polkadot to provide seamless cross-chain interoperability .

Raze Network

Raze Network is a cross-chain privacy middleware protocol developed based on the Substrate framework. It aims to maintain cross-chain audit transparency while providing end-to-end anonymous payment services for the entire DeFi field in the Polkadot ecosystem through zero-knowledge proof technology.

Justin Kellison, CEO of Raze Network, believes that the privacy of Internet users is not effectively protected at present. In addition to the abuse of a large amount of data by large companies such as Facebook and Google, various network attacks such as dust attacks also make users' identity activities traceable, which easily leads to phishing scams. Among them, the user's money payment behavior data is the most sensitive, so it is crucial to keep it confidential.

The Raze Network core technology module is the second layer of anonymous payment for the DeFi ecosystem. The module will be imported as a Substrate-based smart contract and will be used as a general plug-and-play infrastructure for Polkadot, allowing users to hide their account addresses and financial information before joining DeFi. Since the Zether framework supports the Ethereum account model, the Raze contract will support tokens issued in the Polkadot ecosystem (such as DOT and Kusama) and ERC-20 cross-chain private payments, thereby significantly increasing the liquidity of the Polkadot ecosystem.

Raze Network uses zkSNARK zero-knowledge proof scheme, which does not require any trusted setup. Users can use Raze Network to achieve the privacy of on-chain transactions by hiding the identities of the parties involved, transfer amounts, account balances, and hiding the entire transaction history.

Litentry

In addition to privacy protocols, decentralized identity (DID) is also a potential technology for integration with Twitter.

DID refers to a completely decentralized identity that allows individuals or organizations to fully own, manage, and control their digital identities and data. That is, your identity information is not stored on a server of a certain organization and controlled by a certain organization, but distributed on many computers and is completely controlled by you. From this perspective, DID may be able to eliminate the square attributes of Twitter users to a certain extent, allowing users to quickly log in and speak with a trusted identity while keeping users anonymous.

Litentry is Polkadot's first multi-network-based decentralized identity aggregation protocol, with a decentralized identity (DID) indexing mechanism and a Substrate-based credit calculation network. Its goal is to help decentralized identity aggregation, verification, and credit calculation. Its products include Litentry WebApp, Litentry Graph, Drop3, etc., and currently provide aggregated identity transmission support for Phala World.

Once there is such a digital identity aggregated from different chains, the application scope of the existing blockchain can be profoundly expanded, such as: Diversified application scenarios: Aggregated digital identity can realize credit query, identity authorization and authentication, and can also realize functions including single account multi-chain login and proxy payment, and can also be combined with off-chain applications. For example, data from LinkedIn and Twitter, expand the dimensions and application scenarios of aggregated digital identity.

Summarize

Musk's taking over of Twitter has, to a certain extent, brought hope for the Web3 protocol to enter Web2 products. The decentralized privacy protocol and decentralized aggregated identity protocol created for DeFi in Web3 have the same financial attributes as Twitter's transformed payment business.

At the same time, the privacy track project of Polkadot ecosystem has taken shape . In addition to Manta using ZKP technology to create privacy assets and privacy payments, Phala combines TEE and blockchain to protect user data privacy while completing complex calculations; Automata combines TEE with Oblivious RAM algorithm to prevent user data from being viewed, changed and accessed by third parties, thereby preventing MEV and privacy voting, etc. Similarly, Litentry, a leader in the emerging DID track, also provides a new direction for Twitter user ID .

I believe that with the gradual implementation of these infrastructures, as long as Twitter is willing to embrace Web3, Web3 will have the opportunity to reap Twitter's 200 million daily active traffic.