The Meta Account Layer is the portal into the Web3 Metaverse

The current Web3.0 is more like a limited set, with only decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized creator economy (NFT&Gamefi&Metaverse), and decentralized accounts and identities (Connect Wallet) as visible elements. It is rare, and even without any hardware technology support. It is completely virtual and attempts to directly challenge the "traditional Internet" under surveillance capitalism.

There is a special group in the world with a population of about hundreds of thousands. They have puzzling beliefs (no less than the two-dimensional group). They have been committed to building cryptocurrency. In order to cater to the world's recognition, they later evolved into a "blockchain"-based battlefield, a revolutionary technology that sounds more like a benefit to mankind (rather than confrontationalism). The "blockchain narrative" has been supporting the industry for five or six years. The result of changing the narrative is that it has become larger. A new generation of networks based on blockchain has been formed, with a completely different underlying architecture and underlying logic from the traditional Internet, and several waves of large-scale network effects have emerged (especially in 2020 and 2021).

When the "blockchain narrative" is no longer enough to support today's industry expansionism, Web3.0 (more precisely, "next generation Internet") was officially launched on the stage of the times in order to start the great journey of the second decade. Web3.0, like the industry that promotes it, has no proposer or authority center, but is a product of "inexplicable" consensus among hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It sounds more like an information revolution that benefits mankind than "blockchain". Therefore, at the beginning of the second decade, the concept of technology is fading. Although blockchain technology has swept the world and has been deeply rooted in people's hearts, it is difficult for it to represent the "great cause" that this special industry is about to do - it increasingly believes that it can breed new Internet-level products.

For a time, the entire industry seemed to have found a long-awaited truth or doctrine, and used Web3.0 to "fit" all the landing scenarios that have been practiced in the past decade. The most widely recognized feature is the "Connect Wallet" feature. As the name suggests, any application service can be logged in with a "wallet". It is also a revolutionary experience that people in the industry believe to "beat the Internet" because it is so simple and "cool". Admittedly, "Connect Wallet" is not a new thing. It has appeared in the crypto world as an operation very early, especially in the wave of chain games in 2019 (MetaMask has a long-standing reputation and has helped the wave of crypto people in 2017 to successfully enter the Ethereum network). However, driven by the "DeFi Summer" in 2020 and the "NFT Year" in 2021, decentralized wallets (especially browser plug-in wallets) have become increasingly important network protocol layers, because they represent the highest control of human individuals over their own identity value and asset ownership, perfectly grafting the public and private key system with asset economic activities, and bringing the "simple" blockchain network into the "intelligent" era, just like smartphones in the mobile Internet era have opened up intelligent links between all apps (such as login, sharing, recommendation, address book, importing pictures, etc.). This is an inevitability that occurs when digital assets enter a stage of extremely active economic activity development. Thanks to the great 2019-2021 for creating extremely rich digital economic activities.

When you create your own wallet account in this decentralized network, it will follow you throughout your life. No external force can destroy it. Creation is eternal, a kind of "digital eternity". As time goes by, the number of on-chain activities (behaviors) you participate in increases, and your account is also associated with more events and data, just like your life history or archives. When you connect your account to a chain application with one click through a decentralized wallet, the application layer will automatically obtain the useful part of the "life archive" to provide you with services or rewards. For the time being, we call this kind of upper-level encapsulation of the bottom-level blockchain public and private key system, transaction records, and smart contract operation records the "Meta-account Layer", which is the "portal" and "Avatar" to enter the "Web3 Metaverse".

Crypto people along the way will (are) gradually forming a consciousness: paying more and more attention to their own MetaMask wallets, and gradually transferring more and more asset allocation activities to them, and becoming more and more passionate about participating in the rise and spread of new things. At the same time, they pay more attention to the credibility and "high-end feeling" of all the on-chain activities they participate in, as if they feel that the whole world is watching them. We are all talking about the need for an Avatar to enter the metaverse, but have you really thought about what the construction path of Avatar is? In the game world, we are first given a digital body at a low price, and then given a soul through constant fighting monsters, upgrading, clearing levels, operating, socializing, etc. - a construction mode from body to soul; but if the body is recycled, can your soul be migrated? In this parasitic relationship, the body is the host and the soul is too "humble". Is there a paradigm in this world that can reverse the roles between the two, so that the soul has infinite bodies and the game becomes an infinite game.

In a blink of an eye, we have come to a new game world "Ethereum Dead Redemption", but this time it is different: you need to "Connect Wallet" to import your MetaMask wallet, which is the "meta account layer" into the game world; if CryptoPunk NFT is read, you will be given an "alien" or "zombie" body, if BAYC NFT is read, it will be a "monkey" body that likes heavy metal style, if it is read with both, it will be interesting, a new species is about to be born-"alien zombie ape". In short, "Ethereum Dead Redemption" has prepared infinite "bodies" based on the "human consensus layer" (today's prosperity of NFT is indeed the establishment of a human cultural consensus layer). In the game, you will experience a lot, complete many valuable things, and gain many "medals" and "holy grails", all of which will "leap" in the form of digital assets and be permanently recorded in your "meta account layer" in the form of NFT. When you exit the game, these are your "medals" and "holy grails" in the real world, and their value will be recognized by the real world because of the consensus of the game "Red Dead Redemption". If you trade your "medals" to others and return to the game again, you will lose the experience (of course, whether the "soul" should be "bound" is also a very interesting topic, see Vitalik's "Soul Binding").

It seems to make sense:

a) Why is NFT so popular and has rapidly developed into a $40 billion market? Because the metaverse parser needs to use NFT as the "source code" to parse and restore the three-dimensional virtual world. There is no more suitable encrypted carrier for carrying hypertext than NFT. The value logic of NFT is similar to that of classic IP, but it is completely assetized. Today's NFT market is just the beginning of a story. The value of time will be superimposed on it to make it more perfect.

b) Is Web3 really visible? Blockchain is only one of the components of Web3, and the same is true for NFT assets. Even though the NFT asset market is extremely prosperous, if it is only played on the native crypto network like homogeneous crypto assets, such as mapping centralized accounts to the trading area in CEX, or driving transactions with DEX in a more niche network, it ultimately only represents a game in the crypto world. The emergence of the "meta-account layer", or more precisely, the formal establishment of the "meta-account layer", allows blockchain, public and private key identities, or various crypto assets to enter the traditional Internet more conveniently and naturally. Starting from OpenSea, it is imagined that it will be accepted by more and more traditional Internet products and large-scale games in the future. Please add an option "Connect Wallet", which will give users a door to a new world. Only when you open this door with your own hands, can Web3 really be seen.

c) Is the Metaverse too far away? At present, the two lines (referring to Meta's Internet Metaverse and the "asset Metaverse" in the crypto world) are developing independently. It is indeed difficult to see the effect of qualitative change in the short term. This is also the main reason why everyone is familiar with the concept of the Metaverse, but cannot raise the morale of entrepreneurs. We would like to boldly predict a possibility based on the first principles. This pattern will begin to show subtle "collapse" in 2022 and 2023. The "meta account layer" will spread like a virus. When more and more entrepreneurs begin to shift their goals to the "meta account layer", the real Metaverse will be open and bright (it is like your "Doraemon pocket" or treasure chest, hiding all your great treasures), "emergence is the inevitability of life", so please look forward to such a special event or milestone! The distance people are waiting for does not come from the impracticality of realization, but from the fear of facing the destruction and reconstruction that goes back and forth with the process. To quote Yin Ye, CEO of BGI, "The future is the integral of the present."

(About emergence - "Emergence is divided into several different types according to its intensity, namely: simple emergence, false emergence, multiple emergence and strong emergence. The last strong emergence is the highest level of emergence. It produces a whole new world. It is a transition and evolution of the original system that breaks its own boundaries and barriers. New subject types and roles are produced in it. There are multiple causal feedback relationships from top to bottom and bottom to top between various levels and elements. It can be seen that the metaverse is such a strong emergence. It emerges from the physical universe, but finally dominates and integrates the physical universe into a universe with a larger real continuous spectrum." "Metaverse: Physics, Ultimate Medium and Infinite Game")

The so-called Web3, creationism (fundamentalism) is to subvert the traditional Internet ownership. The direct display layer is a super account layer related to accounts and assets. The ultimate goal is to create a "huge elemental ultimate medium that can interoperate with the physical universe" - the metaverse. Games are currently the most intuitive imagination space and large-scale arena that the metaverse gives to the world. It may become a "springboard" for the opening of a new era!

"Red Dead Redemption" itself is no different from traditional top 3A masterpieces, but it has made revolutionary changes to the "body" and "soul" of game players. It takes a different approach and takes advantage of a "mysterious bronze door" leading to Web3 - the meta-account layer, breaking the boundaries and shackles of closed accounts in traditional games, and taking the opportunity to open up and extend the "experience line" of the game. Although it seems that the most valuable "account rights" of the game have been lost, and players are no longer controlled by the virtual world they created, it has become "ubiquitous" by delivering "worldview" and "numerical goals" to the Web3 network through the grafting of public and private key account systems and (encrypted) digital assets! The Web3 network, in essence, cannot natively replace the value of the Internet, but has become an Internet value relay network - any valuable thing in the world that can be abstracted into a digital form will have an "Avatar" in the Web3 network and be captured by infinite scenes; the so-called value comes from creation, and infinite creation means infinite value. Another game, “Ethereum Ready Player One”, recognizes its “worldview”. The assetized “experience” of players in “Red Dead Redemption” can be directly given to the “body” in “Ready Player One”, which means that players are born “brave”, or realize the classic IP interoperability in the movie “Ready Player One”; and the “experience” accumulated in “Ready Player One” will also be recognized by “Red Dead Redemption”, and so on, the “experience” is passed on, a “character” travels through different worlds, and the “soul” is growing rapidly; players are both in the game and above the game. It is no longer that players move with the closed game world settings, but that each game world setting constantly creates infinite plots with players and assets. For example, for every additional “experience” asset of Web3 consensus, the game upgrade will match it. As more and more game worlds join the consensus of the meta-account layer, a new game revolution will come——

Infinite games! (Note: too advanced to be shown)

—— “Top-level design is ineffective in complex systems. What is the first principle of life science? Evolution.” The same is true for the metaverse system!

(The following is a revery about how to create an "infinite game", excerpted from "Metaverse: The Road to Infinite Games" published by CITIC Press)

1. There are no CryptoKitties or CryptoDonkeys in the Metaverse (on-chain), but only genomes, which are stored in the blockchain distributed network in the form of shards. And at the beginning, there is only the junk genome, which is the cradle of all genes and the language of programming. Language precedes compiler. In the Metaverse, the first compiler is the reproductive protocol G0. In nature, the first compiler is RNA, which compiles DNA into protein.

2. Different from the current deterministic blockchain, we need to introduce randomness into the blockchain. The reference solutions include verifiable random numbers, external oracles, etc. Randomness is the foundation of gene mutation. No one can modify genes on the chain unless the genome spontaneously produces random mutations.

3. New genes are generated by random mutation of junk genes. The genes generated at the beginning are very short, with only a few characters. The genes generated later are longer because they cannot use the old genes as prefixes. Genes that appear widely in organisms (generally ancient genes) are shorter, and genes with a lower probability of appearing (generally new genes) are longer. They are a kind of Huffman coding. For variable-length sources, Huffman coding has the highest information density.

4. In the reproductive protocol, genes themselves do not encode any proteins or functions. The properties they exhibit in the metaverse (biological appearance, physical strength, intelligence, etc.) are compiled by other compilers. For example, bacterial compiler G2 compiles gene A into a nitrogen fixation gene, an ability to absorb nitrogen from the air through photosynthesis, and another bacterial compiler G3 compiles gene A into a bacteriophage gene, an ability to devour other bacteria. From a biological point of view, in G2 and G3, gene A is a homeotic gene. However, the same metaverse game can only support one compiler, that is, in its game, gene A can only be compiled into one type of gene.

5. At the beginning, there are no species in the metaverse, but only genomes (including exons and introns), until the chromosomes fuse. After Robert's translocation, the number of chromosomes of the offspring is not equal to that of the parents, so they cannot pair up, and the offspring and the parent's race are reproductively isolated. If the offspring finds a member of the opposite sex who has the same Robert's translocation as him, then they can combine and reproduce, and in this way, we will witness a miracle in the metaverse: the birth of a new species. The first player to complete this process has the right to name the new species. Since only the number of chromosomes is inconsistent, the genetic composition is exactly the same as that of the parents, so at this time, the appearance and function of the new species in all compilers are actually similar to those of the parents. But later, after their genes mutate, they will no longer share mutations with the parent race, and the difference between them and the parent species will become greater and greater.

6. Genes are not stable and will mutate during the metaverse process. But relatively speaking, the environment is more unstable because compilers are acquired and can be modified at any time. For example, a very popular new game suddenly appears, and the compiler it supports compiles a previously unfavorable gene dd (usually a recessive gene) into a very powerful attribute. Then, through natural selection, those organisms carrying dd will flood into this continent and gain survival and competitive advantages. But this advantage is not constant. A popular game will one day be gone, and when this continent withers, the homozygous form of the gene will also decline, and it will continue to exist in the form of a heterozygous recessive gene.

7. Genetic weapons and viruses also exist in the metaverse. But similar to the situation in reality, successful genetic weapons and viruses are not aimed at killing each other, but at coexisting with or even parasitizing each other. Because if the other party (host) is killed too early, the virus itself will also perish due to the loss of the host. Viruses are also an infinite game. The purpose of their survival is the same as that of humans, which is to continue. Therefore, from the perspective of genes, it doesn’t matter whether there are organisms or viruses, or primates or beasts, or high-level or low-level organisms. They are all combinations of genes and keepers of copies.

8. Genes will compete, and compilers will compete. Genes compete to perpetuate themselves, and compilers compete to perpetuate themselves. Compilers are the game environment of the metaverse. They compete to attract more species (NFTs) to flow in. As it attracts more species, the value of the assets carried by the game will increase, and users, social connections, brands, and influence will expand accordingly. The most successful compiler may constitute a culture, a phenomenon, and a super-sovereign association, like Facebook to the Internet. As the compiler becomes popular, more and more games will support it, just like the network effect of a programming language. The more people use it, the more market it has.

9. Compilers have a lifespan, but genes have an almost infinite lifespan. Just as dinosaurs are extinct, the genes that encode forelimbs of dinosaurs still exist in birds in the form of HOX, although in the compilers of the latter, it is manifested as wings. Therefore, the finiteness of compilers does not undermine the infinity of the metaverse. Compilers are ever-lasting, and they are just the "infection" of genes.

10. The perspective of the game in the metaverse should be a genetic perspective, not a species perspective. Due to the infinity of the blockchain, NFT can be considered immortal. In this way, it is ridiculous for us to define game characters in the form of NFT. Is the life span of heroes, werewolves, beasts or alien creatures on the chain infinite? This seems to conflict with our culture. But in fact, this is not contradictory, because the finiteness of game characters is actually reflected in the finiteness of the compiler (game environment). When the compiler has no market, or the game platform that supports the compiler goes bankrupt, then your hero, werewolf and other game characters will die. Precisely because only the first principles are on the chain, such as reproductive protocols, NFT (gene library), etc., and other game logic is running off the chain, so the infinity and finiteness of the game are self-evident. The life of game characters (species) is limited, but the data (genes) on the chain is infinite. If this logic is established and promoted, it can't help but make us take a breath. If the real world where humans live is also a metaverse, the universe as a "game compiler" is limited, and human genes and consciousness are infinite. If the universe we live in is heading towards heat death, can our genes and consciousness still choose another compiled universe to survive?

The metaverse needs to establish a system that can achieve rapid iteration, "continuous iteration, leading to emergence"!