Exploring Vision | How to seize the opportunity of the next Internet wave - Dfinity?

At 19:30 on June 8, the first episode of the Exploration Vision column hosted by Why Lab Exploration Laboratory kicked off. In this Exploration Vision column, Jenny, project director of Why Lab Exploration Laboratory, talked with Punk, co-founder of ICP Legue, on the topic of "How to seize the opportunity of the next Internet wave - Dfinity" to explore the architecture, logic and ecological development of the Dfinity project.

This episode's host:

Jenny: Double Bachelor's Degree from the University of Melbourne. She was a senior analyst at a major overseas exchange and has extensive experience and insights in traditional financial investment. She has focused on the blockchain industry since 2017 and has a deep insight and research into popular projects. She is currently the project director of Why Lab.

This issue’s guest introduction:

Punk: In 2018, he established the Dfinity community - DfinityFun, and jointly organized several online and offline events with Dfinity officials to promote Dfinity. Subsequently, DfinityFun merged with the Dfinity Chinese community to become the current ICP Legue. ICP Legue is committed to accelerating the construction of the Dfinity ecosystem, and its vision is to be the Dfinity ecosystem engine. ICP Legue has helped many traditional Internet developers enter Dfinity, and has also incubated and invested in many high-quality projects.

Dfinity: The third great innovation of blockchain

At the beginning of the column, Jenny gave a brief introduction to Dfinity - "Dfinity was founded in 2015 and was already a star project at the time. Forbes and other media frequently reported on it. In May of this year, Dfinity was officially launched and came into our field of vision. Dominic Williams, the founder of Dfinity, called it the third great innovation after digital gold Bitcoin and smart contract Ethereum - it rebuilt a seamless, unlimited performance blockchain. Dfinity created an Internet computer based on blockchain technology, allowing the network to carry more applications. For developers, because Dfinity has web-level speed and unlimited scalability, they can build related programs and applications directly on the Internet itself, without the need to use cloud services and other similar interfaces."

Dfinity economic model: There are two types of tokens inside

What is the Dfinity economic model like? What problems does it solve effectively? What breakthroughs are there? In response to Jenny's question, Punk introduced the game theory used by Satoshi Nakamoto in designing Bitcoin, and said that the foundation of the Dfinity economic model is consistent with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Filecoin, all of which are positive cooperative games. In addition, the breakthrough of the Dfinity economic model is that there are two types of tokens inside - but strictly speaking, it cannot be said to be a dual-token system. "The first token of Dfinity is called ICP, which is a native token, a utility token, and a governance token. The utility of ICP is that it can be converted into gas tokens, which serve as the fuel to drive the entire ICP program. It can also be simply understood as paying for cloud computing. However, this payment is not made directly through ICP, but through ICP conversion into gas tokens, cycles, and then charging cycles into the server/smart contract. It is worth noting that the generation of cycles requires the destruction of ICP. They are two types of tokens. Gas tokens are stable tokens, and there is an algorithm to keep gas in a stable state. The main thing is to adjust the ratio of ICP to cycles to ensure that the cost is stable. The price of cycles is almost strictly consistent with the underlying calculation logic, and it is always the same. In this way, a solid foundation is established for the underlying incentives of the digital economy."

In fact, ICP exchange cycles is also the deflation process of the entire economic model, and how does the inflation process of the Dfinity economic model work? Punk said that inflation is mainly divided into two parts. First, the part of the fuel burned will be transferred to the miners who run the calculation as a handling fee. The miners earn handling fees, which are stable tokens cycles. Cycles can be converted into ICP. Second, Dfinity distributes rights, namely block generation and the governance mechanism that checks and balances block generation.

What is the governance mechanism of Dfinity? Punk said: "Dfinity has established an on-chain governance mechanism - the Network Neuron System (NNS for short). ICP can be staked into NNS to create neurons. This neuron can be understood as a voting node. The voting node only needs to vote on the proposal. If the proposal is right and passed, the income can be calculated and ICP tokens can be awarded. This is also called governance block, which rewards decision makers who bring value. And anyone with ICP tokens can participate through the staking system. This governance system is very decentralized. It uses a model of attention to replace the model of delegation and representation - that is, you can pay attention to the decisions of large governance nodes and vote, but large governance nodes cannot act as representatives. They will also make voting errors and cannot monopolize the network."

Dfinity's innovation: seamless + unlimited expansion

Regarding the innovation of Dfinity, Punk introduced it by talking about the hot event - the British government website was hacked and caused a large-scale network paralysis, and vividly explained that centralized connection points are very fragile. Punk pointed out that in the past blockchain architecture, only transactions and smart contracts were on the chain, but in fact, as long as there is a centralized point, problems are likely to occur. "99.99% of users use the front end or wallet to issue transactions, play Defi and various contracts, and the middle is centralized. Once it is paralyzed, there is nothing. And Dfinity is not only transactions and smart contracts on the chain, but also the middle key that communicates with the node, including the front end of the middle key is also on the chain." In addition to improving security performance, Punk also pointed out that Dfinity's innovation has greatly reduced costs to the lowest level. First of all, Dfinity's seamless architecture saves a lot of operation and maintenance work, and its automatic expansion function keeps developers away from the worries of expansion and compatibility issues.

In addition, Jenny mentioned that Dfinity's innovative technology solves the problem of information silos. In this regard, Punk said that this ownership innovation is not only reflected in the fact that users take ownership of data in their own hands instead of large companies, but also in community ownership - as many tokens as possible are shared with community participants, thus forming a positive game theory. In addition, Dfinity does not need to rebuild user relationships like the traditional Internet.

Three participation modes of Dfinity

Finally, Jenny asked the question that the audience was most concerned about: "What are the participation modes of Dfinity?" In response, Punk divided the participation modes into three modules based on the identities of different participants. For developers, Dfinity provides a more convenient platform for developers of traditional Internet. For everyone, ICP can be pledged into NNS and follow the governance vote. This model is basically zero cost. In addition, there is a high threshold for node operators: they need to have their own data center, and because the essence of the Dfinity network is a network that serves applications, they should build an ecosystem to bring a positive cycle to the implementation of applications.