White Paper and Web 3.0 Metaverse

 A white paper is, originally, an official document published for the first time by governments or businesses to promote specific policy, proposal or product. To highlight authority, such documents often follow standardized formats, adopt concise wordings, and attach importance to clear and definite facts. The printed text in black and white font is usually bound with a white cover absent from any decors, hence the commonly-known name “white paper”. On October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto posted “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”, the white paper of the bitcoin system on a secret cryptography discussion group, in which Nakamoto fully explained the principles of bitcoin and the concepts of virtual currency. The bitcoin white paper is seen as the founding document of blockchain technology. The value Internet enabled by blockchain technology heralds a new era of Web 3.0 metaverse.

 The metaverse proposed by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash is a hardcore centralized metaverse built on the traditional Internet architecture, emphasizing only immersive, virtual-real fusion Internet experience. In January 2009, the Genesis Block—first bitcoin block was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto, forecasting the advent of the distributed “ledger metaverse”. Users found, with the blessing of blockchain and token technology, they can use virtual digital currency in the virtual world and possess their own personal virtual assets. One of the biggest features of the “ledger metaverse” is that, all data, identities and assets belong to each individual user, no longer subject to the centralized database and monopolies of the Internet. Therefore, with the support of cryptography, user data is stored on the network nodes of distributed ledgers and storages, forming a consensus mechanism for large-scale collaboration of decentralized networks. The intelligent protocol and token technology of the blockchain ensures the uniqueness and privacy of users’ digital identities and digital assets, and provides various application scenarios such as those of supply chain and e-commerce, thereby conforming to the Internet future envisaged by “A Cryptopunk’s Manifesto (1993)”—a future with privacy protection, information sharing, collective defense of value and free will. The metaverse can only become a fair consensus universe when personal data and digital assets are under protection. Such a universe can be accessed by all, and owned by all. Advocating the idea of “whoever labors gains” and “more pay for more work” and under collective maintenance and governance, it serves the interests of all.

In his speech at Gettysburg in 1863, Lincoln put forward three phrases: of the people, by the people, and for the people. Which, in the context of today’s virtual space, have evolved into the meanings structure of “of the computers, by the computers, and for the computers + people behind”. Machine rights and digital order in the virtual world are actually the Web 3.0 metaverse vision resulted from the intersected and overlapped visions of the artists and designers questioning the meaning of human existence and the scientists and programmers seeking the ultimate form of the Internet. The Web 3.0 metaverse going mainstream in 2021 is indeed a consensus universe built on the blockchain and token economic infrastructure. It can enable the universe of the real world, bridge and open up various on-chain virtual universes parallel to and above reality. The Web 3.0 metaverse, walking from the science fiction into everyday reality, will create infinite worlds hosting the integration of physical and nonphysical forms as well as the coexistence of online and offline virtuality and reality, thereby bringing a kind of broad and imaginative application scenario, which points to a new social form of human civilization, to each user’s on-chain digital assets and digital identities.

Text / Curator Gu Zhenqing

2022.12.03