Odaily Research Report | Blockchain Social Communication——Privacy and security are not niche needs but basic needs

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Odaily Research Report | Blockchain Social Communication——Privacy and security are not niche needs but basic needs

小派克

2019-03-26 03:34

本文约7000字，阅读全文需要约28分钟

The next generation of social applications.

Text | Parker Hao Fangzhou, Odaily Research Institute

Picture | Kong Fanxing

Editor’s note: On January 15, 2019, three social product apps—Duoshan, Toilet MT, and Chat Bao—were released on the same day in an attempt to “encircle and suppress” WeChat, but eventually disappeared after stirring up small waves. Regardless of whether it is domestic or foreign, the social market has already been dominated by giants, and any previous encirclement or outflanking actions have ultimately failed. However, the exposure of data privacy and security issues has opened a crack in the Internet social empire. In combination with blockchain technology, we see a new generation of social applications.

The definition of social network refers to the networking of the relationship between people, which is externalized into various social networking software on the Internet. Today, social products have penetrated into more subdivided fields according to different needs and positioning. But at the same time, the development of social networking on the Internet also has a bottleneck that cannot be broken through. (1) The advertising model involves legal risks and is unsustainable. (2) Data privacy security issues are exposed and cannot be broken through.

We believe that privacy, security and confidentiality are basic needs of communication. Facebook and WeChat improve the immediacy of communication in a highly centralized model, but ignore privacy security. As the problem is gradually exposed, this need will become dominant again. Therefore, privacy and security are not niche needs but basic needs, but they have been ignored all the time. The ownership of information property rights on social platforms will gradually become prominent with the asset attributes of information, and will even become a basic demand in the digital age.

The asymmetric encryption technology in the blockchain technology can protect the privacy of information; the distributed technology can ensure the safe storage of data by building a distributed database system and participant consensus agreement; The first link between the information block and the block guarantees that it cannot be tampered with or forged, and can prove originality and ownership. At the same time, the emergence of the fuel currency profit model has played a role in correcting the advertising profit model of Internet technology in the business world.

We summarize different types of projects currently on the market from the two aspects of blockchain communication and blockchain social networking, and form a complete report through research and analysis of their business models, existing problems, risks, etc.

Table of contents:heredownload.

Table of contents:

1. Overview of Social Networking

2. Pain points in the Internet social industry

3. Why do you say that blockchain social networking is a new generation of social applications?

4. Blockchain + Social

4.1 Blockchain + communication

4.2 Blockchain + social platform

4.3 Industry Map

5. Three questions on the blockchain social track

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1. Overview of Social Networking

Social networks refer to the networking of relationships between people, which are externalized into various social network software on the Internet, such as WeChat, Weibo, and Facebook.

These applications can be divided into communication tools and social platforms according to their functional attributes. Communication tools mainly meet people's needs for instant chat in daily life, while social platforms are similar to content squares to meet people's public social needs. As the product form continues to evolve, the functions of the two have been integrated. For example, WeChat can be used for both voice and video, and also supports users to post updates, like each other, comment and forward.

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2. Pain points in the Internet social industry

2.1 The advertising model involves legal risks and is unsustainable

From a business point of view, social networking with the Internet as the underlying infrastructure still has "original sin". For a long time, people have been using Internet social products for free, but we found that the price paid for free is that personal information is sold as platform commodities. Because the main profit model of Internet social media is to analyze user behavior data and provide advertisers with accurate advertising.

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(21 advertisers have access to my Facebook info, Playstation seems to like me)

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(Graph source: Google)

Facebook stock then fell 6.8 percent, wiping $50 billion off its market value within a week. As a result, Facebook has to face lawsuits filed by 80 million users, as well as congressional hearings and investigations by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The technology sector was affected by the incident, with the US S&P technology index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite both recording their biggest one-day losses of the month, down 2.1% and 2.5%, respectively. Other social media and tech companies were down, with Twitter down 1.7 percent, Snap down 3.5 percent and Google down 3.0 percent. And those stocks have led the market higher over the past two years. Economists at BNP Paribas believe the market outcome from the Facebook data scandal marks the end of a long and dramatic dot-com rally and could be the beginning of another dot-com bust.

Of course, there are no bubbles in technology, but business models. The traffic profit model of Internet social networking is not in the traditional analysis model. In the eyes of Wall Street, "popularity does not represent profitability", and technology stocks are still synonymous with high risks and uncertainties.

Facebook has no profit from 2012 to 2014, but its market value has been going up:

In fact, at the end of 2017, Facebook’s daily active users had already begun to decline, especially in the US and Canada, Facebook’s main markets:

In the early days, the model of quickly attracting users through free, and later relying on user data to generate profits will inevitably involve legal risks.

In addition to the right to personal privacy, related legal risks also include the "right to be forgotten" that is currently being discussed. The "right to be forgotten" asserts that the data subject has the right to ask the data controller to permanently delete the personal data of the data individual, and has the right to be forgotten by the Internet, unless there are legitimate reasons for the retention of the data.

The "right to be forgotten" was proposed in 1995 and has been included in the draft legislation of many European countries. In 2014, the Spanish Supreme Court issued a ruling requiring Google to fulfill its obligation to remove users' personal information, affirming the right to be forgotten at the judicial level.

As more and more data security issues are exposed, relevant laws and regulations become stricter, and users' awareness of digital rights wakes up, the model of "clicking to trigger the transaction chain and generate profits" will eventually become unsustainable.

Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that Internet technology is still trial and error in the business world. The emergence of any underlying technology may involve changes in the whole, or even a corrective correction of the previous model. The market needs to find new underlying technologies and business models.

2.2 Data privacy security issues are exposed and cannot be broken through

The development of the Internet has greatly promoted the production and dissemination of information, but it is difficult to protect the security of private information, to confirm the ownership of proprietary information, and to prove the authenticity of shared information.

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3. Blockchain social networking will become a new generation of social applications

Leonard Cohen said there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. Blockchain technology has brought dawn to the bottleneck that the Internet cannot break through. We believe that blockchain social networking will become a new generation of social applications.

From a technical point of view, the blockchain was first used as a technical application of Bitcoin. After 10 years of continuous iterative evolution, it has formed a distributed (Decentralized), trustless (Trustless), time stamp (Time Stamp), asymmetric encryption (Asymmetric) Cryptography) and Smart Contract (Smart Contract) five technical characteristics. Its asymmetric encryption technology can protect the privacy of information; distributed technology can protect the integrity of data by building a distributed database system and participant consensus agreement, which is the safest storage method; and timestamp technology, through Generate information blocks for a certain period of time and the first connected data chain between blocks can form data that can be traced back to the source, can be verified one by one, cannot be tampered with, and cannot be forged. Each participant stamps when generating an information block Timestamp to prove originality and ownership.

From the perspective of user needs, blockchain social networking mainly addresses two needs: first, privacy and security requirements in the process of end-to-end instant messaging, and second, ownership and storage of information property rights produced on social platforms.

Privacy, security and confidentiality are actually the basic needs of communication. Modern post offices meet this demand through institutional commitment and reputation endorsement. Early emails meet this demand through P2P network technology. Facebook and WeChat use highly centralized The mode improves the immediacy of communication, but ignores privacy security. Before the problem is exposed, this demand is recessive, but when the problem is exposed, this demand will become explicit again. Therefore, privacy and security are not niche needs but basic needs, but they have been ignored all the time. The ownership of information property rights on social platforms will gradually become prominent with the asset attributes of information, and will even become a basic demand in the digital age.

From the perspective of business model, the decentralized operation mechanism and fuel currency model of the blockchain system provide a new business model. The decentralized operation mechanism refers to the way in which it can operate autonomously without human intervention and management through a series of open and fair rules. Generally, the consensus mechanism of a public chain system is the rule of this decentralized organization. The fuel currency model is the profit model of the decentralized operation mechanism. Anyone who uses the services provided by the project will be required to use tokens to pay a certain amount (often a small amount). As more and more users are used, there will be more demand for these tokens, so that Token price appreciation. Because at a certain stage, the number of tokens must be limited, and no one can modify them at will. After appreciation, they can enter the secondary market for circulation. Paying a certain fee each time is like refueling a car, as fuel to enable the car to move forward, so it is called the fuel currency model. Based on this fuel currency model, there are already various complex token economic models. Different projects will design different incentive methods to encourage different roles in the system to contribute to the system, which will promote the continuous growth of the market value of the entire system.secondary title

4. Blockchain + Social

At present, the combination of blockchain and social networking mainly has two directions:

4.1 Blockchain + communication

Including the decentralized communication network public chain and DAPP based on the public chain.

Communication network refers to the communication system organically established by communication equipment (hardware) and related work programs (software), which provides the sum of various communication services for individuals, enterprises, institutions and society, and is the infrastructure of the communication industry. Mainly for communication and social networking, including messaging, group messaging, groups, UGC content storage and management, circle of friends, voice calls, video calls, volp calls, VPN proxy, streaming media, CDN, file storage, loT, Data sharing, etc. . By providing developers with SDK and API interfaces, let them build their own applications on it. In fact, it is a PaaS platform that provides communication services, and developers can develop their own application products on it as needed.

The decentralized communication network adopts P2P communication and distributed storage technology, abandons the traditional client/central server mode, and allows each client with idle bandwidth/hard disk in the network to act as a server to provide services for other nodes and users. Use the services of other nodes at low prices or even free of charge, reducing development costs. The traditional solution is to either invest in self-built infrastructure by developers, or purchase it from professional service providers. Netease Yunxin, Ali Wukong, Huanxin, Rongyun, Ronglian, Yunzhixun, Qinjia, etc. are relatively well-known first third-party provider.

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(Huanxin system architecture)

Communication services are characterized by high frequency and real-time. For example, Facebook has 4,166,667 pieces of content per second, SKYPE has 110,040 calls per second, and Twitter produces 347,667 tweets per second... Such a massive business volume has a high impact on system performance. Requirements, but because of the irreconcilable issues of blockchain in terms of security, speed, and decentralization, different information is generally processed in layers.

Information related to transactions, such as accounts and transaction records, is usually at the consensus layer, and information not related to transactions is usually not run on the chain. Distributed storage technology is used to save complete data so that chat records can be found. So in fact, the requirements for TPS are not very high. Whether there is mature communication technology becomes a key indicator of decentralized communication network projects.

Based on the DAPP on the public chain of the decentralized communication network, it mainly uses blockchain encryption technology and distributed storage technology to ensure information privacy and data security storage during user chats.

At present, the types of projects in the market can be divided into three categories: 1. Specialized research and development of industry public chains to provide developers with interfaces, that is, 1 chain n DApps; 2. Build a chain from the basic public chain to serve your own DAPPs. That is, one chain and one DApp, but the final direction of some such projects is also the industry-based public chain. ; 3. Build your own communication DApp on the existing public chain.

4.2. Blockchain + social platform

The combination of blockchain and social platforms uses hash calculations to generate hash codes for the content, stamps it with a time stamp, and uploads it to the chain as a deposit certificate. And introduce a blockchain incentive mechanism to return the commercial benefits generated by users' content or data to users in the form of platform currency, and support cash withdrawal.

At present, the projects existing in the market are also divided into three situations: 1 chain + n DAPPs, 1 chain + 1 DAPP, and DAPPs.

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5. Three questions on the blockchain social track

First question: What are the difficulties of blockchain socialization?

The biggest difficulty in blockchain social networking at present is how to grab users from giants. After all, for users, they cannot feel the underlying technology, so the education cost is huge.

You can focus on the improvement projects of the industry's basic public chain and Internet social products with a large number of customers in terms of encryption, secure storage, and return of data property rights. Such as telegram in the communication direction. But also discern hype.

Second question: What is the biggest risk?

Blockchain social is a decentralized platform, and the review and incentives of content are completely left to users. While solving the problems of information security caused by centralization, it also brings about the problem of unclear regulatory bodies. The person in charge of the platform assumes the responsibility of reviewing the content of the platform.

In addition, the encrypted communication itself has the feature of avoiding supervision, and technologies such as the confidentiality agreement of the blockchain provide a completely private communication environment for instant messaging, and user information is completely confidential. However, confidential instant messaging itself has the characteristics of evading supervision. Criminals can use its characteristics to engage in illegal activities or spread illegal content, which brings great challenges to supervision. Therefore, there are huge risks in how to comply.

The third question: How far is it from the blockchain social era?

Blockchain social networking focuses on privacy protection, secure storage, and data asset confirmation. From the perspective of user needs, data privacy awareness is one of the key factors affecting its development. We believe that as Internet data privacy and security issues are gradually exposed, the public's awareness of privacy is awakening. In addition, since the birth of the Internet, people have generated massive amounts of data on the Internet. When all traces of a person's life become data and stay on the Internet, safe storage will inevitably become a rigid need. At the same time, as personal traces become data, the asset attributes of data are highlighted, and the confirmation of its property rights will also become a rigid demand.

This trend can also be seen from two sets of data: the search software duckduckgo, which focuses on "respecting privacy", fluctuated between 40,000 and 50,000 searches in 2010. Since 2011, the daily search volume has doubled , exceeding 100,000. At the same time, according to the "Post-95 Privacy Outlook" report released by Tencent Technology, the post-95 generation is a generation that pays more attention to privacy and has a very low tolerance for personal privacy violations.

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