Ethereum
Far-out Sci-Fi Ideas Inspired by New Ethereum Token Designs
During the previous bear market cycle, the question on people’s minds was “is blockchain really useful”? We then witnessed the power of Uniswap, as well as the thriving vitality of decentralized finance (DeFi). The question has been answered.
Amélie Hua is a freelance writer and independent researcher.
During the current market cycle, many find themselves faced with a similar question again. People ask this question not out of dissatisfaction, but because it is not always obvious what cryptography is for.
The answer won’t come from new blockchains or new scaling layers. This will come from applications, particularly under newer standards and protocols than the old ones. Given the innovation seen in recent years, the old protocols brought no surprises.
The ERC-6551, ERC-5169, and ERC-404 token standards are new protocols that will open up new applications, and new applications can bring users to the blockchain with non-financial needs and without investment – perhaps providing be a more satisfying response to what is happening. crypto is good for.
ERC-6551 is a token standard introduced to the Ethereum mainnet on May 7, 2023 that assigns Ethereum accounts to non-fungible tokens. These token-linked accounts allow NFTs to own assets and interact with applications. It may not be clear why this is important, but it provides ample space for innovation. This article explores only the direction of personal interest to me, which I call “non-human account entities.” The three most viable situations are gaming, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital IDs.
“Kenshi” is an open-ended game that I like. Players can trade goods between different towns to earn money, but the desert between towns is dangerous. In such situations, players can go to a tavern, hire mercenaries, and pay NPCs. [non-playable characters] to escort the caravan. In traditional games, these NPCs are not real people, but part of the game itself. Because they aren’t real people, everyone in the game except the players has no growth potential. Eventually, real players will complete all tasks and exit the game.
What if there was a new type of entity or object that could embody both real people and NPCs? When a real person logs in, they switch to real player mode and improve their skills. When a real person logs out, they enter NPC mode (reading fixed data and running specific programs), passively earning money as an NPC in real player mode by playing the game on their behalf, for example when he is hired as a mercenary.
ERC-6551 tokens could be the best support for this type of entity in gaming. NFTs (in-game characters) have accounts, data and persistent properties, allowing them to be treated as independent objects. Real player accounts feature NFTs, allowing them to take control when they log in.
This doesn’t mean that the ERC-6551s solve all the problems with perpetual gaming, but they do open up a possible path forward. As a die-hard gamer, I often ask myself: “Can blockchain make gaming more fun?” » Playing as an NPC is an answer that hasn’t been crossed out yet.
Depending on whether you view technology as an evolutionary process, you might view AI as an entity equal to humans – today or in the future. So where would AI live? Will they place themselves on a private server controlled by others? How should they manage and use their assets?
The answer could be: a blockchain in which digital entities have accounts via ERC-6551 tokens.
With data collection and AI training, generating a somewhat similar version of oneself in the digital space is no longer a distant possibility. This digital representation can be trained to act and react like you online. One day, users may even want to give this digital avatar persistence and perhaps even a physical, robotic body.
Will this digital avatar be considered an entity equal to humans? Will this mean we can outlive our meat bodies? Maintaining the “life” of this digital avatar is a challenge, especially after the prototype is gone, so to speak. Entrusting control of our digital avatars to others, including family, is unreliable due to the extended timescales involved. The best strategy is to provide him with sufficient funds to meet his needs.
In this case, he needs a permanent account (an account that cannot be closed) and assets that can be managed independently. What solutions can you imagine? How can it achieve independence, or in other words, how can the digital avatar have ultimate control over itself?
ERC-6551 is a potential answer. These tokenized accounts are a vehicle for independent digital entities, whether a game character, an independent AI, or a person’s “digital avatar.”
ERC-5169 is an Ethereum standard that allows tokens to carry executable scripts. With this token standard, developers can explore applications where some data is processed on-chain and some off-chain. They can explore applications where user rights are protected by a combination of lack of trust and other forms of off-chain trust. It was an idea first introduced in May 2022.
There is a vast space between data that absolutely must be processed by blockchain and data that does not require blockchain processing at all. Applications in this space can have some of their data processed by blockchain to reap the benefits of decentralization, while retaining the ability to process other data off-chain to gain the benefits of centralized management. Today, the limits of this space constitute the upper limits of blockchain’s capabilities.
Lack of trust is perhaps blockchain’s biggest appeal, but achieving it is a difficult task. We often make a mistake when we equate decentralization with lack of trust. In reality, some things require a lack of trust, and others require other forms of consensus.
ERC-5169 is token-centric programming, meaning that on-chain and off-chain data – or lack of trust and other forms of trust – is anchored to a particular token. This expands the interoperability and composability of blockchain – a game-changing innovation for the industry that would allow blockchains to integrate into many more parts of the world.
In other words, these highly interactive tokens would be able to interact with any number of Web2 and Web3 services – like controlling a smart refrigerator with a smart contract, perhaps bringing the Internet of Things closer to reality.
The experimental ERC-404 Ethereum token recently developed by pseudonymous creators “ctrl” and “Acme” is intended to blend the characteristics of fungible (ERC-20) and non-fungible (ERC-721) tokens.
A good friend convinced me to pay attention to the ERC-404 standard with a simple statement: “Blind box swapping won’t last; but the wine trade will. Using ERC-721, the token standard behind many NFTs, can produce products similar to “blind boxes”, in that the total quantity is fixed and the project team assigns attributes to each product, determining the scarcity of each product by controlling the scarcity. attributes.
Instead, the use of ERC-404 can produce products similar to “wine”, an object valued throughout human history due to its real attributes, rarity and provenance as well as its ability to be shared.
The difference between “wine” and “blind boxes” is that wine is produced in a standardized and sustainable way, and a Lafite Rothschild has value not only because the wine is barely produced, but because there is consensus on its value.
ERC-404 tokens are a product production machine where the input is data (the production materials needed to make good wine), such as block heights and random numbers, produces an output that is a product that can be sold or used (the wine itself). . Think of something along the lines of generative art, which is the result of hard-coded algorithms that generate images that many people like.
With these token designs, we do not need to intervene in the production process as there is a standardized and automated process. Likewise, we don’t need to define rarity, because the public decides what is rare.
Here’s the real implication: Only when a type of product can be manufactured in a standardized way can it potentially be widely adopted; and it is only when the shortage results from a consensus that it can be sustainable.
New standards/protocols bring new strengths, and new technologies and scenarios create additional new conditions to unleash this strength.
Taking ERC-6551 as an example, it can be combined with many new technologies, including intent-centric abstraction and accounts. It can be applied to various new scenarios, such as autonomous worlds and AI.
Applications of ERC-6551 are primarily aimed at creating new demands, while applications of ERC-5169 are aimed at providing new solutions to real-world problems and ERC-404 offers an entirely new space Design.
When we discuss the value of various new standards/protocols, we are essentially talking about the new parts or new projects that will emerge. There is a lot to imagine, and I hope that these new coins or projects can break the deadlock that blockchain finds itself in.