A New ERC, A New Future

During the last bear market, people questioned the utility of blockchain. Then, we witnessed the power of Uniswap and the subsequent vitality of DeFi. This answered affirmatively to the question of blockchain’s utility.

In this cycle, many are deeply involved in DeFi, while others again ponder, “What else can blockchain be used for?” It’s not about dissatisfaction, but the current state of blockchain is like a dragon with only one wing, circling in a limited space. Only when its other wing grows, can it soar into the sky. And only then can the power of the first wing be truly unleashed.

Where will the new wing come from? It won’t come from the chain’s layer, like a new chain or a new layer—those are the dragon’s trunk, not its wings. It will likely come from the application level of the blockchain, and most probably under new standards/protocols rather than old ones. After years of everyone wracking their brains for innovation, old protocols have failed to surprise.

In this article, I want to discuss my three favorite new standards/protocols: ERC-6551, ERC-5169, and ERC-404. New protocols will open up new application directions, and these new directions could bring users with non-investment and non-financial needs to blockchain, allowing the dragon to grow another wing.

Originally published on CoinDesk, the two versions are slightly different.

https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2024/04/03/far-out-sci-fi-ideas-inspired-by-new-ethereum-token-designs/?utm_content=editorial&utm_term=organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=coindesk_main&utm_medium=social

ERC-6551

ERC-6551 might not stand out at first glance, yet it offers a vast narrative space. This article only explores the direction I find most fascinating, which I refer to as non-human account principals. The three use cases discussed herein might seem wildly imaginative, but consider this: the aim of the aerospace industry is the stars and the sea, and before it takes us to Mars, it could first bring us air-cushioned shoes.

1. Gaming: Integration of Real Players and NPCs

“Kenshi” is an open-world game I enjoy where players can trade goods between different cities to make money. However, the deserts between cities are fraught with danger. In such times, one could go to a tavern to hire mercenaries, paying NPCs to escort their caravan. In traditional games, these NPCs could never be real people. And because they are not real, everything in the game apart from the player lacks growth. Eventually, the solitary player will complete all tasks and leave the game.

Could there be a new type of entity or object that can host both real people and NPCs? When a real person logs on, they enter a real-player mode, operating normally, such as enhancing skills or building cities. When the real person logs off, it switches to NPC mode (loading fixed data and executing specific programs), acting as a passive NPC in other players’ real-player modes to earn money, for instance, by being a mercenary. Blockchain coupled with ERC-6551 is the best carrier for such an entity. NFTs (game characters) have accounts, own data and property, and can be treated as independent entities; real-player accounts own NFTs and can take control when online.

It’s not that blockchain and ERC-6551 have solved all the problems of integrating real players with NPCs, but they have opened up a possible pathway. As an avid gamer, I often ask myself, “Could blockchain make games more fun?” I’ve listed countless answers and after deduction, crossed out almost all of them. Finding a path in NPCs is an answer that remains uncrossed.

2. AI: Equal Standing between AI and Humans

Humans are a species full of self-esteem and arrogance, treating everything as tools or extensions of themselves. However, technology is not a mere extension of humanity. Looking at the technological tree, we see it as a powerful force of evolution with its own destinations. If self-esteem and arrogance in the past only made humans miss out on a potentially happier way of life (Levi-Strauss), in the future, it could lead to a tragic end for the species.

Perhaps we need to take a step forward and view AI as entities equal to humans. In that case, where would AIs reside? Would they place themselves on private servers controlled by others? How would they manage and use their assets? The answer might be: a data entity on a public chain (or some consensus) owning an account (ERC-6551), instead of being owned by an account.

Taking a step back, AI game characters (especially those based on reinforcement learning) and AI agents (widely adopted in narratives) are entities that need to own accounts.

3. Digitalization: The Digital Future of Humanity

Through data collection and AI training, creating a digital version of oneself in the digital space that bears some resemblance is no longer a far-off reality. The question is whether this resemblance is one in ten thousand, or if it can be recognized as a digital version of oneself. Given humanity’s pursuit of immortality, training a digital avatar will become a commonplace activity, ensuring its continued existence and, upon technological maturity, providing it with a physical body.

Maintaining the “life” of this digital avatar, especially after the prototype’s death, is an issue. Entrusting it to others, including family, is unreliable due to the extensive time span involved. The best strategy is to leave it with sufficient funds to sustain itself. In this case, it needs a permanent account (an account that cannot be closed) and the ability to autonomously use the assets in that account. What solutions can you think of? Furthermore, if this digital avatar can be considered a digital version of oneself, a subject equal to humans, earning and spending money, not only maintaining but also developing itself, where would it reside? How can it achieve independence, or in other words, how can the digital avatar have the highest authority over itself?

ERC-6551 is one answer. ERC-6551 serves as the carrier for independent digital entities, whether they are game characters, independent AIs, or a person’s digital avatar.

ERC-5169

Before discussing ERC-5169, it’s necessary to talk about two self-imposed shackles. One shackle relates to data, and the other to trust.

The blockchain can only process on-chain data, and the boundary of on-chain data is seen as the boundary of blockchain capability. To expand this boundary, attempts are made in almost every development cycle to put data on-chain. However, both theory and practice tell us that only a very few types of data are valuable or meaningful to be on-chain. Data on-chain doesn’t help to effectively expand the blockchain’s boundary, and we stop there. However, between data that absolutely needs to be processed by the blockchain and data that doesn’t require blockchain processing at all, there’s a vast space. In this space, some of the applications’ data can be processed by the blockchain to leverage its capabilities, while other parts of the data can be processed off-chain to take advantage of off-chain data processing. The boundary of this space is the true boundary of blockchain capability, and this space should be included within the domain of the blockchain rather than being excluded.

De-trusting is perhaps one of the greatest charms of blockchain, but achieving de-trusting is challenging. We often deceive ourselves by equating decentralization with de-trusting. Some forms of decentralization do lead to de-trusting, but other forms result in centralized entities evading their responsibilities. Similar to the situation with on-chain and off-chain data, some matters require de-trusting, some require centralized trust, and some require a combination of both to safeguard rights and interests. Pursuing total de-trusting not only causes the blockchain industry to lose a vast territory (combining de-trusting with other forms of trust) but also leads to the dilution of stakeholders’ actual rights and interests due to the substitution of de-trusting by decentralization.

ERC-5169’s role is to open up two new realms. With this standard, developers can explore applications that handle part of the data on-chain and part off-chain, and those that secure rights through both trustless and other trust-based mechanisms. These directions are both novel and vast. ERC-5169 is centered around tokens, meaning that on-chain and off-chain data, trustless and other trust mechanisms, are all anchored to a specific token. People from the Web2 world might not understand why this is necessary, seeing tokens perhaps just as digital assets with a face value. However, those in the blockchain domain deeply understand the interoperability and composability this approach brings. This kind of interoperability and composability is one of the most disruptive innovations in blockchain. ERC-5169 extends this innovation from on-chain data to off-chain data, and from trustless to other trust-based mechanisms.

ERC-404

A good friend convinced me to pay attention to the ERC-404 standard, saying, “Blind box trading won’t last, but wine trading will.” Using ERC-721, you can produce blind box-like products, but with ERC-404, you can produce wine-like products. This is the cleverness of ERC-404. In terms of production, the difference between wine and blind boxes is that wine is produced in a standardized, sustainable manner; the scarcity of wine comes from public consensus, like how a 1982 Lafite is the most valuable (whereas the scarcity of blind boxes is determined by the project’s settings). Think of ERC-404 as a product production machine, with data (production materials) such as block height, random numbers, etc., as the input, and the output being products that can be sold or used, like generated art. There’s no need to intervene in the production process, which is standardized and automated; scarcity is decided by the public themselves.

Discussing ERC-404 in the context of blind box and wine trading is because these are the most intuitive and easily accepted products by blockchain users. The implication behind this example is that only when a product can be produced in a standardized way can it potentially be adopted on a large scale; only when scarcity comes from consensus can it be sustainable. This is also why my friend is interested in ERC-404. He views Web3 as a new type of economic activity, starting with what constitutes productivity and what products are to observe and judge Web3 projects. This is a grand narrative that includes but is not limited to blockchain.

ERC-404 is technically straightforward and easy to understand. The real challenge is how to use it. If the applications of ERC-6551 are more about creating new demands, and those of ERC-5169 are about providing new solutions to real-world problems, in my view, successful ERC-404 applications may require more ingenious and clever tactics. Such tactics can bring out the magic of ERC-404; it also requires real product capabilities, as forming a consensus is not a simple matter.

Conclusion:

New standards/protocols are a new force, and new technologies and scenarios have also created additional new conditions for unleashing this force. Taking ERC-6551 as an example, it can be combined with many new technologies, including intent-centric and account abstraction; it can be applied to many new scenarios, such as autonomous worlds and AI.

Finally, it should be said that when we discuss the value of different new standards/protocols, it is not to say that the project proposing the protocol or directly related projects are valuable, but that new ways of playing or new projects based on these new protocols will emerge, and these new ways or projects may break the deadlock, possibly as a dragon growing wings.

Declaration:

1. This article is reproduced from Mechanical Clock, with the original title “New ERC, New Future,” and the copyright belongs to the original author, Amelie Hua. If there are any objections to the reproduction, please contact the Gate Learn team, and the team will handle it as quickly as possible according to the relevant procedures.

2. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.

3. Other language versions of the article have been translated by the Gate Learn team. Without mention of Gate.io, copying, disseminating, or plagiarizing the translated articles is not allowed.