Unique Value of Tokens
EDCON 2023 · 20 May 2023 · 20:11
Weiwu Zhang, co-founder and CTO of Smart Token Labs, discusses tokens as a way to integrate online functionality and digital rights. He examines how today’s web relies on large providers for identity, payments and social connections, then considers token-based alternatives to fragmented website relationships.
Speakers
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From EDCON 2023, hosted by EDCON.
Transcript
so my name is werewolf and I'm the CTO of smart local Labs today we are going to talk about nothing here thank you now now I can sing something thank you so today I'm going to talk about the unique value of tokens from an integrated web and this is not the web we're used to this is the web of the this is next Generation web enabled by smart tokens so today's web thrives on integration most of the web pages today have usually at least three and these
three common Integrations are login like Google login or Facebook payment like a Google pay or PayPal and social network like Twitter this is quite a contrast with the web one era where the users go to web pages and you when the user goes a website they only see content of that specific website today it's really difficult to build a website without integrating some of these features and these Integrations are provided by today's internet leaders like Facebook Apple and Google they are able to do this because web was
designed without a authentication layer without a payment layer and without a user-to-use interaction layer and the centralized Central points of internet today Google and Facebook they have filled the Gap provided this service and that's how they became the center now we have not uh been able to fully integrate the web for the maximum user experience and the the growth of the web so for example today we still cannot a user who have a reputation on the website still cannot
take their reputation to a new website if they logged into if they create a Content e-commerce website they still have to gain their reputation from the beginning that is because the websites are not integrated the user is able to download their reputational data from the old website but they are not able to upload it to a new website because it's just data it's not an integration between the websites and another example is today's music fan they will struggle to provide their loyalty to a prove their loyalty to a concert ticket because the ticketing website is not integrated with their fanbase website so go inside the
into the iot Internet of Things today a smart car owner can't make his car available to a website because websites are typically not integrated with the Smart Car systems and if you have a token let's say airplane ticket in today's web world if you have web 2 token like airplane ticket it's usually only useful on the website where you purchase the token like the airline websites or the travel agent website so it's not into if a airplane ticket is integrated into a visa
application system the user should be able to supply to apply visa with the actual ticket instead of just the printed copy if airplane ticket system is integrated with social media then it should be able to announce or tell your friends and family of your arrival date if airplane system is air tickets are integrated with maps then when you go to the airport you should be able to say which gate to go just looking at your Google Map and how many minutes is needed to go there and if you need to if the gate is changed you the Google Map should be able to give you a message but that's not
happening today and if you if your plane ticket is integrated with a car booking system or hotel reservation if your flight changed the hotel reservation should be updated as well and if your airplane ticket system is integrated with banking app then your bank would know you have you are in the new country and probably update the security settings or offer user to exchange new currency similarly if if your YouTube or Spotify streaming services integrated then they should know that you are on your way to for example Puerto Rico but Paul Rodriguez and you should they should be able to prepare some content for you to enjoy on
the way so these Integrations are not here today and we have barely had any more Integrations than the basic three things login checkout and social media ever since web 2 was created that is because integration is very challenging so the challenge of the integration comes from is complexity today in web 2 world if two websites wants to integrate if web if website wants to integrate third party they typically do this through a back office connection where for example the visa application website will have a back office
connection to the airline and first this is permission based means that the the visa application website has to apply for permission and Al has to give the permission and then this is privacy invasive because once this permission is given the user have no control over what information passes through between these two websites and then this is also expensive because every integration means that the website has to have a connection with a third-party website and as number of website goes up the integration logic becomes more and more complicated and harder and harder to achieve
finally there is a lack of trust anchor if everything can be integrated to Google and apple it would be easy but if you want to integrate the airplane ticket you need to connect to the airline or one of the airline aggregator website which potentially is a security concern and a tax service given all this trouble today websites became practical and they limit themselves to integrate only three things the social media the login service and checkout but integration can grow currently integration has done the growth of web 2. the solution to go forward
to have this level of integration I described is to tokenize the functionalities of the websites and the digital rights of the users This Means tokenizing Everything making everything online a token and this is not a token we typically speak about like Collectibles or erc20 is the Smart client token where the token can serve as integration points for the websites to be fully integrated so examples like email account can be can be a token a social media post can be a token a social media light can be a token you can use that to prove that you
are liked and diploma of course credentials credit score you can take credit score from one website and use it on the other the Smart Car token that allows you to rent your car to a website carbon offset token that you probably can earn by install solar panels in your roof and use that to buy airplane tickets hotel booking as we mentioned it can be a token you can buy hotel booking sell them and integrate that with Airline airline tickets and gym membership everything can be tokenized when everything is a token Limitless integration is possible via a tokenized the web
and that's only possible if we have Smart tokens and a connecting layer a smart layer if you may say you may call it for smart tokens which sits between the blockchain and the websites that the websites can integrate to so by smart token we mean that tokens that are programmed to be executed in the smart layer as well as in user's wallet to enable all kinds of Integrations this cannot be achieved by blockchain alone because although blockchain provided the basis
for smart tokens it provides a trustless method for token logic via Smart contracts it will ensure that the user who claimed the owner of the token actually owned the token the tokens are transacted according to the rules and issued according to the rules but it itself is not a service network blockchain itself doesn't provide a sufficient API for websites to use Smart tokens and it doesn't provide function features like privacy smart layer is the layer that is needed to connect blockchain and serve as integration points it allows token code
to execute within web 2 and web3 environment with the smart layer tokens Can Be accounted for issued revoked and expired with a set of API so one way to look at it is if you create a smart token you will create smart contract for it as well as the code that serves additional API call and the code to dictate how the token should behave in the user's wallet protect users privacy and interact with the web so smart layer is the integration layer needed for the next web but it needs to provide a few more
several guarantees not afforded by the blockchain at the moment like ethereum it needs to be built on top of ethereum as it is need to handle a large amount of traffic as every user's post can potentially became a traceable token yet it cannot record all of the data on the blockchain directly to ensure privacy usually a token's proof is installed on the blockchain and the the actual token itself works in the layer and he needs to respond to calls from web services that relies on it in a trusted way which
means if a web 2 website access the API any of nodes should be able to provide to answer the call and it should be assumed trusted and verifiable by the blockchain it will act similarly to how Google API acted as integration point for today's web except that the number of types of API call are designed to designed to and expected to Skyrocket as people continue to discover new tokens and Define new use cases for them so what it means is that with smart layer
is going to work differently than Google if Google is going to support Smart Car T Smart Car key as a new type token they will probably roll out new API call they will say that if the user use Google Wallet and version above 3.8 or something then you can put smart car keys into that wallet but you cannot design smart layer in the same way you cannot say smart layer version 3 supports Smart Cars Smart layer version 3.1 supports Fringe smart fridge and smart version a smart layer version 8 support Jones you cannot do this because every time when new
token is created new API call is created and the whole network has to adapt with it so it's not a function based if you have a smart layer upgrade it has to be about scalability and security not about adding a new token because new tokens functionalities should be encapsulated and programmed through a sign the script and deployed on such Network so this is um what we have been working on smart smart token Labs has been working on Smart layers for smart for smart tokens for six years we have the token scripting framework called token script
and it has been we have been using this technology a lot of experiments as well as practical cases for example we have been using the same line of technology for devcom as well as this adcon where the ticket holders can get their ticket attestation through email that allows ticket holders to access perks and other websites as a ticket holder without that website having the back connection with Adcom that is already working but today we are building the smart layer the decentralized network that enables further integration and driven by a token Economy based
incentive mechanism where nodes will meet the service level objectives that we defined for these Integrations so so basically that's the core thing I want to share today and that's but that's not all today people the way people use web will be largely Changed by AI and it's possible that in the future that we don't even use web is the AI agents who are using Ai and that presented unique challenges for intuition so let's take example as an AI take AI travel agent as example let's say that you travel to somewhere you want to change your travel destination halfway your AI travel agent needs to find new
hotels find new routes find new new locations but today's AI couldn't do this because they cannot log in to booking.com they cannot purchase train tickets and they cannot share itinerary on social media now if we adopt the traditional backhand backhand integration that means users need to log into booking.com and get API key and give it to the AI and then go to a trading website or social media website get API key and give it to the AI but that is um that is like ritual faithing new technology with the existing solution if
booking hotel reservations train tickets and social media accounts can be tokenized it'll be very different because AI is able to present a plan AI is able to present a plan what they are going to do like the train tickets as a token to purchase and the hotel reservation to make and all generated for the user to confirm with their private key so if user confirmed all these actions with the private key AI would purchase tokens for each action item and it will not need to obtain API key because you have the control over your crypto key and you can purchase hotel as
a new token purchase instead of logging into booking.com and what we get from tokenized access is that it allows better control so the AI will not have a permanent access to a social media account it will only have access to social media account during this session it will not have it will not be able to randomly book wrong hotels for you simply because it has the API key and the result is going to be tokens in your wallet that you can observe instead of being controlled by the AI it's in your wallet you can use it and it's possible to create underfly use cases so by that what I mean is
typically when you use a mobile app it have a few use cases and it has a few Integrations it connects to a few different parts of the internet and the service delivers delivered objective of the users but AI is able to almost dynamically generate applications based on use cases and third token they are able to connect to Old needed Services directly without going through account integration so that in that way AI will be able to further AI will have a higher requirement on integration and with smart layers we are going to be to to to to to to get a this new level of web integration
so in short a smart layer is a total utility layer for web 2 use cases and it's comprised of smart tokens powered by technology such as token script and the resin the distributed Network and it is incentivized by talking economy that was already proven working in ethereum and virus decentralized projects so I think that's it and I have about one minute is there a question session or no yeah if anyone I can probably answer one question if anyone okay okay please yeah
yes a very good question and then I only have 15 seconds to answer that so um uh currently business and brands have difficulty to reach customers because they're customer base is siled so the first thing that in token this new smart layer enabled is to allow business to work together for one class one company to access the customer base of the other one through commercial agreement so that will open doors for new marketing methods previously it was difficult because you need to link the account of the user from Brand a to a kind of user of brand B but if you tokenize that you can program the logic and it will be there will be a lot of new marketing
methods available for them that will give users more opportunities to play and you can have new smart contract rules where users can get perks from Brands they can probably burn them for cash or they can probably use it for interesting games so that marketing I think will be the starting point okay just just in time I guess [Applause] [Music]