Huawendao Offline AMA, First Session: White Paper Presentation

The first offline presentation event of “Huawendao” was held on September 23, 2022, at Meta Space in Wudaokou. What follows is a written transcript.

First Half: Reading and Discussing the White Paper

“Hua”: I’m one of the three initiators of Huawendao, I’m “Hua,” and today I’ll be reading through and explaining our white paper section by section. If anyone has any questions in the middle, please feel free to raise them at any time.

What I’m talking about today is already the second version of our white paper. The first version was actually longer, with more than ten thousand characters, but after many people read it, they all said it was too complicated, so I simplified it into a new version. The white paper now has two parts. The first part is our basic setup: what exactly is our DAO going to do? This part basically doesn’t involve technical matters; it’s narrative and consensus.

A basic narrative is the “new continent”—of course, I’m not the only one talking about this concept; many people are saying that Web3, or blockchain, is bringing us into a new world. The excerpt below is the original text from the white paper; let’s start reading from the beginning:

1. Basic Setup

1.1 Narrative Background: The New Continent

Since Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper in 2008, people have discovered a “new continent” in the digital world. At first people called it blockchain, the crypto-currency圈; more recently people have called it the metaverse or Web3.

In any case, this new continent transcends traditional national borders; it is an ownerless land full of opportunity. At first it was explored by a group of freedom-seeking pioneers, but once the trailblazers kept bringing back considerable wealth and novelties from the new continent, more and more people decided to move there, becoming pioneers and builders of this free land.

The opening is already a grand narrative: it says that what we have found is a new world, and that the characteristic of this new world is that it transcends traditional “borders.” That is not to say it has no borders at all, but rather that its borders are new—new frontiers.

I have a general analogy (I’ll talk about it again in tomorrow’s lecture, “The Blockchain Revolution and the Mission of DAO”): the discovery of the new continent can probably be divided into the following stages:

At the beginning is the “discovery” stage, analogous to the Age of Discovery discovering the American continent. The people who first discovered the new continent may not have made much money; they merely told people that such an undeveloped continent existed.

After that, the first wave of people went there to “pan for gold.” The gold-panners made a lot of money and brought it back. In the end they still had to return to the old continent; they only regarded the new continent as a place full of gold and opportunity. But what do you do once you’ve made the gold? You still have to come back to Europe to enjoy life.

We are now probably in the transition period from the second wave to the third. Satoshi Nakamoto’s era was the era of discovery; the past few years were probably an era of gold panning, but now we may be entering the next “colonial” era. What does the colonial era mean? It means that I can still make money in the new continent, but after I’ve made that money, I don’t necessarily have to bring my wealth back to the old world, back to the European continent, to consume it. Instead, I’ve found a new way of life in the new continent, and I’ve “settled down” here. Maybe I still go back to Europe from time to time to trade, but the center of your life has already shifted to the new continent.

I think we are now stepping into this era. More and more people no longer have to return to the real world in order to measure wealth; they no longer absolutely need to convert virtual currency back into fiat money before they feel satisfied. Instead, they are beginning to build more inside the new continent—establishing spheres of influence, staking claims, and defining their own property in the digital world.

Eventually, in the next stage—the stage of “independence”—the digital world may mount a complete comeback, just like the American independence movement: people of the new continent no longer wish to accept the arrangements of the old world, and they make their own laws and seek autonomy.

Our DAO is focused on the latter two stages. We first try to establish a new order in the new continent, rather than always thinking about when to sell out and return to the old world. In the long run, our goal is, in a certain sense, “independence,” the establishment of a “polity” in the new digital world. I’m not making this sound grandiose out of self-importance; in fact, many Web3 advocates internationally are already talking about concepts such as founding a virtual nation.

Of course, compared with the American continent in the Age of Discovery, the new continent of the digital world is somewhat different: it does not accommodate the human body of flesh and blood; people enter this world by projecting their spirit into all kinds of digital avatars. And at least for the time being, human beings cannot permanently “leave their souls out of the body” and take root in the digital world. But precisely because of this, people are even more free and unrestrained in the digital world. There are no storms, no diseases, and no slaughter here, yet there is still wealth, power, and human nature.

Many people might say my analogy is not quite right, because the new continent is after all a physical entity, whereas when we enter the digital world we surely can’t say we no longer want our physical bodies. Of course that’s true, but let’s imagine: right now we can enter the new continent through some kind of spiritual projection—so is that more illusory, or more real? In a certain sense it is more real, because this new continent can grant more concrete opportunities for real exploration and experimentation. We are not as dangerous as those predecessors who truly used their own flesh and blood to make revolution, where every reform required risking one’s life. Our exploration is safer, but what we explore is still real, because wealth, power, and human nature are real.

Wherever there are people, there will be struggle and cooperation, and the pioneers of the new continent will also form communities large and small. Some communities are nothing more than extensions of the old order, such as companies; while others try to establish a new order, such as DAO (decentralized autonomous organizations). DAO seeks to create new community consensus and management mechanisms in order to adapt to the environment and characteristics of the new continent (blockchain and decentralization).

Wherever there are people, there is society, but the structure of society also changes along with changes in the so-called “material base” and “relations of production.” Once we enter a new foundational environment, there will definitely emerge some orders that are better adapted to the new environment, but exactly what those orders suited to the new era are, we still do not know—just as someone living in the agricultural era would find it hard to foresee how society would be organized in the industrial era. So one of the great significances of DAO is that we want to establish new forms of governance.

We believe that the key to DAO lies in “autonomy.” If our purpose is merely to dig for gold or make money and then bring it back to the old continent, then the DAO organizational form may not be the most efficient. But if we are trying to explore new forms of autonomy in the new continent, then DAO is the necessary path—the starting point from which pioneers can eventually take root in the new world.

Because only by breaking away from many old constraints and moving beyond the old order is it possible to nurture new forms of social organization.

I think many DAOs out there are meaningless. Their goals are still focused on the old world, still focused on goals priced in fiat currency. Wanting to make money is of course understandable, but these things do not necessarily have to be done with DAO. If there is no revolutionary ideal, then there is no need for an experimental tool like DAO either.

That is the grand vision behind the founding of Huawendao. Any questions?

Question 1: Does that mean the form of DAO doesn’t have a clear definition?

Answer: Yes, I think that as a decentralized autonomous organization, the definition of DAO is first and foremost negative. We can say what it is not—it is not a traditional centralized organization—but what exactly it is, exactly how it is decentralized, and exactly how it is autonomous, there is no settled conclusion. In my view, DAO is a form of exploration; it is a way of organizing the establishment of a new order in this digital new world built on blockchain.

Question 2: Similar forms of organization have existed in human history too, such as primitive tribes, such as pirate ships—we can find some shadows of it in history.

Answer: That’s right. What I call “new” mainly means that it must adapt to a new material base (the new environment of the digital world). And human beings are in fact a historical species; for human beings, there is really no such thing as anything absolutely new in the ultimate sense. All new things have historical roots. Of course DAO has roots in the old world. For example, when we say “organization,” what kinds do we often mean? For example: al-Qaeda, the Palestine Liberation Organization, resistance organizations, pyramid-selling organizations, non-governmental organizations, religious organizations… We actually rarely call a company an organization; a company can only be said to be a form of organization. Treating the company as the representative of organization is rather narrow. When we try to trace the historical origins of DAO, we can see the characteristics of decentralized autonomy in many “organizations.” We can borrow a great deal from history, but of course first we must free our minds; building DAO does not require us to benchmark it against any single old organization.

Tizzy: New organizational forms and old organizations are bound to compete, right? The old organizations of the old world may launch very strong interference against the new organizations of the new world. What’s your view?

Answer: Of course. Revolution is not a dinner party; conflict is inevitable. But I think one relatively good thing is what I mentioned earlier: what we do in the virtual world is somewhat safer. Even if there is conflict, what we can lose is nothing more than some virtual currency; at worst, the result might be that our assets go to zero. Unlike in history, where before even encountering conflict, the voyage itself was already nine deaths out of ten. Conflict will definitely happen, but compared with those great organizations in the past that changed the world, the conflicts we face are relatively commensurate.

forgetful epimetheus: In the Age of Discovery, navigators had certain common understandings about contracts and the like. What basic consensus do explorers of the digital continent have?

Answer: Blockchain, of course. Everything we are discussing now is unfolded on the basis of our basic recognition of blockchain. I think everyone here still shares a consensus about the revolutionary significance of blockchain; it’s just that people may differ on how far that revolutionary significance goes. My own understanding is stronger: I believe the revolution of blockchain does not merely happen at the economic level, or rather, the revolution that happens at the economic level will ultimately become political, cultural, and social in nature. We can already see the revolutionary character at the economic level—for example, blockchain has already provided entirely new possibilities for many kinds of cross-border exchange. And I think that to adapt to this new economic environment, political and social levels will inevitably form new orders to adapt to it.

1.2 Identity: Huayi

Innovation requires breaking old chains, but that does not mean breaking everything old. Only by standing on the foundation of history can humankind keep moving forward.

The New World is free, but people do not regress into savagery. New consensus and new order always have traditional roots.

The culture of the American continents was remade by colonists, including Latins, French, English, and others; their respective traditional cultures and customary practices formed the background tone of the new order on the American continents. The “immigrants” who are venturing into the new continent of the digital world also have roots and origins; they have not abandoned everything from the old world.

If the future of the New World is prosperous and beautiful, then its culture and language cannot possibly be monolithic; here there will be communities of different cultures, such as European-descended, American, African, and so on, living together and thriving together. Of course, we hope that Huayi will also have a place in this new world.

As we mentioned earlier, humankind is on the one hand constantly innovating, but on the other hand also historical. All innovation does not emerge from nowhere; there is always some old traditional element that is preserved and then re-energized in a new environment.

The independence of the American continents also actually drew on all kinds of Old World cultures, including Puritan culture, British culture, and various other European and indigenous cultures, and so on. In the end, they even revived the ancient democratic system.

If the new world brought about by blockchain, as we now look ahead to it, is a beautiful one, then I think it must be rich; it absolutely cannot be something that simply topples everything old. Of course we need to overthrow some old systems of vested interests, but we cannot overthrow all cultural traditions. We need “revival”; we need to build a pluralistic new culture in a new form.

If in such a vast “universe” called the “metaverse” there is only one language, only English, then I think that is a rather frightening thing. If we hope to build this new world into something better, then we should hope that this new world contains multiple cultural traditions, and it would be best if there were also a place for our Chinese culture, for those of us who speak Chinese.

We hope that Chinese culture will also be revived in this digital New World. We hope that Chinese communities at home and abroad, including people of all countries influenced by Chinese culture, will gather their strength to carve out an “ecological niche” with a distinctly Chinese cultural character, and to blossom with unique brilliance in a free and pluralistic New World.

In fact, from the early development of Bitcoin onward, Chinese communities at home and abroad have been actively participating in the development of blockchain technology in various ways; more recent waves around NFTs, the metaverse, Web3, and so on have likewise refused to fall behind, carrying out many explorations and constructions. But unfortunately, Chinese communities have not yet established a good reputation in this new world; indeed, many investors even keep their distance when they see projects led by Chinese people, and many Chinese entrepreneurs have had to package themselves as foreign projects.

I am not saying that we ourselves have great power to seize territory; in fact, the strength of Chinese communities is not small at all, it’s just that they have not gained the corresponding reputation and status. If anyone here is doing projects, I believe you will have some firsthand experience of this as well. The awkward status of Chinese identity in the Web3 field, of course, also has some objective factors: language barriers, restrictions arising from national conditions, and so on.

In addition to the estrangement caused by factors such as language and national conditions, Chinese explorers do indeed still have many shortcomings. For example, first, some Chinese projects are too eager for quick success and instant gains; some Chinese-language communities are full of an atmosphere of ripping off subsidies and making quick money, lacking a long-term vision, and it is difficult for them to form solid sedimentation and accumulation. Second, some Chinese projects often fall into a deadlock of copying one another and vicious competition, lacking an environment for sharing, co-creation, and mutual flourishing. Third, many Chinese projects do not sufficiently embody the unique connotations of Chinese culture.

The style of Chinese people doing projects is often this: when we ask what to do, it is equivalent to first asking, “Which one are we going to copy?” This kind of knockoff culture is very hard to make for a good image.

Our DAO is aimed precisely at these pain points, and we want to do something about them: how to use the atmosphere of the small internal community formed by the DAO to ultimately drive a shift in the atmosphere of the Chinese entrepreneurial circle and improve the reputation of Chinese people.

We believe that it is precisely under such circumstances that it becomes even more necessary for us to insist on Chinese identity and on Chinese unity and co-construction. We believe in the depth of Chinese culture and in the potential of Chinese people. Any cultural tradition has its dross, and rebuilding a Chinese community in the “New World” is itself an opportunity to examine and elevate our cultural tradition.

So we proudly call ourselves “digital Huayi,” and to signal novelty, we might as well call ourselves “Huayi” as well. Borrowing the character “yi” suggests, on the one hand, the freedom and liberation of “decentralization” (Houyi shooting down the suns), and on the other hand that we enter the digital New World in the form of digital avatars, as if “shedding our mortal bodies and ascending.”

The less welcome Chinese people are, the more we need to insist on Chinese identity. If we ourselves are also not very satisfied with being Chinese, and all go take on Western names and pretend to be foreigners, then we may have entered a vicious cycle, with the reputation of Chinese people getting worse and worse. To reverse this trend, we still have to insist on Chinese identity and build a good reputation.

Our Huawendao first of all needs to attract a wave of Web3 explorers who are still proud of our Chinese identity; that is our basic positioning.

We do not need to be falsely modest. Of course we must face the fact that there are many dregs in the contemporary Chinese cultural sphere, and that many phenomena of eagerness for quick success and instant gain are real. But that does not mean that this culture is beyond saving. In fact, if you look into any culture, you can more or less find some places that seem hopeless and very bad. So what we need to do is carry forward the glorious parts and find a way to reinterpret our culture.

Western culture was still built up by a bunch of barbarians, wasn’t it. Those barbarians eventually were able to have a Renaissance and establish a splendid modern civilization. Aren’t we Chinese people just fond of ripping things off and so on? That is still better than barbarians, after all. We need not belittle ourselves or negate ourselves; instead, we can take entering the New World as an opportunity to re-energize the unique aspects of Chinese culture.

Tao: I have a question. Right now Web3 is indeed dominated by European and American culture; it is also an extension of Anglo-Saxon culture, an extension of modernity. And the “barbaric” characteristic you just mentioned is actually important. It is precisely because of this barbaric characteristic that there was the Age of Exploration and the discovery of the New World. I am thinking that the expansive, adventurous, and predatory nature of Anglo-Saxon, or more broadly modern, culture is a dominant cultural trait. By contrast, our Chinese culture is relatively gentler; in Ming-dynasty China, maritime voyages were for maintaining tributary relations rather than discovering a New World, and lacked a strong entrepreneurial spirit or adventurous spirit. And this barbarism is also very typical in the Web3 world. So, in the Chinese culture we now want to create, do we also need something like this barbarism? What do you think?

Answer: I think, first of all, that the Western Age of Exploration was by no means entirely dependent on barbarism. The Western Age of Exploration was the result of a highly developed civilization; pure barbarians could not have done it. For example, Columbus was a self-taught scholar who wrote annotations and textual emendations on Ptolemy’s Geography; navigation also required a great deal of astronomical knowledge, knowing that the earth was round, and so on. Also, the way they organized their fleets was not the way barbarians organize things; they were organized according to contracts, which is not barbarian spirit. Moreover, many adventurers were not all seeking expansion either; a very large motivating force was missionary work, spreading the Gospel, and many others went mainly to make money. It was not entirely bloody expansion. Of course, a certain amount of “barbarism” is indeed needed, and “courage” is needed—but don’t Chinese people have courage too? Not entirely without it. The problem with China is that its expansion has mainly been on land and has not extended overseas. Chinese expansion in a certain sense is actually more thorough, because all of southern China was the result of expansion; originally it was all different cultures. Once the Chinese assimilated them, there were almost no traces left at all; the assimilation was even more thorough than Western colonization. The culture of Huaxia originally existed only in the Central Plains, and of course it could expand too, but it was constrained by geography. In the New World, expansion after all is no longer constrained by land; in a certain sense, it is a kind of exploration within the “spiritual home.” Ancient Chinese people were in no way inferior in the ability to carry out such exploration within the “spiritual home”; their capacity to explore the spiritual world was very strong, and they were extremely inclusive, with their own unique system.

All right, we have already said that we want to expand in the New World (not really), to establish a Chinese cultural identity in the New World and let Chinese people enter the New World with pride. So we need to seek consensus. This is actually very important but not easy, because Chinese culture has always been relatively loose, for example in matters of belief, which has always been relatively pluralistic. In Christianity, people can say that we are all children of God, and a consensus is quickly established. Then what is the Chinese consensus? I think the first point is Chinese writing, that is, Chinese characters. In the next section we will continue with the grand narrative and talk about how our consensus is established:

1.3 Basis of Consensus: Chinese Writing

We “Huayi” are not the first wave of Chinese immigrants to enter the digital New World, just as those who sailed to America on the 1620 “Mayflower” were not the first English immigrants.

The “Mayflower” carried only 102 people, among whom a small number were Puritans seeking a land of autonomy for the sake of their faith, while some of the passengers were not there for religion at all, but together crossed to the Americas in search of opportunities—for freedom or for wealth. Among them were profit-seeking merchants, skilled craftsmen, fishermen, and ordinary poor people and slaves.

The reason this group of immigrants was posthumously recognized as the forefathers of America is precisely because they concluded the Mayflower Compact, this charter of autonomy marking the formation of a new order. Of course, after that they carried out the compact, insisted on regular deliberation, and continuously improved their autonomous regulations; only then did the brief compact ultimately develop into something great.

We say not to benchmark ourselves against organizations in history, but sometimes we also need to draw an analogy. The Mayflower is a worthy precursor for us to take as reference. There were only 102 of them, and in the first year probably half of them died; in the end there were only a little over fifty left. They became the spiritual origin of America because they formed a compact for self-government. In a sense, they were a historical organization similar to a DAO. What the Mayflower had to solve was how, after breaking away from the mother country, to govern ourselves in the New World and how to survive in the New World: that was the compact.

Now, we too want to follow the example of the sages and establish our own consensus and compact, forming a self-governing organization with lasting vitality.

We also have many believers in “decentralization” or the “crypto spirit,” many skilled engineers and creators, and of course also profit-seeking merchants and freeloaders. But in any case, I believe we can seek common ground while preserving differences, and consolidate a basis of consensus that belongs to us.

We definitely will have some steadfast believers who believe in decentralization and in the potential of Chinese civilization; we certainly also cannot rule out some freeloaders looking to get rich, but I believe consensus can still be reached.

For Chinese people, “Huawen” is our basis of consensus. Chinese culture has always embraced all streams; in ancient times, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism coexisted and the Hundred Schools contended, and in modern times it can also accept Western culture and embrace globalization. At the level of thought, ideas, belief, lifestyle, and so on, we pursue diversity and inclusiveness, but Chinese characters are the common denominator for all Chinese people at home and abroad, and indeed for the entire Greater China cultural sphere. Chinese characters carry the accumulated depth of Chinese civilization over thousands of years, and they will also be the cornerstone of Chinese culture in the New World.

We call it “Huawendao”; “Huawen” represents our most basic consensus: Chinese characters. Whether Chinese people, overseas Chinese, or others, as long as we use Chinese characters, we will have a kind of basic consensus. Writing is not something completely neutral; it has a certain cultural bias, and Chinese characters themselves contain a certain cultural distinctiveness.

Among the writing systems that exist in the world today, Chinese characters are unique. Chinese characters are neither letters nor words; they are a distinctive kind of “meta-writing,” and each Chinese character is an independent and open node.

Chinese characters, just like the members of a DAO community, are such that, on the one hand, each individual is square-edged, independent, and self-sufficient; on the other hand, each individual only brings forth its proper meaning in combination and linkage with its context.

Our DAO is named “Huawendao”; we use Chinese characters as the identifiers of community members, and each community member has a “name” that belongs uniquely to them.

The basic consensus is built upon Chinese characters. This foundation is cultural; as long as we use Chinese characters, we will have some ways of seeing things that differ from other cultures.

1.4 Entitlement credential: reputation

The “name” identified by Chinese characters not only provides each community member with a clear authentication of identity; it is also the first anchor for consolidating consensus.

A “name” is not some tag to be called forth and cast aside at will. Once a person joins the community under a certain name and forms a bond with the community through his words and deeds, his name is no longer an arbitrary number, but becomes public knowledge broadly accepted within the community.

So-called fame, renown, and prestige all refer to this community consensus that has凝聚ed around a name. Once a person has enough prestige, his name itself also contains power and wealth.

When I first thought of this “prestige,” I wanted to call it “merit” or “achievement”; in substance it can indeed be understood as merit, and in the future we would “reward according to merit.” But considering its link with “name,” I decided I still had to emphasize the “name” aspect.

Valuing names is not a feature unique to Web3 communities. Traditional communities have always been like this. Each of our names has value. Of course the names of ordinary people are worth a little less, but some celebrities—for example, if they say a few words and can immediately move products, and fans are willing to spend money for them—that is wealth embedded in a name.

Each member of our community uses Chinese characters as the label of identity. When we all move around in the community under this label, under that label there will accumulate some additional things—nothing more than power and wealth.

The power or wealth brought by prestige is vastly different from the stocks or securities that general capital markets use as entitlement credentials. A person who holds a large amount of equity will also obtain power and wealth within some group (for example, the corresponding company), but he can sell out and leave at any time. Especially for ordinary “retail investors,” the purpose of holding equity may be short-term resale; they may not necessarily form a bond with the relevant group, nor do they necessarily truly care about the group’s long-term development.

Our goal is not to make quick money, but to build a self-governing community together, so we do not use shares or capital to define the weight of rewards or voting; instead, we use “name” and the “prestige” it gathers as the basis of community entitlements.

For example, if you stay in a company for a long time and it gives you some options or shares or the like, then you too have accumulated some power and wealth, but power and wealth in this sense are anonymous. One of the great inventions of modern financial markets is the anonymization of property, which makes securities possible. In the old days, partnership shares actually existed too, but they were not anonymous—for example, Zhang San held this much and Li Si held that much. The starting point of modern securities markets is the invention of securities: anonymous, homogeneous certificates that can be freely traded to define entitlements. So these entitlements can be sold or bought at any time, and the power and wealth established in this way are very different from what is condensed around reputation.

When the anchor of your power and wealth is an anonymous certificate, in fact it is very hard to have a long-term vision, because once you have accumulated to a certain extent you can cash out and leave; only those who occupy such a large share that they cannot be dumped all at once may have some long-term mindset.

We use names as anchors and prestige as the measure of entitlements; then, for example, rights to income and rights to vote will all be anchored to prestige.

We will quantify “prestige” and dynamically record each community member’s growth in prestige through community consensus. Those who make contributions to community building will not only receive one-time bonuses or bounties, but also accumulate prestige. The higher the prestige, the greater the entitlements within the community—but the stronger the bond with the community as well—because prestige cannot be “cashed out.” If a person wants to enjoy for a long time the benefits brought by prestige, he will tend to remain within the community, keeping communication and interaction going.

Simply put, our mechanism is that each person has an NFT character (name), and prestige accumulates on top of the name. Your character can be sold, but your prestige cannot be sold. When you sell the character, it is equivalent to abandoning your name, equivalent to “suicide,” no longer active in this spiritual world. Another person with the same name is reborn and starts accumulating prestige all over again. Your contribution is your contribution; once the name is sold, the contribution is not transferred.

The higher your prestige, the deeper your attachment to the community will be, and you will not leave the community lightly. This is a design that encourages long-term community governance. This design is not entirely my own invention either; before, V God’s promotion of SBTs (soulbound tokens) was in fact a similar mechanism. I think this kind of system suits our community better. We are not issuing tokens for now, and we are not using fungible tokens to govern the community; we are using NFTs plus a prestige system.

The prestige system is meant to encourage a community incentive mechanism driven by “seeking fame.” We often put the four characters “seek fame and pursue profit” together and talk about them as if both are bad things, but in fact the two are very different:

“Seeking fame” and “pursuing profit” are not contradictory, but which comes first makes a great difference. If people prioritize interests, and those who possess enormous wealth automatically obtain prestige, then the atmosphere of the community will be impetuous and barbaric. But if people prioritize the pursuit of prestige, cherish their reputation, and in the end allow those who, through sustained effort, build up a good name to obtain the wealth they deserve, then we may create a community atmosphere that is friendly, decent, long-term minded, and attentive to accumulation.

In modern society, especially today, seeking fame and pursuing profit are in many cases completely reversed; pursuing profit has become the dominant thing. As long as you make money, no matter how you made it, you automatically have prestige. For example, many recent things: who are the community leaders? A lot of them were once the people who most fiercely exploited retail investors, and then they automatically became KOLs; everyone thinks they can make money by following them. Why? Just because he made money, so he has prestige. That is a very distorted value system: people do not gradually build prestige through decent conduct and by cherishing their reputation. Instead, it is, “I’ll exploit retail investors however I want; if I exploit them hard enough and make money, I’ll become famous.” I think this is a very bad reversal.

The conception we hope for is still “seek fame and pursue profit,” but seeking fame must be placed before pursuing profit. Those who carefully maintain their reputation and cherish their good name should ultimately still be able to obtain benefits. It is not that we truly have to dedicate our whole lives, end up penniless, and die in poverty; that would also be bad. Those who cherish their reputation and keep contributing should ultimately receive the wealth and benefits they deserve—that is the reasonable thing.

So we need to pursue interests, but we must not prioritize the pursuit of interests. That is the best system.

Q6: (not recorded clearly)

Q7 (online question): After a name is resold, the prestige disappears; that seems inappropriate. The history represented by prestige should not disappear.

A: Perhaps I did not explain it accurately enough. I mean that, from your personal perspective, your prestige disappears, but from the DAO’s perspective it of course does not dissipate. Our DAO is precisely meant to keep historical records; that will not disappear. I mean that when you give up your name, it is akin to “suicide,” and then your “deeds” become the deeds of a “dead person.” We will still “remember” you, but when distributing benefits we will no longer distribute them to you; when voting, we will no longer let the “dead” rise up to vote, but when commemorating the past, of course we will still bring out your achievements to talk about.

Q7 (online question): I think Web3 should be very open, and should allow me to participate intermittently. For example, I participated in an earlier phase, but I see many more newcomers coming in, and I feel that they are more capable, so I may leave the position to them; that may be the better approach.

A: That is all a matter for later. At least at the beginning, we hope everyone will participate long-term. In the later stages there will indeed be the issue of “inheritance”; if we want to bring in successors, I don’t think it necessarily requires you to sell your character before successors can be introduced. Later on we can also bring in successors through means such as “forming compounds.” For example, the four characters tiandi xuanhuang (Heaven Earth Black Yellow) can be combined into a word or phrase; that word or phrase can be our “offspring,” and the person holding that word or phrase can join the community as a new force.

Personally, I hope that even if you want to exit, the gains you can obtain by selling your name are still far less than the future entitlements you can enjoy by keeping it. If it really comes to the point where the old hands have occupied all the slots and newcomers must be given room before they can be attracted, I think at least right now we do not need to think about that; we do not yet have that many people. When we have to face that problem in the future, we may have many other mechanisms.

1.5 Governance Element: Recording History

Although, for the sake of community management, we need to quantify and accumulate “reputation,” reputation is not merely a simple numerical score. Reputation is the embodiment of each community member’s words, deeds, and achievements. We must not only record abstract reputation points for each community member, but also record the historical process of people helping one another and building the community.

The essence of blockchain is an “immutable public historical record.” We will use blockchain technology to record history, taking “on-chain history” as the basis and outcome of community governance.

We also talked about this earlier: no matter what, we will not let reputation vanish into thin air. After an individual leaves, your achievements will also be permanently recorded as history. This is something that needs to be recorded by people. History is not something that every individual can accomplish just by talking to themselves; recording history itself is one of the community’s main activities, and it is a way of governing within the community.

Of course, a community not only needs governance; it will also have other actions, advance other projects, and hold all kinds of activities. But in terms of internal community governance alone, one basic element is recording history. We will record, with the help of blockchain, the actions and contributions of the actors represented by each name.

Blockchain technology and the demand to record history fit each other extremely well. The essence of blockchain is an immutable historical record. Such a record is both the basis for community governance—for example, how much weight your vote carries—and also a product of the community, a special NFT product on the blockchain.

In addition, the matter of recording history also fits Chinese culture extremely well.

Cuneiform writing was initially mostly associated with commercial activity, whereas Chinese script became associated with the activity of recording history very early on. From oracle bone script and bronze inscriptions onward, Chinese characters have always been linked with recording history. The Twenty-Four Histories continue without interruption; the emphasis on history is an inherent part of Chinese culture.

Many of the earliest cuneiform texts were ledgers, whereas oracle bone script belonged to the “wizard-historian tradition”: record first, then divine.

The Twenty-Four Histories are state-sponsored histories. In fact, Chinese folk culture also attaches great importance to history. Folk culture values the continuation of incense offerings and the glorification of one’s family name; genealogies are family histories. In a certain sense, traditional Chinese religion is history. Other so-called religions—such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism—are actually understood in a utilitarian way. For example, when I worship a bodhisattva, it is to seek many children and much happiness; when I worship the Dragon King, it is to pray for favorable weather and timely rain, and so on, seeking some actual efficacy. Such worship is pluralistic: one person can worship many gods. But the core belief of Chinese people is actually ancestor worship. Bodhisattvas and the like can be worshipped however you please—you can worship several at once—but your ancestors cannot be recognized casually. It is impossible for the Zhang family to worship the Li family and for the Li family to worship the Zhang family; this is extremely exclusive. The essence of ancient Chinese belief is history. Bodhisattvas and the like are practical, while ancestor worship is what is transcendent.

The saying “Since ancient times, who has not died? Let my loyal heart illuminate the annals of history” expresses precisely a kind of religious faith. Westerners discovered that people must die, so what should be done? Thus they pursue heaven, or an otherworldly paradise, and the like. But Chinese people say: how should we view life and death? We view them in historical records. The meaning of my life remains in the history books. This is the core of Chinese culture.

From the very beginning of “Chinese writing,” this characteristic was already embedded in the genetic code of Chinese culture, and it continued without interruption all the way through the Ming dynasty, when the historical outlook remained continuous. Even in the Qing dynasty, one can still say that the continuity persisted.

Since antiquity, reputation has been backed by historical records, and the so-called “leaving one’s name in the blue annals” has been the highest pursuit of countless people of noble heart and lofty aspiration. Of course, this is not the exclusive patent of the Chinese. Western scientists, too, will rush headlong into competition over priority in discovery and naming rights. But in ancient China, the activity of recording history was especially institutionalized: the Left Historian recorded events, the Right Historian recorded words, and the institution of court historians was also a governance model unique to Chinese civilization. Within the governance system, court historians played both a religious role—providing standards for ritual and a vessel for meaning—and a practical role—supervising and evaluating.

In ancient China, “historians” were first and foremost an official post. The so-called Shiji means the Record of the Grand Historian; first there had to be the office of Taishi Gong, and only then could there be such a thing as the Shiji. Thereafter, “historian” remained an official post as well: Grand Historian, Chief Historian, Censor, and so on. It was not only those who recorded history in the modern, narrow sense who were called court historians; those who recorded astronomy were also court historians, and those who exercised supervisory functions were also court historians. They recorded other people’s words and deeds and reported them to the emperor and the like. The emphasis on leaving one’s name in history is universal; Westerners are the same. You can see many scientists, in their scramble to secure a place in history, becoming utterly shameless. But in ancient China, history was institutionalized, and history became a “governance element.” This is not something our DAO invented; it is a tradition of ancient China. Up through the Ming dynasty (by the Qing dynasty it was more or less over), the independence of those who recorded history was extremely strong. Even the emperor could not easily interfere with them. And we emphasized that later generations should compile the histories of earlier generations, so that they could be relatively objective and could render a final judgment after the coffin was closed, determining achievements. Of course, this came to an end after the Qing dynasty. The Twenty-Four Histories concluded with the History of Ming, and no one compiled the History of Qing, let alone the history of the Republic. The tradition was broken.

So we must revive Chinese culture:

As a Chinese cultural community built on blockchain, it is only natural for Huawendao to introduce the element of “history” into community governance.

As the community grows, the activity of recording history will not be limited to recording activities within the community itself. We can produce all kinds of products with historical elements, such as Web3 archives, historical and cultural NFTs, and so on, carrying out cultural export in the “new continent.”

There are still relatively few people doing this kind of work. Just today I saw a foreign project—apparently launched as early as March this year—called historyDAO. At the time, they even invited Kevin Kelly to have a talk as part of their event. What they are doing is actually not very good either. I think this is a specialty of Chinese culture, and in the future we can do it even better.

The grand narrative is over. Does anyone have any questions?

Tao: Just now you spoke about history and blockchain, and I thought of a few real things that have actually happened. I very much agree with your view: history really is highly consistent with the spirit of blockchain. One case is from 13 years ago, and another is from just a few days ago. The first thing is Satoshi Nakamoto’s first block, in which he wrote a sentence; the other is the last PoW block of Ethereum, where Shenyu added a sentence. They are both, in a sense, historical records. From the very first block onward, blockchain has contained this possibility of recording history. Once recorded, these histories can never be erased and will remain forever; this is a thread that runs all the way through.

I thought one step further, and I feel that Huawendao could form a healthier community with stronger cohesion and reputation as its guide. Because people care about their own names, practical work and the verification of that work, and then recording it to accumulate reputation—all of this is very good.

However, I was thinking: if it is something good, we can record it. But if it is a malicious person, and he has made many contributions in the early stages, with a pretty good reputation, and then he does a project, using everyone’s trust, and then he shaves the sheep. Then I may never have used my real name; I anonymously made the money and ran off, and I don’t care about reputation either. That may cause harm to the community, so how do we avoid such problems?

Answer: I think in a sense this is impossible to avoid. First of all, within our community there are names; this character is your real-name identity, unlike anonymous forums where names are randomly generated meaningless symbols. So we do have an actual digital identity. It’s just that this digital identity does not necessarily have to reveal your real-world identity; your real-world identity can be anonymous. If you make use of our community and truly do many things that contribute, accumulating reputation, then in a certain sense you have the right to squander that reputation. Of course, we can guarantee that at most you can squander it once; your black history will be recorded, and your previous reputation will no longer be recognized within the community consensus. Because your reputation did not come out of thin air—it was indeed accumulated bit by bit—you therefore have the right to squander it once. And in practice, it is actually hard to determine whether you are really ripping people off or whether the project simply failed.

Tao: In the real world there may also be a very reputable person who, before the age of 40, really accumulated a very high reputation, and then one day squandered it all, or even committed a crime. But the difference in the real world is that the law can have a set of compulsory mechanisms to provide guarantees and punishment, but in a DAO can there be some similar mechanism or method to reward good and punish evil?

Answer: I think that in the digital world, punishment is nothing more than zeroing out your reputation, or confiscating some assets you may have staked. There cannot be any additional punishment. (Because the worst of what he does is only at that level; at most he is deceiving other people’s money.)

『Wen』: In reality, there are also people who squander their reputation and still manage to escape punishment, like Jia so-and-so. The key is that people should become smarter and smarter, and take responsibility for their own judgments.

2. Practical Implementation

(Only the first two items were deployed before the project launched; the subsequent items may be further revised through community discussion after the project launches.)

『Hua』: Finally, let’s talk about the practical implementation section. We don’t need to go into too much detail, because all of these can be further revised later.

2.1 “Thousand Character Classic” NFT

The first batch will release Thousand Character Classic NFTs, a total of 1,000 non-repeating Chinese characters (traditional), put on-chain in Unicode form, with no images and no attributes.

This kind of NFT form, so original and so plain, can only be done with Chinese characters; no other script can achieve a similar effect.

Among these, the three characters “華”, “文”, and “道” are reserved by the three initiators (as markers of initiator identity); all other Chinese characters are minted in blind-box form and will be revealed within one week after the public sale is completed.

To foster a good initial atmosphere for the community, each initiator will seek out Chinese elites to distribute whitelists. Each initiator reserves 40 whitelist spots for subsequent activities; the remaining minting slots will be distributed as far as possible.

Each initiator keeps one character and 40 whitelist spots; I believe everyone can accept that, since that is relatively fair. The blind-box format is the same as mainstream NFT releases: whatever character you draw then is what you get. Of course, the virtue of the Thousand Character Classic is that all the characters are relatively elegant ones; there are no vulgar characters. It is an ancient primer for children.

We’ll try our best to bring people in and give them whitelists. Those of you here who can participate deeply in the early stage can all get whitelists, and you can further recommend reliable elites to join as well.

What do I mean by “elite”? It doesn’t necessarily mean someone who has already made a lot of money or has a high social status. My understanding of an elite is a “decent person.” First of all, you have to be decent; it can’t be that you come here just to fleece the project, and once you can’t fleece it anymore, you start making trouble and filing reports and so on. The kind of people we’re avoiding are precisely those types.

After obtaining a whitelist spot, you can mint one Chinese character at a price of 0.1 ETH; the minting date is to be determined. After whitelist users complete minting, if there are any left over, the remaining Chinese characters will be sold in the public sale at a price of 0.15 ETH each.

This is also standard practice: the public-sale price is a little higher than the whitelist price. Of course, the price can be negotiated; some people think it’s too much, others think it’s too little.

Of course, before evaluating the price, we should first not think of ourselves as an NFT project. We are not an NFT project; we are a DAO. These minting fees are not taken by us initiators. It’s not that we sell the NFTs to you and then take the money away. All revenue from minting goes into the public treasury. The deposit in this treasury will be our future operating funds; it is not something the few of us can just spend whenever we like. Rather, everyone needs to vote on how to spend it, which projects to support, how much salary to give whom—these are all matters to be decided by the community. So the 0.1E pricing is meant to establish an initial public fund; in a certain sense, that money is still yours, still the common property of our DAO. Of course, we initiators will have some initial contributions, and our reputation will be a bit higher at the beginning, but exactly how large a share we occupy will also depend on the consensus of the active community members.

So if you look at it according to the logic of selling NFTs, this 0.1E price is too high, because we don’t have much artistic creation, and Chinese characters themselves don’t have copyright. But as a public treasury, I even think this is a bit too little; with around 100 ETH, you actually can’t do much.

The value of this NFT is actually self-reinforcing as well: the more money others see in your treasury, the more they may feel that this project is worth investing in.

During the blind-box period for the Chinese character NFT, and after the reveal as well, free trading is allowed; royalty is 5%.

All minting fees and royalty income go into the DAO public treasury, to support community projects or for subsequent rewards according to merit.

Unlike the founders of Mfer, we don’t even take the royalty; the royalty also all goes into the public treasury, continually replenishing public funds.

Any problem with this part?

Question 9: I think it could be a bit more expensive.

Answer: Let’s think it over some more.

jaco: I want to ask what the public treasury’s money can be used for?

Answer: We can refer to how other DAO treasuries use their money. Of course, one very direct way is “dividends” (though in our case it’s not shares, so more precisely it’s settling merit—“rewarding according to merit”), directly distributing money according to contribution ratios.

Besides that, the main thing is to invest in some projects. We are a decentralized community; which projects we will support in the future is not up to the initiators. Community members can all offer ideas. For example, if you want to develop a game, or make a series of art works, and you need startup funds, then you can call out in the community: who can provide labor, who can provide financial support. If everyone thinks it’s appropriate, we can hold a vote in the community and decide how much money to allocate to your project.

It also includes spending money to organize some offline events. Of course, right now when I organize offline events, I do it all voluntarily myself. But in the future, for example if you are in the United States, or in Shanghai, and you also want to hold an offline event, as long as you can prove that it benefits the prosperity of the community and provide a record of the event, then if other community members approve, the public treasury can reimburse you as well.

Even if community members think we want to do some diversified investing, such as buying a Bored Ape as communal property, things like that are all possible. In short, everyone has the right to propose something, seek consensus within the community, and then initiate a vote; then we can provide funding support to you.

jaco: Selling out all 1,000 would be the ideal case, but the environment is not very good now, so it may not sell out by then. Some projects, for instance, may bring in market makers to pump trading volume and then attract ordinary people to mint. Do we have this kind of consideration too?

Answer: I don’t think we need market makers. If we can’t mint them all, then we’ll just put the leftovers directly into the public treasury. The public treasury can hold not only money but also NFTs. All the unsold NFTs will be stored in the treasury, and when the time comes, we’ll reveal them blind-box style just the same. If we really need to find market makers, it’d be better for us to do it ourselves. We feel that each initiator keeping 40 is a fairly appropriate amount, but if you all think we need to step in and create fake trading, then it’d be better for me to just spend my own money and buy them myself. To be honest, I’m not short on this bit of money; I could even take care of the whole 100 ETH myself, but I don’t think there’s any need. However many people there should be, there should be that many people—keep it real and that’s enough. For example, at the beginning, only one or two hundred people would be enough. The Mayflower had only 102 people; even if we only sold 102, that would be fine. The rest can just be stored first. As the community slowly grows, naturally someone will come to buy them, and the money from those purchases will still go into the public treasury. In fact, we don’t really need money at the beginning; most things are spontaneous activities. Many DAOs also get going slowly; maybe it’s not until a year later that they suddenly become hot. We may also gradually do some things and then attract attention. Of course, all of this can be discussed.

If, after the public-sale stage, there are still unsold remaining Chinese characters, they will all be returned to the public treasury, and the community will decide how to handle them. Options include listing them at a chosen time, auctioning them in batches, etc.; the resulting income will also go into the public treasury. [This paragraph was added to the white paper after the AMA discussion]

2.2 Official website, Twitter, Discord, etc.

Set up a simple official website to provide basic introductions, the white paper, a minting interface, and so on.

The official Twitter account will be used to release updates and interact with other projects.

The community’s main venue will be Discord, which requires several management and operations talents. Only users who own the Chinese character NFT can enter the internal discussion area.

Enable co-creation tools such as Notion.

[discord and notion already exist; other things are being advanced. If you’re interested in joining, contact me]

2.3 The “Annals” NFT

Compile the “Annals” periodically and publish them in NFT form. The “Annals” include textual records (for example, on July 27, 2022, “華” drafted the first version of the Huawendao white paper) and quantified reputation records (for example, “華” (ETH address) reputation +100, total 1100)

Each new set of “Annals” must be ratified by a community vote. First, the relevant administrator makes factual determinations and quantified scoring, then submits them to the community for public discussion. After a preliminary consensus is formed, a vote is held.

Reputation is tied simultaneously to both the “character” and the ETH address. For example, if “華” is transferred from ETH address 1 to ETH address 2, then the reputation previously recorded under ““華” (ETH address 1)” is reset to zero, and ““華” (ETH address 2)” will be recorded as a new member with the same name. If special events such as a wallet being stolen occur, the transfer of reputation requires community discussion and a vote (to be recorded in the next issue of the “Annals”).

I actually feel that many people in the blockchain圈 today still have too much of an engineering mindset—they always insist on using a new technology to implement some function. For example, with SBT, many people want to make a dedicated contract, a dedicated token, and so on. I think that may not be necessary. We can achieve it with a traditional NFT. It’s nothing more than “wrapping” some information in NFT form—wrapping a set of information up, and then you can achieve the effect of an SBT. Of course, this can still be discussed. If everyone feels that we still need to make something like a POAP, I think that is also acceptable.

In any case, we need to compile the Annals regularly. The “Annals” should be a series of NFTs, not issued all at once, but released one by one. Each Annal wraps a certain amount of textual information: written information includes the parts for humans to read, recording who actually did what, and also parts for machines to read, such as the final accumulated reputation points for each title.

The compilation of the Annals ultimately needs to be approved by a community vote. Of course, before that passes, we need people to establish quantitative standards, determine the facts, make the historiographical records public for discussion, and then vote at the end.

The fame record is bound simultaneously to the “character” and the ETH address. If you sell the character, the fame attached to that character gets recalculated from scratch. Of course, in some special cases (such as an account being stolen), fame can be transferred by a vote of the community.

Each issue of the “Chronicle” can be made into the form of a badge or milestone, awarded to the member who contributed the most during that period.

“Fame” does not require an extra token; it only requires reading the Chronicle NFT. That is, by reading the quantitative record in the latest NFT within the Chronicle NFT, one can know how much fame a certain name has accumulated.

Our community looks to the long term. Fame does not need to be updated in real time or frequently; between the issuance of each Chronicle there is ample time for public announcement and correction, so as to avoid loophole-exploiting and malicious “score farming” and the like.

This NFT can be sold; no matter how it is sold, it will not affect the historical record encapsulated in the NFT, and the person who buys the Chronicle cannot alter it either. It is simply a symbolic, honorific NFT.

Of course, we cannot update fame linearly, at every moment. Your fame only refreshes when the next Chronicle is compiled. But that has its advantages too: it is more conducive to sedimentation, and can prevent certain loophole-exploiting behaviors—like me rapidly farming fame and then squandering it immediately. We need a longer cycle to recognize your fame. Of course, the distribution of rewards and the like is not something that happens continuously every moment either; it will certainly only be done by vote after a certain stage has passed.

So, what we adopt is a relatively slow-paced mechanism, rather than a token that updates in real time.

2.4 Voting Mechanism

First, one must possess at least one Chinese-character NFT in order to participate in various community votes; depending on the issue, voting can either follow a one-character-one-vote mechanism or a mechanism that calculates weight based on fame. For major decisions, fame is uniformly used as the voting weight.

Voting does not necessarily require an on-chain contract. Most voting and decision-making activities can be conducted flexibly within the community, and then put on chain afterward in the form of public announcement and recording into the Chronicle.

Routine decision-making activities may include electing community administrators, record keepers, and other positions; determining whether a certain historical record is genuine and valid; quantifying and scoring a certain contribution; deciding the next small or large direction that the community will jointly tackle, and so on.

As the community matures and consensus solidifies, we can gradually draft contracts for some routine operations and carry them out on chain.

At the initial stage of participation, perhaps all you need to do is check in and say a few words, and you can obtain some minimum fame and thus various voting rights. How much fame our founders should receive is also something open to discussion. How much fame different kinds of work deserve is also something open to discussion. We do not need to establish a very rigid standard. We hope to arrive, after discussion, at a relatively stable standard, but this standard is also dynamic; when the next round of calculation comes, it can be discussed again. Because the needs of different periods may be different, once the community matures it obviously cannot still be the case that you can just check in casually and get fame; the requirements may become higher.

01:44:21

2.5 Initial Projects

In addition to jointly improving community governance, we of course also need to establish some community projects that can mutually support one another and be co-created. These projects can be proposed or introduced by any community member. Once consensus is reached, they can become projects incubated by the community, funded either by private bounties from community members or, where consensus is reached, by use of the public treasury. Participants will have their fame recorded, and the benefits after a project’s success should also feed back to the community in a certain proportion.

What was said earlier concerned internal projects within internal community governance. Apart from community governance, each of our members can initiate all kinds of projects.

Projects incubated by the community do not necessarily need to directly align with the “Huawen”特色. Any project in the web3 field can seek support within the community. We believe that any excellent project led by Chinese people is conducive to the basic consensus that digital Chinese people need in order to establish themselves in the New World. In any case, we do not need to hide ourselves and disguise ourselves as a foreign team in order to seek support; rather, we can stand tall and build achievements under the name of Chinese people. [This passage was added to the white paper after the AMA discussion]

These projects do not necessarily require participation from the entire community. You might have a project of your own, organize your own team, and want to get investment from the community; you can come and make your pitch to the community as well. If community members think your project has promise, they can provide you with venture capital. This is a function that other DAOs also have. Of course, if your project succeeds, you need to feed back to the community, because as a whole the community holds shares in your project, and once the project succeeds, part of the income should be returned to the community treasury. If you default, your reputation is ruined. Ideally, the more fame you have, the more likely the community is to support you. As said earlier, you can “spend” your reputation to attract people to invest.

The founding team will propose some project ideas that throw out a brick to attract jade, such as:

1. The Thousand-Character Classic illustration project

Using AI image generation to illustrate the Thousand-Character Classic, we can create one illustration for each character, or one illustration for each line (such as “Heaven and Earth are dark and yellow, the cosmos vast and primeval”). The completed illustrations can be given to each Chinese-character holder as an avatar or banner display. We could even produce a physical book version of the Thousand-Character Classic for sale or as gifts.

For projects at the beginning stage, my thinking is that our community is still very weak, with no real big-name figures or very strong technical capability, so we should choose things on a smaller scale that we can actually get off the ground. For example, this Thousand-Character Classic illustration project. The basis of our Thousand-Character Classic NFT is that it has no avatar—it is simply a Chinese character—but we can make avatars and cultural products. Of course, if we can find artistic resources willing to draw an avatar for each Thousand-Character Classic character for us, that would of course be great too, but I think that resource is too hard to find, and the workload really is enormous, so we are imagining using the currently very popular AI image generation to do it. AI image generation is easy to get started with; everyone can play with it. What we currently lack most is first establishing a standard base image and some broad stylistic directions, and then letting everyone use their imagination to experiment. That foundation is very important. Some work has already been uploaded to Discord, but I feel it is still not ideal and needs more experimentation. We can also make some larger-format images, more poetic ones, as banners. After the avatar illustrations are completed, everyone will by default receive an airdropped corresponding one; the banner images can be used as rewards or sold separately.

2. Novel co-creation project

Community members jointly create a Jin Yong-style Chinese-flavored novel.

3. Crypto Chronicles project

The community jointly writes a history of blockchain development, forming products such as a wiki archive, character profiles, pixel-style animations, and distinctive NFTs.

4. Co-authored paper project

Collaboratively write academic papers on the history of blockchain/metaverse/web3, especially contributions related to Chinese people, publish them in international journals, and introduce Chinese people’s contributions and ideas to the international academic community.

The novel co-creation project was mainly suggested by “Dao”; he didn’t come in today, so let’s talk about it later. (SC illustration from the audience: we could do something like the SCP Foundation, with everyone composing urban legends and the like and gathering them together, building stories around characters. I have a bioart project that is asking artists to do similar things.)

For the Histories project, we can gather materials together and write a history of blockchain technology and the like. Our community may also attract some people who have already made a name for themselves in the blockchain field; they can tell the history of their own projects, and we can compile it.

Of course, history must be compiled. I myself am trained in the history of science, so when we talk about compiling history, we cannot just let the parties involved say what happened and then record it directly as history; there must be a relatively third-party recorder to organize and write it up. We can do such things—write the history of blockchain, make character profiles.

We can also consider making a batch of pixel-style short animations. This was actually something Dao wanted to do earlier on: turning crypto-circle history into NFTs for sale. I think there is still a market for this, because the market currently lacks things in this style.

There is also the co-authored paper project, especially writing papers in English, using the output of our work to help reverse the image of Chinese people.

2.6 Membership Expansion

In the initial stage the community will adhere to an elite route, and only after a certain consensus and set of norms have formed will it consider further expanding membership. The first round of expansion can be done by introducing the Shuowen Jiezi, expanding to about 10,000 Chinese characters. A long-term expansion plan can be carried out through “word formation”: Chinese-character holders can rent out characters for forming words, thereby creating new “phrase” NFTs, ultimately allowing the absorption of an unlimited number of new members.

Whether or not we sell the 1,000 characters, our active membership in the early stage probably won’t be very large—at most a hundred people, which would already be quite good. But we certainly need a long-term vision and a plan for scaling up in the future. 10,000 characters is already the scale of a typical NFT project; if that still isn’t enough, we can move on to phrase-building. The phrase-building function is a bit like ENS, which sells eth domains—it is, in a sense, staking out a domain name. ENS domains also have rent, and we can let the owners of characters enjoy a steady stream of rent.

Phrase-building also has many additional meanings, because words can form not only people’s names but also organizations’ names. For example, the word “Huawendao” itself is an organization; in the future we can also use phrases to form all kinds of other organizations. A phrase itself can even embody an organizational structure—for instance, “Shaolin Temple” could be an organization jointly run by the three people Shao, Lin, and Si.

2.7 Token Issuance

In the early stage, the community can run perfectly well around just two kinds of NFT, without the need to issue a tradable token. In order to avoid, as much as possible, excessive profit-seeking and legal risks, we will not rush to issue a token before the conditions are ripe.

That said, as a long-term vision to provide room for imagination, we do not rule out issuing a token at an appropriate time once there is community consensus. Of course, a token cannot replace the status of reputation, nor can it be directly exchanged for reputation. But there may be indirect uses. For example, a token could be used to post bounties within the community, and those who complete the bounty could, while receiving the token, also gain the corresponding reputation (subject to community recognition).

Many DAO projects nowadays want to do tokens, but personally I think that’s actually unnecessary. With these two kinds of NFT—Chinese-character NFTs and chronicle NFTs—we can accomplish everything.

2.8 Cultural Export

In the long run, we can standardize the community’s system of recording history and provide objective and neutral third-party “narrative” services for the entire digital new continent.

Smart contracts need third-party audits to ensure security; historical narratives also deserve an objective and neutral third party to evaluate them. The reputation, standing, contributions, and dark history, and so on, of a certain project and its team members are, in many cases, more important than the contract itself. We can provide neutral and reliable historical compilation services to the outside world.

In a sense, today’s NFT circles already depend on narrative; one of the biggest selling points of every NFT project is narrative.

In addition, we can also promote the value of a large category of NFT products. For example, the founder of Twitter turned the first tweet into an NFT auction and sold it for a high price, which has already proven that there are people willing to collect “objects of historical significance.” But this kind of NFT has not yet developed, partly because similar NFTs are still isolated cases and have not yet formed a climate; there are no eye-catching series of products, nor any standards or norms.

If we can create technical standards and cultural consensus for this kind of “historical memorabilia,” we may be able to drive the rise of an entire NFT collecting category.

HistoryDAO, mentioned earlier, is doing this kind of product, but I think what they’re doing is still too thin—basically image-based, with not much historical compilation. This also counts as an existing direction. But right now, when we look in Opensea, we can’t see any NFT category specifically for historical works. Of course, this is a relatively long-term direction.

Well, that concludes the white paper presentation. Thank you, everyone.

Next, please let Wen come and chat with everyone.

Second Half: The Realization of the Common Ideal of Marx and Hayek

“Wen”: Let me first introduce myself. I’m currently in advertising. I come from a humanities background and studied history, but I don’t have a very strong sense of boundary between the humanities and the sciences. I got into Bitcoin and blockchain relatively early.

Just now, Hua talked about many of the things Huawendao wants to do. What I want to talk about next is more about my own thoughts and views on Web3 from the angle of ideology.

Web3 represents not just a new technology, nor just an investment project; I think it more fundamentally represents an idea. And ideas are what truly push civilization forward. Web3 represents humanity having reached such a stage in civilization.

When we first encountered Bitcoin, we were always thinking about whether we believed in the idea behind Bitcoin: decentralization, the fact that information does not need to be verified by a single centralized authority, and that information gains objectivity through the blockchain.

I think one of Le Bon’s views is very right: recorded history is hard to make objective, and the truth of history is difficult to obtain. But after cryptographic technology appeared, information began to have objectivity. So we believed that blockchain would change our civilization and change our lives.

Now, in the Web3 craze, we have seen many things we couldn’t have imagined ten years ago. In the previous crash (2017), NFTs had just come out, and we still didn’t have a very clear sense of what they meant. But in this round of the bull market, we have come to realize that NFT is a foundation of Web3, and from it the Web3 community form DAO has emerged.

What we received from childhood was actually a kind of Marxist education. Marx’s thought was in fact based on Marx’s study of 19th-century British laborers. I think he raised a correct question and also set a correct goal. The question is: why are people objectified and exploited? The goal is: to achieve the greatest freedom for humanity. But the object he found for criticism was capital, and that is not right.

In China, our understanding of Marxism today is mostly dogmatic; when we face many problems, we still just curse capital, and that is very superficial.

On the other hand, in right-wing theory, for example in Hayek, the question he asks is actually the same: people are enslaved. Enslaved by what? Enslaved by centralization. The root cause he identifies is different from Marx’s. Marx said the problem lies in capital, while Hayek believed capital has objectivity; capital is like water, a kind of energy without will, so what enslaves people is the centralization that governs capital.

And both left and right ultimately aim to liberate humanity and let people obtain freedom. Their questions and their goals are the same.

The day before yesterday I watched a debate program between left and right, and in the end, after the debate was over, I found there was actually nothing much to debate. Everyone had arrived at the same destination by different routes. Perhaps this route of arriving at the same destination by different paths is the route that Web3 can offer us today.

Last time when I was talking with Hua about Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, it really is a very inspiring work, and in today’s Web3 or DAO world it can serve like a lighthouse, pointing the way for many people【Note: Hua hosted a reading group on The Human Condition, meeting once a week, with livestreams and recordings; please stay tuned】. Arendt mentioned that human active life is divided into three types: labor (the result of the activity has nothing to do with you), work (the result of the activity has something to do with you).

I, as someone who lays bricks and builds walls, when I see the building completed at the end, I absolutely would not feel that the building is my work. But if I paint a picture or design a work, that work is connected to me.

But what human beings ultimately pursue is the third kind, action; that is the thing that truly belongs entirely to you. Freedom, in the final analysis, is the freedom to choose action, the freedom to choose what action to take.

So what are we truly constrained by? We are constrained by the material world. Earth’s resources are only this much; within limited resources, everyone wants a little more, a zero-sum state of game-like competition, where one rises and another falls.

But as technology advances, people’s dependence on material things is actually continually decreasing. We can now get better experiences at lower cost. When I put on an XR headset and play video games, the cost I have to pay is very low, yet I can get a richer experience. Web3 actually points to such a possibility: as Marx said, when material abundance becomes extremely great, people obtain the greatest freedom. The finitude of material things cannot be broken, but people’s dependence on material things can decrease. People will migrate more of their lives into the digital world, into the realm of Web3.

Why can’t Web1 and Web2 do this? Because in those worlds there are no objective resources, no information that clearly belongs to you. But in Web3, information becomes definite—for example, if an NFT avatar is mine, then it is not yours. In the Web3 world I have property and resources like in reality, and also, like SBT and the like, “reputation” as in real life. We migrate the experience of real life into the digital world, while at the same time needing less from material things.

Once this condition is met, both Hayek’s freedom and Marx’s freedom may be attainable in the Web3 world.

Whether it is Huawendao or the other DAOs currently doing things, the DAOs with genuine long-term developmental direction are all thinking about how to move people’s lives onto the internet and enable people’s agency—letting people act. Rather than moving people onto Web3 only to have them remain objectified, becoming slaves to money and fixating on price. These coin speculators who only stare at money actually have no sense of freedom at all; what difference is there between them and stock speculators? They’re still just slaves to money.

We hope to liberate every person, to liberate the creativity within everyone’s heart.

Suppose one day artificial intelligence and machines replace most of our work—then what can humans do? Humans still have to return to their own experience, start from themselves, and create things. Whether humanities or sciences, a group of people gathers together, and if we want to do something, if we think it’s fun and meaningful, then we go do it. That should be human aspiration. Only in Web3 is such a state of harmony within difference possible, where everyone has different pursuits. The world is not all the same; only slaves, only objectified things, are the same. Human beings are differentiated.

In the Web3 world there may be no great powers; it will mainly consist of one small city-state after another, with lots of overlap among them. One person can belong to many DAOs and play different roles. People’s forms of life will become richer and freer.

What Huawendao wants to do is create, within the Chinese-speaking world, a DAO with this kind of cultural conviction. We do not want to cling to some sort of fundamentalist ideology, nor do we want to do things while harboring an unreflective worship of Chinese civilization. We believe that people who speak Chinese, when gathered together, will naturally form a kind of cultural resonance. Our language and writing have already established a boundary in advance, and that is something worth cherishing.

In short, I want to emphasize that today we are standing at a new starting point for a civilization. This is not about treating Huawendao as a chance to get rich; it is not about letting us be objectified once again. Nor will we go and compete with Web2 for territory. What we hope for is to let people return to the center, to become the center of the internet world, to become the center of their own lives.

『華』：Let me add something. Aside from the analogy I mentioned earlier about the New World, I actually prefer another analogy: the humanism of the Renaissance. The Renaissance in a certain sense was born in the environment of a new medium—printing. After printing became widespread, people gained a new dimension: the dimension of text. Looking at oneself from the dimension of text, one then discovered the meaning of the human being, and “the human” came into prominence. The dazed laborer suddenly became an “individual.” The “discovery of the human being” was what happened in the Renaissance.

We are also “humanists” now. We are in a new medium like Web3, and the revolution of this medium is more thorough than that of printing. Printing actually also established an “infinite” world. Text was originally very expensive; now text has become widespread, and then the value of the book itself was replaced by the value of knowledge. The book itself is cheap, while the differences in the knowledge inside books become the object of pursuit.

It is the same now. Something like this is happening in the world of Web3 as well: the space for creation has become infinite, yet personal identity has not dissolved away. In the earlier internet era, digital media had already become infinite, but it had become too infinite: a small image could be copied without limit, with no individuality and no marker of property, an infinite-ization without boundaries. But blockchain, on the one hand, lets us enjoy the infinity of digital space, while on the other hand enabling us to establish finite boundaries within it. Only with boundaries can there be a self, an individual, and the awakening of humanism. This is a very unique historical opportunity.

『文』：The Renaissance is also worth speaking about. The Renaissance was, in fact, Europeans liberating human beings from religion. Before that, the church monopolized knowledge; they monopolized the right to explain the world. Science overturned the servitude of centralized power through empiricism. Capitalism afterward was actually built on this decentralized foundation. China has still not truly completed such a Renaissance. In real space, it is very hard for us to overthrow that centralized power, and Web3 provides us with this New World, where we can do the things we choose to do. These things do not conflict so strongly with reality, but they also bring us to the opportunity to recover our humanity. In this sense, the Renaissance is very meaningful.

Question 12: I quite approve of DAO, but what I’m curious about is this Huawendao, and these projects in the plan—they don’t seem to have much value. It seems like just a hobby group.

『文』：DAO is not something with especially hard boundaries. What we hope to attract are some substantive elites—not an elite status defined by assets, but people who possess an elite consciousness, not necessarily people sitting in the position of the successful. We hope that Huawendao can find like-minded people among this group and push forward the things we want to do.

For example, if I want to make an app, I find three friends, gather us together, and then I make the app. But if you are in a DAO, you may more easily find like-minded friends and find more people to do it together with. I think that is the meaning of Huawendao.

The projects we put forward now, such as making little pictures and the like, are nothing more than cultural construction activities. Cultural construction in a social group represents a force leaning to the right: making yourself cooler, shaping your own image, getting more people to pay attention to you. If a person only has ideas but cannot express them, then he does not have enough charisma. The deeper meaning of cultural activities is to build charisma.

In a DAO, everyone can put forward their own ideas—what they want to do, find others, put together a small team, divide up the work and cooperate. This is the true meaning of a community, this is action. When you have an idea and can inspire and move this group of relatively elite friends, you are more likely to succeed. That is more genuine than very utilitarian efforts to influence an investor, and it also brings you back to your aim as a human being.

Question 12 follow-up: I think these are all fine. But when you do a project, you will use money from the treasury…

『華』：If you are dissatisfied with the projects we’ve listed, you can bring up your own ideas. We’re just offering them as a starting point. And in the early stages the treasury also doesn’t have much money, so we can’t do very big things. So at the beginning we mainly just do some small things that can increase the community’s cohesion and gradually develop it. Think about it: what could the people on the Mayflower have done at the beginning? Wasn’t it just farming, hunting, and the like?

『文』：This involves the question of governance. Our white paper also does not specify the governance method in a very concrete way. We may bring in people with backgrounds in political science, sociology, law, and the like, and we may gradually clarify some written governance methods. At the very least, every project we have will be discussed and voted on. You need to explain what meaning this project has, what impact it has on our DAO, what far-reaching things it contains. You advocate and campaign for it on your own behalf; if everyone finds it interesting, they vote in favor. If you think this thing has no meaning, then vote against it.

『華』：Actually, any DAO can do any project. The特色 of our DAO is not in establishing specific projects. First and foremost, our特色 lies in establishing cultural consensus, and then, on the basis of that cultural consensus, pushing forward all sorts of big and small projects. Once there is cultural consensus, the way projects are presented may also be different. For example, when you go elsewhere to present your project, the emphasis may be on how much money this project can make, how many leeks it can cut. But when you present it in our DAO, you can talk about what cultural value it has, what political significance it has, or what significance it has for the great rejuvenation of Chinese civilization, and so on. These orientations are what make each DAO different from other DAOs. Here with us, you may be able to win over some investors with a longer view.

Question 12 follow-up: I feel like that would be too heavy, though. I think the system of reputation is pretty good, but when I join this DAO, maybe there aren’t many cultural factors involved for me. I don’t know why culture must be raised to such a high level. Including doing something like a history of the crypto world, or something like that, it doesn’t necessarily have to be done inside Huawendao.

『文』：If you don’t do it inside Huawendao, don’t you still have to find another DAO to do it?

Question 12 follow-up: I just don’t know why Huawendao must elevate the cultural attribute so high.

『華』：Didn’t I already answer this? If we didn’t raise the cultural attribute, you could do it in any other DAO.

Question 12 follow-up: I am willing to join because I know you, 『華』, and I believe in your abilities, so I am willing to join your DAO.

『文』：The特色 of Huawendao is precisely this cultural common denominator of the Chinese language and writing. Under this common denominator, we can harmonize while remaining different. For example, we also include people who do financial investment; that can be done, and supported as well. If you want to make a robot, or make smart hardware, you can also find people to support you and do your thing. Our cultural factor is nothing more than the fact that we are all people who use Chinese characters, and the elites within this cultural circle are gathering together.

『華』：What you said earlier about “heavy,” I don’t quite understand. Heavy where? I said from the beginning that inside the Mayflower there were only some thirty Puritans; not everyone shared the same purpose. People can come in with all sorts of purposes—for example, your boyfriend comes in and you come too, or you want to hitch a ride, or you think highly of me and believe there’s a future in following me; that’s fine too. I didn’t say I was excluding you. I never said anything like, if you don’t agree with my narrative, then get out.

Narrative is there to establish a relatively grand, vague, and abstract kind of cohesion; in fact, it is not a very practical thing. Every concrete project has concrete reasons and concrete driving forces, and it doesn’t necessarily need a specific DAO to push it forward. The existence of this relatively “abstract” consensus is meant to establish cohesion at a higher level. For example, as for me personally, if you asked me to casually set up a DAO, to set up some Zhang San Li Si Dao—why would I do it? I don’t have that drive or sense of mission to do such a thing. If I wanted to raise money, I would have done that long ago. It’s not like I’m doing a DAO in order to raise money or something like that,

so I started this DAO. In fact, during the three of us chatting, we really felt that this thing had meaning—not just that it could make money, or that it could do some concrete projects, but that it had some larger significance, something that might be able to leave a mark in the long river of civilizational history. That is why we started it. So I think this DAO may attract people like me: people who are not here because they necessarily want to invest in a project in order to make money.

This is actually also where Western people are very strong. Don’t look at how developed their commercial civilization is; in fact, many times they are also held together by higher aspirations, not by wherever money can be made they invest there. They also have common values and the like, and only then can they band together tightly. For example, why are Jewish people so formidable, so good at banding together? They too are held together by shared beliefs and values. Our Huawendao also needs to establish something at this level. At this level you can only talk about the “abstract”; you cannot be too practical. If you are too practical, then it actually becomes very hard for it to function as a large force of cohesion.

This level is high, but it is not heavy. Shackles are what are heavy. For example, if I stipulate that you must agree, that entering the DAO requires bowing your head and swearing an oath—that would be heavy. We haven’t given you shackles, we haven’t imposed anything on you. After we finish presenting, listen if you want to listen; if not, don’t. In the end, as long as you buy the NFT, you’ve joined. We’re just creating an atmosphere.

『文』：I think that if each individual wants to complete their own journey without falling into ignorance, then one must plant causes in order to reap effects; but the progress of historical civilization only looks at the result. So for each of us, planting causes is placing a bet, betting on the direction we believe is right. What we are facing today are the questions raised by Marx and Hayek—very classic questions—but in their era no real answer could be obtained. We have the chance to obtain an answer, but if we want to seek one, we can only act; we cannot just wait. If you do not plant a cause, there will be no effect. I myself am actually still working at a big Web2 company, but I still feel that we must take a step forward and try new possibilities.

涛：Let me share my feelings. I feel that Huawendao’s vision targets very large but very real problems. I personally have already started a business in the Web3 field, and I have also communicated with many investors. I have experienced a lot in both domestic and overseas crypto circles, and the feeling is actually very deep. My sense is that we really hope to establish, within the Chinese community, something that has never been realized before. In fact, overseas Chinese are not like Indians or Jewish people and the like; they are actually rather a scattered mass. Of course, there are places that do very well, such as Singapore, but many still do not do well.

Why is the question raised by this classmate just now a real one? I think many DAOs have relatively short- or medium-term horizons or goals. I understand Huawendao’s perspective as being very far-reaching. We hope that our members can “inhabit” here—my actions and my reputation and everything about me are tied together, and I orient my behavior through long-term considerations. One of the pain points or problems with many DAOs is that 90% of people are coming for the money; that is reality, even 95%. I think blockchain can bring many new possibilities. Huawendao is a very courageous attempt—actually very difficult, but very courageous. The “reputation” system actually hopes that your contribution and your value are equivalent, that you can obtain what you deserve in the community. This is a very simple ideal, but our society right now is not like that. Yet this ideal is correct, and in blockchain we may be able to realize such an ideal. Anything else specific can be done, but this idea and the positioning of the Huawen circle itself are already enough; that in itself is a very scarce thing.

『文』：Blockchain may, to a certain extent, solve the prisoner’s dilemma. When we truly write reputation into the blockchain, you may care more about it. Chinese people are actually very responsive to this sort of thing.

“Hu” means that Chinese people talk about things like “failing to uphold one’s good name in old age” (saving face, after all); it’s all a similar culture. The Arendt that “Wen” talked about is indeed very important. One of our DAO’s initial activities is that starting tomorrow we’re going to run a reading group, and I’m taking the lead in reading Arendt. That is extremely worthwhile. “Labor” is labor in which one obtains nothing that belongs to oneself; what one obtains are all anonymous things. In this respect, a Foxconn worker and a financial magnate are the same: what they get is money, which is completely anonymous. Money itself does not embody any of your individuality, your views, or anything of the sort; it is simply a completely neutral thing. “Work” is when what you create contains yourself—for example, it reflects your aesthetics, your abilities, your style, your views, and so on.

What is “action” then? In a certain sense, the work of action is yourself: becoming yourself. This kind of creation is not just you cultivating inner strength in solitude (this is what Arendt calls the contemplative life), but through political action, action within the polis, within the collective, you accomplish yourself. The product of “action” (strictly speaking, it should not be called a product, because Arendt opposes conflating action with the making of products) or, one might say, the “result,” is yourself. The emergence of NFT and the emergence of DAO actually provide new possibilities for “work” and “action,” making it possible for all the forms of individuality stripped away by modernity to come back to life.

So for our Huawendao design, what is its ultimate “achievement”? It is not some project, but each name itself: each person within it accomplishing a reputation, accomplishing his self, accomplishing his individuality. His individuality and contributions can all form something visible and tangible, something real and substantial, placed there—perhaps to live in glory for a hundred generations, perhaps to stink for ten thousand years—becoming something actual, in a certain sense something even more solid than physical artifacts in the real world.

“Wen” said that the guy who wrote Sapiens says that knowledge today is mainly experience. In the past, knowledge under capitalism was mainly mathematics; before that, in the age of myth, knowledge was mainly stories. Experience is extremely essential today; all ways of living are just stacking up a way of dying. For all you know, when you die in the future you may be looking at a big screen with the words of what you did and how many points you got and so on.

02:48:36

Jiang Gungun: I’ve always had a question. Up to now, it seems there hasn’t been a clear description: what exactly is Huawendao, what is it going to do, what does it want to become? Of course, that is precisely what attracts me, but we also need more concrete things, such as how we should position ourselves, what goals we have, what we should do?

“Hu”: DAO is a commonwealth, right? It’s an organization. What is an organization? Basically, it’s finding some ways to organize everyone together, and then finding ways to do some activities. First, from the lowest level, it is a hobby group. From a grand perspective, it is the so-called “literature carries the Dao, the Web3 DAO of Huaxia civilization,” letting our Huaxia civilization enter this world. Perhaps you feel that something intermediate is missing, something relatively in between the朋友圈 and Huaxia civilization.

Jiang Gungun: I feel that the three words Huawendao have not been defined, and it’s hard to describe.

“Wen”: I’ll try to explain. If I had to put it in one sentence, I think it would be “a Web3 community of Chinese-speaking elites”—the basic attribute is a community, and the modifier is a Web3 community, which makes it a DAO. Then add another modifier for what kind of people: that is, a community of people whose mother tongue is Chinese, and who have an identification with Chinese culture, gathering together as elites. To put it graphically: suppose at a dock there are a bunch of ships, and each ship says we’re all heading to the world of Web3, to find that magical and marvelous way out. Then the positioning of our ship is to exclusively take in this group of people who share Chinese as a common language. Whether you’re in the humanities, sciences, arts, or engineering, as long as we all share a Chinese cultural background and an elite consciousness, we invite everyone aboard. In fact, if we look at the dock today, there still isn’t a single ship like this; all the ships at the dock are going to the world of Web3, but the difference is our attitude toward recruiting crew members.

“Hu”: Right, as I said before, being able to proudly be Chinese and speak Chinese—DAOs that can do this are very rare right now. A lot of DAOs are clearly made up of a bunch of Chinese people, yet they insist on taking a foreign-sounding name and pretending they’re foreigners.

“Wen”: And we really are not here to fleece people. We are not telling you how much you can make there, how you can recoup your costs along the way, how you can make a lot and a lot of money on the way. That kind of narrative is very boring; it’s basically treating everyone as leeks, as “things.” We are already in Web3, so at the very least we should have respect for people. On that premise, we then find ways to create wealth, create productivity, create better cultural and artistic works, and so on. Money is not our first priority. People who care too much about money are not the kind of decent people we’re talking about; those people are far too prone to screwing over their teammates.

“Hu”: You may think everything we say is grand and empty, right? But that’s precisely the特色. If you look for other DAOs on the market, you won’t find one with our kind of “grandness,” or one like ours: with humanistic ideas, lofty goals, and identification with Chinese people. These few points—if you look at the market—there are almost none.

“Wen”: Most projects today are similar to old-time sorcery. That is to say: I finish the spell, and then the rain will fall; you give me money, and I’ll perform the spell for you; once the rain falls, you leave, and if it doesn’t, I still don’t refund your money. The way many projects make promises now is exactly the same as in sorcery past: it can’t be verified, and afterward the person just slips away.

Jiang Gungun: I also have a similar question. Since everyone has gathered together, there must be a goal—what should this goal be?

“Hu”: What matters is consensus. The so-called goal is nothing more than surviving as Chinese people in Web3.

“Wen”: Actually, the goals can be diverse. Web3 may well solve the problem that people are generally objectified and enslaved in modern society. We believe Web3 points to this possibility. But if we do nothing, the result will not come on its own. If we have this kind of elite consciousness, we are willing to act, and we also point toward this aim, trying to get people to shift more of their life experience into the world of Web3 and restore their humanity.

“Hu”: What exactly is Web3, then? A relatively consensual concept is that each of us has a digital identity; “digital identity” is a core concept of Web3. But what is digital identity like? Right now, the situation is that if you want to enter Web3, you need to come up with a foreigner’s identity. If I must speak of a concrete goal, our first goal is this: that we can, in a dignified way, use a Chinese identity to proudly establish a digital identity, accumulate reputation, and so on.

“Wen”: When we communicate and cooperate with other DAOs, if English is needed, of course we’ll use English, and we can all communicate very well in English. But our explicit self-identification is people who speak Chinese.

Question 15: Having just listened to the two of you, I’d like to ask whether our Huawendao mission and vision are: the mission is the consensus among Chinese people and the promotion of the Chinese circle and the expansion and development of the influence of Chinese culture in the Web3 field, while our vision is the development of Chinese culture in Web3. We may come into this DAO based on such a mission and vision, and then generate some projects here that advance that mission, and, based on decentralized voting, fund or support these projects. When considering projects, we first consider whether they align with the mission and vision, and then consider economic feasibility, and so on—something like that.

“Wen”: Not necessarily. It’s not necessarily the case that our projects must produce cultural influence. You might simply make an application, like a little game; if the game is fun and you bring everyone together to make it, that works too.

“Hu”: What’s the difference, then? Here with us, you can openly and honorably attract investment as a Chinese person; you don’t need to pretend to be a foreigner, or specifically hire a few foreigners to show their faces in public (a lot of domestic projects really do this). That is the difference of our DAO. Any specific project can be done.

Chen: It’s actually very much like “Chinatown”: just a bunch of Chinese people there; there doesn’t necessarily need to be a prior definition.

Tao: Speak Chinese openly and honorably.

“Wen”: Ultimately, what it points to are all kinds of things that everyone truly wants to do, rather than things that are being demanded of them.

Tizzy: Can I understand it this way: we have gained an opportunity to choose our social contract—Rousseau’s social contract in fact contains a very big contradiction: why should I sign this contract? Now in the Web3 era, we have this condition, and through action we sign the contract. It’s not that the contract comes first and then action; rather, action comes first and then the contract.

“Wen”: Yes. What determines your network identity? It is determined by your property in Web3. Just like in the Athenian polis, only those with property were not slaves; you have your reputation, and everyone knows what you are good at. Web3 also provides a definite record, making people more inclined to do good deeds.

Tizzy: Or rather, it is a concrete technical contract, not an empty contract.

Tao: It greatly lowers the cost of trust between people. For example, if I want to start a business, I can look for investors in Huawendao, or I can look for people on the street. But the people you find on the street are all strangers. They may be capable, but I need to consider whether they will cheat me. I may need to spend a long time confirming things, but in the end they still may cheat me, because cheating me doesn’t cost them much. But in Huawendao, based on a reputation-based evaluation mechanism, everyone is more inclined to do good things; if they do bad things, they get social death. In that case, it becomes easier to discover and combine more possibilities, and the overall ecosystem develops in a more positive direction. You can do anything specific, but there is a better attitudinal tendency and lower trust costs.

“Wen”: What we want to inspire in the future is not even limited to online projects. For example, right now there are many biohacks; projects like that can also look for partners in Huawendao, and that will be safer than looking on the street. Or if you want to put on a cultural event or run a music festival, you can also look here. The people we bring in are very diverse—there are people doing arts, academic work, finance…

“Hu” Our event today ends here. Tomorrow I still have a lecture: “The Blockchain Revolution and the Mission of DAO.” We can do events like this often in the future. I myself will give some lectures and the like, and actually the rest of you can also hold lectures in the name of Huawendao. There should be quite a few people here who can speak.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.

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