1.What is Huawendao?
Huawendao is a decentralized autonomous organization based on identity markers formed on the blockchain, aimed at gathering Chinese pioneers who are courageously exploring the world of Web3, while also attracting lovers of Chinese culture, so that Chinese civilization may glow with new life in the digital age. Joining the Web3 tide, we are not ashamed of being Chinese or of using Chinese characters; we do not need to disguise ourselves as foreigners in order to promote ourselves, nor do we need to trail behind Westerners scavenging their leftovers. Chinese people, and Chinese culture, should confidently and proactively lead the wave of the times, becoming an element of the richly variegated new Web3 world that cannot be ignored.
2.What is the consensus basis and identity marker of Huawendao?
As Chinese people, “Huawen” is our consensus basis. Chinese culture has always been inclusive and accommodating; in ancient times Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism coexisted, and the Hundred Schools contended, while in modern times it can likewise accept Western culture and embrace globalization. On 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 even for the broader Greater China cultural sphere. Chinese characters carry the millennia-old depth of Chinese civilization, and will also be the cornerstone for rebuilding Chinese culture on the new Web3 frontier. We will proudly engrave Huawen into blockchain history.
3.What are the characteristics of Chinese characters?
We use Chinese characters as the identifiers of community members; each community member has a “name” that is uniquely their own. Chinese characters are naturally the most suitable script for identity markers as NFTs. Among the writing systems that exist in the world today, Chinese characters stand alone. They are neither letters nor words; they are a unique kind of “meta-writing,” and each character is an independent yet open node. Chinese characters are just like the members of a decentralized community: on the one hand, each individual is angular and square, independent and self-sufficient; on the other hand, each individual brings forth proper meaning only in combination and concatenation with context. Independent and complete, yet polysemous and versatile, expandable and combinable, they can in the future give rise to countless distinctive community玩法.
4.Which Chinese character NFTs has Huawendao issued?
On the Bitcoin blockchain, we initiated two sets of Chinese character NFTs using the atomicals inscription protocol: a classical edition and a modern edition. The classical edition is the Thousand Character Classic, with 1,000 non-repeating traditional Chinese characters. The modern edition selected the “GB2312” character set, consisting of 6,763 commonly used simplified Chinese characters. The launch announcement can be found here: https://twitter.com/epr510/status/1746151942139564438 , and the minting tutorial can be found here: https://twitter.com/epr510/status/1746155299310862747
5.Why choose the Thousand Character Classic?
The Thousand Character Classic is a cleverly conceived rhymed prose piece—“Heaven and earth black and yellow, the universe vast and primeval…”—familiar to Chinese literati from ancient times to the present. It was a required primer for children in ancient China, and also the main method used in daily ordering and counting. This set of characters is positioned to attract some cultural elites from the humanities, arts, and technology sectors to join in reviving Chinese culture in Web3. The dmint difficulty for this set is relatively high, and we also hope to use it as a gift for some inscription newcomers, so as to foster exchange and break out of our own circle; therefore, our founding team had already begun minting earlier, and there has been a small amount of pre-minting. Of course, it should still count as a kind of semi-fair launch (fair launch).
6.Why choose the “GB2312” character set?
GB2312, formulated in 1980 and promoted as a national standard, marks the open and enterprising posture with which Chinese people in the 1980s boldly threw themselves into the information revolution (see the earlier post https://twitter.com/epr510/status/1745121870406648263?s=19). This character set includes 6,763 Chinese characters, a number just right for the initial stage of an NFT community. It covers 99.99% of usage in everyday simplified Chinese contexts; although it lacks many uncommon characters often used in personal names, it is obviously already rich enough. The modern character set has a lower dmint difficulty than the Thousand Character Classic—one character can be mined in dozens of minutes, even just a few minutes. There is no longer any difficulty distinction within the character set; each character is equal (though everyone may spontaneously judge scarcity according to the meaning of the character itself?). The modern Chinese character set has a completely fair launch: the launch time is when the BTC network reaches block height 826308, and only minting after that point is valid. According to estimates, that should be around 2024-01-18 15:07 Beijing time.
7.What is a fair launch, and why launch fairly?
From Bitcoin through the early altcoin era, “fair launch” was in fact the consensus of the crypto movement. The meaning of blockchain is decentralization, and the most basic and important meaning of decentralization is the decentralization of currency issuance: it is not issued or controlled by centralized institutions such as a central bank or the Federal Reserve. In essence, Bitcoin was not issued by Satoshi Nakamoto; what Satoshi Nakamoto released was a set of open and transparent network protocols and a set of open-source, free applications, after which everyone, including Satoshi Nakamoto, could mine equally in accordance with the protocol, and mining is the process by which Bitcoin is issued. This approach was abandoned in Ethereum and the new ecosystem it led. Although smart contracts are more conducive to project teams raising funds, many projects in fact do not need financing at all; issuance, rather than being for financing and construction, has instead become a process by which investors and project teams profit and cash out. We believe this is inconsistent with the original intention of the crypto movement. And the rise of Bitcoin inscriptions reflects the crypto community’s desire to return to fairness. Under a fair launch, capital parties and initiators can still maintain advantages in three aspects—order of entry, amount of resources invested, and level of confidence held—and may ultimately profit because of stronger initial confidence, but these aspects are also fair and transparent to everyone. For further discussion, please refer to my article: “The Threefold Great Crypto Renaissance” (https://yilinhut.net/2023/12/29/9432.html)
8.What is an inscription, and why mint Chinese characters in inscription form?
The technology of inscriptions can be traced back to the Colored Coin scheme attempted on the Bitcoin chain as early as 2012. Compared with later smart contracts, inscriptions represent a trend of returning to simplicity and stripping away the superfluous. They do not support, at least not at present, various complex on-chain automated contract execution functions, returning to the model of “on-chain recording, off-chain consensus.” The blockchain is only responsible for recording assets and transfer records as simply as possible, while how these records are interpreted and executed is shifted off-chain. This ensures that inscription assets are easier to launch fairly (as above) and to circulate fully (that is, without pre-allocation, lockups, and other tricks that favor project teams and capital parties). In addition, because execution is turned into off-chain consensus, it actually provides more flexible extensibility. As long as community consensus is formed, we can in the future also establish rich玩法, including airdrop rights, voting rights, word-combination rights, and so on. We are currently using the dmint technology of the atomicals protocol to mint inscriptions. Besides being optimistic about atom’s prospects, the main reason is that the dmint model relatively well solves the problem of fair launch. Of course, the inscription ecosystem as a whole is still at a very early stage, and technically far from mature; as technology continues to develop and the ecosystem landscape keeps changing, we may migrate to other inscription protocols, or even not rule out returning to ETH and other smart-contract main chains.
9.Why does dmint take so long?
Dmint mints NFTs by means of POW. The difficulty for the Thousand Character Classic has been set relatively high, and it can take hours or even longer to mint one character. The difficulty for the GB2312 modern Chinese character set is set a bit lower, but each character still takes several minutes to several tens of minutes. The POW mechanism is an intentionally set threshold; if minting were effortless, someone could batch-create wallet accounts and simultaneously scoop up most of the NFTs. In the Ethereum ecosystem, the minting threshold is constituted by the NFT’s price or by a whitelist system, but this way of playing is relatively centralized, and it also allows capital parties or project teams to obtain huge profits too early. Under the premise of a fair launch, while also ensuring that players enter in an orderly fashion and with some sense of effort and participation, and while the initiators themselves must not be able to make money directly, overall, the mechanism of computational mining is the most useful.
——20240115-22:49 Note: due to a technical upgrade of the official Wizz wallet, minting speed has risen significantly, and the experience now has become one of mining too fast. The Thousand Character Classic series has already been minted out rapidly. But we have already arranged the launch rules for gb2312, and we should now likewise respect the rules; this is the essence of fair launch: once the rules are made public, the initiator and anyone who sees the rules should be equal.
10.What use are Chinese character inscriptions?
Chinese character inscriptions are only the beginning of the entire Huawendao movement. They can subsequently carry countless advanced玩法; because of the decentralized nature, combined with the fact that the relevant technology will continue to develop, the future玩法 may in fact not follow my own plan. Here I am only putting forward some ideas.
First, Chinese character inscriptions have MEME properties, marking the “cultural genes” of Chinese civilization (the original meaning of the term MEME). We can use very simple slogans to proclaim our culture: Chinese people have stood up, engrave Chinese characters onto the chain, I use Chinese characters and I am proud, and so on.
Second, unlike Chinese characters inscribed in various scattered forms in the past (such as Chinese character domain names), we are releasing them as a set of characters in the form of NFTs, and so they can combine the gameplay of various earlier NFT communities, such as community voting, lotteries, airdrops, club admission thresholds, issuing new series (such as avatars and artworks), combinations (such as word formation and sentence making), and so on.
At the same time, NFTs can serve as identity markers on social media. Other NFTs are used as profile pictures; our Chinese character inscriptions can even be used as usernames. For example, we can agree that the Thousand Character Classic series may be marked in nicknames or bios with empty corner brackets 『』; the modern Chinese character series may be marked with corner brackets 「」, thereby achieving a community-recognition effect.
Finally, on the basis of Chinese character inscriptions, we can still design exquisite avatar images. I envision adopting the traditional Chinese practice of character divination, and according to dimensions such as yin and yang, the Five Elements, the Eight Trigrams, auspiciousness and ominousness, form and meaning, and brushstrokes, designing traits for each Chinese character and issuing a set of Chinese character avatar collections rich in Chinese cultural depth.
11.What is the significance of engraving Chinese characters into blockchain history?
“Inscribing names” is a deeply rooted hobby of human beings, especially Chinese people. From the men of letters and poets of antiquity to mischievous children in the modern age, we all like to stamp our names on works we have created or collected, and we also like to carve signed lines of poetry, or simply “So-and-so was here,” wherever we go. Ancient people believed that knowing or uttering a person’s true name contained some kind of mysterious power; fortune-telling by characters, sorcery, and apotropaic rites were all directed at names. Even for atheists, a name is not the same as a string of numbers: a “name” is not some mere label, but a bearer of independent personality. The so-called “leaving one’s name in history” is the highest aspiration of countless men and women of noble ideals. Of course, this is not exclusive to Chinese people; Western scientists, too, rush headlong for priority in scientific 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 speech, and the system of historiographers was itself a governance model unique to Chinese civilization. Within the governance system, the historiographer played both a religious role—providing ritual standards and a vessel for meaning—and a practical role—responsible for supervision and evaluation. The essence of blockchain is an “immutable public historical record,” while “the character” is the mark of an independent and free personality. The ancients inscribed characters on “green silk” and in “history books”; today we inscribe characters on the blockchain, and that in itself is a ritual act. And as a Chinese cultural community built on blockchain, Huawendao may in the future further introduce “history” elements into community governance, producing various forms of products with historical elements, such as Web3 archives, NFTs of historical and cultural artifacts, and so on, to carry out cultural outreach in the “new continent.” See the second edition of my Huawendao White Paper published in 2022 (https://yilinhut.net/2022/09/30/8617.html).
12. Who are you?
I studied philosophy of technology at the Department of Philosophy, Peking University (as an undergraduate and then a doctoral student). During my PhD years (2013), I came to know the world of Bitcoin and joined it, becoming a hodler and preacher; over time I wrote blockchain-related essays totaling more than a hundred thousand Chinese characters (see my personal blog https://yilinhut.net). From the very beginning I was intoxicated by the all-around revolutionary impact Bitcoin would bring to human society, economy, and culture, and I was proud to be able to personally participate in this movement of freedom and liberation. Later, I joined Tsinghua University as an associate professor in the Department of History of Science, mainly responsible for general-education courses in the history of technology, philosophy of technology, media philosophy, and related fields, and I also wrote quite a few works that were half academic and half popular. I gradually faded from the crypto scene, until the NFT boom drew my attention back to the crypto movement. I felt that the crypto movement was beginning to enter a new stage, one in which I once again had a role to play, and so I have increasingly taken part in all kinds of activities.
13. What stages of the crypto movement are you talking about? What is the significance of the current stage?
I think the first stage of the crypto movement is the “discovery” stage—discovering a new continent. It was mainly initiated by Satoshi Nakamoto. It discovered a “no-man’s-land” in the digital world, a place where a continuous stream of wealth could emerge in a place beyond the jurisdiction of any old power.
The second stage is the “gold rush” stage. The wealth myth of the new continent spread through the old world, attracting wave after wave of prospectors. After making a lot of money, gold seekers usually still have to return to the old continent; they see the new continent merely as a place full of gold and opportunity, and in the end they must still go back to the old continent to cash out.
The third stage is the “colonization” stage, and this is also the stage I think we are entering: that is to say, after I make money on the new continent, I do not necessarily have to bring my wealth back to the old world and return to the European continent to spend it. Instead, I have found a new way of life on the new continent and have “settled” here. Perhaps I still occasionally go back to Europe to trade, but the center of my life has already moved to the new continent. For within the new continent there are already abundant communities, abundant artistic creation, abundant games and entertainment, self-sufficient economic systems, and so on.
The fourth stage is the stage of “independence,” just like the American independence movement: the people of the new continent no longer wish to accept arrangements made by the old world, and they legislate for themselves in pursuit of autonomy.
The fifth stage is “counterattack”: the culture and order born in the new world ultimately turn around and transform the old world. Just as democratic governance in the United States in turn influenced the European continent, and the operating order of the industrial world in turn influenced agricultural production, and so on.
I believe that, in the end, the counterattack of the new order upon the old order is a broad trend that began as early as the first stage, but the specific cultural customs and other characteristics of the new order are established in the third stage. The culture of the hundreds of people on the Mayflower, the Puritans, ultimately laid the groundwork for American civilization. So what digital civilization in the future ought to look like will also be foreshadowed in the movement unfolding before our eyes. And I hope that, within the diverse foundations of this future civilization, there will remain colors from Chinese civilization.
14. What role do you play in this community?
I am, of course, the main initiator of Huawendao and the Han character inscription series, or rather the leader within the initiating team. There are also many old friends and technical experts who are pushing this movement forward with me. However, we are a fair launch movement; in essence, there is no “project team” behind it—so I would rather call it a movement than a project. Therefore, in principle, both I and all the friends who took part in minting characters in the first batch count as co-initiators of this movement. Where this movement will go in the future will likewise be something we collectively deliberate and create.
Of course, this is not a dodge by which I try to shirk responsibility. As long as the community does not drive me away, I am willing to serve for a fairly long time as the core that holds the community together. I myself have a small amount of pre-mined allocation in the 《Thousand Character Classic》, but it will mainly be used for gifts and giveaways; when the modern Chinese character set (GB2312) is issued, I am on equal footing with all friends who see the announcement. I will mint some myself and buy some on the secondary market as well, but I certainly won’t run off and cash out. It would be hypocritical to say I don’t want to make money, but as a hodler since 2013, I also cannot be short-sighted. I stand by the identity of a Bitcoin “player”; what we are doing is an earthshaking “social experiment.” If it succeeds, fame and fortune will both be ours; if it fails, we still do not lose our dignity.
Once the community has taken shape, we can also hold AMA sessions or salons regularly or irregularly, chatting about speculation in coins and about air-drops and bounty hunting (these are not my strong suit); we can talk about the national situation and about “runxue” (whether one is inside or outside China, Chinese people are equal in the digital world); and I can also bring my strengths into play, chatting with everyone about the blockchain revolution, the history of technology, and philosophy of technology. Beyond talking, of course, we may also connect people economically and help one another; personally, I am willing to sponsor a small number of Chinese entrepreneurs (I don’t have much money), on the condition that they must be proud to be Chinese rather than pretending to be some foreign project.
In addition, around the dialogue between ancient and modern Chinese culture, I will also carry out some initiatives—for example, connecting Chinese artists to create artworks themed around the 《Thousand Character Classic》 or Chinese characters (I am already in contact about this); encouraging more Chinese scholars and elites outside the circle to join the Web3 movement (I have been doing this all along); hosting the compilation and writing of blockchain history (including developing corresponding NFT collections); and so on.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply