Chat with STEPN、Mask Network、RSS3 — About Web3!
Hello Metasensers, here is Twitter spaces of the Metasense and other speakers interview🎉, we got our important part and spread the content “Web3 Speaking — About our past, present and future” to our community. 🛫️
Firstly, we want to thank STEPN、Mask Network、RSS3 wonderful speech.
So let’s dive into this chat !🏃♀️
Q&A 📝
Alice:First of all, I’d like to ask you to share your reasons for joining Web3, and the motivation for launching your current project.
Joshua: RSS is a protocol for all distribution of information or content. It is a reflection of the era of Web3. In the process of social development, we will find that when a new era comes, there will be a large number of new content forms or content carriers appear, and also a large number of new asset carriers. So we think there needs to be a new protocol to do this thing and let it be used for all.
We went on to identify and study new standards, and practice at the same time. Slowly through some explorations, we roughly made a project and product in the current shape of RSS3.
Suji: I find the exchange of information among people to be a very interesting topic. The first time I heard about Web3 it was just a fun concept to me. That was until 2016. After seeing V and Gavin Wood’s article on Web3.0 and later having the chance to meet with these early foundation people, we decided to make a new generation of social network infrastructure in 2017.
Alice: How do you feel about a decentralized Twitter?
Suji: We actually started communicating with Twitter in 2018. And in 2019, the founder of Twitter started an open organization like a DAO. In addition to his own staff, there were eight or nine community members, of which we were one.
The reason why we chose to develop Mask is that we have tried many paths and found that it is unlikely to leave the users of Web2 behind. The method we use is to take Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as the base, and make a new layer of network on top. The term is called over top (OTT). It is just like when you are using WeChat, you are also using your cell phone number. These two relationships are similar.
Then Mask is one such network on Twitter. Of course, I believe there may be other approaches as well. Social must allow more ordinary people to come in. Now twitter itself is still in a relatively messy state, and it is an opportunity to do decentralized social. I think we should not try to challenge it, but rather bring its users into Web3. This has always been a goal of ours.
Yawn: My entrance was quite a coincidence. I came into the business around 2017 as an investor. At the end of last year, I talked with my neighbor about GameFi and Axie, and we thought we could do better. So, I suspended my investment company and started STEPN with co-founder Jerry.
Alice: Next question, how to make better decisions?
Joshua: I think in terms of role, probably one of the most important points is how to stay focused. As for the whole business itself, the choice of its scope, try to stay focused. Since WEB3 is very modular, it has a high requirement for interoperability. So how to turn yourself into the mainline of a single area that is very useful and valuable is a very important thing.
Alice: From the perspective of new Web3 entrepreneurs, in terms of verticalization, do you have any advice for them?
Joshua: When choosing a vertical direction, there are two starting points. First, you are a developer yourself and in the process of developing a particular application, you may find that there is a structural space or a missing component. Then you can go and research more and find out if there is an opportunity here.
The other is to look at the development of the technology, or the development of the component itself. You are not a developer, but there are ways to determine if there is a systematic opportunity or vulnerability here to get ahead of the game.
Alice: Can you share the way that you grasp the industry in-depth?
Joshua: Pay more attention to new information. For example, a certain type of infrastructure will grow faster, or a certain type of infrastructure has matured. Focusing on this type of information a little bit more and tracking them is the best practice.
Suji: I think it’s different programs, different approaches. We’re also wondering which part of the web is commerce and which part of it is community. There is an interesting project called search.interface.social. It is about searching your name abc.eth to find out the source of your various identities. Through participation in several donations, we have a deeper understanding of why infrastructure is important. People probably don’t do their own private messaging platform; people don’t do their own distribution platform. The ability to put these things together is what eventually supports a real network. A simple social network like Twitter that we see today may be the result of a combination of many protocol layers.
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Yawn: In theory, we believe that if you’re already a successful entrepreneur, your intuition often makes sense.So, when we need to make a big decision, we often use initial reactions as a blueprint to a conclusion.
Then rationality intervenes, and a more rational approach is used to analyze. Whether it is just too aggressive, or whether there are any poorly thought-out things. A relatively rational approach will then be taken. Generally speaking, when we are making individual decisions, we will follow these two principles.
When we make group decisions. It involves team management. Team management usually involves two issues. The first is giving power. The second is reporting.
We would divide which decision-making can be given. Find a possible solution, and then come to us sometime for reporting.Ultimately, the decision we confirmed, is double-checked. Analysis and post-review, plus a team-distribution model and structure. This is a very specific part of our thinking.
Alice: To sum up, the first is execution, having an implementable decision; the second is observation, timely feedback from each node, making retrospective possible
Alice: Did any of you encounter any unexpected pitfalls or challenges in the development of your projects?
Joshua: The biggest challenge or difficulty is the trust of developers in the early days. And also how to find value when your business is still relatively small, or when you don’t offer many services. How to get seed users and believers.
Alice: How did you gain the trust of developers?
Joshua: Probably two ways. One, have a good connection with developers. Familiarity with the team or the founder.
The other is to make a demo. So that developers can see that this component makes the whole development threshold lower, then they may be willing to try it. Typically, your own team writes an open-source application, and then puts it on GitHub, spreads it on Twitter, or your own community, or directly to the user, getting users.
Alice: From your perspective, is there any difference between Web2 and Web3 developers?
Joshua: I think one of the biggest differences is the understanding and use of modularity. For Web2, it’s basically a set of self-built services, and there’s no separation. For Web3, the first thing is the assetization of data, which gives the data to the user. Developers no longer have a monopoly. The second thing is a large number of components to pick and choose from. You can use them rather than build everything yourself. This is a huge difference. It can be expected that the product ecology or development ecology of Web3 will be more prosperous because it will be more efficient.
Alice: Since the popularity of STEPN, many startups are making X to Earn. Do you think there will be any new emergence next?
Yawn: That’s hard. The biggest reason we chose walking to earn money or coins was that first of all, it’s available to everyone; and second, it’s easier for us to prevent cheating.The biggest problem with X to Earn is how to prevent cheating. A coin should cost.
We made some treatments so that users have to consume their energy and time, just like bitcoin mining. If there is a coin that does not require consumption to get, it does not have an underlying value to support it. In this case, the support of this coin’s value is very weak. All the other X to Earn coins that we have seen should be successful as long as they have a cost, and as long as they can prevent users from cheating. Of course, there must be an incentive that is practical and useful in its economic system.
Having a use-case, having input, and being cheat-proof are, I think, very important for X to Earn; then again, X to Earn is also a customer acquisition model. In the market, your users will keep leaving, so you have to keep replenishing. Since users are mobile, user capture and retention require continuous efforts. The final test of a project’s is how strong it is in execution, how it can constantly think of new ways to capture new users from various ecosystems and then put them in, while reducing the rate of user losses.
Alice: Can you give a message to those who are starting a business in the Web3 industry, or those who want to start a business soon?
Yawn: When we talk about Web2 and Web3, is Web3 the next paradigm of Web2, or will Web3 swallow up Web2? I think this is a very important question since it will lead to very different results. A good example: Britain, the Empire where sun never set, supposedly invented the silver standard, and Pound was the settlement currency at that time. After World War II, the United States led the establishment of the gold standard, after taking control of the system, the oil trade was settled in Dollar. The decline of Britain, lead to the end of the British Pound.
I think, from Web2 into Web3, there is only drastic, fierce competition and annexation or cross-dimensional strike. Within a special timeframe, there will be a rapid transformation into Web3. Of course, there may be more regulatory things.
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