1.The development history of email and blockchain
Last updated
Last updated
1.1. History of email development
Email (referred to as email, e-mail) is a type of digital information sent by a sender. A method of exchanging information with another person or persons, typically over the Internet or other computer networks. The purpose of writing, sending and receiving letters is to complete the exchange of information between the sender and the recipient.
The first email is generally believed to have been sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, a Ph.D. from MIT working on the ARPANET, while testing the software SNDMSG. and "@" is used for the first time as the address interval indicator. Born from email More than 50 years have passed since this starting point. After such a long period of development, email has become a very popular tool and method of information transmission. Whether it is a personal email or a business email, They are used frequently in our lives and work, not only as a tool for people to transmit information, but also Email addresses are often used to authenticate users to various websites or applications. Email service providers also experience changes from decentralized individual service providers to platform service providers. Every company or website in the Web1.0, usually the way to build their own mail server, the decentralized distribution of email services, later due to For reasons such as management costs and functional development, it has gradually become a way of providing emails by a few large email service providers. Such as Gmail, QQmail and other email service providers. Email service providers are becoming more centralized.
From Radicati’s email analysis reports in recent years, we can see that the number of email address worldwide is approximately 4.3 billion, with an annual growth rate of 3%. The global statistics of emails sent every day is roughly 350 billion, More than 120 trillion emails are sent throughout the year. This includes not only sending messages between users of daily correspondence, including a large number of Marketing emails, virus emails, phishing emails,etc. They are illegal and harmful email.
The information service of email has been developed for more than 50 years. In Web3.0, due to the development of blockchain technology, resulting in changes in the infrastructure, products and services such as email will gain new developments, resulting in great changes.
In November 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the white paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" and proposed the concept of Bitcoin. The creation of the Bitcoin genesis block in 2009 marked the birth of the blockchain. After more than 10 years of development, blockchain technology has developed from blockchain 1.0 to blockchain 2.0.
Blockchain 1.0 is the digital currency era represented by Bitcoin, which is mainly based on distributed ledgers.The digital currency functions on this platform include payment, circulation and other digital currency functions, realizing the decentralization of currency and decentralization payment. Simple script programming can be performed on the blockchain 1.0 system, Because it does not yet have a Turing-complete language system and related facilities, applications in the blockchain 1.0 only have simpler functionality.
Blockchain 2.0 is an era represented by smart contracts. This era is represented by Ethereum, an independent account system and Turing-complete virtual machine support make the blockchain technology of this era gradually more and more attractive. and richer the functions. With the development and popularization of blockchain technology, the functions of smart contracts have become more and more sophisticated, more and more powerful, and with the gradual development of cross-chain technology, layer2 expansion technology, oracle and other technologies, Blockchain technology has had practical applications in a variety of application scenarios.
Blockchain technology, as a technology with decentralization as its main feature, has several obvious characteristics.It is: decentralization, immutability, anonymity, openness and autonomy. At the same time, blockchain technology also has some economic characteristics, such as the ability to trustless, monetary functions, economic incentives, value redistribution, etc. These characteristics are almost completely absent in centralized applications. This is the innovation of blockchain technology. There are roots of breakthrough innovation characteristics. These characteristics of blockchain are gradually changing many application scenarios. Current blockchain technology is booming, driven by a variety of application scenarios. Various new technologies and new protocol standards are constantly evolving. The emergence of interruptions laid the foundation for changes in upper-layer applications.
The concept of Web3.0 has gradually attracted more attention since 2020. By 2022, various media,articles often introduce relevant content, and many individuals and institutions are discussing Web3.0 related things.The definition and standards of Web3.0 were full of controversy and disagreement in the early days. The common explanation accepted by most people is "read, write, own" .
Web3.0 can be analyzed from two aspects: academic definition and technical definition. There are many academic definitions controversy, the technical definition is clear and there is no controversy. There is no disagreement on the technical implementation definition of Web3.0, and it is generally accepted. The definition of acceptance is what Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum and creator of Polkadot, said in "What is Web 3.0?" The description in the article represents the implementation definition of the Web3 technology stack. Its official website is
https://web3.foundation. But the concept of Web3 is a technical concept, and what we understand as Web3.0 is a broader concept that transcends technology. You can refer to the Web3 technology stack diagram.
Typical representatives of Web3.0 are some decentralized applications built on the blockchain. As follows some games and financial applications in the blockchain, as the infrastructure matures in the later period, almost all Web2.0 applications can be migrated to Web3.0.
With the development of the Ethereum Improvement Proposals, some important basic protocols have emerged and matured, such as ERC-20,ERC-721, ERC-1155, ERC-3525, the three basic elements of the Web3.0 world FT (Fungible Tokens), NFTs (Non-Fungible tokens), and SFTs (Semi-Fungible Tokens) are produced. This is the development of Web3.0 has laid a good foundation. On these basic elements, we can build a rich Web3.0 applications.
Three core characteristics of the Web3.0 era: user-centered, economic incentives, autonomy and co-governance. These will bring huge changes and upgrades to various current applications.
Currently, Web3.0 still has some limitations, such as the performance of blockchain infrastructure needs to be improved, and The development environment and ecology of the infrastructure need to be developed, the user experience and education costs are high, and the experience of Web3.0 products are lack of experience and the construction of legal and regulatory systems brought about by digital currency have not yet been formed. These factors make the development of Web3.0 applications is not smooth enough.
The outbreak of AGI technology in 2023 has caused people to think about the infrastructure in the Web3.0. What will the real Web3.0 look like? What infrastructure is it built on?
Among the many discussions, we recognize some mainstream definitions, which can be summarized as the three major infrastructures in the Web3.0 era: decentralized network protocols, blockchain, and artificial intelligence.
First of all, the decentralized network protocol is the main foundation. It ensures the connection of information and value, as well as sufficient decentralization, and will not affect upper-layer applications due to a single failure or the will of some people. This infrastructure began to be constructed in the pre-web era, and is currently developing towards a broader physical space, wider, denser, and faster speeds.
Secondly, blockchain technology has brought about the foundation for the transformation of production relations. The new era can better reflect the user-centered, promote multi-party cooperation through economic incentives, and through new organizational structures and financial Wealth management methods to distribute wealth well.
Finally, the explosion and rapid development of AI have greatly improved productivity, making wealth creation has entered a new era. Applications in the Web3.0 should give full play to the role of AI and integrate AI into the application, improve the application experience.
Blockchain technology has epoch-making significance, not only in its distinctive technical attributes, but also in its economic attributes.Technical and economic properties in blockchain, for traditional email all software systems have direct upgrade and transformation capabilities. Because of the existence of public chains and structural design of the Web3 technology stack has changed the traditional centralized application structure and also changed the information access and transfer methods. This way, information such as emails can not only be transmitted peer-to-peer, but can also be combined with smart contracts and layer2 extensions and other blockchain technologies enhance the functionality of next-generation email services. At the same time, the economic capabilities in blockchains, such as incentives ability, value delivery ability, value redistribution ability etc. will also change the current email to a great extent service capabilities and related ecology.
A new technology has both technical and economic attributes, and often has a very large impact force. The huge growth in the value of digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the rise of services, such as DeFi and Opensea, have all proven the power of blockchain technology. Promote Web3.0 and value network from the development of blockchain technology.The development of related concepts such as the Metaverse heralds the coming of a new era. Philippe Agion describes new general-purpose technologies in "The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations" , Each wave of innovation brought about by innovation corresponds to a surge in innovation results.
With this technological wave, traditional applications can theoretically be migrated to the new era. for email, a popular traditional information tool, blockchain technology can not only affect its technical principles and functions implementation, will also cause changes in the email system's ecology due to changes in its new features. In the follow-up to this article The content is divided into several parts to introduce related content.
In view of the development stage of Web3.0 and the imperfect infrastructure, the integration of email and blockchain technology consolidation is a progressive decentralized exploration path.
