chungkin Express

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  • Build Your Own Democracy: How Does DHK dao Achieve Autonomy?

    Build Your Own Democracy: How Does DHK dao Achieve Autonomy?

    Last issue, several friends left comments laughing that I was using clickbait titles. I half-jokingly replied, “You guys taught me that writing peacefully in the body text is useless.” Indeed, I’ve always been a “content person,” but the comment responses have never been so enthusiastic. If one day I truly become a clickbaiter, it would be a collective karma forced out by apathy.

    If we can take one more step within our capabilities in our daily lives, although we won’t see immediate effects, accumulation will eventually bring about a turning point. Conversely, some people think it’s enough to suppress the surface appearances daily, not knowing that they are just accumulating resentment, which will have to be repaid someday.

    Previously, I discussed the multiple meanings of the “D” in DHK. This time, from concept to practice, let’s talk about the “A” in DAO – how autonomous is to be implemented, starting with the DHK token distribution mechanism.

    The DHK token is an ERC-20 smart contract built on Ethereum, with seven million tokens minted on the Layer 2 network OP Mainnet. Excluding one million reserved for backup, one hundred thousand tokens, worth approximately two thousand USD, are airdropped to the community monthly. In other words, six million DHK will be gradually distributed over 60 months, i.e., five years.

    Guanyin’s Treasury Opening is Harder Than Imagined

    Most people would assume that giving away money is simple, and any difficulty would merely be an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response. However, if the public hasn’t yet recognized the value of the token, or doesn’t understand what you’re talking about at all, giving away money is no easier than handing out flyers on the street. In 2010, Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen created a “faucet” to give away Bitcoin. As long as you passed a simple reCAPTCHA to prove you were human, you could receive 5 BTC – more generous than Guanyin’s treasury lending. It seems incredible now, but its usage back then was very limited, showing just how difficult it is to give money to the public.

    From Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20100703032414/http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

    If this was the case for Bitcoin, it goes without saying for DHK. Although the plan is to airdrop one hundred thousand tokens monthly, only a portion of people ever claim them. Originally, if the goal was just to blindly chase KPIs “with results as the target,” even ten billion tokens could be easily distributed. But DHK dao chose the harder path, adhering to the principle of “proof of contribution/participation.” Tokens are distributed based on each user’s contribution to the community and require active claiming. Alternatively, after explaining to “Muggles” (newcomers), a trivial amount of 1 DHK, representing “daoyau” status, is issued, moving step-by-step towards the vision of bringing seven million people onto the blockchain.

    Many things cannot be quantified, but to allocate resources, we have no choice but to measure the contribution of each daoyau. Taking April 2025 as an example, the monthly airdrop budget is split in half. Fifty thousand DHK are distributed to users who stake ATOM, OSMO, or AKT with DHK’s partner validator, allocated according to the square root of their income contribution:

    1. Calculate the income from the three nodes: ATOM, OSMO, and AKT. In April 2025, nearly 90% of the income came from ATOM.
    2. Based on the income proportion from ATOM, OSMO, and AKT, the fifty thousand DHK are divided among the three groups of users.
    3. The number of tokens a user stakes in each token’s validator node is taken square root, and this figure represents the user’s contribution, aiming to narrow the wealth gap.
    4. The DHK airdrop share for each user is calculated based on their contribution ratio.

    As for the other fifty thousand, they are allocated to daoyau Pro who are paid subscribers to the weekly newsletter. This part of the calculation is much simpler. Continuing with April 2025 as an example, there were 182 daoyau Pro, so each received 50,000/182 = 274 DHK.

    Interestingly, at the time of the airdrop in early May, DHK was 0.03 USDC, making 274 DHK worth about 8 USD, which is higher than the daoyau Pro monthly fee of 6 USD. And this wasn’t unique to April; the airdrop amount being higher than or close to the daoyau Pro monthly fee has been ongoing for a while. I don’t think any daoyau Pro subscribed just to earn money from airdrops, yet they inadvertently earned back their monthly fee or even more. This strange phenomenon is the “karma” of the blockchain industry, which I call “When will the cycle of reciprocal rewards ever end?“

    The Art of Distributing “Leftovers” (下欄 – Haa Laan)

    The above describes the distribution method, but whether users claim it is another matter. Of the 182 daoyau Pro in April, 101 provided wallet addresses to claim DHK, accounting for 55%, proving that daoyau Pro members pay to support, not to claim airdrops. “Saving” 45% of the airdrop budget isn’t a good thing; assets need to flow to be meaningful. Notifying and encouraging more people to participate has always been my work, including this article. But while trying hard to explain, I also understand very well that for many people, spending time to understand is a much greater commitment than paying money to support.

    As for users staking ATOM, OSMO, and AKT, the base is much larger, totaling over twenty thousand people. However, due to the lack of user contact information, the claim rate for airdrops is much lower. For example, in the first quarter of 2025, seventy-five thousand DHK were allocated monthly to staking users, but the claim rate was only 8%. In view of this, the volunteers decided that starting from the second quarter, the airdrop quotas for staking users and daoyau Pro members would be adjusted to fifty thousand each, and the share for daoyau Pro members might be gradually increased further.

    Speaking of contributions, how can we forget the volunteers? In Cantonese, there’s a term “下欄 (haa laan),” which originally referred to fruits in a fruit market that were about to rot and needed to be taken off the shelves. In the past, society wasn’t as affluent as it is now, but it valued thriftiness, so these fruits were distributed to employees. Over time, any practice of treating kitchen scraps, expired food, or any unsellable goods as employee benefits came to be collectively known as “haa laan.” A year ago, DHK dao borrowed this concept, distributing unclaimed airdrop tokens to volunteers each quarter based on their contributions, simultaneously solving the problems of “running on passion” (working for free) and asset stagnation – killing two birds with one stone.

    How to self-assess elegantly and fairly is another challenge in resource distribution. I remember during university, we often did group projects. Lecturers would require group members to conduct peer evaluations, where each person would allocate one hundred points among other group members based on their contribution. These points were then summed up to determine each person’s contribution score for grading purposes, preventing anyone from getting a free lunch. The method DHK dao volunteers use for peer evaluation is similar, but it employs quadratic voting (QV), requiring each person to use n² points to represent n contribution points, allocating a total of 99 points.

    Here’s an example: Suppose there are five volunteers, and we first consider Alice’s scoring. Alice believes Bob contributed the most, followed by Carol and Dave, while Eve had no notable merits. So, she gives Bob 81 points, reflecting 9 contribution points (9² = 81); Carol and Dave each get 9 points, meaning 3 contribution points (3² = 9); 99 points have been used up, so Eve gets 0 points.

    It’s relatively rare to use exactly 99 points. More often, because scoring is squared, it’s often impossible to sum up to exactly 99 points. Therefore, the principle for scoring is not to exceed 99 points, but it’s not necessary to use them all. This isn’t a design flaw but an intentional feature. The starting point is to prevent people from conveniently averaging out scores and to force evaluators to think more carefully.

    Assume the scores from everyone are as follows:

    Finally, each person’s score is converted into contribution points and summed up. Then, the DHK is allocated proportionally. Assuming a total of 10,000 DHK, the allocation results are:

    From the example above, it can be seen that although Bob’s contribution and score are outstanding, the distribution among everyone is not excessively disparate. Besides requiring participants to think more when scoring, quadratic voting can also effectively narrow the wealth gap.

    Using quadratic voting, DHK dao’s volunteers have conducted three peer evaluations and “haa laan” distributions since the middle of last year. All related numbers, documents, and transaction records are fully open for inspection on the website dhk.org. No matter how long they are stored, data will not be deleted under the pretext of slowing down the website.

    I often emphasize that if you want democracy, besides entering the system and taking to the streets to fight for it, you can also create it yourself. On this “specific day” of June 4th, no matter if the state machinery holds ten events in Victoria Park, even if I feel unwilling to accept it, I will absolutely not slow down my pace of creating democracy in daily life.

    p.s. Apart from watching movies, I rarely set foot in shopping malls. This issue’s cover photo, a casual shot taken in a mall, is the first of its kind. I mainly feel that the giant panda “invading” Hong Kong, with Hong Kong people seemingly oblivious and living as usual, strongly reflects the reality of Hong Kong. (Mysterious voice: Otherwise, did you think the black-clad neighbor carrying two bags of groceries would physically block the giant panda?)

  • Substance Over Form

    Substance Over Form

    In accounting, there is a principle called “substance over form.” A deep understanding of this principle not only helps in analyzing corporate accounts but can also be applied to all aspects of our lives, helping us see through the appearance of things to understand the substance behind them.

    The DAO Hack vs. Juno Proposal 16

    Let’s start with an example. Suppose Alice provides services to Bob Company Limited. The contract stipulates no salary, but instead, a monthly loan of 10,000 dollars is given to Alice at zero interest, to be repaid in one hundred years. Since there is no salary, should Alice be exempt from taxes? In reality, it’s preposterous to think any government would accept this logic. Any reasonably functioning tax authority would treat this 100-year, zero-interest loan as a wage and levy the appropriate income tax. In other words, according to accounting principles, Bob Company Limited cannot book this monthly 10,000-dollar transaction as a loan. It must be classified by its substance—as a salary. This is the accounting principle of “substance over form.”

    Is the newsletter’s open rate declining, finally forcing the author to resort to analyzing public company financial reports? Unfortunately, even if I wanted to, I don’t have the skills. I bring up this accounting principle because after last issue’s A Decade for Ether, A Century for Humanity: Ethereum’s 10th Anniversary, Part II was published, reader Wancat left a comment asking why I had vehemently criticized the passage of Juno’s Proposal 16 to claw back airdrops received by a whale three years ago, yet now seem to have a double standard (my words, not theirs) by defending Ethereum’s use of a hard fork to recover the stolen funds from The DAO Hack. I initially intended to reply in the comments but found my response growing too long. So, I deleted it and simply replied that I would address it in a full article this week, experimenting with this format for deeper interaction with readers.

    With that prelude, my brief answer to Wancat’s question is this: while the hard fork for The DAO Hack is similar in form to Juno’s Proposal 16, their substance is vastly different. The former was about recovering a large sum of funds that a hacker obtained from the community by exploiting a vulnerability. The latter was about forcibly taking away a large airdrop from a whale that was obtained according to the rules set by the project creators—it was a tyranny of the majority. For details, please refer to The Ordeal of Democracy: A Wake-Up Call from Juno’s Proposal 16, which I won’t rehash here. The form is merely the method of execution; the substance is the crucial point. Therefore, my judgment on the two incidents is entirely different.

    I must emphasize that this does not mean I believe recovering The DAO Hack funds via a hard fork was a good thing. The good thing would have been to conduct proper testing to prevent the theft in the first place. A drastic measure like a hard fork is never good; at best, it was a necessary choice, the lesser of two evils. What I commend is not the method itself, but how Ethereum handled a theft that could have brought down the entire ecosystem. It neither blindly adhered to “code is law” above all else, nor did it use a centralized method to “administer justice” (it was technically impossible anyway). Instead, it made democratic deliberation the main prerequisite, attempting to find consensus through forums, polls, and other methods.

    Democratic Deliberation as the Highest Principle

    Some argue that “code is law” is the supreme principle of the blockchain, and we must accept the results of program execution, which would make the very act of labeling a behavior as “theft” problematic. I also emphasize “code is law” and agree it is the guiding principle in 99.99% of cases. But no matter how flawless a system is, at best it can only push the applicability of the principle higher—say, to 99.9999%—but it can never be the sole, 100% standard. To do so would be to chain the system to its first version of code, accepting every computational result as a “feature” and no situation as a “bug,” which is clearly not feasible.

    Even Bitcoin, which most strictly adheres to “code is law” with the fewest code changes, still needs to fix bugs and evolve with the times. Not to mention the eventual arrival of quantum computers. If “code is law” were the only principle, does that mean the community should do nothing and simply accept that quantum algorithms will eventually destroy the Bitcoin ecosystem? Clearly, behind “code is law,” we cannot erase the factors of society and humanity, including technological evolution, law, and morality.

    Form is usually objective, but substance inevitably involves value judgments. The example at the beginning was clear-cut only because the terms were extreme, making the substance of the transaction clearly a wage. If different numbers were used, the substance could become highly controversial. The advantage of being guided by form is objectivity, free from value judgments. However, we cannot ignore the importance of discussing substance for the sake of convenience, even if it leads to debate or disputes. To borrow an old saying from TVB (from before it became “CCTVB”): “Harmony is not 100 people saying the same thing; harmony is 100 people having 100 different things to say, while still respecting each other.”

    Frankly, I wrote the above with some hesitation. The hesitation isn’t about being wrong, but that explicitly stating that human factors are inevitably behind “law” can be easily misinterpreted and exploited. In a mild case, it could be used to endorse pseudo-web3 projects that are centrally controlled under the guise of decentralized governance. In a severe case, it could be used by nation-states to play the bully—using the law to control people when it suits them, and arbitrarily interpreting, amending, or enacting new laws when it doesn’t, stopping at nothing.

    Unlike the physical world, in the web3 world, the “interpretation” and “enforcement” of law are handled by code, effectively preventing human intervention—this is the true meaning of “code is law.” But at the level of “legislation” and “amendment,” both nation-states and blockchains inevitably involve human participation. The key is that the process must align with the democratic spirit, with stakeholders participating in deliberations and, when necessary, fair voting.

    Seeing Through Form, Focusing on Substance

    Coincidentally, this week five years ago, my column in Apple Daily was titled “Stablecoin = The Value of USD + The Agility of Bitcoin.” The meaning is that the substance of a stablecoin is the US dollar, and its form is a cryptocurrency. Even though the world has changed dramatically, this understanding is sufficient to grasp the core of stablecoins. USD stablecoins have a market because the USD itself has a market. Citizens in places like Argentina, Turkey, and Russia are eager to buy it. When the USD exists in the form of a cryptocurrency—a stablecoin—it becomes much harder for local governments and banks to stop their citizens from buying and holding it. Of course, some powerful nations will still use high-tech surveillance, and they mean what they say, at least effectively restricting the masses who haven’t mastered the relevant technology to step out of their comfort zone and manage their own assets.

    Similarly, the recent discussions about whether there is demand for a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin can be partially answered by the “substance over form” principle. The crux of the matter is whether there is an underlying demand for the Hong Kong dollar itself—are there people who want to convert to or park their funds in HKD but are constrained by the traditional financial system? If so, the emergence of an HKD stablecoin would unlock previously non-existent purchasing power. Form helps improve efficiency and enhance effects, but substance is the key. Even as a big believer in cryptocurrency, I do not think a sovereign currency with no inherent market demand will generate new demand simply by issuing a stablecoin.

    Besides web3 governance and stablecoins, there are countless examples in daily life where form obscures substance. For instance, the form is an NFT, while the substance, originally intended to be cultural content, is in reality just speculation. The form is a mobile app, while the substance, meant to be a specific function expressed through the features of a smartphone, is in reality just an app created to follow a trend or secure a government subsidy. Or, the form is an election, which in substance should be the practice of democracy and the expression of the people’s free will, but in reality might be an elaborate, costly charade with candidates hand-picked by a central authority.

    Only by seeing through the form and focusing on the substance behind things can we understand the world’s underlying logic and recognize the truth.

    p.s. At last Wednesday’s offline event for Ethereum’s 10th anniversary, fifty to sixty people were in attendance. When the host, Phoebe, asked those who manage their own wallets to raise their hands, I didn’t see a single lowered hand in the room. Although I know this is just the echo chamber effect, for someone like me who has been promoting self-custody wallets for seven or eight years and is used to most people not having a web3 wallet, the sight was still stunning and left me secretly thrilled. Or perhaps “moved” is the right word; I’m not even sure myself.

  • A Decade for Ether, A Century for Humanity: Ethereum’s 10th Anniversary, Part II

    A Decade for Ether, A Century for Humanity: Ethereum’s 10th Anniversary, Part II

    In a poll from our last issue, A Decade of Ether, A Century for Humanity, when asked about the most unforgettable event in Ethereum’s ten-plus-year history, nearly half of the 56 participants were most impressed by the NFT speculative frenzy of 2021-22. This allowed the event to win by a large margin with 46% of the vote. Perhaps the reason is that NFTs were what most successfully broke into the mainstream, or perhaps it was recency bias affecting judgment. However, the event that best reflects the core values of the Ethereum community is undoubtedly The DAO Hack, which received the fewest votes in the poll.

    The DAO Hack

    Readers who have played massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have likely encountered situations where a bug in the game’s code is exploited by some players to obtain rare weapons and large amounts of in-game currency, disrupting the game world’s economy and ecological balance. Whenever such an incident occurs, the game company, while patching the vulnerability, has two choices: either accept the consequences brought about by the exploit, or roll back or alter the database to restore every player to their previous state. The former, while seemingly turning a blind eye to unfairness and economic imbalance, is also the choice that shows the utmost respect for the system’s rules. The latter, though it tries its best to make amends, inevitably raises concerns among participants about the officials abusing their power and arbitrarily modifying data.

    In 2016, Ethereum, which had been online for less than a year, faced The DAO Hack. It was just like an MMORPG with a critical vulnerability. Fixing the bug was a given, but as for whether to accept the consequence of 3.6 million ETH being stolen or to modify the code to recover the funds, the community was deeply divided and engaged in a fierce debate. Interestingly, the initial catalyst for Ethereum’s main founder, Vitalik, to realize the ills of centralization was his experience playing World of Warcraft. In a 2009 update, the game’s developer, Blizzard, removed the damage component of the warlock’s Siphon Life spell, effectively crippling his character’s power in an instant. In an MMORPG, the game developer is God, with the absolute power to modify characters and all sorts of data. Seven years later, Vitalik—later known affectionately (and sometimes jokingly) as “V God” in the Chinese-speaking world—had switched from the role of a player to that of a blockchain developer. What was his proposal for handling this incident?

    First, let’s clarify the scale of The DAO Hack. 3.6 million ETH was worth “only” about 50 million US dollars at the time, not even qualifying as a major theft in blockchain history. However, that was based on the market value and US dollar standard of the time. Calculated at the current rate of $3,878 per ETH, this sum would be a staggering $13.96 billion. In comparison, the largest cryptocurrency theft in history, which occurred in February of this year, involved assets stolen from Bybit valued at “only” $1.46 billion at the time. Even at current coin prices, this is six to seven times smaller than the scale of The DAO Hack. Furthermore, consider BitMine, the institution that currently holds the most ETH, with a position of around 560,000 ETH—less than one-sixth of the amount stolen. Comparing these numbers isn’t to say that principles can be cast aside if the scale is large enough, but when making such a difficult decision, it’s impossible not to consider the amount of money involved, especially when the scale of the theft is large enough to cause the entire ecosystem to sink without a trace.

    The final outcome is well-known to many. The event split the community into two factions. One side held “code is law” as its highest principle, preferring to let the “cracker” walk away with the funds (some would even argue that the morally charged term “cracker” shouldn’t be used). The other side, which included Vitalik, advocated for adding code to prevent the hacker from withdrawing the funds, allowing users to get their money back. Although forum discussions and one-coin-one-vote polls showed the latter opinion was more mainstream, the faction advocating for no changes also garnered enough support from miners. This ultimately led to a hard fork, creating two parallel worlds. The former became Ethereum Classic (ETC), while the latter is the Ethereum and ETH that the public knows today.

    I joined the community too late to have personally participated in The DAO Hack. Looking back at the records, I agree with the handling of the situation by adding code to stop the “cracker”. On the surface, this contradicts my previously emphasized stance of “code is law,” but in reality, it reflects a deeper understanding of “law” and, in my view, marks the beginning of Ethereum’s human-centric approach.

    Humanism is Needed Behind “Code is Law”

    Whether in a democracy or an authoritarian society, no one would deny the importance of law. Yet, their interpretations can be worlds apart. The former, rule of law, uses law to check government power and prevent its overreach. The latter, rule by law, uses law to control the populace and consolidate governance. In the former, the law reflects the will of the people, and the legislative process is authorized by them. In the latter, the law reflects the will of the regime, serving the administration; there is even “legislation by decree,” where new laws are enacted first and “deliberated” later (this is different from the “legislate first, then review” proposed during the Sunflower Movement, as it refers to new legal articles being promulgated and taking effect immediately, with “deliberation” to follow at a later date).

    Returning to The DAO Hack, the act of adding code to recover the stolen ETH is not enough on its own to determine right from wrong. We must consider whether the community, in its crisis management, adhered as much as possible to democratic principles—encouraging expression, communication, and discussion—rather than acting autocratically or as a “tyranny of the majority” in the name of efficiency. By the same token, “code is law” alone is not a sufficient reason to reject all needs to modify code. It’s impossible to avoid making a judgment on whether a certain action is an attack or normal usage, let alone treating a bug as a feature. Otherwise, if human judgment were to be completely excluded, wouldn’t the first version of the code become an eternally immutable law after its public release, never to be updated?

    It is common knowledge that Taiwan is a society that emphasizes sentiment, reason, and law, often in that order. When practiced well, this manifests as human warmth; when abused, it becomes perfunctory, where the law is not followed. During the 2014 Sunflower Movement, breaking into the Legislative Yuan was, objectively, illegal. However, law enforcement and the judiciary considered the overall context and the sentiment and reason beyond the law, respecting the public’s will by exercising discretion. This reflects a people-first, human-centric approach. In contrast, some societies exercise prosecutorial discretion for the powerful and well-connected while stressing to citizens that “the law is the law.” And if no law is broken, they can tailor-make new ones with extreme speed. This is an abuse of sentiment, reason, and law, and it is why humanism must underpin the principle of “code is law.”

    “…Participation in an illegal assembly is punishable by a maximum of 5 years in prison. Participation in a riot is punishable by a maximum of 10 years…”

    In the physical world, everyone is born a citizen of Country X. A few who wish to be citizens of another country can choose to emigrate, but most can only sigh, “In my next life, I won’t be a citizen of Country X.” The digital world is different. Blockchains are permissionless ecosystems. If you have a major grievance, you can always “vote with your feet.” If the dissenting voices reach a critical point, it can even result in an effect of “forking the government.”

    Back then, for Ethereum to modify its code to handle The DAO Hack, it would have been absolutely impossible to rely on the will of the Foundation or Vitalik alone had the miners not agreed and cooperated by upgrading their nodes. The subsequent fork into Ethereum and Ethereum Classic, and which ecosystem would ultimately become more vibrant and enduring, was also the result of the entire community’s continuous “voting” through their actions. After The DAO Hack, Ethereum has thrived through difficulties to this day. Meanwhile, Ethereum Classic has suffered multiple 51% attacks, and its current market value is less than 1% of the former’s, a fact that reflects the community’s choice.

    Human-centric Technology

    Ever since Nokia, the “dumb phone” maker, used “Connecting People” (or more literally, “Technology always comes from humanity”) as its advertising slogan in the 1990s, the saying has become deeply ingrained in the public consciousness, as if it were an indisputable consensus. However, an advertisement, after all, only seeks to create an image. “Human-centric” becomes just a slogan, and its actual meaning is often a matter of divided opinion.

    The most common and resonant understanding of “human-centric” is “easy to use.” There’s nothing wrong with this understanding; tech products should be intelligible to grandmothers and children alike—who could object? From this perspective, one must admit that blockchain is an absolute failure. And Ethereum, with its massive architecture that includes L2 designs, is even harder to use than other blockchains. Even for someone like me who uses it daily, I spent a whole day last week on an incompatibility issue between a smart account and a multi-sig wallet interface. Imagine how it is for a newcomer. The weakness of a poor user experience cannot be denied. Fortunately, the Ethereum community is actively confronting this. After successfully scaling, it has begun to gradually improve the user experience through updates like smart accounts.

    However, ease of use isn’t everything, nor should it override higher values. For instance, WeChat is very easy to use, but it lacks end-to-end encryption and its payment system is completely centralized. This is not what a human-centric approach should look like. A truly human-centric approach doesn’t just cater to the interests of developers and venture capitalists, let alone those of powerful nations or governments. It also cares for the underdogs, the marginalized, the disadvantaged, and the long-term well-being of all humanity. It pursues not short-term price surges, but sustainable and affordable transaction fees. It considers not just efficiency and cost-effectiveness, but also privacy and resilience. It cares not just about humans, but also the environment and other species.

    I am immensely glad that the core values demonstrated by Ethereum over the past decade—from not kowtowing to VCs and distributing the initial ETH fairly at the start, to spending years on development to switch to PoS and reduce energy consumption by 99%, to sacrificing short-term gains by moving most transactions to L2, and to recently investing significant R&D resources into technologies like zero-knowledge proofs to enhance privacy—all embody the humanistic spirit I aspire to.

    Although it may seem obvious in hindsight, it is in fact incredibly difficult. Consider the pressures: Tron stands undefeated by aligning with a powerful state; Solana achieves powerful performance by slightly sacrificing decentralization; ETH’s own token demand has fallen sharply in the short term due to the L2 architecture. In such a fiercely competitive business environment, to resist the temptation of short-term profits, withstand voices of doubt, and still show humanistic care is a rare and precious quality.

    I hope that in the next decade, two decades, or ten decades, Ethereum will continue to uphold its long-term vision, prioritizing resilience, privacy, and the public good. May it be a century for humanity, transcending the narrow vision of nation-states to work for the well-being of all humankind.

  • ckxpress.com 20th Anniversary: My Brief History of Blogging

    ckxpress.com 20th Anniversary: My Brief History of Blogging

    On April 21, 2005, I registered ckxpress.com and set up my personal website. It has now been 20 years, during which I’ve published 1,250 articles totaling 1.18 million words. Although the domain still has seven years until expiration, I just paid for an additional three years of registration fees to hold ckxpress.com for another 10 years. If it weren’t for the limit set by ICANN, I might have registered it for another 100 years.

    Blogging Resume

    If I were applying for a job as a blogger, my resume might look something like this:

    Curriculum Vitae – chungkin Express

    • Blogspot: 2003 – 2005
    • ckxpress.com on WordPress: 2005 – present
    • Medium: 2014 – 2020
    • Matters: 2019 – present
    • Substack: 2020 – present
    • Paragraph: 2024 – present

    If you were the employer, would you perhaps find me fickle for changing jobs so often and toss my resume aside after a glance? Hold on, please let this applicant explain.

    In October 2003, I started contributing to the Telecom section of the Hong Kong Economic Journal (HKEJ). The column name, “Made in Hong Kong,” was so old-fashioned I don’t want to admit it. At that time, Mark Zuckerberg was still studying at Harvard, social networks hadn’t emerged yet, but Web 2.0, centered around UGC (user-generated content), was quietly unfolding. Blogspot (Blogger), founded in 1999, had gathered a group of users who enjoyed writing online over several years before Google acquired it. In the same year, I registered ckxpress.blogger.com, kicking off the chungkin Express blog, where I posted my column articles weekly. Considering this brief history, and even adding my personal website hosted by the Computer Science Dept during university (cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~ckko), my blogging journey extends far beyond 20 years.

    Also in 2003, meanwhile, WordPress was just established. After adding plugin and theme, it gradually gained popularity. As someone who always advocated for self-hosted websites and owning one’s domain, I set up ckxpress.com using WordPress in 2005. Although WordPress remains vibrant today with continuous updates and improvements, it is, after all, a product of over twenty years ago. The barrier to entry is relatively high, and both its underlying PHP language and basic product assumptions are somewhat outdated. However, it relatively remains the most free and extensible content management system. That’s why I’ve continued to use it to this day and will keep an eye on its development, especially regarding Web3 aspects.

    The decade following 2003 was a golden era for the internet, emerging after the dot-com bubble burst in 1999 and several years of quiet building by entrepreneurs. Web 2.0 brought significant innovation, making UGC and social networks mainstream, but it hadn’t yet evolved into an oligopoly. Readers could receive my new articles (more often, just ramblings) from ckxpress.com via RSS. They could also read and comment on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, creating a balance between personal space and a public forum. In 2013, Google shut down Google Reader, single-handedly burying the open ecosystem, marking a watershed moment as the internet gradually transformed into walled gardens.

    Web2 is Broken, Yet Web3 Isn’t Mature

    In 2014, as problems caused by social media algorithms and closed systems became increasingly severe, I started paying attention to writing platforms and joined Medium, founded in 2012. Besides publishing my column articles on my personal website, I gradually began syncing them to Medium as well.

    Medium’s founder, Ev Williams, was one of the original founders of Blogspot. After making money and exiting, he established another writing platform. He was someone who couldn’t stand the deteriorating quality of online content and tried various ways to maintain the quality of Medium articles. He used traditional manual curation, abandoned the advertising model he once used, and introduced a paywall and membership system starting in 2017. I paid to become a member right from the start when there were no benefits and joined its partnership program as soon as it began. At its “peak,” I earned HK$1,000 in a month. However, since I’ve always been unwilling to put my articles behind a paywall, I stopped locking articles after a short period and last updated on Medium in 2020.

    For a while, around 2018-2019, many authors from Taiwan and Hong Kong joined Medium. However, Medium eventually discontinued its Chinese version and Chinese-language articles had virtually no chance of exposure, and income dwindled. Consequently, most authors migrated away although very few resisted the paywall like I did,. Hong Kong authors mostly moved to Patreon, while some Taiwanese authors shifted to vocus.cc. Speaking of Vocus, I used it for a period, but somehow I couldn’t log into my account anymore, nor could I Google my articles. I can no longer recall specifically when I started posting or when I stopped.

    After Medium came my old friend, Matters. Matters was founded in late 2017, around the same time as LikeCoin. Naturally, I started using it from the beginning, syncing articles from ckxpress.com, totaling 276 articles to date. Matters’ most prominent feature is that all articles are stored on the “decentralized storage” IPFS, offering a degree of censorship resistance. Secondly, of course, is its integration with LikeCoin, attempting to generate income for authors based on individual articles without resorting to a paywall.

    As social networks became increasingly difficult to navigate, I started using Substack (founded in 2017) in 2020, sending out monthly ramblings to friends. Then, in mid-2021, after Apple Daily was shut down, ending my columnist career, I took the plunge and started the DHK newsletter on Substack, which has now reached its #201 issue. In 2023, I even invested 5,000 USD to become a micro-shareholder. Substack has lived up to expectations, attracting more and more readers and authors in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Its features are comprehensive, and the interface is well-designed. I can hardly imagine what breakthroughs Substack could still achieve within the current system; I would describe it as the “Web 2.0 ceiling.”

    Yet, foolishly perhaps, last year I moved my newsletter again, from Substack to Paragraph, a platform designed with Web3 principles at its core. Honestly, Paragraph is far less mature than Substack, especially with very few Chinese users. Since the move, my subscriber count has seen almost no growth. But I don’t regret it and will continue to stay with Paragraph to support its decentralized storage, content-unit-based creation, and open-content monetization mechanisms. Matters and LikeCoin strived for similar goals but didn’t fully succeed. Now, other entrepreneurs are continuing to explore this path, and I hope to participate as an author, helping to promote this model.

    The Value Proposition of Web3

    This blogger applicant may seem fickle on the surface, but from start to finish, I have been pursuing an autonomous, open, and sustainable environment for writing and reading. Besides, although I often “moonlight” elsewhere, my “main job,” ckxpress.com, has never been interrupted for 20 years. You could call me a loyal employee, right?

    Dear employers, when someone uses a single platform long-term, it often signifies vendor lock-in that stifles innovation. The truly ideal ecosystem should be like portable phone numbers or email addresses – no matter how many times you switch service providers, your identity, data, and social graph can come with you. This portability, composability, and perpetual data storage are the core pursuits of Web3.

    I’m not sure if I’ll still be using Apple, Google, or OpenAI in 10 or 20 years, or if I’ll still be struggling with compromising with Meta’s algorithms. But I can assert that unless the internet or I disappear, the ckxpress.com website will continue to operate. No, even if I disappear, ckxpress.com will remain unaffected. I plan to upload myself to the cloud before I die and find a way for an AI ckxpress to operate decentrally after my death.

    p.s. Due to space limitations, saying ckxpress.com has been built on WordPress for 20 years skips many technical details. In reality, it involved multiple evolutions: from initially renting a virtual machine and installing Linux, Apache, etc., myself, to later opting for the convenience of hosting on WordPress.com. Then, as cloud services became popular, I thriftily rented a low-end EC2 instance on AWS. Later still, tired of management, I switched to a cloud service providing a complete WordPress environment. Most of the time, I’d rather pay a bit more for simplicity, but sometimes the opposite happens – I get the itch to handle the underlying infrastructure myself, even obsessively avoiding server restarts to solve problems. My longest EC2 uptime was 1051 days. However, regardless of how many times the backend has moved, for readers, it remains ckxpress.com. The URLs for all articles have remained unchanged, and SEO hasn’t been affected. This is the beauty of portability, and why I so strongly advocate for owning your domain. Only what you can take with you can truly be called ownership. Unfortunately, this kind of autonomous internet user is becoming increasingly rare.

  • The Will of D

    The Will of D

    I had only been back in Hong Kong for a day, still adjusting to the time difference, when I dragged myself out of bed at 5:00 AM on Monday to catch the first flight to Taipei. I was attending d/acc day to listen to talks and share about d/hk. I might discuss the philosophy of d/acc in another article later, but this week, I want to talk about the “D” in DHK.

    A reader once asked me about my process for choosing topics for the weekly report. As the saying goes, “ideas are cheap, execution is precious.” I find topics everywhere; the real difficulty is developing them. Even for subjects I know best, it takes me half a day to write. My schedule is filled with pending topics, already planned out to issue #221 in September. Yet, almost every week when I actually sit down to write, I end up tackling issues that have jumped the queue for various reasons. Like this week, my sharing about d/hk unearthed the long-shelved topic of “D.”

    The “D” in DHK

    Many know that DHK was originally called #decentralizehk. When simplifying the brand back then, my good friend R strongly advocated for “DeHK” and even proactively checked the availability of domains like dehk.org. Many have heard of DeFi, DeX, etc., making the meaning of DeHK quite apparent. Coupled with the domain availability, it was a good name. The reason I insisted on DHK and regretfully didn’t accept his suggestion is that the “D” represents far more than just decentralize.

    When most people see DHK, the first association the “D” might trigger is probably “Dollar”; after all, HKD reversed is DHK. I didn’t intend to create this association, but if it helps someone remember DHK, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

    Most people know the original core meaning of D is Decentralize. Literally translated, DHK could mean “Decentralized Hong Kong,” which aligns with the mission stated in our declaration: “to provide web3 civic education for Muggles.” What was truly unexpected was that several years after DHK was founded, the Hong Kong government also put forward similar discourse, (in a sense) embracing cryptocurrency and aiming to “build Hong Kong into a digital asset management center.” While I don’t think this makes DHK politically correct or eligible for funding to run web3 civic education, at least blockchain is no longer universally condemned, and cryptocurrency isn’t seen as a monstrous threat, which is undoubtedly a good thing.

    Decentralize’s twin is Democratize. The physical world of Hong Kong lacks democracy; DHK attempts to create democracy in the digital world. You might think this sounds naive (“膠” – slang for silly/unrealistic), but at least I am sincerely committed (“真心膠” – genuinely committed despite appearing naive) rather than just talking the talk. DHK volunteers use a QV (quadratic voting) mechanism each quarter to evaluate contributions, and then distribute the community’s leftover $DHK for the quarter based on contribution levels. This is the democracy we created ourselves – not only practical but also more advanced than the voting and distribution mechanisms of any country. Democracy isn’t just about voting; more importantly, it’s about daily participation. In this respect, DHK’s consistent approach is that everyone can join as a dao member, and every dao member can become a volunteer to initiate their own projects.

    Besides Decentralize and Democratize, Diversify is also essential. Only a society with choices can be diverse, and only a diverse society allows individuals to have choices in life. A system lacking diversity cannot be truly decentralized, nor can it achieve genuine democracy, and vice versa. Therefore, diversity is another core value of DHK, inseparable from decentralization and democracy.

    There’s another “D” that is particularly important for Hong Kong: Diasporic. Since 2019, the UK alone has seen over 200,000 Hong Kong immigrants, nearly 4% of Hong Kong’s population. Adding those in Taiwan, Canada, the US, Australia, and elsewhere, it’s no exaggeration to say Hong Kong has become a diaspora. I deeply agree with the sentiment that “Hong Kong is not just a place, but more importantly, its people.” However, to prevent this from becoming just a romantic slogan, we need a vessel to carry the history and meaning of this “Ship of Theseus.” Claiming DHK is that vessel might be an overstatement, but it can at least be a piece of the puzzle. DHK volunteers are spread across Hong Kong, the UK, Taiwan, and North America, while dao members are even more dispersed. This group’s identity is no longer based on a shared location, and perhaps will increasingly not depend on the ID cards and passports they hold. Through weekly reports, discussion groups, and other activities, using networks, tokens, and blockchain for daily interaction, DHK continues to interpret the identity of Hong Kongers in everyday life, constructing a diasporic community.

    The final “D,” and the main reason I attended d/acc day, is Defend. The “D” in d/acc stands for Decentralize and Democratic, but also Defensive, while “acc” means Acceleration. Combined, it signifies accelerating technological and economic development while simultaneously avoiding centralization, valuing democracy, and prioritizing defense. For instance, in today’s rapid AI development, rather than solely competing to develop Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or even Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), d/acc focuses more on whether the emergence of AGI and ASI could lead to unprecedented disasters as described in science fiction, or obliterate human value.

    Currently, all nations hope to win the AI race. Some see it not just as a competition for economic efficiency but as an arms race. Some patriotic elites in the US even refer to AI research as the “new Manhattan Project.” As the name implies, if detonated, the consequences could surpass nuclear bombs, becoming the most severe man-made disaster in history. Despite the extremely severe potential consequences, the winner enjoys exclusive benefits while the disaster is shared collectively (perhaps even borne by others). Preparing for AI defense, especially in the current climate emphasizing national priorities, is destined to have no market. Even far-sighted heads of state are unlikely to gain popular support. What is shared by the most receives the least care – a typical tragedy of the commons, and a core concern of d/acc.

    Returning to the main theme, what DHK aims to defend are Hong Kong’s culture, traditions, and core values, including Traditional Chinese, Cantonese, freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Language is a “niche” issue shared with places like Taiwan and Guangzhou, while the others are universal values, or at least values upheld by advanced nations. Thus, what DHK seeks to defend includes not only Hong Kong but also broader humanistic concerns.

    I have no intention of deifying DHK. Quite the opposite, I am keenly aware of our limited strength. Just preserving Hong Kong’s history is a lifelong task. Therefore, defending universal values like the rule of law and human rights might seem like “being overwhelmed by too much empathy/passion” (“困乏我多情”). DHK’s daily practice focuses more on Hong Kong issues, implemented bit by bit through projects like the “Drifting Classroom” – focusing on marginalized small shops), the “UBR Unconditional Basic Reader” program (collecting Hong Kong books), donating to support local civic media, and the conceptual DHKid identity system.

    DHK isn’t the only thing centered around “D”; so is the Japanese manga One Piece. In One Piece, there is the so-called “Will of D,” a belief associated with a certain country or family, symbolizing the spirit of resisting oppression and pursuing freedom. Whitebeard, the captain of the Whitebeard Pirates, once said that the “Will of D” will be inherited by future generations; even if the bloodline is broken, the spirit will endure and eventually change the world.

    In One Piece, D also carries another layer of imagery, representing Dream and Dawn. To uphold the “Will of D” is to hold onto dreams, believing firmly that darkness will eventually pass, and dawn will arrive.

    p.s. DHK’s predecessor was my column #decentralizehk in Apple Daily. Once, a good friend J advised me not to be so provocative with my language to avoid trouble. I understood J was just concerned, but this type of concern puts extra peer pressure on citizens already walking on thin ice and unwilling to compromise. Annoyed, I complained that J didn’t blame the regime oppressing the people but instead blamed me for my peaceful social intervention. We went back and forth and had a small argument. Recalling this small incident isn’t about assigning blame, but about illustrating how tense the spirit is, how tight the pressure, when living in an authoritarian society and speaking under white terror.

    p.p.s. Dedicated to the unwavering Will of D.

  • Web3dom Season One: A Reflective Milestone

    Web3dom Season One: A Reflective Milestone

    Publishing one article a week for three years might not be something to boast about, especially when many seasoned writers and artists maintain their daily routines for decades. However, sticking to it is still worth a little self-reward. And the reward is… to keep writing! 🥲

    Over the past year, excluding retrospectives and event notifications, I published 55 articles. These, as usual, cover Information Freedom (23 articles), Financial Freedom (18), Democracy (9), and Uncle’s Diary (5). 

    At the end of this post, I have listed all 55 English articles from this season for those who might want to catch up or revisit. I’ve marked the most popular ones with a 🔥 and my personal favorites, often the overlooked gems, with a 🌈. Although I’d like to select more, I’ve limited myself to just one per category. If you disagree with my choices, feel free to leave a comment.

    I’m often worried that I write too much about my daily life, veering off the “web3dom” topic. However, after checking, I found that my life diary accounts for less than 10% of the content, thanks to the “nano diary” strategy—brief personal notes placed at the end of each weekly update in the “p.s.” section to reduce the impact of personal ramblings on the newsletter.

    Besides categorizing by “Three Freedoms”, the articles can be divided into various series, including book preservation (10.5 articles), Bitcoin (8), book and film reviews (5.5), LikeCoin (5), product reviews (4), and information security (4).

    Thanks to the advent of AI, the newsletter has been available in English under the name web3dom – of web3 and freedom. The latest issue is last week’s #54. Over the year, web3dom accumulated 135 free subscribers. The response has been modest, but I’ve been managing it passively without actively promoting it.

    Another experiment this season was switching platforms. Over the past month, emails have been sent via Paragraph. The migration had some errors, and there are still some bugs to fix, but the platform’s functionality is promising. After moving to Paragraph, the Chinese and English newsletters were combined. Subscribers continue to receive the language they were subscribed to on Substack but can change their preferences or opt for both languages.

    Subscription and Community Support

    As of today, my newsletters have over 21,400 free subscribers across both languages, with an open rate slightly dropping to about 31% after the platform switch. The peak number of paid subscribers was 168, but it has recently dropped to 154, all from the Chinese version, contributing approximately $8,660 annually. Previously, I used this income to support my writing and reporting. However, with the DHK dao maturing, starting in the fourth season, I will transfer all the income directly to a multi-signature wallet managed by community members.

    I lead a simple life, and any surplus I have is invested back into civil society. So, there’s no need to feel sorry for me. Instead, since the subscription income is used for the community, we should support it even more. I should adopt the same mindset: since it’s not for me, I need to move away from a passive approach, actively promote paid subscriptions, and encourage more people to become “daoists”.

    Information Freedom

    1. Why I write
    2. Hong Kong DeCentral Library
    3. I invested in Substack, a media platform that combines reading and socializing
    4. 🔥Whether the core of web3 lies in AI or blockchain is not up to KOLs🔥
    5. NFTs as a carrier of karma
    6. Launching a Web3 Publishing House in Pursuit of Freedom
    7. Kindle Withdraws from China: The Evil of DRM
    8. 🌈Why Steve Jobs opposed DRM🌈
    9. Forever preserving human history and culture – for how long ever?
    10. The Hong Kong DeCentral Library beta lauch
    11. 1000 True Fans: Even a rotten pig head has an anosmic deity to appreciate it
    12. Twilight of the Brave: Ip Man, Dai Pai Dong and Sham Shui Po
    13. The 100th “Writing NFT” as a Gift for Readers | Publishing = Work ^ (Distribution * Presentation)
    14. The UBR “Universal Basic Reader” project: Purchasing all Hong Kong books published in 2024
    15. No code in practicing decentralization in daily life
    16. Work and Character: Reflections on Reading Dung Kai Cheung’s Kokoro
    17. The UBR “Universal Basic Reader” Project is officially launched
    18. After the Taipei Book Fair: My One and Only Book Haul
    19. Web3 Bookplate: Proof of Readership
    20. LikeCoin 3.0 GreenPaper. Introduction
    21. LikeCoin 3.0 Green Paper: Part One – Returning to Ethereum
    22. LikeCoin 3.0 Green Paper: Part Two – Where does the Coin Fall?
    23. Like Coin 3.0 Green Paper: Part Three – The Seven-Step Upgrade

    Financial Freedom

    1. Kelpr: Navigator of the Cosmos
    2. Comparing Cosmos and Ethereum Ecosystems from the Interfaces of Kelpr and Metamask
    3. The Playbook to walk you through 3 levels of Bitcoin adoption
    4. Thoughts on ATOM’s price
    5. Ten points on the JPEX Incident (from a newbie who had just deposited funds)
    6. Pure academic talk: On registering a Jpex account and deposit without revealing personal information
    7. 9gag MEMECOIN’s Market Capitalization Surpasses One Billion HKD: My Perspective on Meme Coins
    8. In the Post-FTX Era: Licensed Hong Kong Exchange Haskey Test Drive
    9. Buying Wonton Noodles with Bitcoin: RedotPay Cryptocurrency Visa Card Test Drive
    10. 🔥Looking Back after Three Years: Buying $100 of Bitcoin Every Day🔥
    11. I’m All in for Real Bitcoin: “Pocket the Bitcoin ETF first”
    12. To understand Bitcoin, start with Cabbage
    13. Preface for Moneyverse: how money works in the multiverse Paperback Edition
    14. BitcoinBreaks New Highs: Five Things to Remember in a Bull Market
    15. A 30-Second Read on Moneyverse: How Money Works in the Multiverse
    16. 🌈Alice in Cryptoland: A Bitcoin-Centric Worldview🌈
    17. Four Years On: Revisiting the Bitcoin Halving
    18. Thinking Fast and Slow on Bitcoin Pizza Day

    Democracy

    1. DHK dao-mocracy: The “making of” validator governance
    2. “Solution looking for a problem” as a path for entrepreneurship
    3. How to take part in Gitcoin Grants
    4. DHK dao’s Fourth Evolution
    5. 🔥The so-called “real name’ is just a legally registered name🔥
    6. Being upright and transparent doesn’t mean one should lay bare
    7. 🌈Towards the Other Shore: How to Create Digital Democracy through Blockchain?🌈
    8. Morning in Hong Kong, Reading at Mount Zero, From Words to Prosperity
    9. Cryptocurrency is super secure, but far from private

    Uncle’s Diary

    1. Normal People
    2. Hong Kong is small, Hong Kong is big – Watching Band Four
    3. Time Still Turns the Pages – Preface to the Road of Games
    4. 🔥#photodump Postcards from Taipei🔥
    5. 🌈It’ll be embarrassing when we meet again – Postcard from Edinburgh🌈
  • LikeCoin 3.0 Green Paper. Part Two. Where Does the Coin Fall?

    LikeCoin 3.0 Green Paper. Part Two. Where Does the Coin Fall?

    Last week’s newsletter was the debut on Paragraph.xyz.  Kindly check your spam folder, newsletters tend to get misjudged as junk mail, dropping last week’s open rate to 30%, likely due to this. If you find the newsletter in your spam folder, kindly move it back to your inbox to train Gmail or your email system, and please add the sender [email protected] to your address book.

    Now, back to our discussion on the LikeCoin Green Paper, here is the third piece.

    Bringing LikeCoin’s infrastructure back to Ethereum raises a series of questions that need further consideration.

    1. Should LikeCoin’s smart contracts be deployed on a single chain or multiple chains, with cross-chain bridges allowing LIKE tokens 3.0 to operate simultaneously across multiple chains while maintaining the total supply unchanged?
    2. With Ethereum hosting over 100 L2 chains, which one or ones should LikeCoin choose as the underlying layer for 3.0?
    3. How should users of LikeCoin 1.0 and 2.0 upgrade their existing LIKE tokens?
    4. What are the options for validators from LikeCoin 2.0, and how can they continue to participate?
    5. How should data on LikeCoin 2.0, such as ISCN and NFTs, be migrated to LikeCoin 3.0?
    6. How can DApps from LikeCoin 2.0 be upgraded to LikeCoin 3.0?
    7. How will LikeCoin 3.0 tokens be distributed, and will there be any limits?
    8. On which platforms will LikeCoin 3.0 tokens be traded?
    9. What governance mechanisms and tools will LikeCoin 3.0 utilize?

    Given that the first two questions are more fundamental and impact decisions on other fronts, this article will prioritize addressing them, while other questions will be discussed in subsequent articles.

    Single Chain vs Multi-Chain

    While L2 has been developing for several years and is gradually maturing, most exchanges and OTC boutiques in Taiwan and Hong Kong have not kept up, for reasons unknown – whether it’s due to an inability to discern or understand the demand, or perhaps regulatory constraints. From what I can observe, most users either haven’t grasped the situation yet and are adopting a wait-and-see approach, or they’re still recovering from the bear market two years ago and lack interest in new developments. Therefore, when discussing whether LikeCoin 3.0 should exist on a single chain or multiple chains, let’s first briefly explain the concept of L2.

    L2, or Layer 2, is the second layer network, which is Ethereum’s scaling solution. It allows general computations to be executed on L2, which are then periodically bundled (“roll up”) onto the L1 mainnet, significantly increasing L1 capacity and reducing user transaction costs. To illustrate, let’s use the example of four people – Alice, Bob, Carol and Dave – playing mahjong, with two of them from Taiwan and two from Hong Kong, for example. If Alice wins a hand, Bob, Carol and Dave all need to transfer money. This process is not only cumbersome but also costly. So, Bob comes up with a solution: he takes out pen and paper and uses four columns to represent the four individuals, with Carol responsible for keeping track. In Alice’s column, he writes +400; in Bob’s -200; in Carol’s -100 and in Dave’s -100. Dave further suggests settling every four rounds, and everyone transfers the money in the bank.

    In this example, the bank account represents L1, reliable but with high transaction costs. Bob’s proposed accounting method represents L2, which lacks the credibility of a bank but is convenient and efficient. Carol, the person keeping track, is technically referred to as a sequencer, while Dave’s improvement suggestion is roll up, which ensures the security of L2 is periodically returned to L1.

    The above analogy aims to provide readers who are unfamiliar with L2 with a basic understanding. However, please don’t take it too seriously, as playing mahjong and keeping accounts cannot fully encompass all L2 concepts. For example, EVM smart contracts can be deployed on multiple L2s, and users don’t necessarily have to concentrate on the same ledger but can use their preferred chain. Before minting new tokens for LikeCoin 3.0, the first decision to make is whether to use a single chain or multiple chains.

    Regarding this issue, I suggest first locking in on a single L2 chain. The most obvious benefit of single-chain deployment is consolidating liquidity. Otherwise, if deployed across multiple chains, liquidity becomes dispersed, making it difficult for users to decide where to buy or sell LIKE tokens. In fact, one well-known drawback of current L2s is precisely liquidity fragmentation. In addition to trading, consolidating LikeCoin on a single chain also allows DApps, NFTs and other data to be centralized. Although multi-chain offers choices, when the scale is not large enough, it may lead to data, NFTs and content being scattered across multiple chains, thus disrupting the user experience. Moreover, by conducting a vote before deployment to choose a single L2 as the foundation for LikeCoin, we can balance democracy with efficiency.

    However, the selection of the first L2 chain by the community is just the beginning. Years later, the chosen L2 may become crowded, or LikeCoin’s ecosystem may be mature enough to expand to more L2s. Therefore, LikeCoin’s smart contracts can leave room for maneuvering, so that under the premise of community consensus, LikeCoin can be deployed to another or even multiple L2s. This is also the common practice of large-scale DApps like Uniswap and AAVE, starting from L1 and then being led by the community to decide whether to deploy the protocol on more L2s. Each deployment is both an expansion and an inevitable dispersion of liquidity and user groups. It’s the most flexible and feasible approach, tailored to the needs of the community.

    photo credit: public domain 亜東印画輯. Cover: CC-BY-NC-SA 王惠瑩

    L2: The Better Choice?

    When it comes to selecting an L2 solution to support LikeCoin, the first consideration is whether to develop our own L2. Honestly, I’ve been pondering this possibility for the past 2 years. However, as time has passed, the situation has become increasingly clear: our own L2 might lack the stablecoins like USDC, crucial support from platforms like Uniswap and Opensea, essentially losing most advantages of migrating back to Ethereum. If we were to go with our own chain, we might as well continue operating the existing LikeCoin chain. While developing and maintaining L2 is much simpler and cheaper compared to L1, it still requires a considerable effort. For instance, Gitcoin’s L2 Public Good Network (PGN) recently ceased operations due to poor response.

    Stepping back, the Ethereum ecosystem offers over 100 L2 options for LikeCoin to choose from, and the number keeps growing. Evaluating each one individually is nearly impossible. A more practical approach is to identify the peripheral applications that LikeCoin needs the most, filter out L2 solutions that support these applications, and then make further decisions based on that narrowed down list.

    In my estimation, the essential peripheral applications that LikeCoin 3.0 would need when moving to Ethereum L2 include:

    1. USDC and USDT ERC-20: for liquidity and exchanges

    2. Uniswap: for liquidity provision and trading

    3. Opensea: for presenting, selling and trading NFT books and Writing NFT interfaces

    4. Gnosis Safe: for multi-signature wallets

    The absence of any of these applications would significantly impact the operation of LikeCoin 3.0. Therefore, if we were to choose an L2 to deploy LikeCoin smart contracts, I would opt for one that supports all of the above applications. Below, I’ve listed some L2 chains supported by USDC and several DApps, as well as other L1 chains using 0x addresses, for reference. (Note: USDT is similar to USDC, so it’s not considered separately here.)

    • USDC: Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Celo, Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon PoS, zkSync
    • Uniswap: Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Blast, BNB chain, Celo, Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon PoS
    • Opensea: Arbitrum, Arbitrum Nova, Avalanche, Base, Blast, BNB chain, Ethereum, Klaytn, Optimism, Polygon PoS, Zora
    • Gnosis Safe: Arbitrum, Aurora (Near), Avalanche, Base, BNB chain, Celo, Ethereum, Gnosis Chain, Optimism, Polygon PoS, Polygon zkEVM, ZkSync Era

    Among the L2 or side chains that are supported by both USDC, Uniswap, Opensea,and Gnosis Safe, apart from the Ethereum mainnet and another L1 chain, Avalanche, there are 4 options:

    • Arbitrum
    • Base
    • Optimism
    • Polygon PoS

    After passing through various considerations, each has its own strengths and community preferences. It should not be too wrongno matter which one the community will ultimately choose. Unless one of these chains is supported by a foundation to cover the development costs of LikeCoin 3.0, my top recommendation, based on self-funding or potentially retrospective rewards, would be Optimism (OP mainnet). This is primarily because the community atmosphere there tends to be more supportive of public goods and concerned with public interest. Over the past year, many projects and users with similar ideas have gravitated towards Optimism. Especially after the closure of PGN Public Good Network, Optimism has become almost the default choice. For example, Matters, a close ally of LikeCoin, has recently deployed USDT donation and the latest feature, Billboard, which distributes ad profits to authors, on Optimism. If LikeCoin 3.0 settles on Optimism, integration and interaction with Matters are expected to be simplified, greatly improving the current cross-chain user experience.

    Next time, we’ll continue discussing other aspects.

    p.s. Sometimes emotions get the best of me, like when I saw dozens of bamboo trees in the village being cut down and replaced with a red flag.

  • LikeCoin 3.0 Green Paper. Introduction

    LikeCoin 3.0 Green Paper. Introduction

    If we consider the creation of the LIKE ERC-20 token on Ethereum on February 8, 2018 as LikeCoin 1.0, then the launch of our own L1 blockchain with the genesis block mined on November 15, 2019 marks the arrival of LikeCoin 2.0. Since then, there have been earth-shaking changes in the LikeCoin ecosystem, the blockchain industry, our home base Hong Kong, and the entire world. As we enter the seventh year, it’s time to discuss the next steps for our community, which I call LikeCoin 3.0.

    To keep pace with the times, LikeCoin must not only innovate technically but also coordinate with DApps, adapt to changes in peripheral tools, adjust the token economy, maintain governance continuity, safeguard stakeholders’ interests, help users adapt, and plan for migration. In the next few articles, I will express my views on various aspects, stimulating discussion within the community to seek consensus and gradually implement changes.

    Before diving into specific recommendations, let’s first examine several key factors that have influenced LikeCoin’s trajectory amidst the technological and social developments of recent years.

    LikeCoin Community

    First and foremost is LikeCoin itself. Since the launch of “2.0” (I’ve never been a fan of this term, it always feels a bit awkward), LikeCoin, as a protocol, has begun to operate on the principles of liquid democracy. Any proposals related to token economics, protocol updates, community funding, etc., must first be discussed in the forum, then formally submitted as proposals. Once approved, they are executed directly on the blockchain. For proposals involving manual intervention, legitimacy is established through the approval of the proposal, authorizing individual stakeholders to execute them.

    Over the past four and a half years, this liquid democracy mechanism has processed a total of 81 proposals. Among them, 73 received enough deposit to proceed to voting, with 68 being approved and 5 being rejected. Due to the large number of proposals, below are just a few representative examples to outline the contours of liquid democracy:

    • Proposal #4 on September 21, 2020: Opening up direct user voting, initiating the direct democratic part of the referendum mechanism. Approved, developers were authorized to implement it.
    • Proposal #7 on January 6, 2021: Adjusting the inflation rate dynamically between 7-20%. Approved, executed directly on the chain.
    • Proposal #25 on December 11, 2021: Utilizing community funds to distribute Fairdrop LIKE tokens to the Cosmos community according to a specific formula. Approved, funds were automatically disbursed on-chain, developers executed it.
    • Proposal #32 on January 27, 2022: Dissolving the community delegation committee. Rejected, not executed.
    • Proposal #52 on July 13, 2022: Updating the StarFerry version of the validator software to include NFT functionality. Approved, automatically executed on-chain, validators cooperated with the upgrade.
    • Proposal #62 on March 2, 2023: Paying outsourced workers with assets belonging to the community, managed by a multisig wallet. Approved, authorized the multisig wallet manager to sign payments.

    On one hand, on-chain governance is advancing, while on the other, traditional governance is receding. I had hoped that after ten years, the LikeCoin project would be taken over by the community for decentralized governance. However, unforeseen societal deteriorations prompted me to accelerate the process significantly. On November 30, 2020, I resigned from the foundation and began the process of dissolving it. Finally, on December 10, 2021, LikeCoin Foundation Limited was officially dissolved, marking the transition to DAO governance.

    Losing the status conferred by the system and the income provided by the position doesn’t mean I won’t be involved anymore. As I’ve said before, I’ve committed to this project for ten years, and that hasn’t changed. Besides being a founder, I’m also a stakeholder, reader and creator, using LikeCoin every day. However, given my unique position, I’ve been seeking an appropriate distance to continue contributing without overshadowing others or becoming an obstacle to the development of LikeCoin DAO. After much deliberation, I’ve decided to turn my myriad thoughts into the LikeCoin 3.0 Green Paper, offering concrete suggestions on how this decentralized publishing protocol should move forward.

    It’s well-known that in the blockchain community, projects often publish white papers outlining their goals, designs and operating mechanisms, but green papers are rare. The practice of white papers and green papers comes from traditional governance. White papers are typically used by governments to announce policy outlines, while democratic governments often present initial proposals in green papers for discussion, gathering public opinions, adjusting them and finalizing them as white papers. For example, the Hong Kong British government released the Green Paper on Representative Government on July 18, 1984, followed by the White Paper on Representative Government on November 21, 1984, before implementing related policies in 1985.

    Legitimacy is the foundation of governance. The reason I position my suggestions for LikeCoin as a green paper is fundamentally because the development of the community is determined by the DAO, and I’m not qualified to unilaterally publish a white paper to set directions. Green papers, on the other hand, are different. There’s no need for qualifications, and any stakeholder can express their views. It’s more of an obligation than a privilege. The so-called “LikeCoin 3.0 Green Paper” is merely an integration of a series of suggestions. Actual implementation doesn’t require packaged decisions but is better suited to be broken down into multiple proposals for individual review. Additionally, revisions can be made during the process. As long as there are ideas, the community can even propose entirely different counter-suggestions.

    As a Civic Liker, I will do my utmost to propose development suggestions beneficial to LikeCoin. Ultimately, whether they are adopted and how they are implemented will be decided by the entire community.

    Ethereum Infrastructure

    Back on November 25, 2017, when LikeCoin was just getting started, I attended the Taipei Ethereum Meetup in Taiwan. Despite Vitalik and several core developers being there in person, and even amidst a bullish market, with Ether trading at around 400 dollars, there were fewer than a hundred people in attendance, and the cowork space in a basement on Changchun Road was more than enough to accommodate everyone. I remember Vitalik’s topic at the time was Ethereum 2.0, where he discussed technologies like sharding and Plasma, and it was anticipated that 2.0 would be launched shortly. I also naively believed it (and it was during this event that I met the author of Blocktrend, Astro Hsu, whom I had been following for a while. So, you could say I practically grew up reading Blocktrend).

    As they say, changing the engine mid-flight is the hardest part. Ethereum 2.0 turned out to be much more complex than initially envisioned, undergoing numerous revisions in the process of implementation. The development time far exceeded estimates, with sharding still not implemented even today. However, with its active and robust community, Ethereum overcame many obstacles over 6 to 7 years, gradually realizing the vision of 2.0 through a series of upgrades. The most critical upgrades include:

    • December 1, 2020: The launch of the Beacon chain marked the beginning of Proof-of-Stake, with pioneers staking ETH to secure the Ethereum network.
    • August 5, 2021: The London upgrade, which reduced gas fees and began burning some of the ETH used for transactions (EIP-1559).
    • September 15, 2022: The Paris upgrade, a historic moment known as The Merge, officially transitioning into the Proof-of-Stake era.
    • April 12, 2023: The Shapella upgrade unlocked staked ETH, allowing nodes to claim rewards and exit the network.
    • March 13, 2024: The Dencun upgrade significantly lowered transaction costs on Layer 2 networks (EIP-4844).

    Although ongoing upgrade work is still in progress, since the Dencun upgrade, the usability of the Ethereum mainnet along with the L2 ecosystem has become quite high, largely fulfilling the promise of low-cost, high-performance transactions. For most applications, infrastructure is no longer the bottleneck.

    Furthermore, with the implementation of abstract accounts (ERC-4337), issues such as high barriers to entry for newcomers and poor user experiences that have plagued the entire industry are expected to be gradually resolved.

    Creative Ecology

    LikeCoin is a community token for creators and journalists, from its inception of turning likes into rewards, to content conservation since 2020, and then decentralized publishing since 2022. Although it continues to evolve, it has always maintained its original aspiration of focusing on the needs of creators.

    Looking at the creative ecology, it’s clear that we just can’t forget our original aspiration. In LikeCoin’s birthplace, most citizen media have been forced to shut down, even the highest-selling newspapers have closed their doors, losing not only their future but also over two decades of content in a single night. Although the example comes from a single city, citizens around the world must be vigilant and guard against the trend of authoritarian censorship.

    In terms of livelihood, with the popularity of subscription models, the income of a small number of creators has improved. However, subscription models not only exacerbate income disparities among creators but also trap content behind paywalls, preventing information from circulating. Coupled with increasingly authoritarian algorithms on platforms and readers’ dwindling attention spans, in this information age, public discourse faces its most daunting challenges.

    In summary, compared to seven years ago when LikeCoin was founded, blockchain infrastructure has come a long way and is now entering a golden age, gradually realizing its initial vision. However, beyond technology, the problems facing creators have rarely been resolved and have even become more severe.

    This is the context of LikeCoin 3.0.

    P.S. I’ve been procrastinating on this simple short piece for months, not knowing where to start, delaying it for a whole two months. I hope that after taking the first step today, I can smoothly complete the remaining parts of the green paper.

  • Web3 Bookplate: Proof of Readership

    Web3 Bookplate: Proof of Readership

    Hong Kong has always been renowned for its efficiency, outshining Taiwan by leaps and bounds. While Taiwan’s multitude of parties are continuously embroiled in disputes over various social issues, Hong Kong has, in what feels like the speed of light, already completed the entire process for the Safeguarding National Security Bill – from public consultation, summarization of opinions, submission to the Legislative Council, to debates, reviews and passing the first and second readings. After attending the Taipei Book Fair and dragging a suitcase full of books back from the airport, I’ve come to deeply appreciate the benefits brought about by “advance to prosperity”.

    The Taiwanese Lifestyle: A Proof of Work

    However, in one aspect, the efficiency between Taiwan and Hong Kong is completely reversed – and that’s printing. Years ago, when I was in Taiwan and in dire need of printing, I discovered to my relief that virtually every convenience store offered printing services. Operating a printer at 7-Eleven, I felt like a kid who had just moved to the city from a remote village and was using a flush toilet for the first time, full of wonder and amazement.

    You might find it hard to believe, but in Hong Kong, I’ve had to take a half-hour bus ride to the office just to print a single document more than once. Printers at home have become obsolete, stationery shops have turned into real estate agencies, and photo developing shops have shut down with the rise of Instagram. Finding a printing service during the day is hard enough, let alone at night when it’s practically impossible. Thankfully, this hasn’t caused me much trouble since I hardly need to print anything throughout the year, having used electronic signatures for many years and being accustomed to reading directly from a computer screen. In fact, nearly every time I’ve needed to print something in the last decade has been because of something related to Taiwan, whether it’s an entry permit or some application.

    Taiwan is fantastic, except for the extensive use of paper. Every time I’m in Taiwan, my pockets are always stuffed with receipts and invoices. Although recycling is well-managed, true environmentalism should be about avoiding unnecessary production, right? Besides, in education-focused Taiwan, there’s an abundance of certificates for everything; for someone unskilled like me, there’s a pile of appreciation certificates for sharing sessions at universities or conducting training at various institutions, which leaves me blushing from head to toe. Out of respect, I’ve kept and preserved them all, only to find out later that they can actually come in handy when applying for certifications.

    From education and lifestyle to consumption, everything requires proof. Living in Taiwan is indeed a “Proof of Work”.

    From Invoices and Receipts to NFTs and DIDs

    Let me take this moment to elaborate, perhaps for the “10th time” (cue mysterious voice: it’s been more than ten times, actually), on the significance of NFTs. Essentially, the nature of NFTs is quite straightforward; they serve as a form of certificate. In some scenarios, they act as receipts, proving ownership of something for which you’ve either paid money or exerted effort. In other cases, they resemble certificates of appreciation or diplomas, evidencing your attendance, participation, or completion of something.

    Unlike invoices, which are centrally recorded in the government’s database by tax authorities, akin to fiat currency, NFTs are recorded on a blockchain that operates without a central authority but with consensus. Compared to certificates of appreciation, which can be easily forged and are hard to verify, NFTs offer immutable but publicly accessible records, making verification a breeze.

    Regarding the management of invoices through devices issued by the Ministry of Finance, the corresponding digital counterpart would be cryptocurrency wallets like Metamask. Furthermore, the “Digital Wallet” announced by the Ministry of Digital Affairs at the beginning of the year, set to officially launch next year, will serve as a carrier for various credentials such as the Citizen Digital Certificate, health insurance card, membership cards and qualification certificates. Following the W3C international standard, it utilizes Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) to manage different aspects of personal identity, not only eliminating the need for paper but also fully embracing the principle of decentralization.

    On one hand, Taiwan relies heavily on paper-based processes, showing a certain adherence to tradition. On the other hand, it embraces digital democracy in a highly progressive manner, leaving other nations’ governments in the dust. I believe “Taiwan can help” and am looking forward to Taiwan demonstrating to the world a simple yet non-authoritarian digital democracy. I have great confidence in the Ministry of Digital Affairs and the civil society, but my only concern is whether public outreach is sufficient and whether the people’s understanding can keep pace. I worry if fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) towards the government and emerging technologies could overshadow well-intentioned policies.

    Bookplate NFTs and a Web3 Bookshelf

    Invoices correlate with purchases, diplomas with education, and letters of appreciation with public participation. But what about a medium to encapsulate our reading history and cultural footprint?

    Back in the days before e-books became popular, when I still bought physical books in large quantities, I had a habit of keeping the bookstore receipts tucked inside them, noting the when and where of my purchases, and incidentally using them as bookmarks. Over the years, as I’ve gradually parted with my collection of physical books, flipping through them one last time often revealed receipts that had become unreadable. For books that held special meaning, I sometimes went a step further, signing my name and dating the title page.

    Whether it’s preserving receipts, personal signatures, or stamps, any method of “declaring ownership” is purely a personal act, invisible to a community. Recognizing this, I’ve included a book token with the direct sale of Moneyverse: how money works in the multiverse. Unlike traditional book tokens made from prints, this book token utilizes NFT technology to verify ownership of the corresponding physical book, offering immutable and publicly accessible records. Imagine if other books and sales channels could support book token NFTs, enabling book lovers to connect with authors while building a Web3 bookshelf, thus forging their identity in the world of reading and forming connections through books.

    In the first phase of a decentralized publishing experiment at the end of 2022, I published Moneyverse: how money works in the multiverse as an NFT ebook. If this concept seems bewildering, think of an “NFT ebook” as “NFT + ebook”, by comparison to current practices. After purchasing the NFT ebook, you’d receive the text via email, similar to receiving a physical book in the mail after purchasing Moneyverse: how money works in the multiverse.  Meanwhile, readers could also claim an NFT, just like now with the book token NFT, only that back then, I figured book tokens were less recognized than NFTs, hence the lack of such terminology.

    To be honest, out of the 1024 NFT ebooks sold last time, 312 NFTs went unclaimed. Although it’s somewhat disheartening to have a batch of NFTs sitting unclaimed in my wallet, since the text had already been acquired, the NFTs seemed to serve little purpose beyond display. Readers’ reluctance to claim them, similar to my own habit of declining receipts after shopping, is entirely understandable.

    However, does this “included with the book” NFT serve no purpose other than display? The answer is a resounding no, and let me prove it right away. First and foremost, by accessing the NFT’s display interface, the general public can see information about the book, while the holders can link to the text, which will be kept up to date. Moreover, readers who own the Moneyverse: how money works in the multiverse  NFT can enjoy a 30% discount when purchasing the physical book Moneyverse: how money works in the multiverse. This discount should have been available from the publication’s outset, but due to the first edition selling out and only now with the second printing can I provide the original NFT holders with a discount code via email, for which I apologize.

    While a 30% discount on books is nice, let’s spice things up a bit. If you return the Moneyverse: how money works in the multiverse NFT to ckxpress.likecoin (like13f4glvg80zvfrrs7utft5p68pct4mcq7t5atf6) and email me your postal address, you will receive a signed physical copy of Moneyverse: how investment works in the multiverse.  This arrangement might seem simple, but on further thought, you’ll realize that without NFTs, such an action would be impossible. After all, you don’t truly own a traditional ebook, so how could you return it? However, with the Moneyverse: how money works in the multiverse  NFT having a secondary market price of $39.9, and the physical book only costing $19.9, whether to exchange the NFT for a new book is left to the reader’s discretion.

    This time, my new book is published in physical form, partly to satisfy readers who love physical books and to engage as much as possible with the traditional publishing and sales ecosystem. On the other hand, it’s a “covert operation” as the second phase of the decentralized publishing experiment, incorporating the book token NFT, not only allowing readers to showcase their physical book collection on a web3 bookshelf but also opening up more possibilities. What book token NFT holders will gain in the future, even I don’t know. What I do know is that with this connection, I, the persistent author, will be able to find the readers who have supported me and properly thank you.

    Black Window Bookplate

    Further Reading

  • Comparing Cosmos and Ethereum Ecosystems from the Interfaces of Keplr and Metamask

    Comparing Cosmos and Ethereum Ecosystems from the Interfaces of Keplr and Metamask

    Recently, Instagram launched Threads and expressly stated that it would later join the ActivityPub federation. After years of cultivation, the concept of federation on the internet has finally garnered some attention from general users. Besides ActivityPub, another point of interest is the blockchain federation, the Cosmos ecosystem.

    (more…)

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