互聯網革命vs區塊鏈革命系列
前言
馬克吐溫曾經說過：“歷史不會重演，但它確實會押韻”。1994年，《連線》雜誌的主編凱文·凱利著就了《失控：機器、社會與經濟的新生物學》一書，這是關於社會進化、特別是互聯網發展的“先知預言”，後來成為《黑客帝國》主演們的必讀物。25年後，八維資本試圖捕捉互聯網和區塊鏈革命之間的相似之處，以幫助人們更好地瞭解技術生命週期和區塊鏈行業的未來。我們將在接下來的幾周內發佈一系列文章，歡迎訂閱我們的微信公眾號。
文章系列，敬請期待：
互聯網與區塊鏈革命之：
part1:早期的成功產品
part2:顛覆性公司的起源
part3:早期的挑戰
part4:新概念，估值和時機
part5:我們是在1994年嗎？ 下一步該怎麼辦？
互聯網與區塊鏈革命：新概念，估值和時機（part4）
作者：Remi Gai @ 八維資本
編譯：八維研究院
八維研究院原創，轉載請註明出處
本文是整個系列的第四部分：
新興技術使以前不可能或不實用的新概念和業務模型成為可能。這些新概念和商業模式通常需要時間進行驗證，並需要新的評估方法。正如互聯網革命，時機對於這些新概念和模式在新興市場取得成功非常重要。
新概念的出現
隨著互聯網和區塊鏈的發展而出現的新概念
新技術有潛力創造新的概念和商業模式，從而可以出現新的市場。例如，互聯網允許出現諸如 “ 無限選擇” 等新概念 （例如：銷售來自世界各地的所有書籍的書店 - 亞馬遜），或“即時滿足” 的概念 （例如：電影）出售來自世界各地的所有電影的租賃商店 - Netflix ） 。 互聯網使這些新模式成為可能，亞馬遜 或 Netflix 等公司明白消費者的期望正在改變，並專注於改變他們的模式以滿足這些新需求。其他一些概念包括“搜索引擎”、“實時信息”、“即時消息”、“社交媒體”、“數字廣告”和“流媒體”。儘管我們現在把它們中的許多視為理所當然，但許多這些概念都是從一個想法開始的，需要時間來測試和證明。例如，在早期的互聯網時代，傑夫·貝佐斯從一開始就有了“一切商店”的想法，但起初覺得這太誇張了，於是選擇把賣書作為概念證明，以驗證“電子商務”的商業模式。之所以選擇書籍，是因為它們與商品最相似，在商品中，買家知道他們會收到什麼，而且利潤率相對較高。一旦傑夫·貝佐斯證明了“電子商務”是一種可行的圖書商業模式， 亞馬遜很快就會擴展到其他垂直領域。
隨著新技術的出現，娛樂業的演變
在區塊鏈領域， 隨著 Cryptokitties 的推出，2017年底出現的 一個新的挑戰概念是“數字稀缺”，它允許您在區塊鏈上擁有Cryptokitties 。在區塊鏈出現之前，完全擁有數字資產的完全所有權不是一個可行的想法，也是迫使傳統娛樂業在過去30年內改變其商業模式的一個主要痛點。在互聯網時代之前，娛樂業的商業模式嚴重依賴於CD、磁帶、DVD等實物產品的銷售。隨著互聯網的出現，MP3和MP4等新型文件以及對等協議（1999年）的出現，盜版開始猖獗，文件在網上免費獲取。由於缺乏數字版權保護和文件所有權工具，傳統娛樂業不得不轉向一種以體驗為導向的模式，即我們今天所知道的，提供諸如 Blockbuster，Netflix 和 Spotify 等服務。如果區塊鏈技術出現在10年前，那麼我們今天使用消費數字媒體的方式可能會有所不同。區塊鏈帶來的其他一些新概念包括“不可變”、“終局性”、“加密貨幣”、“效用代幣”、“代幣管理註冊（TCR）”、“去中心化金融系統（DEFI）”和“去中心化自治組織（DAO）”。這些概念目前正被許多激動人心的空間和時間項目所探索，這將驗證它們在世界上的價值。
新的估值方法
胖與瘦方案（來自USV的概念，來自JoelMonégro ）
通常，新概念和商業模式的價值一開始很難把握。在互聯網的早期，投資者並不確定要對網絡公司進行估值，因為他們中的許多公司沒有可觀的收入，也沒有“擁有”任何有形資產（建築物、卡車、設備等）。例如，許多投資者忽略了這樣一個事實： eBay 易趣的價值來源於它的社區，而不是傳統的估值方法，同樣的，今天最大的互聯網公司從他們擁有的用戶數據中獲取價值。在區塊鏈世界中，大多數初創公司沒有任何現金流，其中一些傳統的估值方法（如DCF或P/E）不適用。此外，DAPPS的非中介化本質從根本上不允許應用層從其用戶那裡獲取很多價值，並且通常會將價值從用戶數據推送到協議層（回到 Fat and Thin Protocol 的概念）。
《連線》雜誌的hotwired.com是第一個顯示橫幅廣告的網站（1994年）
新商業模式的可行性在一開始並不總是很明確。在互聯網的早期，許多公司開始採用“付費牆”的商業模式，然後逐漸轉變為廣告模式，因為事實證明它是有效的。數字廣告商業模式的發現和推廣是 由 Wired 發現並 推廣 。1994年，Wired 將其傳統的廣告模式從他們的雜誌複製到了他們的新在線雜誌（Hotwired ），這是以前從未在網上嘗試過的。有趣的是，在早期的網絡時代，很少有網站讓人們喜歡點擊廣告橫幅，只是為了瀏覽其他頁面。一旦這種新的商業模式被證明能帶來可觀的收入，許多公司就走上了這條道路，特別是像雅虎這樣的新興搜索引擎，它們以前一直在努力尋找貨幣化的途徑。25年來，數字廣告的市場規模在2018年從零增長到2700億美元（Statista）。
在加密貨幣領域，我們看到了與代幣經濟相關的有趣的新模型。例如，協議和實用令牌開發人員可以通過保留一些最初生成的令牌來為自己創造價值。然後，收入取決於基於市場採用、需求和投機的代幣價格變化。雖然從分權的角度來看，這種模式是有意義的，在這種情況下，這對於中間商獲取價值的機會理應刪除或從系統最小化，但這些項目所承擔的風險相當大，因為它們的成功將完全取決於它們的“一次性”鑄造代幣的成功，在部署後沒有機會進行重大業務模式更改。其他一些有趣的新商業模式還包括由交易所 FCoin 首創的模式，該模式試圖通過獎勵交易用代幣（即“交易即採礦”模式）來解決交易所的流動性問題，而不是像大多數交易所或社交媒體平臺Steemit 那樣收取費用，並允許他們 在用戶使用他們的代幣時獲得相關信息。總的來說，我們很高興看到新的代幣和商業模式出現在這個空間。
UTXO分析和市場週期 （來源： Delphi Digital ）
為了評估加密貨幣的價格，我們已經看到了新的估值方法，例如網絡價值與交易（NVT）比率，它衡量加密資產交易活動相對於網絡價值的美元價值（由 Willy Woo 和 Chris Burniske 推廣），或者utxo分析（來自 Unchained Capital 的概念 ），這與從比特幣交易到價格的未消耗產出。這兩種方法都是提供新框架來解釋在熊市和牛市週期中比特幣的價值的方法。然而，在評估協議令牌價值的正確方法上，仍然存在許多問題。價值是否應基於區塊鏈頂部構建的DAPP數量及其各自的用戶群？還是應該以他們提供的總計算資源為基礎（例如，以太坊中的GAS可以被視為礦工提供的計算能力，或者，如果是 FileCoin ，則視為存儲能力）？一般來說，由於我們仍處於區塊鏈革命的早期週期，因此沒有標準化框架來評估區塊鏈、DAPP和加密貨幣的價值。
時機
互聯網革命：市場、基礎設施和公司的演變
回顧互聯網時代的主要應用程序是如何推出的，新技術的先驅者很少能夠存活足夠長的時間來主宰他們的類別：通常情況下，它仍然是我們今天的模仿者：搜索領域的谷歌，而不是 Altavista 或 雅虎 ；社交網絡領域的 Facebook ，而不是 Friendster 或MySpace。在科技界，一個新想法的最終成功在很大程度上取決於時機。第一款互聯網瀏覽器 Mosaic 的成功，正是它成為為該領域早期推動者的時機。NCSA快速的電腦和互聯網連接使馬克·安德烈森和地下室的其他孩子們能夠在網絡起飛前，完美地捕捉到網絡的浪潮。
即使是看起來是偉大想法也可能無法兌現承諾，因為底層技術或基礎設施還不夠成熟，無法支持其採用和可行性。例如，在互聯網早期，媒體流是一個很受歡迎的想法，在互聯網上，broadcast.com（由Mark Cuban於1995年創建的互聯網廣播公司）獲得了成功，但當時其他試圖提供視頻相關服務的公司卻失敗了。YouTube（2004年）起飛，就需要發展寬帶互聯網連接，同時採用消費者視頻和手機攝像頭，以及 Napster 失敗後的版權侵權教訓（第一個因版權侵權而關閉的點對點文件共享服務），這幾乎發生在10年後。Facebook（2004年）也獲得了採用智能手機的時機，隨時都提供了一種更為個性化和緊密的互聯網體驗。如果iPhone沒有啟動智能手機革命，哪來的 Instagram，Snapchat，Twitter 和 Uber ？它是社交媒體消費和生產所需的完美工具。一些人認為，社交媒體最終成為主流，因為智能手機在同一時間成為主流——兩者在適當的時候互補。在區塊鏈領域，DAPP的主流採用將在很大程度上取決於技術和基礎設施的成熟度，這些成熟度可以允許一些用例的可行性和可擴展性。一些想法可能在未來幾年內可行和實用，而其他想法可能需要5-10年。
總之，新興技術允許出現新的概念和商業模型，從新的估值角度對它們進行評估是很重要的，因為以前的方法可能不適用。這些新概念中的許多需要時間來驗證，它們的採用與時間密切相關。
後記
馬克吐溫曾經說過“歷史不會重演，但它確實會押韻”。 我們試圖在互聯網和區塊鏈革命之間勾勒出一些相似之處，以幫助公眾更好地瞭解技術的生命週期。請留下您的想法和評論，希望本系列文章將為行業提供一些有價值的觀點。
Sources:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/237974/online-advertising-spending-worldwide/
https://coinmetrics.io/nvt/
https://www.delphi digital.io/utxo
http://www.usv.com/blog/fat-protocols
英文版：Internet vs Blockchain Revolution Series
Introduction
Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme”. At 8 Decimal Capital, we are attempting to find similarities between the Internet and Blockchain revolutions, to help the community better understand technological life cycles and the future of the Blockchain industry. The Internet Revolution facts are based on the book “How the Internet Happened”, written by Brian McCullough. We will be releasing a series of articles over the next couple of weeks. Feel free to subscribe to our medium channel to stay up to date with our new posts, in which we will regularly share our findings and insights.
Article Series:
Internet vs Blockchain Revolution:
Early Successful Products (Part 1)
Origins of Disruptive Companies (Part 2)
Challenges in the Early Days (Part 3)
New Concepts, Valuations, and Timing (Part 4)
Are We in 1994? What to expect Next? (Part 5)
New Concepts, Valuations, and Timing（Part 4）
Author：Remi Gai @ 8 Decimal Capital
Edition:8 Decimal Research
This article is the fourth part of the Internet vs Blockchain Revolution Series.
Emergent technologies enable new concepts and business models that werenot possible or practical before. These new concepts and business models oftentake time to be validated and require new methods of valuation. As the InternetRevolution has shown us, timing is very important for these new concepts andmodels to succeed in emerging markets.
The Emergence of New Concepts
New concepts that appearedwith the development of the Internet and Blockchain
New technologieshave the potential to create new concepts and business models, allowing for newmarkets to emerge. For example, the Internet allowed for the emergence of newconcepts such as “unlimited selection”(ex: a book store that sells all the books from around the world - Amazon), or the concept of “instantgratification” (ex: a movie rental store selling all the movies from around theworld - Netflix). The internet madethese new models possible, and the companies such as Amazon or Netflixunderstood that consumers’ expectations were changing and focused on shiftingtheir model to satisfy these new demands. Some other concepts include “searchengine”, “real-time information”, “instant messaging”, “social media”, “digitaladvertising” and “streaming”. Although we take many of them for granted nowadays,a lot of these concepts started as an idea and needed time to be tested andproven over time. For example, during the early Internet, Jeff Bezos had the idea of the “everything store” from thebeginning but thought it was too grandiose at first and chose to focus onselling books as a proof of concept to validate the business model of“e-commerce”. Books were chosen because they are most similar to a commodity,in which the buyers knew what they would be receiving, and had a relativelyhigh margin. Once Jeff Bezos hadproven himself that “e-commerce” could be a viable business model with books, Amazon quickly expanded into otherverticals.
Evolution of theentertainment industry with the emergence of new technologies
In the blockchainspace, a new fascinating concept that emerged towards the end of 2017 with theintroduction of Cryptokitties was“digital scarcity”, which allowed you to own digital cats on the blockchain.Having complete ownership of a digital asset wasn’t a feasible idea before theexistence blockchain, and was a major pain point that forced the traditionalentertainment industry to shift their business model over the past 30 years.During the pre-Internet era, the entertainment industry had a business modelheavily dependent on the sales of physical products such as CDs, cassettes,vinyles and DVDs. With the emergence of the Internet, new type of files such asMP3 and MP4, and the peer to peer protocol (1999), piracy started to flourish,and files became free for grabs online. The lack of digital copyrightprotection and file ownership vehicle forced the traditional entertainmentindustry to shift into an experience-oriented model that we know today, withservices such as Blockbuster, Netflix, and Spotify. If blockchain technology appeared 10 years earlier,perhaps the way we consume digital media today would have been different. Someother new concepts that came with blockchain include “immutability”,“finality”, “cryptocurrency”, “utility tokens”, “Token Curated Registry (TCR)”,“Decentralized Financial System (DeFi)”, and “Decentralized AutonomousOrganization (DAO)”. These concepts are currently being explored by manyexciting projects in the space and time will validate their value in the world.
New Valuation Methods
Fat vs Thin Protocol (a concept from USV, by Joel Monégro)
Often, the value ofnew concepts and business models are hard to grasp at first. Back in the earlydays of the Internet, investors were not sure on to put a valuation on dot-comcompanies, as many of them didn’t have significant revenues and didn’t “own”anything physical (buildings, trucks, equipment etc.). For example, manyinvestors missed the fact that the value of eBaywas derived from its community instead of the traditional valuation method, inthe same way, that today’s largest Internet companies are deriving their valuefrom the user data they own. In theblockchain world, most of the startups don’t have any cash flow, in which someof the traditional valuation methods such as DCF or P/E does not apply.Additionally, the disintermediation nature of dapps fundamentally doesn’t allowfor the application layer to capture much value from its users, and oftenpushes the values from user data to the protocol layer instead (going back tothe idea of Fat vs Thin Protocol).
Wired magazine'sHotWired.com was the first website to display banner ads (1994)
The viability ofnew business models is not always clear at the beginning. During the early daysof the Internet, many companies started with a “paywall” business model thengradually shifted into an advertisement model as it proved to be working. Thedigital advertising business model was discovered and popularized by Wired. In 1994, Wired replicated its traditional advertising model from theirmagazines to their new online magazine (Hotwired),which was something never attempted previously on the web. Interestingly duringthe early web period, there were so few websites that people even enjoyedclicking on advertisement banners, just to explore other pages. Once this newbusiness model was proven to generate significant revenue, many companiesfollowed this path, especially the emergent search engines, such as Yahoo, which previously struggled tofind a way for monetization. In 25 years, the market size of digitaladvertising grew from nothing to $270B worldwide in 2018 (Statista).
In thecryptocurrency space, we have seen interesting new models tied to tokeneconomics. For example, protocol and utility token developers can create valuefor themselves by retaining some of the initially minted tokens. The revenue isthen dependent on the price inflection of the tokens based on its adoption,demand, and speculation by the market. While this model makes sense from thedecentralization perspective, in which the opportunity for middlemen to capturevalue is supposedly removed or minimized from the system, the risks taken bythese projects are fairly large as their success would be solely dependent onthe success of their “one-time” minted tokens, without the chance of makingmajor business model changes after deployment. Some other interesting newbusiness models include the one pioneered by the exchange Fcoin, which attempted to solve the problem of exchange liquidityby rewarding tokens for trading (the model of “trading is mining”) instead ofcharging fees like most exchanges, or the social media platform Steemit, rewarding users for the contentthey produce and allowing them to gain exposure on the platform if the usersstake their tokens. Overall, we are excited to see new token and businessmodels appear in the space.
UTXO Analysis and MarketCycles (Source: Delphi Digital)
For assessing theprice of cryptocurrencies, we have seen new valuation methods such as TheNetwork Value to Transactions (NVT) ratio, which measures the dollar value ofcrypto asset transaction activity relative to network value (popularized by Willy Woo and Chris Burniske), or the UTXO Analysis (concept from Unchained Capital), which correlates theunspent output from bitcoin transactions to price over time. Both areinteresting ways to provide new frameworks to explain the value of Bitcoin during bear and bull marketcycles. However, many questions still remain on what would be the right way toassess the value of protocol tokens. Should the value be based on the number ofdapps built on the top of the blockchain, and their respective user base? Orshould it be based on the total computational resources they provide (forexample, gas in Ethereum can be seen as computational power offered by the miners,or storage power in the case of FileCoin)?Generally, as we are still in the early cycle of the blockchain revolution,there are no standardized frameworks for evaluating the value of blockchains,dapps, and cryptocurrencies.
Timing
Internet Revolution: theevolution of the market, infrastructures, and companies
Looking back at howthe major applications from the Internet era rolled out, pioneers of newtechnologies are rarely the ones who survive long enough to dominate theircategories: often, it is the copycat that are still with us today: Google, not AltaVista or Yahoo, insearch; Facebook, not Friendster or MySpace, in social network. In the technology world, the ultimatesuccess of a new idea is very much dependent on timing. What led to the success of Mosaic,the first Internet browser was the timing for becoming an early mover inthe space. NCSA’s fast computers andinternet connections allowed MarcAndreessen and the other kids in the basement to be perfectly positioned tocatch the wave of the Web right before it took off.
Even great ideasthat seem to be the next big thing can fail to deliver on their promise becausethe underlying technology or infrastructure isn’t mature enough yet to supportits adoption and viability. For example, media streaming was a popular ideaduring the early Internet in which Broadcast.com(Internet radio company created by MarkCuban in 1995) became successful, but other companies trying to providevideo related services at the time failed. For Youtube (2004) to take off, it required the development ofbroadband Internet connections, combined with the adoption of consumer videoand cell phone cameras, and the copyright infringement lessons from Napster’s failure (first peer-to-peer file sharing service that was shut down due tocopyright infringements), which almost happened 10 years later. Facebook (2004) also got the timingright on the adoption of smartphones, which provided a more personal andintimate experience of the Internet at any moment. Where would Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Uber be if the iPhone didn’t start the smartphone revolution? It was the perfectvehicle needed for social media consumption and production. Some would arguethat social media finally became mainstream because smartphones went mainstreamat the same time - both complemented each other at the right moment. In theblockchain space, the mainstream adoption of dapps will be very much dependenton the maturity of the technology and infrastructure that can allow forviability and scalability of some use cases. Some ideas could be viable andpractical in the next few years, and others could take 5-10 years.
In conclusion,emergent technologies allow for new concepts, and business models to appear andit’s important to evaluate them from new valuation angles, as the previousmethodologies might not be applicable. Many of these new concepts take time tobe validated, and their adoption are closely tied to timing.
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Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme”. We are attempting to draw some similarities between the Internet and Blockchain Revolutions, to help entrepreneurs and investors better understand technological life cycles. Please leave your thoughts and comments below, and hope this article series will have provided some valuable perspectives about the Blockchain industry.
Sources:
“How the Internet Happened”, written by Brian McCullough
https://www.statista.com/statistics/237974/online-advertising-spending-worldwide/
https://coinmetrics.io/nvt/
https://www.delphidigital.io/utxo
http://www.usv.com/blog/fat-protocols
八維研究院出品的其他研究
跨境金融科技平臺Pandaq正式發佈
《互聯網vs區塊鏈革命》系列之一：早期的成功產品
《互聯網vs區塊鏈革命》系列之二：顛覆性公司的起源
《互聯網vs區塊鏈革命》系列之三：早期的挑戰
亞洲首個合規及開源智能合約PandaST Protocol詳解
Medium:https://medium.com/@8DecimalCapital
