Benny, the founder of ERC6551: the large-scale outbreak of chain games will be in the original field

Original source: ThreeDAO

on July 10 , Benny, the founder of ERC 6551, was honored to invite Benny, the founder of ERC 6551, as a guest at Wanwudao to discuss the difficulties and opportunities of NFT, as well as open topics such as AI and chain games. It is worth noting that Benny is also a founding member of CryptoKitties and ERC 721. The following is the translation of the highlights of this event. You can also scan the QR code on the poster at the end of the article to watch the replay, and join the ERC 6551 community to communicate with Benny in depth.

Wanwudao CoachDAO Simon: Please introduce yourself

Benny: Six years ago I was a member of the ERC 721 team and launched CryptoKitties, followed by NBA Top Shot. We started to cooperate with trendy brands, and finally we released My own SAPIENZ project, which is an NFT about digital fashion items, we hope that NFT characters can have their own clothing and other accessories, so we created ERC 6551 for this, this is my story.

**Boyu:**I am the co-founder of RE:DREAMER, we focus on capitalizing the real world, especially physical goods for the consumer economy, so we have a lot of connections with manufacturers and supply chains, we hope Many real-life behaviors and data are stored in NFT through the blockchain, and we are combining ERC 6551 with our own standard ERC 6672.

Kekos: I am the co-founder of Createra. We are building a Web3 game engine. We think the design of ERC 6551 is very good. We are also trying to combine it with games, such as in the DID field.

**Shawn:**I am the Co-founder of Parami Protocol. We also have an ERC 5489 protocol, which can change the creator economy of the Internet and turn NFT into a gateway for Web3 content discovery.

Kaiyang: I am the co-founder of xBank. We try to match the demand and supply of NFT. We give NFT demanders more leverage to lower their threshold for buying NFT.

Timmy: I am the co-founder of Furion. We develop NFT in the direction of Defi, fragment NFT from ERC 721 to ERC 20, and then we empower the ERC 20 Token in various ways to make it more usable .

Simon: What is the driving force behind ERC 6551 innovation? Benny, can you introduce your background and creative experience?

Benny: I have been a supporter of NFT for the past six years. I have been to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, etc. to participate in game conferences and share my thoughts on NFT and CryptoKitties. I still remember that many people used They looked at me with strange eyes. They didn't understand what this guy was talking about. We all know that ICO was very hot in those years, so everyone didn't pay attention to the niche NFT.

After that, Dapper Labs, which I participated in, decided to develop its own blockchain Flow, and developed NBA Top Shot on top of it, so we also missed Ethereum and other EVM compatible chains. When I left Dapper Labs, I Back to the Ethereum ecology, NFT has produced many changes in the past four years, such as BAYC, AZUKI, Doddles, etc., so I have to find a way to catch up with the progress, I am like a student to learn a lot to understand where people use NFT , and the possibility of NFT breaking out in various fields. So ERC 6551 is not a recent emergence in essence. For example, resource-oriented concepts have already appeared in fields such as Flow, so ERC 6551 is native to blockchain, but not to Ethereum.

The emergence of ERC 6551 was not imagined by a few of us sitting in the room, but the needs we discovered during the project. SAPIENZ is a collaboration between Future Primitive and Jeff Staple. Jeff Staple is a very well-known street Designer, he has 25 years of experience and has cooperated with hundreds of brands such as Nike. During this process, we came up with a cool idea. If NFT characters can change clothes, and this process is on the Ethereum chain, there is no need to pay gas fees? But it is very difficult to solve this problem. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to learn from many other projects such as Doodles. They are trying in this direction. We used xmtp technology to develop a message in a hackathon in San Francisco that allows NFT to send messages" Talking to each other" project, and then at breakfast, I asked the team members that since we can realize NFT "talking", we can let NFT have an account of its own, so that it can interact with other Dapps or hold other assets ? This idea is very cool, so in the following time we conducted a lot of research and searched for many standards and projects, but we didn't find that no one had realized this idea, so we did it.

First of all, ERC 6551 is not a Token standard. Many people will be confused and even compare it with ERC 721. But in fact, ERC 6551 just connects each independent NFT to its own account. It is very open. So there are 5 very important content to help everyone understand it.

First, ERC 6551 is applicable to all NFTs on EVM chains such as Ethereum and polygon, and is forward compatible, that is, NFTs issued by CryptoKitties can also be bound to their own accounts.

Second, your NFT can hold ETH, USDC and other ERC 20, ERC 721 and ERC 1155 standard Tokens.

Third, there is no packaging contract, so you don't need to send your NFT to a specific contract address.

Fourth, NFT and the corresponding bound account are compatible with existing infrastructure, such as Opensea, MetaMask, Etherscan and other platforms.

Fifth, it is completely decentralized. Before that, some solutions were realized in a centralized way, but for us we strictly follow the spirit of decentralization, so NFT is the only one for the account it is bound to. Owner, we can never do bad things such as stealing users' assets.

Simon: What is the main application scenario of ERC 6551? What kind of changes and innovations do you think it will bring to games, social networking and other fields?

Benny: I think the first and most obvious area is the game, what it does is to create a decentralized inventory system, which is very important for the game, we are talking to a lot of game teams, they are Consider using ERC 6551 for some new variations.

The second scenario I think is DAO. Many DAOs will issue their own NFT membership cards, but the problem is that DAOs are related to loyalty and reputation. Before ERC 6551, in addition to membership cards, you will also get points, SBT, etc. These things will exist independently in your MetaMask. When you sell your membership card, these other things are still in your hands, and ERC 6551 will structure these things. In addition to issuing membership cards, many DAOs , and other assets related to reputation and behavior will also be placed in this membership card.

The third scenario is infrastructure. Many of our projects, including rabbit hole, are using ERC 6551. We are also exploring the development of data indexing and other fields. We are also discussing standard integration issues with platforms such as Zora and Opensea.

The fourth scenario is social networking. We are closely communicating with Lens Protocol, because in Lens Protocol you have many NFT assets including handles and followers. These are all on the same layer and are not structured, which is confusing and difficult to understand. ERC 6551 can create a network for them, so Lens Protocol is very interesting to us.

Simon: The five founders of Wanwu Island, what changes do you think ERC 6551 will bring to what fields?

Boyu: I think ERC 6551 has a lot of potential. The part that is of particular interest to us is that NFT can own the copyright of real-world assets. This is a really interesting thing. Before that, people were trying to make reality People in the world hold digital assets, but now it can be reversed, allowing digital assets to hold real-world assets. When we communicate with some brands, we can see the potential to create more interesting scenarios based on this, especially regarding the membership mechanism.

Kekos: I also think that ERC 6551 will first be applied in the game and social fields. For example, the NFT of the bound account can have its own identity and assets on the chain, and these assets can directly interact with Dapp through ERC 6551. Make the tasks in the game field more composable and interactive.

Shawn: As a member of Parami Protocol, I am definitely a firm believer in NFT. In the social field, NFT has been proven to be a very effective medium, which can display people's identity, culture, trends, etc. ERC 6551 and Parami Protocol Its vision coincides with that of tokenizing behaviors such as influence and interaction on the Internet.

**Kaiyang:**Let's go back to 2017, when smart contracts just appeared, but there were not many use cases, but now it is completely different and we find that it can do many things, just like today we have an NFT account, I believe it will have a wide range of scenes in the future. For us xBank, as an NFT lending platform, imagine that users enter our platform and use NFT as an account. This NFT will accumulate user points and credits, and will expand a lot of gameplay. We will be very active in exploring ERC 6551 and xBank Possibility of business combination.

**Timmy:**I very much agree with what Benny said about the construction of the ERC 6551 ecosystem. I think the first requirement in this ecosystem is transactions. How to combine ERC 6551 with ERC 20 and ERC 721 The combination of transactions is very important, because the most important attribute of assets is tradable. The second point is how to build a community. For example, when we bought BAYC, a community will be automatically formed. I think the member community is very important, especially For PFP-type NFTs, a strong community helps build a better ecology.

**Benny:**I find it very interesting about Timmy’s two points just now. When you create a DAO, you need to have a multi-signature wallet to manage the assets of the community and add other signers. Every NFT project It is a DAO, if there are 10,000 NFTs, there will be 10,000 wallet addresses, so issuing an NFT is equivalent to creating a DAO, but you need to add all these 10,000 wallet addresses into the multi-signature Wallets, and need 5,000 addresses to vote, there will be a big efficiency problem, but I believe that someone will start to design some new DAO tools, I think this is an interesting direction worth exploring.

The second point is that many people are doing Defi. I know a lot about NFT and DAO, but to be honest, I don’t know much about Defi. I’m a novice. I put a lot of money into Defi but lost money , but there are two opinions about ERC 6551. One is that it will make NFT more non-homogeneous and more unique, making it more difficult to estimate the price, because you can trade at the floor price on Blur, but ERC 6551 can Many assets are included in the NFT, and data on the chain is also accumulated, which makes its price more difficult to estimate than the current traditional NFT, and thus more difficult to be traded. Another point of view is that ERC 6551 will create a new Defi paradigm. I really don’t know much about Defi, but as far as I know, maybe you can create an NFT as an LP of Uniswap or other Defi protocols and get benefits, and Create a package of assets for this NFT, which is equivalent to a hedge fund on the chain in a sense, and you can also sell it in Opensea.

Simon: What is Benny's future plan for ERC 6551? How can we help it be accepted by more people?

**Benny:**In the near future, there may be something like an extension store, on which developers can build extensions that can be installed on NFT. Imagine if you own Azuki, you can only wait for the project to go Create new contracts and add new functions to NFT, but in the future, if an extended store is generated based on ERC 6551, and developers publish many interesting functions in it, you can add it to your own NFT instead of NFT creator.

Secondly, I think it is also great to combine AI with it. For example, there will be NPCs in the game who will give you tasks and talk to you. In the future, there will also be NPCs in the metaverse of the virtual world, but when people leave the virtual world, the whole world will be It will become empty like a ghost town. What we are trying to do is to fill the world with AI and programmable NFT as NPCs. These NPCs will also be part of the blockchain, and every action will be on the chain. They will have their own identity and they will own their own assets, which is really exciting to me.

Simon: How secure is ERC 6551?

Benny: We think it is relatively safe, and we have implemented two code audits, and we will continue to do so, but as you know, smart contracts cannot be 100% safe, and I will try my best To ensure security through audits, bug bounties, etc., so first of all, I need to tell everyone that when you interact with smart contracts, there will still be certain probability risks. This cannot be ruled out, and there is no 100% thing.

Secondly, suppose you have an NFT, and then it holds other NFTs. All NFTs will eventually be held by a wallet. This wallet may be MetaMask or Ledger, etc., so if you leak the mnemonic of this wallet or Will be attacked and cause asset loss.

The third risk is assuming that you hold a lot of assets under the NFT, so you put it on Opensea to package and sell it, and someone gives you an offer based on the price of this whole set of assets, and you transfer all the assets under the NFT out, and then accept With this offer, the other party got nothing but an NFT shell.

One conceivable method is to use a time lock to set a time for your NFT. Before that, the assets in the NFT are locked. Other buyers will believe that you will not do bad things after seeing the lock. But it also means that you cannot extract the assets inside normally, so this solution is not perfect, it is only temporary.

Another solution is that we are working closely with Opensea. They have assigned an engineer to take charge of this matter. Opensea will check whether the asset exists, whether the Token account has been changed, etc. If there is an abnormal situation, it will block the buyer. This is a more effective and long-term solution.

Simon: How might ERC 6551 and AI be combined?

Benny: Whenever I think about this question, I am excited, but at the same time I am also very scared, because now ChatGPT can only conduct conversations, does not own assets, and does not have its own wallet, so although it is very smart now, But you can’t do some evil things, but just like the NPC scene I just said, it can earn millions of dollars through flash loans to attack the blockchain, and even hire people in the real world to work for it after it has money. So we will organize an event in New York on September 20th, inviting friends from all walks of life, such as OpenAI, NVIDIA, artists, etc., to discuss the topic of ethics, and to some extent we are unleashing this unstoppable force , it has the potential to be the end of humanity, and maybe we can reconcile and really set some moral standards out of it.

Just as Elon Musk was worried about AI before, if the NPC I mentioned has its own AI model injected with soul, and holds assets and wallets to interact with other people, because the blockchain is decentralized They have all the rights in the blockchain world, and these NPCs may be like Skynet in the movie. I don't know if anyone has a solution for the risk of decentralized AI models. Maybe this is the reason why AI models are not open source yet.

But our conversation today is happening in 2023, which is not very different from when I was talking about NFT in 2018, so we are still in a very early stage, but I believe this kind of change will not happen now Blue-chip NFTs are those brand-new projects that have thought deeply about this matter.

I have spent a lot of time studying psychology. Dunbar’s number is also known as the 150 law. He believes that a person can only have meaningful and stable social relationships with 150 people in a lifetime, so I am also thinking about the same problem. How many items generate deep and meaningful associations? Imagine if my house was on fire, what would I do to protect it? It may be a photo with parents, or it may be an engagement ring. At present, there is no research on how deep a relationship between humans and objects can be. Assuming there are 100, at least 99% of them are in real life today, but I I believe that in 5 to 10 years, there will be a large number of digital items that you will care about, so NFT will make digital items meaningful because of ownership. In the real world, you will be limited by your environment, you can only put items that are meaningful to you in a limited room, but in the digital world you can have millions of items, so NFT breaks through the human possession Item space and quantity limitations. Secondly, these items are static in the real world, but in the digital world you can program and interact with NFT, and even NFT will have its own consciousness after combining with AI, which will be very interesting.

The five founders of Wanwudao how will you combine ERC 6551 with your own products?

**Timmy: **Building a community is very important to me. Community contributors will get reputation rewards such as points and SBT, and then they can vote to determine the direction of the product, or enjoy product discounts and discounts. Think ERC 6551 can help in this regard.

**Kaiyang:**I think a more reasonable pricing model is very important to us. We will focus on how protocols such as ERC 6551 will change the value estimation of NFT and adapt to it.

Shawn: I think Benny's ideas are very consistent with the Parami Protocol we are developing in many ways. We believe that a person's brand, influence and culture can be tokenized, and to some extent it will become a DAO, these will be quantified into value on the chain, we think that ERC 6551 will have many combinations with Parami Protocol, we have now developed a Google browser plug-in to improve the interactivity and scalability of NFT.

Kekos: As I said earlier, I will try to use ERC 6551 in combination with DID in our game, so please keep following us.

**Boyu: **Because we focus on the integration of manufacturers and supply chains, this process will be very complicated, because an entity may correspond to different roles and permissions. In addition, our ongoing community ambassador program will also have many roles and For badge management, we will try to use ERC 6551 within the system.

How does ERC 6551 solve the cross-chain problem?

Benny: The TBA implemented by ERC 6551 itself can be cross-chain compatible. Assuming you hold Moonbird, the account address bound to it on the Ethereum mainnet is 0x 123, and this address will also be Polygon, The addresses of EVM-compatible chains such as Optimism and Arbitrum, so when you transfer NTF from Ethereum to other EVM-compatible chains, the account corresponding to this chain is still yours, but the biggest problem is that if your Moonbird is in Optimism If I hold assets on the main network, how should I control it on the main network? We are developing account guardians, which use cross-chain solutions such as LayerZero to allow your moonbirds to operate assets across chains, but we are not very satisfied with this idea because it is still centralized to a certain extent because it requires a cross-chain chain provider, so we are working on a new, more automated and native version, which can complete cross-chain signatures through NFT accounts, but the only problem is that you need to pay gas fees from the main chain to other chains, we have some Feasible ideas are under study, and are actively communicating with the Optimism team on how to avoid paying the Gas fee of the main network, and only need to perform asset transfers through signatures without using cross-chain providers. This is a more Decentralized solutions, no one has ever done this, so it is still in the research stage, we think there is an 80% probability that it can be realized.

In the end, if you want to issue NFT or chain games, you can choose the Ethereum mainnet, because it has more NFT players, and then you can issue the points, badges, etc. on this NFT on Layer 2, you only need to prove your It is enough to have the ownership of the NFT on the main network, which requires a long time of research and testing for us, about 2 to 4 months.

Simon: What do you think is the most important thing as a founder?

Benny: I don’t think it matters whether you are in Asia or Europe as a founder. I think the most important thing is that we have the responsibility to do evangelism and education first, so that more people can understand your Project, although our communication today is about ERC 6551, but I want to emphasize that as a founder, you need to always ask yourself why you are doing this? Try to put aside the technology behind this and explore your real purpose. What kind of problem do you want to solve? Then think about whether using current technology is the best way to solve this problem? So I often see a lot of debates about ERC 6551. Some people say that it is not so good, some people say that it is plagiarizing something that existed many years ago, but I want to say that the debate about whether the technology is good or not is not the most important thing. Because first of all everything is open source and I don't make money from it. Secondly, I think that if we keep competing, arguing, and attacking others, this is not a process of achieving a greater goal in the blockchain field. Whether it is Ethereum or other ecology, they are all developed through cooperative contributions. So we have to cooperate and grow each other, instead of just arguing and attacking, this will not produce any substantial changes for the industry.

I think my experience in CryptoKitties and Dapper Labs in the past six years originated from Ethereum. I learned a lot from it, especially the spirit of decentralization. Dapper Labs is a centralized company worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I am Its early members, until it grew to a scale of 600 people, I felt the disappearance of the company culture, respect for decentralization and great goals disappeared, and began to make a lot of wrong decisions, but in the future You can prevent this from happening in a centralized open source organization. So if you are a founder, you really need to pay attention to decentralized decentralization and openness, so that the organization can live longer.

Is it possible for the full chain game to usher in some opportunities next year?

**Benny:**My prediction for the future is not necessarily correct. It is difficult for me to judge what will happen tomorrow, but I did meet some very interesting game teams, but what I want to say is that in 2018 I went to China and South Korea When I participated in the game conference with Japan, I saw a lot of very large game companies, they have good IP, and they are interested in Web3, but after 6 years, I did not see their success, of course, there may be many reasons such as policies, etc. Factors, but at least I think that chain games need to be completely decentralized, and there should not even be a centralized server. The outbreak of chain games should be generated in a more original field. I don’t think it can be solved by IP, because in Dapper In Labs, we signed many big IPs including the NBA, but they were not very successful. I don’t think such huge IPs as Disney will become a good case. Maybe it’s a decentralized IP that has never appeared before. It will be successful, such as Nouns, BAYC, etc. I have seen many game teams trying to find ways to sign existing centralized IPs, but centralized IPs will definitely do centralized things, there are many red tapes in it, you can’t really Create it freely, so games that explode on a large scale should be more original, decentralized, and bottom-up.