Shang Yang knows the strength of horses, and Bigan knows the heart of people. When NIL ascends to the sky, XMR will be delisted.
Blockchain originated from privacy technology, especially cryptography. From elliptic curves to zero-knowledge proofs, all of them prove the success of privacy economics in the Web 3.0 era.
But things are not perfect. From XMR being frequently delisted from CEX/DEX to the arrest of the founder of Tornado Cash, you will find that even if Nillion can be listed on Binance, the geek spirit of privacy projects is retreating, and its final product delivery capabilities are far from perfect.
When it comes to polishing privacy products, blockchain projects of the same type need to learn from their Web2 counterparts and improve their own posture.
Proton proves that privacy can be a well-functioning product
Privacy is a Feature, Not a Product.
Simply talking about privacy to strengthen the product form is meaningless. In other words, privacy also requires PMF. The reason why giants such as Google and Meta can violate privacy while making people unable to stop is because of convenience and network effects. They can be used out of the box and everyone uses them. Even individuals have to use them in office scenarios, so they will eventually accept everything from Google.
Image caption: Giant fined, Image source: Proton
On this point, the regulatory authorities' model of using fines to replace regulation has failed miserably. Even taking the legendary penalty-resistant Google's $2.974 billion as an example, Google would only need about 16 more days to earn it back, and these fines cannot be converted into revenue for European technology companies, leading to their further powerlessness in the face of Google.
Faced with this problem, Proton's approach is to build its own full range of products, starting from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The pure inherent credibility of scientific researchers is higher than that of commercial companies. Cryptography technology, open source code, and product audits are used to build privacy products that are truly meaningful - you can achieve the corresponding functions without using Google's full range of products.
Of course, the current network effects and scale effects are still unable to compete with the giants, but compared with their blockchain peers, the products they provide are sufficient for daily use and are qualified Google Alternatives.
Image description: Pronton products and part comparison, Image source: @zuoyeweb3
Compared with the entire Google Workspace family, the current Proton is basically a counterpart to Proton Mail itself. It is worth mentioning that Proton Mail is also the favorite of Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and Square.
Proton Mail is different from general email products. It can be used without binding a mobile phone number, and supports end-to-end encryption mode to ensure the privacy transmission of emails. Before Telegram is regulated, it can be used in conjunction with TG's end-to-end mode to basically build a relatively high level of commercial privacy experience.
Of course, after the fall of Telegram, Proton Mail combined with Signal can also meet the privacy surfing needs of most people.
Similar to Telegram, Proton has also begun to enter the Web3 field. Its first product is Proton Wallet. Unlike transaction-oriented products such as Bitget Wallet and Binance Wallet, Proton Wallet is extremely restrained and has relatively simple functions.
The significance of Proton is to prove the feasibility of building products based on privacy technology. Different from the advertising profit model of traditional giants, Proton adopts a payment system. Different from the token economics system of Web3 peers, Proton has not reached the stage of issuing coins. We can call it:
The non-tokenization practice of crypto technology.
From Skiff to Nillion, the Tokenization of Crypto Technology
If Pronton is considered to be Don Quixote, then Skiff, Nym, Privasea to Nillion are dwarfs, whose own PMF has not been found yet, but the token (Snow White) has taken the lead.
On February 9, 2024, Notion announced the acquisition of Skiff. This is also the first case of a large Web2 product acquiring a Web3 startup. It did not take the coin issuance route to create a new trend in the industry. By the way, this is actually the second time Stripe has acquired Bridge.
Skiff is also similar to the Google Suite, with a document suite based on IPFS and an encrypted mailbox service. However, there is a huge problem: the UI is extremely ugly and there is no experience in using it. This is also the biggest problem with current Web3 products. Limited by the slowness and high cost of the underlying blockchain, it is difficult to develop large products based on it to beat Web2 counterparts.
Proton is a suitable Google Alternative, but Skiff is not a qualified Proton Alternative.
In addition, the development of other Web3 privacy products is also not satisfactory. Nym gradually shifted its focus to the VPN field in the later period. Privasea in the FHE direction emphasized more on adaptation in the AI field, and today's Nillion is still within the MPC narrative of the previous cycle.
Yes, the narrative is divided into periods. The concepts such as MPC and blind computing (NBC) built by Nillion are derivative narratives of Ethereum and ZK applications in the L2/Rollup field. AA wallet and MPC paradigm belong to this category. With the weakness of Ethereum coin price, privacy technology products are being abandoned by the market. The most obvious is that FHE has not become the next step of ZK. Face-slapping article reference: FHE is the next step of ZK, encryption technology says so.
It’s not that privacy technology is not important, but that the combination of privacy technology and tokens is no longer important, at least not at this stage.
Without privacy technology, Proton cannot build its own business logic and product matrix, which is a good PMF model. However, for products such as Nillion, the investment of Binance and Hack VC seems to be more important.
As for the concept of blind computing, the trusted layer, multi-ecosystem, and privacy AI are not Nillion’s real profit sources. We all know that Nillion’s only product may be its own token. From this point of view, at least Nym really wants to grab the VPN market.
Image description: Nillion's latest paper, Image source: Nillion
In the latest technical paper, Nillion's research focus is still on the practice of MPC. The traditional secret sharing MPC algorithm will cause a sharp increase in the amount of data during calculation, and Nillion is studying how to reduce the complexity of the algorithm to improve computing efficiency.
Well, let’s take a look at the opening performance of Nillion tokens. As I said before, this kind of Web3 privacy technology combined with AI cannot find real application scenarios because OpenAI and DeepSeek do not have these factors. If new products with privacy technology can grab market share from them, then it will be a meaningful pioneering move.
If that doesn't make sense, then check out @Optimism, which really thinks privacy is important.
However, Privacy is Good and still needs to be demonstrated by Privacy Products. It is meaningless to talk about MPC/ZK/TEE/FHE/AI in vain. Everyone can say empty slogans that do not solve the problem, but they will ultimately damage the social credibility of the technology behind them.
The bad consequences have already appeared. Now people are afraid of L2, and they also feel that ZK is a scam.
After Safe caused huge losses to Bybit, not only Vitalik remained silent, but also the front-end brother and the multi-signature mechanism.
Conclusion
Monero (XMR) is a little unfamiliar to people in the BNB Chain Meme speed-passing era, but it should be the last attempt after Bitcoin to truly consider how to combine cryptographic technology with its own application scenarios.
On February 7, 2024, two days before Skiff officially announced its "joining" Notion, XMR was delisted by Binance, "exiting" the largest source of liquidity. Perhaps from now on, the so-called privacy technology will be like the F-47, just a part of winning science, but Web3 privacy economics has not yet finally gone bankrupt.
