The Future of Cryptocurrency: Insights from Mr. Charles Du
—— An interview with Mr. Charles Du on Fintech, Blockchain, and applications of Internet Computer
About Mr. Charles Du:
Figure 1: Dr. Charles Du
Charles Du is an MIT Media Lab alumnus and former Communications Director for Accenture’s Enterprise Search and Collaboration global practice. Having worked on multi-million knowledge/portal projects in the US and Europe, he settled in Singapore after an INSEAD MBA and managed the APAC operations network of a Swiss linguistic services company, coordinating hundreds of full- and part-time staff. He co-founded Prolog Systems in Singapore and recently moved to Shanghai.
Witnessing the havoc wrought by info overload, disinformation, and polarization, Charles had realized that the root cause is the dispersive information architecture underpinning the Internet. The only solution is to create a convergent collaboration framework designed for civil, constructive, and concrete dialog. The software would enable large teams to work together directly on papers/plans/proposals, remotely and asynchronously, eliminating the need for emails/messages/meetings. Further collaboration between teams and institutions would facilitate consolidation of useful information across the Web and displacement of centralized platforms (Google/Facebook).
The company is currently looking to reincorporate in China and raise another round of funding to tackle remote collaboration challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.
Follow Dr. Charles Du on LinkedIn.
Figure 2: Screenshot of Charles Du’s LinkedIn Page
What is your motivation for doing research about fintech/blockchain?
Figure 3: 50+ Blockchain Real World Uses Cases
Mr. Du:
Instead of fintech, I’m more interested in the broader application of blockchain.
I will say that I’m not particularly interested in fintech as a sector. I’m looking more broadly in terms of the content architecture because personally, I think the advent of cryptocurrency, especially in the form of bitcoin and associated, non-fiat currency[1], is the wrong clique, the wrong approach towards actual financialization of blockchain. The only piece that is really useful that comes out of this will be blockchain. And the key to understanding blockchain is not, I think, to have a fintech-focused application, but in terms of the broader context. How do you take this framework of verifiable transactions and apply it more broadly towards different domains?
Blockchain will become a more applicable and profitable mechanism when applied to the content collaboration domain.
So blockchain, if you see it as a verifiable transaction system, is a lot more useful if you apply it to the content domain, where the content update is built on transactions. So you actually go away from this draft, publish, expire model of content publishing and go towards a collaborative, dynamic model built around transactions. So actual owners can shape their own narratives, conduct contribution transactions with contributors, thereby build consensus for actionable plans or comprehensive analysis, and that makes blockchain a much more widely applicable and profitable mechanism.
Can you briefly highlight your research in the field of fintech/blockchain?
Figure 4: How does a transaction get into the blockchain?
Mr. Du:
My research emphasizes low overhead high efficiency
In terms of my personal research into blockchain, I have to say that I keep up with the latest publications, but my emphasis is on low overhead high efficiency transactions. How do you make blockchain transactions efficient to a degree the computational expense is justified? And for me, I think the threshold has already been reached, especially when considering my conceptual applications, which is where you take an integrated blockchain system and go to an enterprise, and say hey, you know, currently your enterprise is generating this much content, like your contract and your proposals. And in general, we can expect how many interactions happen on each particular output document, and what is the overhead for making interactions into verifiable transactions. Then we measure the latency for each of these interactions and make sure that it meets business requirements, tune configuration if needed, and you’re done.
As a mediator, I facilitate collaborations between individual installations
And then, as a mediator, between installations, in terms of the internet computer concept, it’s the canister. To me, each installation would be a canister, right? You have your own system, including blockchain verification. And what I would have to do is try to collaborate between canisters, between installations. I just have to say, query your blockchain engine and say, hey, can you verify this person’s contribution history is legit. You make sure everything is verified, and then you calculate the collaborative rank of that person that is trying to collaborate with this other person. If it meets a threshold, then they’ll say, it’s a yes, then let’s go. So everything is encapsulated within that individual installation.
How do you think the Internet Computer can possibly empower your research? What support do you need to innovate with the Internet Computer? What technique questions do you have for the DFINITY engineers?
Figure 5: DIFINITY and Internet Computer
Mr. Du:
So one video that I saw on YouTube, which was how the consensus mechanism[2] works for different installations, allows for screening out malicious factors I guess. I will be interested in seeing how much of that they are anticipating, and the level of redundancy? Because what I would imagine in my particular application scenario, is that the source of the data, for any enterprise, has to be that installation. Because what I want to see is ownership of content by the participants. So instead of this google, Facebook model, where it is like, you create something and they own it. What you have to do is, there is trust, trust in the participants, and respect the rights of participants. You create something, and you own it, not anybody else. So how does the consensus mechanism[2] fit into that structure? Because to my mind, there is a point of authority, and that authority has to lie within the organization. But, maybe we use some kind of external replication of the blockchain (not the content) for verification, so you can make sure as an outside entity that the organization that source the data does not falsify the data, does not go in and change stuff and hack around and screw up with the historical record. So maybe that’s an application of the consensus mechanism? But how that works in terms of the actual deployment structure wasn’t very clear. Would it be configurable? Optional configuration options? Would the clients be able to pick default options? What kind of overhead would that incur because then they’re going outside of the enterprise network? What kind of legal ramification would that entail, is there a double-blind factor involved, whereas an outside intermediary I just go in and request verification, I don’t care where it’s going to, I don’t care about access rights to the underlying data, or must I be granted access rights to the data to request verification? How would the verification process itself be secured? That would be my particular question.
Questions from Mr. Du to DFINITY engineers and developers
1. How will consensus mechanisms fit into the Internet Computer framework? Will the participants obtain ownership of the content they created?
2. Will the point of authority lie within the organization or outside the organization on Internet Computers?
Relevant Materials
[1] non-fiat currency:
■ What is non-fiat currency (hard money)?
Hard money policies (as opposed to fiat currency policies) support a special standard, usually gold or silver, typically implemented with representative money.
[2] consensus mechanism
■ What is the consensus mechanism?
A consensus mechanism is a fault-tolerant mechanism that is used in computer and blockchain systems to achieve the necessary agreement on a single data value or a single state of the network among distributed processes or multi-agent systems, such as with cryptocurrencies. It is useful in record-keeping, among other things.
Acknowledgments:
Interviewee: Mr. Charles Du
Interviewer: Austen Li
Executive Editors: Xinyu Tian, Lunji Zhu
Chief Editor: Prof. Luyao Zhang