This was posted after 6.Sunday Sermon, which is out of sequence, but it comes before the Sunday Sermon posting.
OK, Welcome Back to UF seminar. Today we are going to take a deep dive, so put your head in the right space. Let's dive in. Today, we're going to discuss Onli. The goal here is to give you a basic understanding of the technology you'll be building on. However, it's important to remember that your customers aren't particularly concerned with the technology itself. From my experience, if someone is overly focused on technology, they're likely not your target customer. You don’t have time to convince them about technology. What your customers truly care about are the results—the solutions that your product provides to their problems. You're not selling technology; you're selling a solution. For instance, Amazon sells convenience, not logistics. Airlines sell travel experiences, not jet engines. Customers care about service and price, and they often care more about the complimentary peanuts and drinks than the technology that reduces the drag coefficient of the plane. So, you're here to understand why your products can do what others cannot—not for the customer, but for your own understanding and for your team.
Let's begin by answering the question: What is Onli? You may have heard it described as a new way to store, move, and secure something of value, known as an Asset. More technically, it's a hyper-dimensional vector storage system built on a custom protocol. If you're not a computer scientist, this might sound complex, so the simpler explanation might be more helpful: Onli is a way to store something, move it around, and keep it safe. Because of this capability, it allows you to share something without relinquishing control. This is a groundbreaking concept, but it can be challenging to understand because it represents a paradigm shift.
Paradigm shifts are notoriously difficult to communicate—like explaining breathing oxygen with a lung to a fish in the water it lives in. Also, while Onli might seem new, it was actually created in 2010. It's only considered "new" to those who haven't heard of a vector store before. The innovation isn't solely in the engineering, although the engineering of Onli 3.0 is indeed impressive and far ahead of its time. The real paradigm shift lies in the first principles.
The journey begins with understanding what an asset truly is. An asset is property owned. Property is a bundle of rights established by legislation and enforced by regulation. The most crucial of these rights is the right of exclusion, which grants the owner the authority to control the use of a thing and exclude others from using, possessing, or benefiting from it. As you can deduce, ownership is a key attribute of an asset.
Computers are capable of handling a wide range of tasks with information, but until our patent, they were unable to digitally embody assets. You can send information about an asset, such as a contract, in a PDF, or a pointer to a ledger entry, but you can't send the asset itself. There's a significant difference between the two. The reason for this lies in an obscure problem that isn't immediately apparent.
For centuries, humans have aspired to fly. However, it wasn't until Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli published his 1738 treatise "Hydrodynamica" that we began to understand the principles that could make this possible. Bernoulli's theorem states that as the speed of a fluid (such as air) increases, its pressure decreases.
Later, in 1799, English engineer George Cayley laid out the principles of aerodynamics, including weight, lift, drag, and thrust. These principles provided the foundation for the Wright Brothers to engineer, build, and fly the first airplane in 1903.
The development of the airplane required a paradigm shift. The problem wasn't immediately apparent, and it couldn't be solved through intuition or deduction alone. It required a fundamental change in understanding and approach.
In the realm of computing, the act of making copies is a fundamental operation. This is the essence of how computers function. When data is transmitted from one computer to another over the internet, a copy of the bits is made. The World Wide Web, at its core, is a system of interlinked documents stored on a network of computers called the internet. Even though the words are used interchangeably. They are different things. These documents are housed in hierarchical file systems, akin to a giant room filled with file cabinets. Each file cabinet is independently owned and managed by a 'secretary', who alone knows the exact location of each file. To ensure the system's functionality and reliability, each secretary must make a copy of each file for her cabinet. This is not a negative aspect; rather, it's a necessary measure for ensuring reliability.
The advent of the web interconnected these documents, giving birth to the open Data Economy. This new economy is based on a business model where free software is provided in exchange for microwork. Every tweet, text, email, comment, or picture post you make is a form of this micro-work. This new revenue model monetizes microwork, creating an entirely new economic landscape. However, it also introduces new challenges, such as privacy and security issues. On the flip side, it allows for the collection of enough data to make significant advancements in Machine Learning. So, while it may have its drawbacks, this system has contributed more to the advancement of humanity than almost anything else, rivaling even the invention of fire.
Onli represents a paradigm shift in the realm of storage technology, specifically in relation to Blockchain. This shift is primarily due to its ability to solve the issue of uniqueness quantification. In the context of computing, uniqueness quantification refers to the capacity to create something in a digital environment that is truly unique and singular. This implies that across a network of devices, there can only be one instance of this entity. According to Thomas Kuhn, when a particular method or approach reaches maturity, a paradigm shift typically disrupts the status quo and takes its place.
In traditional computing systems, especially those using hierarchical file systems, when data is transmitted across a network, the system usually makes copies of files and stores them locally. This makes it challenging to create something across a network of devices that is truly unique, as any form of transmission will effectively make a copy.
Solving the uniqueness quantification problem, therefore, involves creating a system where a digital entity can be created, transmitted, and modified without creating duplicates. This entity remains singular and unique across the network, regardless of how many transactions it undergoes.
Onli, for instance, solves this problem with its unique Genome structure and Genome Editing process, ensuring that there is only one valid Genome at any given time, thereby achieving uniqueness quantification.
What is the significance of doing this? Why is this important? Solving the uniqueness quantification problem in the context of digital assets is significant because it:
1. Establishes Clear ownership: It allows for the creation of truly unique digital assets with one owner, establishing clear ownership.
2. Enhances Security: It provides a higher level of security as each unique digital asset has only one owner.
3. Enables Trustless Transactions: It allows for transactions without the need for a trusted third party, as there is only one.
4. Drives Innovation: It opens up new possibilities for creating new types of digital assets and ways of managing them.
5. Improves Efficiency: It eliminates the need for data duplication, making transactions faster, using less energy, and thus making the system more efficient.
As you can now see, our thesis is that this new technology can be the foundation of a new kind of economy, The Private Data Economy, and realize what blockchain had only hoped to do. Now that the hypothesis that there is a demand for this has already been proven, while blockchain is, for all practical purposes, dead, crypto is booming, even though it doesn’t actually fly.
Blockchain technology cannot deliver because it is built on the status quo, and what it constructs is a workaround to the core problem. It is important to point out that while optimism bias may be driving demand, Blockchain was never intended or engineered to solve the technology problem; rather, it was a Cypherpunk hack that was released as open source.
A blockchain is a type of community-held database that is publicly accessible. However, the entries in this database are controlled by a password known as a private key. This private key is a sophisticated form of cryptography that ensures the security of transactions and the identities of the individuals involved. In addition to the private key, there’s also a public key, which acts as an address where information can be sent. This public key is visible to everyone on the blockchain network, but the data sent to that address can only be accessed by the person who has the corresponding private key.
There are lots of copies of the database because making copies is the status quo. The database is managed using a consensus mechanism, i.e., a competition is held as to who in the community gets to update the entries in the database, and then that database becomes the master that is copied. The result of this model is that the competition uses the majority of the computing power.
It is important to point out that an NFT is not an advancement, either. In its most basic form, a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is nothing more than a web link that is stored on a blockchain database that is open to the public. This web link can sometimes include an encryption key, ensuring that the data it points to remains secure and unaltered. It is, however, just a link. It is a record or registry of ownership, not the thing itself. Which defeats the purpose in the case of assets because everyone can have a copy (no right to exclusion) of the asset. With NFT, what you have is a community-held registry that someone can point to as the owner. Ironically, in my opinion, a community registry is probably the best use for a blockchain. Since blockchain is public by default, in order to secure the record, it must anonymize the owner. A feature or a benefit, depending on your perspective.
The differences all come to a head when you talk to a regulator or an accountant. Accounting and Auditing essentially revolve around three fundamental assertions: The assertion of rights and obligations, The assertion of existence, and The assertion of valuation. The root of all accounting assertions, as a practical matter, all comes down to one thing: proof of exclusive ownership. A password cannot convey legal or ownership rights. Let me put this in practical terms. If you claim you have an asset on a ledger and that its value is $1,000,000, and to substantiate your claim, you possess a password, This isn’t enough to exclude anyone else. If someone else has the password (private key), they can claim the same thing. You would only know this when they used the password. Therefore, an assertion that you alone possess the value and accompanying rights and obligations is not viable. In a marketplace driven by the next greater fool theory (a valid economic theory that states a thing has value if there is a fool who will pay more for it than you did) and thus is without economic merit (there are no contractual rights and obligations), it is also not viable. What you have is, at best, an intangible asset. It certainly cannot meet the standard of proof of a financial asset (a contractual right or obligation). At best, you really have a collectible asset if you can prove ownership. There are very substantive consequences to uniqueness quantification. This is, in fact, the source of the regulatory conflict.
Onli represents a paradigm shift, addressing a fundamental scientific computing issue. However, this problem is not obvious or immediately apparent—akin to explaining to a fish the nature of the water it swims in. Online technology goes even further than just the first principles, with concepts like actual possession vs. custodial possession. Actual possession is when you possess something, like cash, and have it in your hand. Custodial Possession is when you give someone something, they have custody of it, and they provide you with proof of ownership, like a ledger. Think bank account. Onli has no ledger, no miners, no consensus, and is private by default. Therefore, transferring value takes on a fundamentally different nature. Owners control assets, not the community, like a ledger. Onli is different from the ground up. The point is that you need to accept that your customers are not concerned with the intricacies of technology. Instead, they care about the tangible benefits that your solution offers. While, in many instances, you are able to do what other tech cannot because it is built with Onli—it's faster, more cost-effective, more secure, and aligns with regulatory frameworks—it is important to recognize that Onli is the fabric of innovation. You are the tailor, and what you are selling is the suit. What you are here to build is the store. Onli is only part of the stack, the asset side; your team will be combining this with other technologies to build the solution. What you are selling is the solution.
Understanding why Onli is superior to blockchain technology is important for you, but it is not part of your value proposition. Just as an airline doesn't include the principle of lift in its value proposition, you don't need to delve into the technicalities of why Onli outperforms blockchain. Focus on the benefits and value that your solution brings to your customers. Your value proposition is about solving a problem your customer needs solved.
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