Interview with Wang Pengfei, CEO of Data Collection China: The development and thinking of digital collections

If 2021 is the "first year" of the metaverse, then 2022 can be called the year when NFT exploded. Driven by the promotion of Internet companies such as BATJ, traditional companies have been eliminated one after another, and even the national team has occasional plans. Every time Shandong Ship, Moon Soil, and Dunhuang appear, they will arouse the cheers of digital collection enthusiasts. The participation of fashion brands such as Nike and Li Ning has also triggered a wave of digital collections.

In the absence of supervision, NFT, which is gaining momentum, has gradually become a "hotbed" of risk breeding. However, on April 13, the China Internet Finance Association, China Banking Association, and China Securities Association jointly issued "About Prevention After the Initiative on NFT-related Financial Risks, the trend of NFT "localization" in China has become more and more obvious.

What is the difference between domestic digital collections and NFT? Are NFTs compliant? Does the law support it? In this issue of Jinse Finance, we have invited Wang Pengfei, CEO of Shuzang China, to explain the issues of NFT and digital collections.

1. What are the commonalities and differences between digital collectionsandNFT?

The first question may be the one that everyone is most confused about. What are the similarities and differences between the development of domestic and overseas NFT markets? When we interviewed Wang Pengfei, Mr. Wang divided the question into two parts.

(1) Common features of NFT and digital collections

First of all, what they have in common is the prospect of a metaverse. Many people say that 5G or digital collections are a key to the metaverse, because in the future, everything in the metaverse should be digital assets or digital collections.

This is to gradually land after the operation now, and in the middle of the process of landing, the digital collection will be the first to land.

Most of the domestic digital collection platform providers, including users, are actually referring to the development logic of overseas NFTs, because after all, there are less supervision and more diversity, and more innovations can be explored. In China, whether it is from the chain, There will be some differences at the business level or at the product level. Some Chinese products are stronger, and some foreign countries are more advanced. From a broad perspective, everyone is very optimistic about this market because it is based on the future of the Metaverse.

(2)What is the difference between digital collections and NFT?

From a different perspective, it is necessary to analyze what is an NFT with Chinese characteristics.

In China, NFT is said less and less often, and the domestic context is digital collections. The characteristics of domestic digital collections should be viewed from several aspects.

1.Differentchains

The first one is from the perspective of the chain: overseas is a public chain, and domestic is an alliance chain. In fact, I personally think that the difference here will become smaller and smaller.

The public chain has more nodes, but its nodes are not unlimited. Although there are few nodes in the alliance chain, if there are more nodes and each of them has a strong endorsement, it is actually no problem for ordinary users to carry ordinary assets.

For example, we are now using BSN-DDC’s Wenchang Chain. The structure of BSN is at the national level. It was jointly initiated by the National Information Center, China UnionPay, China Mobile, and Jujube Technology. Many government agencies have participated in it since 2019. Trust endorsement is also relatively strong overseas. You see, a country with so many important institutions participating, for example, would it be unsafe to put 10 billion or 100 billion on it? Actually it can.

The choice of the chain brings new dissimilation. For example, the public chain has no access, and anyone can enter and anyone can issue the contract. On the alliance chain, it has constraints, and at the same time, the contract cannot be changed after it is issued. Yes, you can also see the source code. From this point of view, although the alliance chain seems to be closed, it is also an open form, but it has higher requirements for the participants. For example, erc721 overseas and domestic basically have this logic. In terms of smart contracts In fact, there is not much difference.

2.Differencesin transaction layers

If you go to the next level, as the most important payment layer or transaction layer, there are fundamental differences. For example, in China, you cannot directly conduct transactions in smart contracts.

From the perspective of payment, the logic of the initial sale of digital collections is basically a continuation of the existing e-commerce model in China, paying in RMB, and there may be digital RMB payment methods in the future, so this part is different from foreign countries of. However, foreign countries are all native. In China, this level is actually centralized. Centralized purchases are used first, and users can only hold them after they are on the chain. According to the current situation, the custody method after the chain is completed is the private key. All are hosted on the platform, and the user controls the assets.

But the development trend, I think the future is towards the direction that the private key can be exported. In fact, BSN also made an announcement that it will launch a function similar to the safe deposit box. The function of the safe deposit box is to support the creation of private keys on it. For example, after Shuzang China docks the safe deposit box, we may create a new account for him that is similar to an e-commerce account for the things the user buys in Shuzang China. I will make all my things similar to the technical level used by some overseas exchanges. One way of operation is to transfer all your assets to your verification account. At this time, Data Zang China will not be in control, but the user will be in control.

Users operate directly in the safebox, similar to the plug-in " little fox " on the browser. At this level, it is actually like a public chain. Although the alliance chain just means that the payment is different, the payment is still centralized in RMB. In the future, we think it will move towards digital RMB smart contracts, and support digital RMB on the alliance chain. The assets of erc721 or erc1155 interact with each other, and I think it is a rudimentary form of the metaverse. At this level, Data Tibet China has researched and discussed it deeply, and we also want to actively promote this aspect, which is good overseas. We have learned the place, and then we must abide by the domestic requirements.

3.Differencesin product tiers

As for the difference in the top-level product layers, the overseas features are mainly copyrighted, which are the only copyrights, and the domestic ones are basically divided into copies. We didn’t particularly understand some of its features at the earliest, because we were overseas. We also think it is meaningless to mint such shares, but in fact, at present, user voting proves that it is valuable and meaningful. Because it is a collectible, that is, once it is issued on the blockchain, it is limited.

At the same time, it has a unique number. Although it has no copyright, it can be collected, and it can also be donated in some ways, including some platforms that are constantly promoting the market under compliance conditions. Of course, there are still a lot of non-compliance companies in some China. There may be one or two hundred non-compliance companies. They have actually completed a transfer and transaction. From this perspective, it means that the number of shares is actually in line with China’s current market. , There is also a lot of space for copyright in the future. The number of copies is mainly due to the relatively small amount. 9 yuan, 99 yuan 9, and 29 yuan 9 can buy 1/10000 national treasure-level artworks or many big IPs. This is basically the case overseas. It is impossible to have.

In foreign countries, there are relatively few ways to digitize copies. In China, I think this is cultural inclusiveness, so that everyone, especially many young people, did not have many opportunities to collect in the past, but through future metaverse products The collection method has been realized, and we also do a lot of domestic museums, including traditional calligraphy and painting. Overseas, most of them are original, purely original, such as CG, etc. This is also a difference. What I just said is that foreign countries are single, domestic ones are multiple, foreign countries are basically original, and domestic ones are mainly mirror images in reality. In fact, they are somewhat different, and each is looking for some The path of development, anyway, domestic development is quite fast, this is the similarity and difference in my understanding.

2. What role does NFT technology play in promoting national traditional culture?

In terms of NFT selection, foreign countries will tend to use some original illustrations or generate some images with AI, or against the neural network to generate some images as products. In China, it basically appears in the form of online and offline derivatives. It is the appearance brought out by the cultural attitude or a difference in everyone's understanding of the collection. From this point of view, can NFT technology drive the development of traditional national culture?

Teacher Wang Pengfei said in an interview that NFT’s promotion of national traditional culture is divided into two aspects: internal and external, and both have brought good results.

(1) Empowering the internal display of Chinese culture

In fact, our collection of Chinese traditional culture is also the main focus. Our goal is the metaverse, but we think that culture must also be inherited in the metaverse, because I think the crowd determines it, because we are targeting the Chinese user group, whether it is post-90s or post-00s After 10, it is all rooted in the culture.

So it can be seen from our collection that whether it is traditional calligraphy and painting or traditional Chinese painting, we have also made some Chinese comics, national tides, animations, and some museum series and intangible cultural heritage series are important components. It is also recognized by users. Of course, I saw that some platforms have posted some. For example, I just said that there are some original ones. We feel that the scarcity is not so high, and too many people can create them.

Because our current platform is mainly based on the mode of rush-buying, which is basically instant, so we still cherish an opportunity for sale, that is, to try our best to make more traditional cultural content for this kind. We were the first company to establish We also made a decision. We have ten series, such as traditional famous mountains and clear waters, intangible cultural heritage and other series, and we are now going this way step by step. I think I just went back to the topic just now and said that in fact, this is digital collections and NFTs given to China. A good opportunity to display culture is just an opportunity for digitization.

Just now we have also entered the era of digital economy. The country has entered the era of the nation. As I said just now, many of our suppliers are cultural copyright owners, including some cultural brokerage companies. It’s like they didn’t live very well in the past, but since last year, this After digital collections, they will actually gradually become more active. After earning income, the ecology will be easier to build and will be more motivated to create more and dig more content. Like many cultural scenic spots in our country, Tourist Attractions, Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo

This kind of IP category of museums has entered, and I think this is a very good situation. Another feature is serving young people. In fact, many young people may not have such a strong awareness of these traditional things. Maybe they used to watch overseas animations and so on. It is an era of regression. In this context, we have combined the future of the metaverse to express Chinese traditional culture in the form of digital collections. Now we support pictures, GIFs, videos, and various forms of expression including 3D to show them. I think this is a very good way to get through the entire industrial chain from top to bottom. This is the first point.

(2) Promoting the development of Chinese culture abroad

The second point I think in the future is that we have already seen some Chinese culture, and some of them have appeared on Opensea. I think this is just the beginning. In the future, I think it will be like China, including China’s alliance chain. Transnational alliances are possible. Including the ability to go out from our Belt and Road Initiative. In this case, with the cooperation of the open alliance chain and our digital RMB support, we focus on the contract digital RMB, and with our digital products, I think China’s digital product operation capabilities are in the forefront. The world should be the strongest, because China itself is relatively good at operating and fighting hard in the Internet industry.

So I think that in the future, the dissemination and export of Chinese culture to the outside world should play an important role in promoting it. It will be very hard to transmit culture without a starting point.

But if there is a period, now it is combined with marketization, new technology, and marketization. In fact, it is easy to mobilize consensus if you want to build nodes in all parts of the country and countries around the world, and they will help you push these contents , because they are also profitable, and in the middle of this process, our culture can be exported overseas. I think the future is an important part.

What kind of metaverse does a Chinese user play, does he go over the wall to play overseas? We still use our own, including in fact, I think this metaverse is the same as the alliance chain, initially serving China's future and serving those countries around us. Go out along the Belt and Road. Now we have not been doing it for a long time, that is, half a year, but we can already deeply perceive this change here. From the inside of this industry ecology, everyone is now very motivated and work efficient. There will be a rapid development. I think the speed of this development is no less than overseas, that is, the development speed of the NFT ecology in the ecology of the public chain, and I think diversification is still very good. You can see that overseas is involuntary. Basically the same things, one piece of content costs more than 1,000 yuan. You can see that it has changed a lot in China. For example, traditional themes such as Journey to the West, Three Kingdoms, and Water Margin have been excavated more, and even an unpopular but well-known IP number like Peony Pavilion is used in China. Doing murals as a form of expression, and doing it in the form of digital products, will make it dynamic in the future, so I think it is a very good thing.

3. What challenges are currently encountered in the development of NFT technology?

As a practitioner of the domestic NFT market, what challenges did you encounter during the exploration process? How to solve it?

Teacher Wang Pengfei answered the difficulties and solutions they have experienced since the establishment of Shuizang China.

(1) Data challenges of the alliance chain

When we were evaluating whether to develop the digital collection industry in China, we first had to see if it was possible for this industry to exist, because although there were several companies doing it at the time, there was actually a big challenge, that is, the challenge of the alliance chain , everyone thinks that the alliance chain is an internal scope, can it provide services for hundreds of thousands, millions or even tens of millions of C-terminals?

This requires competence as well as trust. This is what we focused on during the evaluation, so we investigated the relevant chains in China, including its reliability. For example, if the user cannot even own the private key, the security of the blockchain will be greatly reduced. How can we enter the Metaverse in the future? Assets cannot be transferred, let alone cross-chain without a private key.

At that time, issues like these were all in the category of infrastructure, so we did research at that time. Why did Data Tibet China choose to cooperate with BSN-DDC? The first point is trust. An ordinary alliance chain is composed of several companies and there will be some interests in it, but BSN is a national-level infrastructure, and it has third parties such as the National Information Center. China is the top authoritative organization for information, so the infrastructure led by them, I think the part of trust is solved.

(2) Future compliance challenges for digital collections

The second one is about BSN-DDC. It is a coincidence that BSN-DDC was released on January 25th, which is also the birthday of Shuzang China. We also participated as an important co-sponsor of BSN-DDC. The main reason why we are optimistic about BSN-DDC is that we think it is the compliance path of China's NFT. Now the NFT industry is actually disordered. For example, in terms of collections, anyone can establish an alliance chain and anyone in it can publish collections, so that the entire market will definitely enter chaos, just like the "Hundred Regiments War" back then or even more chaotic. It is said that there are already sales templates for digital collections on the Internet. You can buy a set for tens of thousands of dollars, and quickly build a set of digital collection products. Some even use overseas chains. If there is no control over the copyright of such products, If something goes up, the market will soon be messed up. Therefore, we believe that the market must be polarized. Chaos before governance is an inevitable process. Looking at it now, there are already some signs and symptoms of chaos. We often see that the original public chain routines such as creation medals, referendum rewards, etc. Come, at this time you will find that the collections on some platforms are indeed worthless.

So NFT must be done under the premise of compliance in China, but who will do it? At present, we see that the platform of BSN is used to do DDC, which is the closest to this matter. Although it is not a national standard at this stage, we can feel the power of BSN-DDC. In the future, in China, it will not only empower digital collections, but blockchain is already a trend similar to how everyone surfs the Internet now. Everything related to assets will use the blockchain, and the management platform in the blockchain we understand is BSN, which is an infrastructure network. I think the BSN-DDC they launched is also an important part in the digital collection scene.

Because first of all, you need to generate your chain account with a real name, and secondly, there will be corresponding supervision on it no matter from the security level or the business level. In the future, the DDC alliance will also promote multi-level, such as copyright protection, registration, authentication, etc., here It must be extended to the issue of on-chain and compliance. Innovation can only be introduced after compliance. Innovation that is not based on compliance is a violation of regulations. There is a great risk that this could face a ban.

Therefore, when we were preparing for the Data Tibet China project, we believed that compliance was the first priority, and then how to make NFT on the alliance chain? How to make NFT in China? This is a very important challenge, and this challenge has actually been solved very well by using BSN-DDC, and now we have seen the actual effect. At present, it seems that our choice is correct, because in about two months since its launch on January 25, Shuzang China has entered the top 10 digital products in the country. It has achieved very good results. In March alone, nearly 300,000 copies of DDC were released. It is currently at the top of the platform side of the BSN-DDC network. The company has sales of 6 million in the second month after its establishment. This is a start-up company. That is considerable, and one of the important factors is that Shuzang China chose to use BSN-DDC.

In fact, we also worked on blockchain before. Using Hyperleger Fabric, we can also set up a chain to support ERC721 and ERC1155, and even the cost of on-chain chain is also saved. Even in China, I have many friends of medium and large enterprises who are engaged in blockchain. Chain service, but why didn't we choose it? Because we want to choose the best, most promising, and most suitable ecology for digital collection scenarios, we think it is BSN-DDC. On the other hand, many first-line IP copyright holders in China have come to cooperate with us. For example, everyone will see the 3D Temple of Heaven digital collection one after another. Whether it is from IP copyright holders, users, or evaluation agencies, you can see positive reactions. This is also true. It means recognition from the user end, which is very important because the user end will have a clearer understanding of the market chaos, and will inevitably seek cooperation with some formal and compliant, promising, and credible institutions. At present, Shuzang China is still a start-up company. It has only been 2-3 months since registration, but we have chosen a reliable infrastructure, which has a high-quality chain and our high-quality IP resources. Of course, the team in Tibet is also a strong team. Both the Internet and the blockchain have entrepreneurial experience and capital paths. This has generated comprehensive trust, so the effect has also come out.

With the goal of cultural inheritance, Digital Collection China has been committed to providing the creators, collectors and investors of Chinese digital art with the most compliant, convenient and safe digital collection casting, trading, exhibition, social networking and other services since its establishment .

4. How to empower content creators?

The total amount of traditional culture is limited. The future development of the industry must have the participation of countless content creators. For content creators, income is very important. How can digital collections empower content creators? ?

Wang Pengfei believes that the empowerment of creators by digital collections in the future should be carried out in two ways.

(1) Long tail market creation

In fact, it means that we are still a relatively high-end IPO type, as we just said. In terms of the high-end type, we are now basically exposed to more and more IPs. It is said that they are basically top-level IPOs, because we think it may be the case now. If it takes one or two days a day to make one, then release one, taking into account the rhythm of the market. At this time, in fact, they all have professional companies that serve all aspects and are ok. Relatively speaking, there is a good social division of labor, but in fact we think that only doing this model is not enough.

We think that so many things need to be created in the final horticultural degree, and these top IPs alone are not enough. We must use the developers, designers and creators at the most basic level, so we are now planning and To create a platform, similar to the architecture of an open platform, an open platform with digital collections, what kind of structure is the first thing I can support more creators to come in, including an interesting one we talked about yesterday An art institution for teenagers, they have more than 100,000 students in China, and these students are also creating, so of course I think their creations should not reach this relatively high artistic level now

But I think their trends represent the future, and we need to provide them with a channel to generate digital collections, such as the best paintings in a school, the best paintings in a community, or even the best paintings in a city Yes, he also has a group, can his works be sold?

I think it can be sold in a small area of his, and it may not be appropriate to bring it to our platform, but we have also done children's products before, but we are doing public welfare, not commercialization. If we make it Commercialization is actually aimed at teenagers, and it is actually possible in a small range, so we think the future is a long-tail market.

In the case of the long-tail market, it is not the mode we are rushing to buy now, but the way we open the platform, we export capabilities, we take the capabilities of BSN-DDC for secondary development, and then make it into an interface. Provide it on this platform, so that these developers don’t need to understand the code, they can directly use this kind of operation, and their works, including some time online operations, including some offline creations, can be scanned Then they uploaded it after they came in, and then first cast it into a digital collection, and then some of them have their own traffic, so they can directly do some sales.

(2) Realization of the cooperation of traffic parties

In fact, many traffic parties are not easy to realize. At this time, there is an opportunity, because digital collections are first of all a major trend, and it is a fast-growing market, so in this case, we say that we provide him with a distribution similar to Taobao. mode, we connect the creators of the traffic side, and the creator said that I am willing to share 30% of the sales to the traffic side, and the traffic side will see whether his works are suitable for his user group What is the unit price? If he thinks it is suitable, he may obtain such a promotion code. On his own traffic platform, through the QR code and the connection method,

Including the way he publishes in his community, and then the user performs a conversion.

In fact, I think the biggest service ability for creators is to sell their things.

I think it was their first appeal, so how do we concentrate all kinds of traffic in China, especially the traffic in the middle waist, and then use this method of thousands of people and different kinds of traffic? The collections are connected. In some sports communities, if you want to promote others, if you can’t, it’s more appropriate to promote sports.

The most traditional ones of traditional culture, and for example, those who have cars are right for cars, etc. In the future, I think our development platform will have such a value. It may be a parallel relationship in the future when he buys us, but I like this I can serve more people.

5. How to avoid risks?

How to avoid the risks related to the content of the distribution before the distribution, and avoid the phenomenon of "making a profit", Wang Pengfei said:

In fact, we also need to proceed step by step. In fact, there are platforms that can be directly promoted to individuals to generate. We are still promoting to institutions first. Your personal studio is also called an institution. I will first verify the real name. We are online. We will still do the real-name authentication under the Internet, because after all, it involves uploading a lot of things in the future, right?

The second layer is that the uploaded things are copyrighted first, and we have to review them. Not everyone can upload them by themselves, right? After uploading, we have to review, including, that is to say, your review is mainly to review and include content. We may connect with some copyrighted AI platforms at that time.

Don’t use the pictures on the Internet to make them. If you sell the money, you won’t be able to find them. My platform still has certain joint and several responsibilities.

First, your picture is ok.

Second, you have the copyright. If you don’t have the copyright, we will help you to register the organization. We will open up the registration and directly register the copyright.

Third, we will also care about your selling price and number of copies. You can’t really sell a thing for thousands of dollars and buy hundreds of copies. Some users may not know it, and then they buy it after being fooled by him. After buying it, they find out that this is not the case. We The operator of the platform still has certain obligations, so we will have a suggestion.

We will have a suggestion when reviewing. For example, if you buy one for 19 yuan and 9 yuan in the market, it will be dozens of copies, hundreds of copies or thousands of copies, right? I think it should be said that within this reasonable range, we will still be completely open, and it is such a new thing

Here, I may be afraid of being used by some people as you said. I think it is also a responsibility of the platform, especially in new cities. In fact, you can see that Taobao’s development is also a step-by-step process. The more he is like this, the final supervision will be We will find a good balance point, which can not only guarantee the rights and interests of merchants, but also guarantee the rights and interests of consumers, and can also comply with a national supervision at the same time. So let's say that this is not completely laissez-faire, and there is a corresponding review at various levels.