US multinational tech firm Google is increasingly getting involved in all aspects of the next iteration of the internet known as Web3, including a recent partnership with Coinbase to launch a crypto payment pilot program and expand its blockchain ecosystem.
Its most recent move into the space is the launch of its Web3 Chats hosted by Raphael Hyde, which debuted with a very interesting conversation with IoTeX CEO and Founder Raullen Chai. They spoke of Chai’s past as a senior Silicon Valley-based engineer and his current dominant machine economy blockchain project.
When Hyde asked Chai where his Web3 journey began, the University of Waterloo cryptography Ph.D. responded with one word: Google. And then Chai spoke of his passion for blockchain and how he encountered bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto’s BTC whitepaper in 2008 and found it fascinating. He then became part of the Canadian bitcoin community..
“However, back then, there was still no such thing as the Web3 industry. Coinbase was a three-person startup, so very limited. I joined Google and remained there for four or five years,” Chai said. “I have an emotional attachment to Google.”
The inception of IoTeX
In 2017, Chai and two other people, ex-Facebook scientist Qevan Guo and VC expert Jing Sun, joined forces and founded IoTeX to disrupt the IoT industry with blockchain technology.
“We built our Layer One blockchain technology from scratch in about two years,” he said.
Today, IoTeX has over 170 ecosystem partners. More than 100 delegates run the IoTeX network, among which we find Binance, Stanford University, and others who have processed over 50 million transactions. IoTeX has serviced tens of thousands of people in nearly 70 cities and supported over 15,000 smart devices.
“Last year, we were practically done with all the L1 technology and began developing middleware to connect the smart devices and machines in the real world with MachineFi (machine economy or financialization) dApps and tokens,” Chai explained.
Raullen Chai was speaking of soon-to-be-released W3bstream, the world’s first decentralized off-chain compute infrastructure that brings real-world data from smart devices to blockchain dApps.
That blockchain-agnostic middleware unlocks rewards for hundreds of millions of people and communities in return for contributing data and resources from billions of intelligent devices and for carrying out everyday activities such as walking, exercising, driving safely, or being eco-friendly.
A new design space for Web3 apps
As Chai explained, W3bstream is a new, innovative design space for Web3 applications that unlocks new MachineFi business opportunities for developers, entrepreneurs, and device makers. More fascinating yet, it reduces go-to-market costs and times by at least 50%.
W3bstream is unique, Chai said, because no other data protocol makes machine communication or data computation possible.
“There is no decentralized protocol that talks with many machines, which could be your Oura ring, smartwatch, car, or solar panel. You cannot compute that much data on the chain.”
“All the data generated by IoT devices need to be computed off the chain and then converted into proofs such as an activity at your home or that you run three miles every day, that you are being healthy or driving safely,” he added.
Then, once converted into W3bstream proofs, it moves on chain and onto smart contracts to trigger a business logic, or, in other words, a reward in form of a token or NFT, Chai said. He further explained x-to-earn, which could be sleep-to-earn, a way for employers to encourage employees to sleep well before work to be more productive.
“We also work with the hardware company that manufactures the OBD Dongle. (On-Board Diagnostics) You can plug this device into your car, and it collects data that you can contribute to a Google Maps alternative and earn tokens,” Chai said.
Chai also spoke of another use case he particularly finds interesting: proof-of-humanity. He goes in-depth into explaining what it does and how it works, but essentially, with W3bstream you can verify in a trusted way that people not bots are account holders and that account holders have not registered multiple accounts.
I really like the bear market
“I am always curious about people’s perception of the Web3 industry and how it might get further adoption because we are in this bear market. Things have calmed down quite a bit, and NFT sales are down by about 97%,” said Hyde. “And so, how does that affect you?”
Chai responded that he has been through three of these cycles.
“The bear market is perfect for builders. There is not so much noise across the market, so everybody on my team is 100% laser-focused on what we should be doing. I really like the bear market for this reason.”
It’s no surprise that Google Web3 Chats Host Raphael Hyde would choose a successful ex-Googler such as Dr. Raullen Chai to debut his show. More particularly so because of the promising future IoTeX has and its upcoming W3bstream release.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
