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Metanet: The better, more inclusive and dynamic internet

From the start of my digital asset journey, I took Satoshi Nakamoto at his/her word that blockchain technology and digital assets were intended to be used. Not hoarded as ‘digital gold,’ not endlessly flipped in pursuit of speculative riches, but used—for the wide variety of purposes that only enterprise blockchain technology is capable.

It’s for that reason that Ayre Group is now the world’s largest venture capital investor in Metanet apps that rely on unboundedly scaling public proof-of-work enterprise blockchains like BSV. My support for BSV-based projects is well known, but that support stems from the fact that BSV is the only legally- and regulatory-compliant enterprise blockchain that can scale to make Metanet a reality.

What is Metanet? It can best be described as an economically integrated online system that enables cost-effective, instant micropayments. An even simpler way to say it is that Metanet represents the vision of a better, more inclusive and dynamic internet.

A long time ago, major corporations hijacked the original peer-to-peer vision of the internet in favor of routing all traffic through their centralized (and proprietary) hubs. Now, with the growing rollout of the IPv6 standard, end users can assign unique IP addresses to each and every one of their devices. Little by little, device by device, this is helping to restore that original peer-to-peer internet model.

All these devices talking to each other—many of them autonomously, such as the ever-increasing army of Internet of Things (IoT) devices—will require the help of artificial intelligence to ensure digital messages arrive safely at their intended destination(s).

The combination of AI, the exponential rise in IP addresses and the friction-free, cost-effective micropayment capabilities of BSV will help make Metanet a reality. Free from the high transaction fees and slow processing times of traditional financial systems, individuals will be able to easily access and monetize webpages, services, every single piece of online data, with each of these transactions costing tiny fractions of a cent.

This global democratization of access to data and services will empower individual creators to engage in a direct-to-consumer model, free from the grasping middlemen that would render such a model unworkable. Metanet represents a world unconstrained by bureaucracy, allowing individuals to rely solely on merit, innovation and their will to succeed.

Metanet also promises to upend the current model of cross-border transactions, including remittances, by eliminating the fees and delays imposed by intermediaries. Metanet’s decentralized nature will also bring enhanced security and trust to digital transactions, while offering greater control over one’s personal data. 

Industry will also benefit as developers leverage Metanet’s capabilities, creating new applications and services in fields like education and healthcare that could benefit from Metanet’s flexibility and security.

And these developers can work with confidence, knowing that BSV can trace an unbroken history back to the Bitcoin Genesis block. This means that the blockchain on which developers are building is the only one with a locked protocol since 2008, ensuring that applications developed today won’t be compromised by unnecessary protocol revisions.

I have been fortunate enough to enjoy great success in a number of fields since I began my business career all those years ago. But I have made it my life’s mission to bring Metanet from the drawing board to the real world. Metanet’s potential is simply too great to ignore.

It’s for that reason that I have made London Blockchain Conference ground zero in this conjoining of enterprise blockchain, IPv6 and AI that will create Metanet. Next year’s event—the 11th in this entertaining and informative series—will have an even greater Metanet focus. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you there, so together we can marvel at all the impossibilities that Metanet is helping to make possible.

For more information on London Blockchain Conference, go to LondonBlockchain.net and sign up for the newsletter to receive further updates.

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AI needs guardrails; enterprise blockchain has a role to play

In an astonishingly brief period, artificial intelligence (AI) has gone from the stuff of science fiction to a very real presence in the here and now, with significant ramifications for the world as we know it.

Not a day goes by without fresh reports of AI making further inroads—welcome or unwelcome—into different avenues of society. These reports illustrate AI’s capacity to disrupt any number of sectors, everything from business, the arts, science, government operations… few sectors appear immune.

All disruptive technologies spark similar concerns, stretching back to the original Luddites following the introduction of machinery into English textile mills in the early 1800s. I’m not yet convinced that AI must inevitably lead to the kind of malevolent ‘self-aware’ systems envisioned in the Terminator movies—although James Cameron is already making the rounds warning of the dangers of AI’s weaponization—but there will definitely be people who’ll need to retrain for different skills as AI’s capacities grow.

The growing awareness of AI’s capabilities followed the public being granted access to a number of programs that create text, images, videos, and musical compositions based on text prompts. The resulting creations left a lot of users slack-jawed after reading, seeing, or hearing the seemingly impossible.

As might be expected, some AI-generated images, videos, and music are better than others. The image software can struggle to render things like hands, while many of the singers belting out other people’s songs are easily detectable as bogus.

There are concerns regarding AI text generators’ tendency to sound authoritative even when they’re talking utter bullshit—potentially fatal bullshit. A New Zealand grocery chain recently found itself doing damage control after its in-house chatbot responded to a customer prompt for making an economical meal from water, ammonia, and bleach. The resulting ‘Aromatic Water Mix’ suggestion was, in reality, a recipe for chlorine gas, which hasn’t been popular since World War I.

The need for adult supervision

Public opinion may be split on whether AI will be our savior or our downfall, but one thing is clear: it can’t be the former without some technological guardrails, which is where enterprise blockchain comes in.

The basic problem with large language model (LLM) text generators is a formula as old as time: garbage in = garbage out. Simply put, randomly ingesting all available online information will invariably suck in as much bogus data as verifiable truth.

There are also occasions when AI makes up what it doesn’t know. Consider the lazy lawyers who submitted an AI-generated court filing rather than spend time doing their own research. Their failure to abide by the ‘trust but verify’ maxim led to their being sanctioned by a court for attributing fake opinions to real judges. (The court of public opinion may yet leave these attorneys without a practice.)

The situation will get progressively worse as AI models reabsorb AI-generated ‘alternative facts,’ making each new iteration that much further from the truth. Conversely, an AI model trained purely on authentic data from publicly verifiable sources would be a world-beater.

Research groups would benefit from a blockchain-backed AI system by allowing end users to confirm that reports and studies do, in fact, represent the legitimate output of these entities.

Blockchain-based AI could also ensure artists of all sorts (verbal, visual, aural, etc.) are properly compensated for derivative works based on their creations, assuming that ownership of those original creations is registered on the blockchain.

One chain to rule them all

Which is where the BSV Blockchain comes in. BSV is the only blockchain that has proven its ability to scale unbounded, making it the only blockchain capable of handling the immense data management needs of enterprises and governments. (BSV also stands alone as the only digital asset that doesn’t have to worry about financial regulators classifying it as a security rather than a currency.)

BSV is also the only blockchain capable of completing the internet’s development. It’s the only chain capable of handling the immense volume of new addresses possible under IPv6. The only chain that’s also economically equipped to handle all this data, thanks to transaction fees measured in fractions of a penny.

For a while, all you heard from ‘crypto’-focused VCs was the promise of Web3, but that roar has since become a whisper. It wasn’t because Web3 was a bad idea; it was because none of the blockchains that these VCs supported could scale to the level necessary to take Web3 beyond the theoretical.

Web3 is about reversing the transfer of power that occurred between the internet’s early days and the Web2 centralized data-harvesting model that followed. Returning control over personal data to the end user will allow individuals to effectively negotiate who has access to their data, how much of that data can be accessed, how often and for what purpose.

The role that an infinitely scalable blockchain will play in realizing all of the above was all the justification Ayre Ventures needed when it recently made the single-largest blockchain IP investment to date. The CHF500 million ($549.2 million) equity acquisition of nChain was based on its patent library, which Forbes described as impacting “everything from the US$1 trillion cryptocurrency market to corporate implementations built by some of the largest companies in the world.”

Technological advances can (and do) inspire both optimism and fear, but it’s up to us to determine how these technologies impact society. With a little help from blockchain, AI doesn’t present any challenges that we can’t meet while offering opportunities too good to pass up.

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