The Evolution of the Encryption World: Synergy of Technology, Mechanisms, and Defense Systems

The various chaos and stagnation in the encryption field raise the question: Are we really moving towards an ideal future? This article will explore the essence of the encryption world, the bottlenecks in its development, and the infinite possibilities for the future from a systematic perspective, providing important insights for us to understand the true nature of this emerging field.

How can we achieve the original intention of the encryption world and maintain a safe and ethical development environment? Although the encryption world is steadily progressing, many rules and orders have not yet been fully established due to its early stage of development. Newcomers can easily suffer losses if they enter recklessly. When the existing infrastructure cannot adequately support the concept of decentralization, can we unite traditional regulatory bodies and community forces to establish a mechanism for spontaneous monitoring and compressing the space for wrongdoing, building an "immune system" for the encryption world to purify the development environment comprehensively? At the same time, can we also provide ordinary participants with a global perspective to better grasp the development direction of the encryption world?

Technology and Mechanism: Dual-Engine Driving the Future of Encryption

To realize the original intention of the encryption world and break the existing dilemmas, especially to dismantle the root of "evil-doing," it is necessary to rely on the dual drive of "technology" and "mechanism."

The founder of Ethereum once stated, "We are no longer early participants in the encryption field." The rapid development of Ethereum and layer two network solutions, especially in terms of reducing costs, increasing transaction speed, and enhancing security, marks that encryption is moving towards a more mature stage. Indeed, over the past decade since the birth of Bitcoin, programming-focused developers have made significant contributions to the continuous development of the encryption world. Technology is undoubtedly the core engine that opens up the "infinite future" of the encryption world.

However, "we are still in the early stages of encryption usability." Why has encryption not achieved widespread adoption? In addition to the need for improvements in user-friendliness and ease of use, an important reason is that our research and application in "mechanism design and evolution towards a digital legal ecosystem" lags far behind the development of encryption technology. Whether the vast territory opened up by technology will yield "flowers" or "bitter fruits" depends on whether there are sufficiently sophisticated mechanisms to effectively guide and regulate. The various chaos in the current encryption world reflects, to some extent, that our mechanism design is still not precise and complete, leaving ample opportunities for wrongdoing, which is undoubtedly a major obstacle to the popularization and adoption of encryption.

To quickly move towards the next billion users, we urgently need to improve the overall ethics and security level of the digital legal ecosystem. However, this is no easy task.

Digital Legal Ecosystem: A Brand New "Species"

"Digital legal ecosystem" is an unprecedented new "species" in human history. Digital law, as a set of rules aimed at achieving specific goals, allows participants to collaborate or compete within the framework of these rules, thus constructing an open and dynamically self-evolving complex system (, referred to in this article as the "digital legal ecosystem" ). Unlike complex engineering systems such as chips, airplanes, and bridges that are "dead" ( mechanical ) systems, the digital legal ecosystem is more akin to living ( adaptive ) complex adaptive systems like natural ecosystems, global climate, and immune systems; it encompasses not only interactions at the micro level but also emergent phenomena from micro to macro levels.

It should be noted that "mechanical" and "adaptive" are not two completely opposing states; they are at two ends of the same spectrum. Overall, the encryption protocol ecosystem leans more towards an "adaptive" state, but current research on mechanisms is insufficient to support the construction and sustainable operation of a "fully adaptive" system.

The design and evolution of such "living systems" present a brand new world-class challenge. The design of token economics alone involves Nobel Prize-level problems such as reverse games and incentive compatibility. Moreover, the solutions to these problems should be elevated to the levels of token design, digital legal design, and even the design of the entire digital legal ecosystem. From certain dimensions, the difficulty is comparable to advanced chip design, rocket and aircraft design, car design, and skyscraper design. Therefore, we cannot rely solely on the "model-based systems engineering" methods that originated from these "dead" systems; we need to further upgrade to the "agent-based systems engineering" methods suitable for living systems with emergent phenomena, in order to understand, design, and model simulation of behaviors at all levels of the digital legal ecosystem's entire lifecycle.

In addition, the "living system" is not just a design challenge, but its evolution also faces enormous challenges. How can we minimize human governance? Is it possible to build a complete self-regulating system that can dynamically adjust parameters and mechanisms based on changes in the external environment and internal operating conditions? Moreover, in the future, can we leverage powerful artificial intelligence to achieve the adaptability of the "living" system?

Digital Legal Engineers: The Rise of a New Talent

From protocols like Ethereum, AAVE, and Compound that have successfully traversed bull and bear cycles, it is not difficult to find that a commonality among these protocols is that they have invested a significant amount of time and effort in mechanism design and evolution.

Just like security audits for technology, how to determine whether a project is trustworthy involves not only looking at whether it has conducted compliant code security audits at the technical level, but also focusing on whether there are digital legal engineers involved in designing and continuously optimizing the structural mechanisms and parameter adjustments of its ecosystem. If so, this at least proves that the project parties place sufficient emphasis on ethics and sustainability, respect the property safety of every participant, and carefully design their mechanisms based on the operational规律 of the ecosystem.

However, the current emphasis on digital legal engineers in the encryption world is far from sufficient. Although some organizations have been continuously promoting the development of the token engineering field and have achieved significant results, the concept and method of "token engineering" have not yet been widely popularized and applied. Many project parties, investors, and others remain at the level of "token economics," and are even largely unaware of "token engineering." This reflects, to some extent, that we are still in a very early stage in the research on the design and evolution of mechanisms in the digital legal ecosystem, which is evident not only in the lack of theory and practice but also in the lack of professional talent.

The encryption world wants to further break through the bottlenecks in security and efficiency, and it needs to further explore the potential and value of digital legal engineers.

Technology is the pioneer of the unknown, while mechanisms are the guardians of vast territories. Without the collaborative drive of both, it is difficult to create a balanced, robust, and anti-fragile digital legal ecosystem. The ultimate ideal state is that, without any human intervention, the development of "technology" and "mechanisms" is sufficient to support the self-security defense and automatic efficiency optimization of the inherent nature of the digital legal ecosystem.

However, the iterative development of technology and the cultivation of digital legal engineering talent is not something that can be achieved overnight. When the two wheels cannot fully support the original intention of the encryption world, we still need the collaborative efforts of "external artificial defenses" to jointly safeguard the morality and security of the encryption world.

Defense New System: Building the Ethics and Security of the Encryption World with Technology and Mechanisms

The encryption world urgently needs to establish a "new defense system" to counter risks. There is a high probability that the encryption world will remain in a "centralized" and "decentralized" mixed state for some time in the future. The term "mixed" has two layers of meaning: first, the "decentralization" of digital law itself is a gradual process; second, the degree of "decentralization" across the end-to-end full cycle of digital law varies, for example, although some decentralized financial protocols are highly decentralized themselves, they still need to rely on centralized infrastructure services during the implementation process, and applications built on top of the protocols may also be centralized.

In such a hybrid system, the defense system should also be composable. The ultimate ideal state is that the community completes the "decentralization" part of self-regulation from the bottom up, while traditional institutions conduct regulation of the "centralization" part from the top down. Currently, the regulation by traditional institutions, such as the government, is accelerating, which is an external manual defense. Although this regulation can indeed compress certain malicious spaces, it may limit the development of "decentralization." By leveraging technology and tools, building a digital legal self-regulation system based on the community can suppress the emergence of "evil" and systemic risks from the inside out and from the bottom up. This internal manual defense mechanism can more flexibly address the "evil" problem faced by the encryption world, and it is also consistent with the path of achieving the original intention through decentralized means in the encryption world.

Conclusion: The Synergistic Drive of Technology, Mechanisms, and Defense Systems

Therefore, to achieve the original intention of the encryption world and establish a secure and ethical digital natural environment, it seems that at this stage, at least a dual-driven synergy of technology and mechanisms is required, along with a new combinable defense system. These three aspects may not be exhaustive, but they are key to breaking through the bottlenecks in the development of the encryption world.