What do we talk about when we talk about “crypto-native”?

Original title: What is the real Crypto Native?
Starting from 2021, Crypto Native has gradually entered the crypto industry. Almost every newcomer has heard of this term, because the old people in the circle always talk about it. But if you ask the old people in the circle what this term means, some people may not be able to answer. As for what Crypto Native is, everyone may give a different answer. But does it mean refreshing information about Crypto on Twitter every day, transferring most of your assets to BTC or ETH, staring at the market every day to analyze market data, or talking about big words such as "decentralization" all the time? Maybe all of them, maybe not.
We can see the number of mentions of Crypto Native in the search on the entire network. In 2018, it increased by 5.57 times compared to the previous year, in 2021, it increased by 7.52 times compared to the previous year, and in 2022, November, it increased by 2.85 times compared to the previous year. As time goes by, people's attention to Crypt Native shows an exponential growth pattern, and this growth trend shows no signs of slowing down.
Crypto Native’s popularity Source: Meltwater.com Crypto Native’s background
Crypto Native in the crypto world is the continuation of the decentralized thinking of native cryptocurrencies. The starting point of the Crypto Native narrative is Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin. As the cornerstone of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, the decentralized thinking and trustless mechanism behind it are the origin of the Crypto Native concept.
Since the emergence of Bitcoin in 2008, the world has had the first group of Crypto Natives. Under the influence of the Mentougou coin theft incident and the dark web "Silk Road", Bitcoin peaked in 2011 and then entered a cold winter. This group of people who truly own and trade Bitcoin believe in cryptographic algorithms and blockchain technology and advocate "Code is Law". At this time, Crypto Natives are people who believe in cryptographic algorithms and own and use Bitcoin.
As time goes by, Bitcoin is given the title of "digital gold" by people, and its commodity attributes have overshadowed its currency attributes. Due to the entry of a large number of people and funds, the early infrastructure of the encryption industry was gradually built and improved during this period, and mining machines, payment scenarios, trading platforms, and financial derivatives have gradually matured. The rapid growth of Bitcoin computing power is a good proof of this.
In 2014, a significant event happened. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin released the first version of the Ethereum white paper and pre-sold ETH on July 24, 2014. Subsequently, the Ethereum virtual machine EVM and smart contracts came into being, marking the beginning of a new era for the crypto industry. Similarly, at this time, Crypto Native holders were not limited to Bitcoin, but also included Ethereum or other cryptocurrencies, but this group still firmly believed in the cryptocurrency system established by cryptography and blockchain technology.
With the establishment and improvement of the Ethereum ecosystem, people's imagination of the public chain ecosystem has been fully utilized. With the emergence of new financing methods such as ICO, more and more dAPPs have made people see the application value of blockchain. Not only that, financial derivatives on the chain have also begun to develop, and derivatives such as contracts and loans have also promoted the prosperity of centralized exchanges.
From Twitter posts after 2017, we can get a taste of the connotation of this word. Jessica Verrilli @jess first used this word on Twitter on October 26, 2017, referring to college students who were engaged in cryptocurrency-related projects. The new "Internet native" or "mobile native" group is maturing. Just like the Internet-native that appeared before, the so-called X-native seems to be naturally more adaptable to certain lifestyles and thinking patterns, and can adapt to the tricky parts and enter the circle more quickly. It is not difficult to see here that the most important characteristics of Crypto-native are age and industry, that is, young people whose first career may be related to cryptocurrency.
Original link
In 2017, this word was still not very popular on Twitter. In December 2017, Andrew Spence pointed out that Crypto-native means a new era and a new lifestyle. Crypto will subtly and quietly change people's lifestyles.
Original link
Another Twitter user, Ryan Sean Adams, posted in October 2018 that Crypto Native refers to a way of operating a company, which is built according to contract law and settled through the legal system. It is a successor to the Legal-native joint-stock company. It will be built through code and settled through blockchain. Crypto-native here is more inclined to refer to an underlying governance logic, that is, whether the source of normative behavior comes from law or code, and whether it is a business operation mechanism generated by compliance with which entity's rules. The source of normative behavior comes from code, which is what we are familiar with DAO (decentralized organization).
Original link
In addition to the literal meaning of the word, Crypto Native also represents a business model. In December 2020, Daniel explained the definition of Crypto-native from the perspectives of Crypto Native Person and Crypto Native Business:
A Crypto Native Person is someone who buys cryptocurrency before owning any other assets (stocks, bonds, etc.).
Crypto Native Business is a decentralized protocol that supports the functionality currently provided by CeFi or tradFi.
Daniel Chainview first divided and defined Crypto-native, which is a collection of people or businesses with specific keywords such as "buy", "asset", "decentralized", etc. Crypto-native Business is understood as TradFi or CeFi providing decentralized services.
Original link
From 2020 to 2022, DeFi, NFT, and GameFi have risen strongly, and countless projects have emerged, giving the industry a shot in the arm. Crypto has never had such imagination and sky-high valuations. But the heat will eventually pass, and speculation will eventually fail. When the tide recedes, someone will eventually swim naked. All Crypto Natives need to re-examine the fundamentals and intrinsic value of the Crypto industry and return to their original intentions.
Similar keywords of Crypto Native
Decentralized
The opposite is Centralized, Single-point. Under the guidance of this concept, there is no centralized institution to do macro-regulation. For example, Bitcoin is managed by a decentralized network, so it is independent and fearless. It is not afraid of control over it by individuals, companies or countries. For example, if one country bans Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies, another country may be happy to take over as a way to attract entrepreneurs built on the blockchain or miners who want to take advantage of the country's low-cost energy. Even if governments around the world unite to completely ban Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrencies will not be eradicated as long as there are still connections and communications between individuals in society.
Trustless
In contrast, there are Trust Assumption, Trusted Setup, and Trusted Parties. The most Crypto Native way of trading based on the cryptocurrency industry is to adopt a trustless mechanism to provide a brand new product that is different from the traditional system. This product only provides basic rules and proof methods without comprehensive subjective control. In essence, the crypto industry provides a rule-based, efficient, and global human cooperation form without expensive trust costs. This industry is based on objective proof (mathematics or cryptography) rather than subjective commitments, and abandons entities that were once widely trusted or deeply trusted. A typical example is Fox Tech. As an Ethereum expansion solution zkRollup, Fox uses a zero-knowledge proof system zkFOAKS. The process does not require any trusted entity to participate (No Trusted Setup). It uses pure cryptography and mathematical means to ensure the consistency, completeness, and verifiability of information, thereby achieving a safer, more efficient, and lower-cost effect.
Permissionless
The opposite is Permission. Let's take Web3 infrastructure and basic resources as an example. Its most important feature is that there is a decentralized market with no permission and no threshold. The so-called "no permission" means that anyone can enter this market. The most typical form of this market has a bilateral relationship, that is, the person who provides resources and the person who consumes resources. Permissionless means that no matter who or what role, anyone can provide resources, and no matter who can consume resources. This is fundamentally different from Web2. For example, storage providers such as AWS have provider thresholds, and only they can be this centralized provider. Although it is open to all consumers and there is no threshold on the consumer side, we do not think it is Permissionless. Decentralized storage such as Arweave allows free entry on the supply side, and we would think it is Permissionless. Crypto Native believes that no matter who or what role, anyone can provide resources, and anyone can consume resources. Such a market structure was rarely seen before Web3, and both the supply side and the consumer side of this market became Permissionless.
Individual Sovereignty
Crypto Native also places special emphasis on personal sovereignty, which is also a major difference between Web3 and Web2, especially the ownership of tokens and data. When using traditional Web2 to write articles, post, chat, and comment, these contents will be reviewed and may be deleted. In the Web3 era, these data belong to the users themselves, and the data does have a certain ability to resist censorship and is difficult to lose. Why can Web3 make ownership while Web2 can't? A very important technology is that the data is verifiable when it is generated, which can make these assets and data have ownership. The moment they are on the chain, the blockchain will generate a verifiable time series to determine ownership at the consensus level. When our articles and other content are published on traditional central servers and single-point servers, there may be several backups, but these servers are all managed by some service providers. The service providers can also prove ownership, but the ownership of data belongs entirely to these centralized entities. Let's look at the content platform Mirror. It sends NFTs to Ethereum and stores content on decentralized storage such as Arweave. Even if Mirror is turned off one day, anyone can get the data to restart the platform and trace, verify and confirm the data and assets.
Now more and more people are concerned about how to tell the story of Crypto well, how to break the shackles of centralized finance, network and society, and how to build a free and equal world. This wave seems to have never been so intense and widespread in human history. The deep-seated goal implied by Crypto Native is that this group believes that the technology brought by the crypto world can solve many deep-rooted problems in the real world. The Crypto Native group on the big stage of the Web3 world is practicing the Decentralized concept, polishing Trustless products, and building a Permissionless market, thereby creating a society that effectively protects personal sovereignty. This is exactly the light I see in the eyes of Crypto Native practitioners.