foreword
foreword
"I, Tony Tao, have a dream, to visit Dunhuang as soon as possible before it is ruined!"
In order to realize TT's dream and to leave a pink memory for the intern before she left, we embarked on a journey to Dunhuang.
Coincidentally, during our stay in Dunhuang, Alipay released the Dunhuang-themed Alipay cover nft. Those who are familiar with us must know that we focused on the metaverse at the beginning of the year. Although it is a coincidence, it also has the flavor of fate. Professor Wang Defeng famously said: "If a person over 40 years old does not believe in fate, he has no understanding." He deeply agrees, and when he visited Dunhuang, he also had some thoughts on NFT and metaverse. It is natural to record it, so there is this article.
Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, it is said that in the second year of Jianyuan in the former Qin Dynasty, a monk named Le Zun traveled to Dunhuang. At this time, the sun was setting and the sun was shining on Sanwei Mountain. Venerable monk vowed to practice here, and dug the first grotto of Mogao Grottoes in the cliffs of Sanwei Mountain. At that time, during the Northern Wei, Western Wei, and Northern Zhou dynasties, the rulers believed in Buddhism. In addition to monks, a large number of princes and nobles also supported the digging of caves and the construction of Buddha statues. Since then, it has gone through sixteen countries, Northern Dynasties, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan Dynasties and other countries. Up to now, there have been 735 caves, 45,000 square meters of murals, 2,415 clay colored sculptures, commonly known as "Thousand Buddha Caves", and five With more than 10,000 ancient cultural relics, it is the largest and richest Buddhist art site in the world.
image description
(Because it was not possible to take pictures, all pictures are from the Internet)
■ An immersive blind box experience with guaranteed 8 consecutive draws
The itinerary to visit the Mogao Grottoes is an immersive blind box experience with a guarantee of 8 consecutive draws.
There are a total of 735 caves in Mogao Grottoes, but due to the later man-made destruction and years of devastation, the integrity has been severely damaged and cannot bear more tourism resources. Therefore, although Mogao Grottoes has the reputation of "museum on the wall", but It did not select 5A-level scenic spots, in order to maintain a restrained balance between protecting the scenic spots and displaying the history and culture of Mogao Grottoes to the outside world. Under this balance, the Mogao Grottoes only released 66 grottoes and 12 routes. Each route will randomly select 8 grottoes to visit. The grottoes that are open every day are randomly arranged according to the flow of people and opening hours, including a guaranteed Cave 96, 9-story Pagoda, Great Buddha Hall. So we kindly call this tour arrangement a guaranteed 8-game blind box tour. Mogao Grottoes will also release new card pools on a regular basis. For example, before July 2020, the pool depth of the Grotto Blind Box was only 40, and now the depth of 66 cave pools is gradually opened as experts evaluate, and It is said that there are also special cave pools.
(Here I strongly recommend "Seeing Dunhuang Again", far exceeding our expectations, especially the last scene, which really shows the scenes of different dynasties in a boxed history.)
■ Each blind box is an immersive cultural experience across time and space
The grottoes of Mogao Grottoes span from Rome to India in space, and span from the pre-Qin Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty in time, and have gone through thousands of years. After more than a thousand years, the architectural styles, painted sculptures, and murals of the caves have become a chronicle of art and social culture. Different dynasties, different social styles, different beliefs, and different regional and national cultures have all gathered in Mogao. cave. You can feel the gaze and communication from different time and space.
Although you can only draw 8 times at a time, and the tour guide is very stingy with the light of the flashlight, in these 8 grottoes, you can see the prototype of the familiar Nine-colored Deer story, you can see the three Buddhas of different dynasties, and you can see the classics Even in a short tour, I can already distinguish the styles of different dynasties: the Sui and Tang Dynasties are exquisite, delicate, and expressive; Imitation; if you see soul statues with out-of-scale proportions, stiff expressions, and earthy colors, they must have been repaired indiscriminately after they were discovered by Wang Yuanlu in the Qing Dynasty.
The so-called sense of immersion refers to the intersection of details of different senses. Here, you can feel that the artisans and painters of the past dynasties have competed on the same stage beyond time and space, and condensed the content they want to express. The grottoes are connected together by the cliff at the east foot of Mingsha Mountain, just like being in a grotto version Metaverse that spans thousands of years.
What makes Mogao Grottoes achieve this effect is the UGC ecology brought about by its continuity for thousands of years and the formation of consensus by coincidence.
Stones may be people's cognition of eternity at that time, so their culture was expressed in the form of painted sculptures and murals, and they were preserved in the form of "the front corridor and the back cave" of the grottoes.
consensus:
consensus:
The formation of Mogao Grottoes was an accident in necessity, an inevitable phenomenon produced under the social background at that time. AD 366 was the period of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Sixteen Kingdoms. On the one hand, the Silk Road was constantly developing, and Buddhism entered the Central Plains along the Silk Road.
On the other hand, during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, there were continuous wars, social turmoil, and people's unrest, and there was a huge demand for religious belief. Therefore, during this period, Buddhism was spread to the Central Plains soon after it was introduced, and monks from the Central Plains began to go to the Western Regions to seek Buddhist scriptures and translate Buddhist scriptures in Sanskrit. Dunhuang, which is located in the throat, naturally became a key hub of Buddhist culture. Another important coincidence is the geological landform of Dunhuang, which is a rocky mountain formed on the edge of desert and Gobi that can be dug into caves. has a unique effect. Buddhist monks first practiced in wooden temples, and later evolved into cave temples. In the 4th century AD, cave temples were popular in South Asia. That is to say, the method of cave construction was also introduced to China through the Silk Road. Explore and invent.
All of the above have made Mogao Grottoes reach multi-angle and multi-party consensus in terms of geographical environment, religious needs, and architectural technology.
Consensus brings UGC (or PGC) ecology:
What really created the brilliance of the Mogao Grottoes is the UGC system of its cave supporters. During the cultural heyday of the Hexi Corridor, a large number of social talents were concentrated, which created the need for publicity for digging caves. And at that time, many senior officials who believed in Buddhism went to Dunhuang to work and dig large-scale Buddhist caves, just like the current KOLs change their ape and punk avatars on Twitter to call out orders. , Believe in Buddhism, and digging caves has become a smashing social fashion. Those who made a vow to dig grottoes are called donors. Portraits of donors can be seen on almost all the corridors of the grottoes. They are the owners of these grottoes, and they brought together all social classes at that time, such as local officials, military officials, etc. Soldiers, monks, common people, ethnic minorities and so on. For the purpose of religion, or politics, or propaganda, or recording, they funded the skilled craftsmen at that time to dig, and some craftsmen were willing to gather in Dunhuang for their livelihood, and some for artistic or religious pursuits. environment to create. Together, they constitute the UGC ecology of Mogao Grottoes, which has been handed down to this day.
Prosperous from this, the same Mogao Grottoes have finally reached the decline of consensus and continuous falsification
Weakness of consensus:
As the Central Plains gradually lost its political dominance over the Western Regions and Central Asia, the Maritime Silk Road rose, and the Land Silk Road lost its scale advantage and gradually declined. The Mogao Grottoes also stopped new construction and gradually disappeared from the world since the Yuan Dynasty. in the field of vision.
Continuous falsification:
Even though stones and paints are made of anti-corrosion materials, they still cannot resist the ravages of time and man-made damage. After thousands of years, the Mogao Grottoes are already overwhelmed, which is why Tony wanted to experience it as soon as possible at the beginning of the article.
Of course, modern people will try their best to make this past continue. If engraved on stones is the ancient people's technical cognition of eternity, then digitization is the means of continuation with modern technology. Dunhuang Academy and other institutions have passed digitization, ARVR , Image quality restoration and other technical means allow us to see the beauty of Dunhuang. However, digital storage is not enough. Blockchain technology is the eternal technical cognition of this generation.
If the blockchain technology is the contemporary "stone", what will these "stones" leave for future generations?
Just as currency needs to be accompanied by force, the output and influence of culture cannot do without the assistance of finance and power. The grottoes we can see now are inseparable from the sponsorship of the rich and powerful at that time, and the religion, aesthetics, and scriptures reflected were also the mainstream expressions of the rich and powerful at that time.
NFT is a combination of smart contracts and information. Information can eventually be expanded into culture, smart contracts can be expanded into defi and dao, and extended to finance and power, so NFT can be regarded as a combination of culture, finance and power, and naturally has a later stage The properties that can be hyped can not only carry out cultural inheritance, but also better carry out cultural export or even aggression.
If the donors represent the dignitaries in history and left behind the Buddha statues, statues and religions we see today, what kind of cultural form will NFT, which naturally combines finance and power, leave for future generations?
If it is said that religious needs link the ecology of ancient UCG donors and craftsmen with cliff stones, a "Dunhuang version of the public chain" is created. So what kind of consensus can link global creators and producers to build a contemporary "Dunhuang Prosperity"?
It's all worth thinking about.
perception and integration
The above associations that put Dunhuang and the metaverse together inevitably lead to the suspicion that everything looks like a nail with a hammer, and it is indeed the case. For me, who deeply believes that the metaverse is the future, "Because I believe, I see" has been deeply rooted in my heart, and everything can be "meta".
But for most people, "Believe because you see it" is the mainstream.
Increased awareness is an important step in the broader rollout of the Metaverse
Increasing awareness is divided into two lines: traditional and crypto
■ Tradition—Technical visualization or perception
I really like the words "technical visualization" that Mr. Wu Xiao of Pure White Technology said. Visualization is to increase the perception of technology and allow people to better understand technology.
The movie "Ready Player One" made people implant the possibility of the metaverse in their minds, and it has become the best commentary to explain the metaverse now.
Fortnite's Travis Scott virtual concert, let people experience that they can watch the concert while controlling their avatar to jump around on the star
gather.town makes people experience that the seemingly meaningless simulated meeting form of RPG maker+zoom is actually quite good.
"The Sims", "Animal Crossing" make people feel the possibility of becoming an avatar to obtain a second life
Facebook Oculus 2 makes people feel the arrival of consumer-level VR (see the beautiful girl playing Beat Saber the highest!)
Roblox makes people see that the metaverse is really beginning to be sought after by capital
It is conceivable that the best way to promote the metaverse to traditional audiences is to wait for the popularization of consumer-grade ARVR hardware products represented by Facebook or Apple, as well as the maturity of supporting technologies such as cloud computing and 5g, so that more people can truly perceive the metaverse. A world like Ready Player One appears.
■ Crypto——perception of openness and changes in production relations
If traditionally rely on technological progress to make people perceive the metaverse, crypto is more about making people enter the metaverse through the perception of openness and production relations.
Open metaverse:
Imagine that you take your dog to decentraland for a walk in the morning, and you pass by a gallery, which is a painting exhibition by one-stroke painting master Sinclair. When you see a painting you like, you click on it and jump to opensea to buy it, and you get one Exclusive poap (proof of "visit here"), keep going.
After walking for a while, the dog suddenly barked twice to remind you that someone is stealing your "dish". This dish is not an ordinary dish, it refers to the mine of DeFi. Since a new game similar to Happy Farm has been released recently , all defi users have moved LP into it for visual mining. Since then, defi assets can not only generate interest, but can be buried in the vegetable field in the game, and they can also harvest NFT of various crops, and even give birth to different animals The NFT. You quickly exit decentraland and go to Happy Farm to drive away the robot that steals vegetables. You boasted that your pet dog is really smart, and fed it some newly bought "computing dog food NFT". Thinking about it, this dog is actually just a static picture NFT you bought last year, but because the community is so good, people continue to develop it, gradually changing from a static picture to a 3D file with movable bones, and since RCT came out After the function of AI empowering NFT, anyone can buy computing power to use AI to train their own NFT, so this dog has gradually evolved from a static picture to a dog that can chat and even predict whether your mine has been stolen. machine intelligent pet dog. The "computing power dog food NFT" just fed can also make it smarter.
As soon as you finished picking up the food, you received an invitation from your friends to fight. Recently, you and your friends are addicted to a game called depokemon, a game similar to pokemon, but it allows characters from other different games or projects to fight together. You agree to the battle request, enter the game, you choose the pet dog you just fed the dog food to fight, and the opponent is the zombie character in Cryptopunk. You think you’re going to be cold, but you remember that you just got an artifact from another blockchain game “dark forest” the day before yesterday, and today the depokemon game has been updated to support props from other blockchain games to buff pets in the game addition. You installed the artifact, defeated your friends, achieved the system achievement of 100 victories, and obtained a "key NFT". Having this key proves that you are a "high-playing user", and you will be eligible to participate in this year's event VIP post-events at the game branch of Devcon.
After the battle, you are tired, you go back to your virtual home, hang the latest Sinclair painting on the wall, and enjoy it quietly.
Some of the above-mentioned open experiences of interworking between different metaverses can already be experienced in decentraland and crypto voxel. So even though their image quality and technology are still immature compared with traditional ones, this open perception is very important.
Perception of changes in production relations:
Crypto and NFT's changes in production relations are more difficult to perceive, but they are indeed happening.
Here, anyone with a creative mind can mint their creations into NFTs and connect with fans in a programmable way.
Here, anyone with a vision and a common goal can initiate an active practice of organizing a Dao at low cost.
Here, you can play to earn without worrying about the danger of centralization, earn money by playing equipment in the game across borders, and even play to earn. The leading game Axie infinity has fed a group of Filipinos, and the monthly income has reached $20 million.
If it is said that Crypto essentially plays the role of a united front, BTC is the first enlightenment to activate and connect the potential of decentralists and mining machines, and Ethereum has further activated smart contract developers and graphics card computing power The potential of filecoin has activated the potential of storage. Crypto with different mechanisms will eventually activate all dormant energy and monetize it for storage. The Crypto in the field of NFT and Metaverse activates the potential of creators.
■ The intersection of traditional and crypto, reality and virtual
The perception brought by the iteration of traditional technology and the perception of social relationship changes brought about by innovation in the crypto field will eventually converge and merge. In addition, reality and virtuality are also merging. The AR games represented by pokemon go let us see the future of the fusion of reality and virtual games. An AR sports game called HADO combines real-world competitions.
The future Metaverse will inevitably be a great fusion of reality and virtuality, tradition and Crypto.
All in all, in the face of a new future brought about by changes in the macro environment and the resonance of various technologies, don't try to understand it, but feel it.
Therefore, in the second half of the year, we will focus on the concept of Metaverse, starting from feelings, and try to let more people get in touch with the concept of Metaverse. For this reason, we have arranged a space between metaverses. Friends who are interested in metaverses are welcome to come and sit with us.
