How Blockchain Provides Business Services for Enterprises: An Interview with Mysten Labs' Director of Commercial Products

Recently, we interviewed the Commercial Product Director of a certain blockchain company to discuss how blockchain technology can provide commercial services for enterprises, and why a certain blockchain is particularly suitable for these use cases.

The following is the content of this interview:

Q1: Please briefly introduce yourself, your role, and how you got involved in the Web3 space?

Currently, I lead the company's commercial product team. Generally speaking, commerce encompasses everything; it can be the foundation of most things, involving various business sectors such as gaming, retail, loyalty, travel, ticketing, and more.

This is my sixth year exploring the blockchain field, having started my journey back in 2017. I took a break for about 14 months to care for my child and then prepared to re-enter the workforce. I want to work on an interesting, complex, and challenging tech stack. Previously, I worked for a long time in a leadership team at an agency, so I feel very satisfied with this part of my career. I want to solve unresolved problems; I no longer want to rely on selling "let's build you a company homepage" or "let's create another retail checkout page". I feel that many problems have already been solved online, and I want to tackle those unresolved issues. Through mutual friends, I was guided into the blockchain field, experiencing an amazing process that gradually helped me understand blockchain. Many aspects of it also left me feeling overwhelmed.

My past work experience is in user experience. Therefore, I pay great attention to optimizing the "lowest common denominator," which means I need to find the simplest way to understand this issue. I found that, just like now, the information about Blockchain at that time was almost chaotic. Most of the information was confusing, and much of it was related to finance. Eventually, I began to believe in the problems that Blockchain could solve; some described Blockchain as a solution-seeking tool. But in reality, I think it can solve a very clear problem, which is asset ownership and digital agency. In traditional Web2, we do not have this. My data does not belong to me, and my online behavior does not belong to me; it belongs to the companies that interact with me.

Blockchain has disrupted everything; my transactions are mine, my assets are mine, my results are mine. Moreover, I am very interested in the privacy implications of some blockchain technologies. I have always had a strong interest in zero-knowledge and how to achieve online activities in a way that protects privacy more easily rather than giving it up. Zero-knowledge seems like a very interesting proposition to me. Therefore, I fell in love with blockchain in 2017, but since the funding of the startup I was in was pulled back at that time, I went on to do other things while still keeping in touch with the blockchain world. This year, I finally had the opportunity to return to the blockchain space in my current role.

I like Blockchain, not just as an isolated entity, but as a foundation that can improve the infrastructure of the Internet as a whole. Some Blockchain actually has this potential; it is suitable for the infrastructure of the Internet. I think many other Blockchains are great, but they often have slower speeds and higher costs, making them less suitable for enterprise use. And I believe some Blockchain has more potential to easily meet all these challenges. I am really looking forward to some Blockchain validating my personal hypotheses about Blockchain and the impact it may have on the entire Internet.

Q2: For enterprises that have developed well in the Web2 field, how do you guide them to think creatively about the problems in their business and how blockchain can be a solution?

Let's look at the issue from a business perspective. In business, we often talk about the sales funnel. At any given moment, if I attract 100 people to the top of my sales funnel, some of them will drop off, and some will engage more deeply; this part will also experience drop-off, and the people at the bottom of the funnel will be those who ultimately convert, that is, the ones who actually make a purchase or take the action I need them to take. This funnel game is a fundamental principle of any business, whether you are a movie theater or a shoe retailer; you are trying to attract as many people as possible to the top of the funnel so that, through natural attrition, as many people as possible reach the bottom of the funnel and convert.

For example, the top of the funnel is a very complex place, basically where the advertisements are. You try to attract as many people as possible to learn about your business, understand your products, and interact with your brand. My previous job was at a certain e-commerce platform, which can be said to be an advocate for small businesses. Their mission is to empower more and more people to become entrepreneurs, giving them the ability to define their own businesses and destinies. The biggest challenge every entrepreneur on that platform faces is acquiring customers. This involves how to tell my story? How to find people who want to buy the products I sell? How to adjust my sales approach to cater to those who might be slightly interested in my products? How to maintain consistent sales so that even if I perform exceptionally well this week, I can continue to build on that next week? These are all long-term challenges faced by small businesses. But for various reasons, these challenges have become very daunting in the current internet environment.

First and foremost, the most important issue is privacy. Web2 and the internet have gone down the path of "I need to collect as much data about you as possible to show you ads." I remember when I first got into the internet, there was a lot of super personalized content that made you feel like you were having a very special experience while interacting with the website. The problem is that the only way to achieve this is by collecting and holding a large amount of very personal and private information. Thus began a trade of selling such information, and the advertising world became obsessed with buying private data. This is why we established rules like GDPR and California's CCPA, which are designed to protect individuals so that their information won't be shared or even collected without consent. Now, unfortunately, this also means that the quality of the data needed to build customer channels has decreased. So previously, I could obtain information like your gender, name, and home address with high confidence from dealers, but now I can't actually buy that information. So I now need to guess this information or try to infer this data. This just happens to provide space for certain large tech companies to monopolize the advertising market because they have applications that give them the right to collect this data. They have become the only place where you can look for new customers.

For example, on a certain e-commerce platform, Apple changed its privacy rules, and as a result, we observed a significant decline in sales for merchants on that platform on iOS devices, specifically on the iPhone, because many of these merchants relied on collecting advertising data from a certain social platform through mobile phones. Although it wasn't intentional, Apple essentially stifled the marketing channels at the top of the funnel for thousands of small businesses, as they are not big brands with million-dollar budgets. We are talking about your part-time job or the corner store nearby, these small businesses that want to find target users in their communities.

So the question is how Blockchain contributes to this data ecosystem and how zero-knowledge technology can feed information about people's behavior back to the internet without sharing private information. Zero-knowledge allows individuals to verify facts more intelligently. The speed and scalability of a certain Blockchain make it the most suitable place to use zero-knowledge to provide services for real-time internet queries.

How can I tell my story? How can I find people who want to buy the products I am selling? How can I adjust the way I sell? How can I maintain sustainability? These are all challenges that small businesses face in the long term.

However, not all problems have been solved, but it is certain that just as the entire online advertising world was built in the early 2000s with the online behavior, we are now seeing the potential to use Blockchain to lower customer acquisition costs.

You can think of many blockchains that offer zero-knowledge proofs. I believe that one particular blockchain stands out because it can provide this service at internet speed and predictable costs.

To give another example, loyalty. Every time I encounter a company that wants my email address, I think, what have you done for me that makes me feel satisfied? Why should I be loyal? With digital asset ownership, you can give me something that will always belong to me; it can be updated, changed, and developed. Some Blockchain has the ability to provide dynamic, composable NFTs (at internet speed and low cost), so suddenly, loyalty programs may mean more to customers; it can actually offer more than just more emails and discount codes.

Q3: Is this to add a certain Blockchain to your tech stack to achieve what you are trying to do in a broader business model?

This is something I firmly believe in: a certain Blockchain is an essential type of Blockchain in your technology stack. The era of cloud computing has essentially introduced us to this idea of rapid scalability. Now, if you are a business starting tomorrow, or if you are investing in your infrastructure, you will absolutely include cloud computing, because not doing so would be foolish. I think a certain Blockchain represents a Blockchain era, and you can think about it in a similar way. Some things are only possible through a Blockchain like a certain Blockchain, or can only be secured by using a Blockchain like a certain Blockchain, so trying to achieve these things in other ways would be absurd. A certain Blockchain is still new in this field, and it needs partners willing to build with us and embark on this journey.

Q4: In many ways, what you have described is the opposite of what is typically considered with Blockchain, namely building Web3 businesses.

Interestingly, the distinction between Web2 and Web3 is only useful in helping to describe the difference between Blockchain technology and standard foundational internet technology. There will come a moment in the future when this distinction becomes irrelevant, as we are not striving to create an internet to access; we are simply working to make the internet you already use better for everyone. The win-win should be for everyone, including end users, and right now saying Web2 and Web3 can help you describe this distinction. But at some point in the future, we are just talking about the internet and generalized internet behaviors and activities, and what will become the norm.

We are not trying to create an internet that you need to go to; we are just trying to make the internet you already use more friendly for all participants.

Q5: What role do end users play in understanding the value of decentralized technology and Blockchain, as it relates to their own privacy? Do you expect them to make more demands on businesses, and once businesses are ready to provide benefits, will they start to receive those benefits?

All of the above is true, let's start with the decentralized technology stack. The incredible thing about decentralized blockchains with this capability is that many people participate in making it a reality. Many have invested a lot, not just the companies that founded it, and not just the investors, but all participants. Based on successful open-source technologies, this collective investment has been the foundation for many years. However, there has always been a notion that if something is open source, it can't make money. What blockchain does is tell you that you can make money within this open-source culture because the decentralized technology stack allows you to do both at the same time, particularly blockchain technology. Some people will delve into all aspects of verification nodes, staking, node operations, etc., which are necessary for a well-functioning economy to stabilize the globally available blockchain network. Another group of users will be very focused on what it means for their activities.

I think there is another group of people who, to be honest, don't really care much about blockchain or anything else. They just want a very good loyalty program, and they want a safe experience online. They hope that the companies they trust will not use their information for bad purposes.