Every new era brings about a shift in the way humans collaborate, and the Web3 era is no different.

Web3, also known as the decentralized internet, paves the way for a fairer, more transparent, and collaborative world, operating in a "trustless" manner. Take Ethereum as an example: it functions as a global, collaborative computer where users can code or trade anything on this peer-to-peer (P2P) blockchain, governed by its community. If we envision Ethereum as an ecosystem consisting of individuals and organizations, it becomes clear that its evolutionary trajectory is not dictated by a single individual or entity but is propelled forward by collective collaboration.

In Web3, a novel network co-constructed, co-governed, and shared by all its users, everyone becomes content owner and creator. As reported by The Influencer's Club, the total asset value of the Web3 content creation market surpassed US$100 billion in December 2022, and it continues to expand. Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) serve as a prime example of Web3's role in promoting the content creation economy. These unique digital tokens employ blockchain technology to record ownership and verify authenticity, enabling creators to monitor every transaction involving their work on the chain. By setting royalties, creators can also earn income from secondary sales.

Although NFTs tackle the needs of individual and organizational creators, they don't provide a complete solution. In the inherently collaborative environment of Web3, a question still lingers: how can we ensure that everyone can participate in collective collaboration, governed by open and transparent rules while recognizing and rewarding each contributor's efforts? The decentralized publishing platform Cascad3 seeks to address this issue.

Introducing Cascad3: A Decentralized Publishing Platform for Collaborative Intellectual Property

Cascad3 is a decentralized publishing platform currently under development, aimed at fostering collaboration and monetizing collective intellectual property. At the heart of this platform lies the Cascading Economy concept.

So, what exactly is "cascading"? Let's explore two examples.

In the Web2 era, Wikipedia serves as an instance of "cascading." It functions as a collaborative platform for the collective creation of knowledge. By aggregating the wisdom of the masses, Wikipedia enables collaborative authoring and the development of collective hypertext. Wiki pages allow all users to browse, create, and edit content, empowering them to write, revise, expand, and discuss shared topics. This process optimizes collective creation and amplifies the value of knowledge sharing.

In the Web3 realm, a "fork" in a blockchain represents cascading. In the open-source community, forking refers to the process of "copying and modifying" as a means to extend the influence of open-source software. In the world of blockchain, forks occur when disagreements arise during the upgrade process. Since blockchains lack a centralized administrator, every code upgrade requires unanimous community approval. If consensus cannot be reached, the blockchain may undergo a fork. A hard fork constitutes a fundamental change to the software, necessitating all users to upgrade to the latest version, whereas a soft fork involves copying and modifying the software code. The original project persists, but on its foundation, a new direction emerges, leading to the development of fresh projects.

Cascad3's Cascading Economic Model: Fostering Collaborative Innovation

Collaboration lies at the heart of mobilizing social productivity and production resources, enhancing efficiency through strategic allocation. In the context of Web3 collective collaboration, Cascad3 seeks to define, confirm, and execute production relationships and resources. The platform aims to provide a tool for collective collaborators, enabling each "collective" to freely establish rules and conditions recognized by creators. Subsequently, production relationship rights are confirmed based on the blockchain network, and the benefits generated in the process are automatically distributed among all participants.

Cascad3 employs a bottom-up economic distribution model. As income flows in from downstream works, each downstream piece serves as an automatic distributor of revenue, providing continuous passive income to the upstream segment. All these works, along with their upstream and downstream relationships, are securely stored on the open, transparent, and immutable blockchain.

To grasp the notions of "upstream" and "downstream," it's important to recognize that creativity, innovation, and development often involve standing on the shoulders of giants. In the Cascad3 cascading economic model, "upstream" denotes these "giants" who provide the foundation for innovators, while "downstream" signifies the innovators themselves. When your work draws inspiration from or builds upon existing pieces, your creations are considered "downstream," and the referenced works become "upstream." Within an extensive blockchain collaborative network, any work can simultaneously be "upstream" and "downstream."

In the Web2 era, you might have opted to pay tribute to specific works in writing or provide a hyperlink, but with Cascad3, you can directly allocate a percentage of the revenue generated by your work (refer to Y%/Z% in the figure below) to these pieces. At the same time, the creator retains a certain proportion in their work (refer to X% in the figure below), which is determined by the space manager. In Cascad3, space administrators can be individuals, decentralized autonomous communities (DAOs), or leaders in centralized enterprises. The author's retention rate (X%) set by the space creator is open and transparent, allowing participants to freely choose which spaces to join.

Envisioning the Future of Cascad3

Early adopters of the Cascad3 platform primarily encompass content publishing and production platforms, as well as decentralized autonomous communities. Notable examples include digital content provider COL Chinese Online, decentralized profit-sharing wiki Arweave Wiki on the Arweave network, members of the decentralized autonomous community SeeDAO, Arweave co-builder community PermaDAO, and multimedia collaborative fiction community Babel Universe. Going forward, the platform could be extended to various other fields, such as academic writing, game development, and hackathons.

Looking ahead, participants in collective collaboration may not be limited to just humans. It's conceivable that, on the Cascad3 platform, your upstream or downstream collaborators could be artificial intelligence systems. AI-generated content (AIGC) has experienced rapid growth, accelerating the revolution in content productivity. In just a few months, AIGC has found widespread application in text, image, audio, and video content generation, with commercial ventures in design, content creation, games, and other industries. Although AI-generated data currently constitutes less than 1% of all data, Gartner estimates this figure will rise to 10% by 2025. Sequoia projects that, by 2025, the application scale of AIGC in China alone will exceed 200 billion.

On the Cascad3 platform, creators might collaborate with AI to produce and share content while retaining ownership of their intellectual property. This collaboration could give rise to a decentralized collective narrative experience unique to the Web3 era.