Leo Cheng, the co-founder and CEO at Machi X, a marketplace for “discovery and exchange” of intellectual properties (IP) and their rights, has predicted that “every product and service that lives in the digital world, which should be most things, will be tokenized in order to interact natively and more efficiently with an increasingly digitized world.”

Cheng, who’s also a project advisor for Mithril (MITH), a decentralized proof-of-stake (PoS)-based project that aims to reward users for creating content (social mining), told CryptoGlobe:

I believe anything that is transactional – buying and selling of physical goods and services, or licenses to use things (rent a car/boat/bike etc), places (housing, event space, learning facilities) will be tokenized. Our digital identification coupled with our cryptoassets will allow a lower-friction way of doing things.

Thr economics graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, argued: 

Why do we still use physical cards to represent things like our identity or purchasing power that we enter into a software system today? Why not simply have software-based solutions that interacts with other software-based systems?

Development Of Digitally Native Assets

Several prominent members of the crypto community including Anthony Pompliano, the founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, recently noted via Twitter that “crypto is just another word for automation.” Pompliano also believes the future economy will consist of digitally native assets.

As explained by Cheng, the co-founder and former principal at Blockstate, a token sale advisory and blockchain consulting service: “With Machi X, we are leveraging technology to solve intellectual property challenges, starting with the music industry. By tokenizing music copyrights, we are [aiming to fundamentally change] the way that musicians can monetize their work. [We are] also [trying to] create a new way for fans and artists to interact … Through this process, we are [attempting to] make intellectual property rights digitally native.”

Web 3.0 Will Allow Us To “Do More Everywhere With Increased Speed And Usability”

When questioned about his vision and expectations regarding what Web 3.0, an evolving set of protocols for the new internet, will look like, Cheng remarked:

In my view, Web 3.0 will largely be a change in the underlying infrastructure of the internet as we know it today, making the digital world even more accessible and easier to use for everyone. End users will not [find it] as shocking as the transition from hand-written and mechanical typewriters to emails.

He continued:

Rather, Web 3.0 will allow users to do more everywhere with increased speed and usability. This change will be enabled by finally completing the transition of everything we interact with into the digital format. Specifically, digital-native representations of every asset and identity will become the default – value in general (money, real estate, securities, intellectual properties) and access (memberships, credentials, certificates, identifications) will be digitized and integrated with Web 3.0.

Future Economy: “A Hybrid Of Centralized Services Sitting On Top Of Decentralized Networks”

Responding to a question about whether decentralized platforms are going to be increasingly used in the future, as compared to centralized networks, Cheng said:

A hybrid of centralized services sitting on top of decentralized networks will dominate the future. Centralized services can better serve the end user by providing superior user experiences specific to the use case, while decentralized networks can reduce costs by eliminating middlemen in many of today’s processes that involve [having to pay] too many vendors. A good example of this is the way sale and purchase of stocks are handled today.

Commenting on some important use cases for blockchain technology, Cheng remarked: “Outside of our current effort to tokenize intellectual properties, other important use cases today for blockchain I see are: 1) Supply chain management for applications like food safety, and 2) Cryptocurrency as alternative currency for failing banking systems.”

Walmart, IBM Track Contaminated Produce In Seconds

Elaborating on these two main use cases for distributed ledger technology (DLT), Cheng stated:

Supply chain management – The work that IBM and Walmart have done around food safety is nothing short of revolutionary. They’ve reduced the time it takes to track contaminated produce back to the farm from a week down to mere seconds. Lives can be saved, and also farmers will lose less revenue when products go bad. Other supply chain applications in shipping and logistics will help expedite delivery while reducing costs.

He added: “Failing banking systems – The recent currency crisis in Venezuela demonstrates just how vulnerable populations of failing economies can be, when sudden hyperinflation devalues their currencies and reduces access to basic necessities such as food and water.”

Cryptocurrencies Helping Venezuelans Preserve “Value Of Their Money”

According to Cheng: “Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), and Dash (DASH) have provided some Venezuelans with more currency stability, in addition to access to the financial world outside Venezuela. These cryptocurrency alternatives to the Venezuelan bolivar have helped Venezuelans preserve the value of their money, as well as act as a store of value.”