Author: Liu Honglin
This week, driving through the Hexi Corridor, from Wuwei, Zhangye, Jiuquan to Dunhuang, crossing the sandstorm pass at the foot of the Qilian Mountains, I realized that the 'Silk Road' is not a romantic term; it is a vast expanse of sandstorms, continuous post stations, and millennia of camel bells. Standing by the Han Great Wall watching the sunset, a thought emerged: does this invisible and intangible thing called virtual currency have any relation to the trade route that once supported Eurasian civilization?
Thinking about it carefully, it is indeed quite interesting.
The Silk Road is essentially a conduit of trust and payment. On the thousands of miles of trade route, a merchant could leave Chang'an and conduct business with various countries along the way using a Han dynasty post seal and a few rolls of silk; in today's Web3 world, one Ethereum address can cross borders to complete value transfers. The silk of the past was currency; today's tokens are digital silk. Only the carrier has changed, the logic remains the same: it is all about bypassing geographical and power boundaries to achieve transactions, consensus, and trust.
From camel caravans and silver coins to on-chain tokens: crossing payment and trust.
Today, we are taking photos at the foot of Jiayuguan, thinking this is the end of the Great Wall. But during the Tang Dynasty, it was the starting point for Central Asian merchant teams entering China. The road opened by Zhang Qian to the Western Regions later supported the entire Han and Tang dynasties' 'barter' and 'silk diplomacy'. Every transaction on the Silk Road had to resolve a fundamental question: what do you use as 'money'?
In an era of non-unified monetary systems, the essence of currency is a certificate of credit. A merchant departing from Zhangye might use Han Wuzhu coins, but upon reaching Samarkand, silver coins, gold, or even camels themselves could become mediums of exchange. What truly facilitates the flow of transactions is the 'payment negotiation' across languages and cultures and the trust in each other's identities. The circulation of currency is actually based on a very primitive yet efficient decentralized consensus system.
In fact, 'silk' itself was not just a commodity in ancient times; it was a form of currency.
As early as the Han Dynasty, the court had explicitly used silk and cloth as salaries for troops and officials in border regions. (Book of Han · Food and Goods) records: 'Rewards and salaries were all given in silk, and silk could replace currency.' This means that in certain situations, silk was not just a 'commodity' for trading, but could also directly replace copper coins or gold and silver as an 'official payment tool'.
Especially in border areas, during wartime, or in times of metal currency shortages, silk and cloth, as lightweight, storable, and high-value materials, even became 'hard currency' in diplomacy. (Historical Records) document that during the Tang Dynasty, 'silk was gifted in thousands of rolls' to Tibet as a means of appeasement and trade exchange. By the Song and Yuan dynasties, silk was widely circulated in Central Asia, Persia, and even the Eastern Roman Empire, regarded as 'noble currency from the East'.
This is also the true meaning of the 'Silk Road': silk is not only goods but also a 'settlement unit' on the path. Its value is recognized by civilizations along the route, just as today USDT or BTC are acknowledged by users from different countries. In the past, we crossed boundaries using fine silks; now we cross borders with digital currencies.
This trading structure sounds ancient, yet it bears an astonishing similarity to today's virtual currency transactions. In reality, in places like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Nigeria, a significant amount of trade, remittances, and even retail payments have begun to use USDT or DAI for settlement. As long as you have a wallet address, you don’t need to open a bank account or go through foreign exchange controls, and funds can arrive internationally within minutes.
Especially after the rise of the Telegram ecosystem, the issuance of USDT on the TON chain quickly surpassed 1 billion USD, and on-chain payments shifted from speculation to real scenarios: paying salaries, doing purchasing, hiring overseas teams, and procuring servers — a complete set of gray and white payment paths is becoming as simple as sending a WeChat red envelope.
It is very similar to the logic of 'barter + universal currency' on the ancient Silk Road: transactions are not completed using one's own settlement system but rather through a 'third value medium' that everyone trusts. Camel caravans have been replaced by wallet addresses, silver ingots by tokens; the means of trust have changed, but the value of trust itself has not.
Why is Telegram popular? Not because it allows anonymous chatting, but because it inherently possesses cross-border attributes, encryption foundations, and user stickiness. Beyond WeChat, Telegram is one of the few 'global social apps', and TON is precisely its extension in the blockchain world.
TON is currently one of the closest attempts to the form of the 'Silk Road' within the blockchain public chain system: it connects communication, accounts, payments, and transactions throughout the entire chain, allowing users to complete wallet transfers, receive salaries, make micropayments, and even build automated Bot interaction logic within the chat box. This system provides a realistic path for users in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia to bypass banks and credit cards.
TON is not an isolated case; Sui, Solana, and BNB Chain are also following a similar 'payment-oriented' path. However, compared to the 'DeFi-ization' of other public chains, TON resembles a full-stack ecosystem recreating 'transactions + identity + ledger + communication' — it is more aligned with the collaborative form of the Silk Road.
Compliance Game: From Shibo Si to On-Chain KYC.
Of course, every time trade is liberalized, there will be a backlash of regulation behind it.
During the Tang Dynasty, 'Shibo Si' was established to specifically manage overseas trade. (New Book of Tang · Food and Goods) records: 'The Shibo Shi is exclusively in charge of foreign goods,' meaning that as long as you bring goods into China from the sea or border, you must declare, pay taxes, assess value, and exchange currency at specific ports. The Shibo Si was not only a trade regulatory agency but also the most important foreign exchange management department at that time.
Looking back, during the Han Dynasty, the 'Guandu Wei' managed the entry and exit checkpoints of the Hexi Corridor, overseeing the passage, customs duties, and identities of merchants traveling to the Western Regions; the Song Dynasty set up 'Qiaochang' to manage licensed trade and regulated paper currency circulation through 'Jiaozi Wu'. These systems together constituted a real 'compliance framework' that existed along the ancient Silk Road.
If various blockchain ecosystems want to assume the role of the 'digital Silk Road', they will eventually face a problem similar to that of the Tang Dynasty's Shibo Si: how to find that critical point between free flow and national regulation.
First is the role of regulation. The vast majority of blockchain projects claim to be technically neutral, but when they embed wallets, launch USDT, engage in financial lending, and link billions of users globally, they inherently possess attributes of 'financial institutions'. Should they be regulated, by whom, and under what jurisdiction — these questions all need answers.
Secondly, there is auditing and compliance. On-chain data is indeed transparent, but transparency ≠ compliance. If you want to conduct large cross-border settlements, you must meet complex requirements such as anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, which often means user identity penetration and funding path identification — this creates a natural tension with the 'anonymity' and 'decentralization' that Web3 users value most.
Lastly, there is the issue of taxes. In traditional trade, how much cargo you bring, how many post stations you pass, and how many times you change horses are all recorded, assessed, and taxed. However, on the chain, the P2P transaction paths are obscure, and the profit sources of DeFi are complex; how should the state define 'taxable transactions'? Who will be responsible for tax base declarations? These remain unresolved questions.
In simple terms, all the regulatory challenges faced by today's Web3 payments have actually been experienced by the ancient Silk Road. The challenges back then were geography and military force, while today's challenges are code and regulation.
Written after Dunhuang: We are always searching for methods to 'cross boundaries'.
The day I left Dunhuang, I drove along National Highway G215, crossing the Qilian Mountains, and my phone often lost signal. The mountain road twisted and turned, with snow-capped peaks in the distance and wind-eroded Gobi and ancient paths beneath my feet. In such terrain, people seem small, and technology appears quiet, as if the digital age is still a millennium away.
But it is precisely in such silence that I recall a simple yet unchanging proposition: human civilization has always been a series of efforts to cross boundaries.
The ancients used camel caravans and paper-based customs documents to navigate geography and language; today we use blockchain and smart contracts to attempt to cross systems and trust. On the ruins of the Silk Road, we are not establishing a cross-border settlement system for the first time, nor will it be the last. Only this time, we are using code, addresses, and on-chain consensus.
Technology may change, routes may be altered, but the impulse to 'cross over' has never been extinguished for thousands of years. In the past, we walked the physical Silk Road; now we are trying to establish a digital Silk Road. Whether it is ancient post stations or smart contracts, they are essentially the same desire — between order and chaos, we must always carve out a feasible path for trust.
