Written by: Liu Honglin
This week, while driving through the Hexi Corridor, from Wuwei, Zhangye, Jiuquan to Dunhuang, passing through the sandstorm at the foot of the Qilian Mountains, I realized that the 'Silk Road' is not a romantic term, but rather a landscape filled with sandstorms, numerous relay stations, and millennia-old camel bells. Standing by the Han Great Wall watching the sunset, a thought crossed my mind: could this invisible and intangible thing, virtual currency, have any connection with the trade route that once supported Eurasian civilization?
Thinking carefully, it is indeed rather interesting.
The Silk Road is essentially a channel of trust and payment. On the thousands of miles of trade routes, a merchant could use the Han Dynasty's relay seals and a few rolls of silk to do business in Chang'an and various countries along the way; today, in the Web3 world, an Ethereum address can complete value transfers across borders. The silk of the past was currency; today’s tokens are digital silk. The medium has changed, but the logic remains the same: both are aimed at bypassing geographical and power boundaries to achieve transactions, consensus, and trust.
From camel caravans and silver coins to on-chain tokens: the crossing of payment and trust.
Today, we are taking photos at the foot of Jiayuguan, thinking this is the end of the Great Wall. But in the Tang Dynasty, it was the starting point for Central Asian merchant teams entering China. The route opened by Zhang Qian to the Western Regions later supported the entire Han and Tang Dynasties' 'barter trade' and 'silk diplomacy.' Each transaction along the Silk Road had to solve a fundamental question: what do you use as 'money'?
In the era of non-unified currency systems, the essence of currency is a credit certificate. Merchants departing from Zhangye might use Han Dynasty five-zhus coins, but by the time they reach Samarkand, silver coins, gold, or even camels themselves could become mediums of exchange. What truly facilitates transactions is the 'payment negotiation' across languages and cultures, along with the trust in each other's identities. The circulation of currency is actually built upon a very primitive yet efficient 'decentralized' consensus system.
In fact, 'silk' itself in ancient times was not just a commodity; it was a form of currency.
As early as the Han Dynasty, the court explicitly used silk and satin as salaries for the military and officials in border regions. (Book of Han - Records of Food and Money) states: 'Rewards and salaries are all given in silk, which can replace currency.' This means that in certain situations, silk is not just a 'commodity' for transaction, but can directly replace copper coins and silver as an 'official payment tool.'
Especially during times of war, at border areas, or when metal currency is scarce, silk and satin, being lightweight, storable, and high-value materials, even became 'hard currency' in diplomacy. (Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government) records that the Tang Dynasty 'bestowed ten thousand pieces of silk' 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 a commodity but also a 'settlement unit' along the path. Its value is accepted by various civilizations along the route, just as USDT or BTC is recognized by users in different countries today. In the past, we crossed boundaries with silk and satin; now we traverse borders with digital currencies.
This trading structure sounds ancient, yet it bears striking similarities 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 using USDT or DAI for settlement. As long as you have a wallet address, you don't need a bank account or to go through foreign exchange, and funds can be transferred across countries in just a few minutes.
Especially after the rise of the Telegram ecosystem, the issuance of USDT on the TON chain has rapidly surpassed $1 billion, and on-chain payments have gradually shifted from speculation to real scenarios: paying salaries, making purchases, hiring overseas teams, and procuring servers—a complete set of gray and white area payment paths is becoming as simple as sending a WeChat red envelope.
It is actually very similar to the logic of 'barter + universal currency' on the ancient Silk Road: not using your own country's settlement system, but completing transactions with a 'third value medium' that everyone trusts. Camel caravans have been replaced with wallet addresses, silver ingots with tokens, the means of trust have changed, but the value of trust itself has not.
Why is Telegram popular? Not because it can chat anonymously, but because it inherently possesses cross-border attributes, encryption foundations, and user stickiness. Beyond WeChat, Telegram is one of the few 'global social software', and TON is precisely its extension in the blockchain world.
TON is currently the closest attempt to the 'Silk Road' model within the blockchain public chain system: it connects the entire chain of communication, accounts, payments, and transactions, allowing users to complete wallet transfers, receive salaries, conduct micro-payments, and even build Bot automation interaction logic within chat boxes. 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 pursuing a similar 'paymentization' path. However, compared to other public chains' 'DeFi-ization,' TON is more like replicating a full-stack ecosystem of 'transactions + identities + ledgers + communication'—it is closer to the collaborative form of the Silk Road.
Compliance game: From the Maritime Trade Office to on-chain KYC.
Of course, every instance of trade liberalization will be met with a regulatory backlash.
The Tang Dynasty established the 'Maritime Trade Office', which specialized in managing overseas trade. (New Book of Tang - Records of Food and Money) records: 'The Maritime Trade Envoy is solely 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 Maritime Trade Office was not only a trade regulatory agency but also the most important foreign exchange management department at that time.
Going back to the Han Dynasty, the 'Pass Commander' managed the entry and exit checkpoints of the Hexi Corridor, responsible for supervising the passage, tariffs, and identities of merchants traveling to the Western Regions; during the Song Dynasty, 'marketplaces' were established to manage licensed trade and regulate the circulation of paper currency through 'exchange offices.' These systems together formed 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 reality akin to that of the Tang Dynasty's Maritime Trade Office: how to find the tipping point between free flow and state regulation.
First is the role of regulation. The vast majority of blockchain projects claim technological neutrality, but when they embed wallets, launch USDT, facilitate financial lending, and connect hundreds of millions of users globally, they inherently possess attributes of a 'financial institution.' Should they be regulated, who will regulate them, and under what legal 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-scale cross-border settlements, you must meet complex requirements such as anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, which often means identity verification and fund path identification—this creates inherent tension with the 'anonymity' and 'decentralization' that Web3 users value most.
Finally, there is the issue of taxes. In traditional trade, how much goods you carry, how many relay stations you pass, and how many times you change horses are all recorded, valued, and taxed. But 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 is responsible for tax base declarations? These are still unresolved questions.
In simple terms, all the regulatory challenges faced by today's Web3 payments have actually been experienced by the ancient Silk Road. It's just that the challenges back then were geography and military power, while today's challenges are code and regulation.
Written after Dunhuang: We are always searching for ways to 'cross boundaries.'
On the day I left Dunhuang, I drove along the G215 National Road over the Qilian Mountains, with my phone often out of signal. The mountain roads twisted and turned, with eternal snow-capped peaks in the distance, and beneath my feet was the weathered Gobi and ancient paths. In such a landscape, humans seem small, and technology appears quiet, as if the digital age is still a millennium away.
But it is precisely in this silence that I recall a simple yet unchanging proposition: human civilization has always been a series of efforts to cross boundaries.
Ancient people used camel caravans and paper customs documents to traverse geography and language; today, we use blockchain and smart contracts to attempt to bridge systems and trust. On the ruins of the Silk Road, we are not the first to establish a cross-national settlement system, nor will we be the last. Only this time, we are using code, addresses, and on-chain consensus.
Technology will change, routes will shift, but the impulse 'to cross over' has never extinguished in thousands of years. In the past, we traversed the physical Silk Road, and now we are trying to establish a digital Silk Road. Whether it’s ancient relay stations or smart contracts, they essentially reflect the same desire—between order and chaos, we must always carve out a feasible path for trust.
