What technology unveiled the true face of blockchain?

Four questions reveal the real content of blockchain: What kind of technology is it? What can it change?

Is there such a feeling that all the explanations of blockchain always make people feel that Yunshan is foggy? Even Yang Kaisheng, the former president of China Industrial and Commercial Bank, who has studied blockchain for many years, bluntly said at the Tsinghua University Blockchain Application and Investment Forum that blockchain is becoming more and more incomprehensible and mysterious.

In fact, the blockchain is just a technology, not as omnipotent and mysterious as the legend. Excluding technical terms and obscure technical terms, we try to uncover the true meaning of blockchain hidden behind the veil through these four questions.

1 q

What kind of technology is blockchain?

Blockchain is a very important patch in the history of Internet development.

What exactly is a blockchain?

The White Paper on the Development of Blockchain Technology and Application in China 20 16 issued under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology explains that in a broad sense, blockchain technology is a brand-new distributed infrastructure and computing paradigm, which uses blockchain data structure to verify and store data, uses distributed nodes to generate and update data, uses cryptography to ensure the security of data transmission and access, and uses intelligent contracts composed of automated script codes to program and manipulate data.

In the book "Linking the Future", the author wrote more simply, "In a word, blockchain is a technology that can greatly reduce the credit cost of commercial society. As a distributed account book, the blockchain, once recorded, is permanently preserved and cannot be changed. "

The weak centralization of blockchain and immovable property have always been the two characteristics that blockchain enthusiasts value most. In the eyes of the industry, this will solve the trust problem to a great extent.

"If the blockchain can subvert everything, I think it is too much." Liu Siyu, founder of Top Found, believes that blockchain is a very important section in the history of Internet development. The Internet solves the problem of efficiency, while the blockchain can solve the problem of fairness to a certain extent.

In his view, the theft of Facebook data has aroused people's attention to data security, and if data and credit assets are uploaded, any unauthorized centralized organization can't obtain these data, users will have the right to control their own data, and data security will be guaranteed.

Not only that, the industry believes that the future of blockchain may still be reflected on Token. Previously, the word was translated into "token", that is, virtual currency such as bitcoin, but now insiders are more willing to translate the word into "incentive mechanism".

"When Token is no longer a speculative coin, but a reward mechanism for users in blockchain applications, then it will become a good solution to the fairness problem." An industry insider said that Token is inevitable in the operation of blockchain technology. How to use it most reasonably is a problem that needs to be considered in future supervision and application projects.

However, can this accounting technology really improve efficiency?

At least for now, further research is needed. As Yang Kaisheng said, seven or eight transactions are settled by bitcoin every second, which is too slow. "Frankly speaking, in today's bank management, this is unacceptable to banks and unbearable to customers and the public."

In fact, there are already blockchain processing methods superior to Bitcoin, and digital currency such as Ethereum and EOS are generally considered to be superior to Bitcoin in terms of settlement ability and application development.

Tang Ling, founder and CEO of Gui Zhi Science and Technology, predicted at the "Node GBA Global Blockchain Technology Application Conference" that the next generation blockchain system should be a multi-chain and multi-economic model architecture, and cross-chain interaction will ultimately be a trusted database and a trusted data source.

Two questions

What can the blockchain change?

At least many people believe that blockchain will rebuild the financial system.

Speaking of blockchain, it seems that everyone is talking about that blockchain can change the world and is an important force leading the future development of science and technology in the world. However, what can the blockchain change? Maybe it will reconstruct many important formats.

At least many people believe that blockchain will rebuild the financial system of the current world. In fact, blockchain technology was born in finance and can solve the problem of integrity in the process of financial transactions.

Financial personnel like to take notes as an example. In recent years, bills in banks have become newspapers, and hundreds of millions of bills have disappeared. This kind of thing is not uncommon. If we take advantage of the unbreakable and traceable characteristics of blockchain, then this absurd thing will not happen.

The industry believes that blockchain finance can implement the contract principle through technical means and solve the trust problem. Through * * * knowledge agreement and programmable intelligent contract form, mutual trust and credit are established, commercial terms agreed by all parties to the transaction are formulated and implemented, and legal rules and regulatory control nodes are introduced to ensure that value exchange conforms to contract principles and legal norms and avoid unpredictable transaction risks.

The industry generally believes that blockchain is a blessing of commercial credit and technical trust, which is conducive to maintaining financial integrity. And it will have an impact on payment, credit investigation, currency form and many other aspects.

In addition to finance, people in the industry generally believe that blockchain may also play a role in insurance, medical care, education, real estate and even judicial activities and charity, and establish a more transparent and secure network system.

3 q

What step has the blockchain developed to?

It is still in the early stage of development, but some companies are promoting themselves under the guise of blockchain.

"No matter from what point of view, blockchain can generate great value in the future, which is why everyone is actively studying." Feng Li, head of Baidu's financial blockchain, said that the research and application of blockchain technology are only at the trial stage, and the current blockchain technology does have great shortcomings.

According to Feng Li, from the technical level of the industry, there is still much room for improvement in both the performance of blockchain technology, the combination with business and the underlying technical algorithms. Today, the infrastructure of the blockchain has not yet been built, and the blockchain still has a long way to go before a large number of applications land.

In fact, looking at the layout of the three major Internet giants of BAT in the blockchain, some applications have begun to gradually land. But most of them are still in the research and development stage.

Starting from 20 16, Ali tried to use blockchain technology in the fields of charity tracking, cross-border food supply chain and medical care. Last year, the "basic" strategy of open blockchain technology was established. This year, Ali also launched a luxury platform-the Luxury Pavilion. The raw material production process, circulation process and marketing process of commodities are all written into the blockchain.

Tencent Cloud released the "White Paper on Blockchain TBaaS" in early April this year, and established a blockchain service based on Tencent Cloud. At the same time, Tencent also established a joint laboratory with Bank of China last year, and the two sides will conduct comprehensive cooperation based on blockchain and big data.

It is worth noting that the research on blockchain technology continues. It is generally believed in the industry that blockchain technology is still in the early stage of development, but there are indeed some enterprises that hype themselves under the guise of blockchain.

Four questions

What opportunities can blockchain bring?

This feast will obviously no longer belong to speculators.

In February this year, the People's Daily article on blockchain ignited the national enthusiasm for blockchain technology. Dou Jiali, a researcher at Peking University Guanghua Financial Technology Laboratory, wrote in People's Daily that the birth of blockchain will greatly reduce the cost of value transmission and liberate productivity again, so we should seize the opportunity of blockchain.

On the 20 18 Boao Sina Finance Night, Chen Lei, CEO of Xunlei Group, said that the innovation of blockchain changed the social organization structure and gave China the opportunity to surpass the United States and western countries. "In the development of electronic industry, communication industry and Internet industry, China started later than the United States and western countries. The blockchain is indeed a very important opportunity, because China started almost at the same time as the Western world. "

Wu Ying, chairman of Zhongze Jiameng Investment Fund, believes that the opportunities brought by blockchain are unimaginable to many people, which are dozens, hundreds or even thousands of times that of the original Internet.

In Wu Ying's view, capital should support those "real entrepreneurs". In the field of blockchain, the so-called real entrepreneurs are not only people who want to be long-term officers, but more importantly, "people at the technical level." He believes that blockchain is very suitable for people who really understand Internet technology to start a business. They can really build a new blockchain technology platform, starting with manufacturing products and starting with the lowest technology.

However, this feast will obviously no longer belong to speculators: for ordinary investors, the blockchain concept may no longer be an easy place to make money. Wu Xiaobo, a well-known financial commentator, predicted that the retail blockchain craze will become the biggest investment joke this year. He believes that the financial derivative of investment opportunities seems to give everyone an opportunity to share the dividend of technological change, but it is actually more of a trap for speculators.

In other words, only by returning to technology itself and developing technology instead of deceiving others can technology be truly applied to the world, serve people to the greatest extent, and bring practical and effective benefits to the further development of China's economy.