At the end of 2017, Jiang Guofei, vice president of Ant Financial Services and head of the blockchain, predicted that the blockchain technology in 2018 will begin to be applied to the actual commercial system, and the third-generation blockchain technology architecture will appear, and cross-chain value transfer will be realized. and data exchange.
So far, most of these predictions have come true. On September 20, at the Yunqi ATEC Summit in Hangzhou, Jiang Guofei announced the launch of the Ant Blockchain BaaS service platform, and shared Ant’s technical path in consensus mechanism, smart contract, trusted computing, privacy protection, and cross-chain interaction.
In short, the ant blockchain adopts a Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus mechanism; adopts multiple front-ends corresponding to a unified smart contract instruction set; adopts a trusted execution environment management alliance node key system; adopts technologies such as ring signature algorithm, homomorphic encryption, and zero-knowledge proof Privacy protection; and the new UDAG cross-chain data routing protocol is used to realize chain-chain interaction.
The following is the transcript of the speech, enjoy:
good afternoon everyone.
Blockchain is undoubtedly the technology field that the industry is most concerned about at present. We friends who don’t talk about blockchain at gatherings seem to have no sense of technology and are out of the times.
Whether it is core technology or practical application, Ant Blockchain has made good progress in the past year.Today, on the one hand, we want to share with you Ant’s practice and understanding of the blockchain, and on the other hand, we will officially open the Ant blockchain technology, and work with you to promote the group to accelerate innovation。
Trust is the core foundation supporting inclusive and sustainable digital financial products and services. Ant Financial has been committed to using technological means to create a better trust mechanism, from Alipay's earliest secured transaction, to Sesame Credit, to today's Ant Blockchain. Trust means lower costs and better collaboration. Including the blockchain I am going to talk about today, trust is also the greatest value it brings us.
The Ant Blockchain team was established in 2016. In the past two years, the Ant Blockchain team has mainly done two things:
The first thing is to refine the technology and create an independent and controllable financial-grade blockchain platform. In the ranking of blockchain patent applications published by the media last month, Ant Financial ranked first in the world for two consecutive years. We have made breakthroughs in large-scale node consensus, smart contracts based on flexible and secure programming models, trusted computing based on hardware, privacy protection of account models, cross-chain protocols and trusted data sources, etc.
The second thing is to let the ant blockchain land in various industries and serve the real economy. Focusing on credible data, credible objects, credible contracts, credible assets and credible people, we have landed a large number of practical applications, which will be discussed in detail below.
Let's talk technology first.
First, the consensus mechanism. Ant uses a purely asynchronous, ownerless, Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocol, which supports large-scale node participation and achieves high consensus efficiency and low confirmation delay.
In terms of smart contract writing, Ant Blockchain adopts the idea of multiple front-ends corresponding to a unified instruction set, supports a variety of common developer-friendly languages in the industry (such as Python, C++, etc.), and supports the popular contract programming language Solidity. At the same time, Ant also attaches great importance to the efficiency of smart contract execution, supports multiple contract audits, and ensures the safety and reliability of smart contract codes.
Safety is paramount. The ant blockchain is based on the trusted execution environment's alliance node key management system, which fully guarantees the credibility and security of the node key; the data transmission between nodes is based on the TLS protocol to ensure end-to-end encryption and secure data transmission.
Privacy protection is also a hot topic in the blockchain industry. Ant Blockchain uses the privacy protection scheme under the account (balance) model, hides the accounts of both parties through the ring signature algorithm, and uses homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proof algorithms to prove the validity and legitimacy of the transaction without revealing the details of the transaction .
In addition, we believe that chain-to-chain interconnection is the key to future business interactions. Therefore, the ant blockchain adopts a new UDAG cross-chain data routing protocol, which can form a DAG structure and a multi-chain framework based on the organization of multiple states; introduce Oracle clusters through trusted hardware to solve the limitations of the protocol itself, starting from the data source Ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the entire link data.
Behind the technical advantages is Ant's technology globalization talent strategy. Whether it is the original Bitcoin, or the later Ethereum and Fabric, we see that the current leading blockchain talents are still mainly foreign. In the past year, we have introduced many global blockchain research talents, and the overseas talents of the Ant Blockchain team accounted for more than 50%.
In order to strengthen the research on the basic technology of blockchain, Ant has undertaken the construction of the financial technology laboratory of Dharma Institute, and through the linkage of industry, education and research, it has introduced and cultivated a large number of blockchain research talents on a global scale, and studied the latest development of global blockchain technology. The trend provides a steady stream of power for the continuous optimization of the Ant Blockchain platform.
There is another interesting story here. We have a returnee postdoctorate in cryptography. The landlord was very happy to know that he was engaged in passwords. He kept asking him to help crack the safe that the landlord forgot the password. The probability of encountering a cryptographer in one's lifetime is very small.
The value of Ant Blockchain is to generate real value in the real world.
In the past year, we have seen the hustle and bustle of the blockchain market, as well as many chaos. But Ant has always firmly believed that the value of blockchain technology lies in solving valuable social problems, and the real user value in the real world is our only direction of efforts. The essence of the blockchain promotes the credible flow of "data on the chain", making society more efficient and life more convenient. In the alliance chain, the enterprises on the chain gather together to provide a certain industry service, which can be medical care, supply chain, or remittance. The value circulated on the chain can be bills, data, vouchers, funds, etc. etc., and the end users of commercial services are C-end consumers, and the value on the chain will eventually flow to individual users. Therefore, as an infrastructure, blockchain will connect B-end enterprises in various industries and C-end users who finally receive services. Greatly improve the efficiency of trusted data and value transfers, bringing about huge social progress.
Based on the value understanding of the blockchain, and the value of the ant blockchain: to generate real value in the real world. We have implemented a series of applications in the three major scenarios of on-chain finance, on-chain retail, and on-chain people's livelihood. We can foresee that the blockchain will start to be commercialized on a large scale in the near future and become the infrastructure of society, and this trend is also accelerating. Let me introduce to you some applications of Ant Blockchain in the past three months.
An example in the financial field. At the end of June this year, together with partners such as Standard Chartered Bank and the Philippine gcash wallet, Ant launched a blockchain-based cross-border remittance service from Hong Kong to the Philippines, making cross-border transfers faster. , more convenient and safer. 3-6 seconds to arrive, revolutionizing the status quo of cross-border remittances. Through the parallel collaboration between the bank and the wallet on the blockchain, sharing the remittance ledger, the smart contract ensures the automatic transfer of funds between institutions in seconds. This is also a concentrated expression of Ant Financial's responsibility, technology, and globalization. Let us use the power of technology to provide inclusive financial services to more people.
In August, under the guidance of the government, together with Zhejiang TravelSky and other partners, we launched blockchain-based medical electronic bills in many hospitals in Hangzhou, Jinhua and Taizhou, Zhejiang. After patients pay registration, outpatient and hospitalization fees with Alipay, the relevant electronic bills will be sent to Alipay's "Invoice Manager" immediately; QR code, you can scan out an electronic bill.
The difference between blockchain electronic bills and ordinary electronic bills is that the blockchain will stamp "stamps" throughout the entire process of electronic bill generation, transmission, storage and use. If an electronic bill has been reimbursed, it is impossible to report it again. The second time, because it has been "stamped" with "reimbursed" by the blockchain, and these "stamps" are traceable and cannot be tampered with. This is exactly the problem that ordinary paper invoices and ordinary electronic bills cannot eliminate. Within two weeks of the launch of this project, 600,000 electronic bills were circulated on the Ant Blockchain. Blockchain technology further promotes the full digital automatic circulation of bills.
In the retail scenario, the product traceability platform based on the ant blockchain uses blockchain technology to track and record the circulation chain of tangible products or intangible information, and the data about product characteristics such as product quality information, logistics information, quality inspection information, etc. Tampering is registered on the blockchain. Provide a trusted connection mechanism for producers, sellers, consumers, etc. At the same time, it can connect and integrate data flows such as logistics, business flow, information flow, and capital flow, and optimize the upstream and downstream relationships of the supply chain through collaboration and trust mechanisms, making the collaboration between various participants in the business ecosystem simple, efficient, and low-cost . For merchants, it can provide product traceability services in a more efficient, safer and more convenient manner, and truly focus on consumers and realize brand upgrading.
In August this year, the Wuchang Municipal Government launched comprehensive cooperation with Tmall, Cainiao Logistics and Ant Financial Services Group. One of the important cooperation is that Wuchang Rice will introduce Ant Financial Blockchain traceability technology, from production, circulation, warehousing, quality From inspection to sales, blockchain technology stamps each bag of milk powder and rice so that consumers can trace the entire circulation history of the product and improve food safety.
Starting from September 30th, every bag of rice sold in the Tmall flagship store of Wuchang Rice has an exclusive "ID card". We believe that in the traceability scenario of commodity retail, blockchain can play an active role in the field of anti-counterfeiting. At present, the ant blockchain supports the traceability of many commodities such as Australia and New Zealand milk powder, Heilongjiang Wuchang rice, and Pingwu honey.
In the field of people's livelihood, just yesterday, you may have seen the news that Ant Financial, in cooperation with Hangzhou Internet Court and Qiantang Notary Office, officially launched the judicial credible deposit chain, making the ant blockchain the first in the world to be protected. Court-approved blockchain.
The Judicial Credible Evidence Chain can truly solve the problems of digital asset rights confirmation and rights protection, and is widely used in many fields such as contract signing, copyright protection, financial insurance, and house rental. Taking contract signing as an example, the signing cost can be reduced to 1% of the original, the cost of dispute resolution can be reduced to 1/10 of the original, and the overall time cost will also be reduced from several months to several hours.
There are many such cases. From public welfare, renting houses, medical care to electronic contracts, from business services to government affairs governance, we have all begun to see the shadow of blockchain, without industry boundaries, blockchain is becoming a part of ordinary people's daily life just like mobile payment . We believe that blockchain will become the infrastructure of digital China in the future. Life on the chain is no longer a lofty concept, no longer an obscure technical term, and it will quickly affect your life.
Leave trial and error to yourself, and leave success to others. Ant Blockchain has accumulated the Ant Blockchain platform and solutions through previous practice and exploration. We believe that the difference between our solutions lies in "scenario-driven" , In the various scenarios just introduced, we have repeatedly polished our blockchain platform based on actual pain points, so it will be more in line with market demand and easier to implement.
On the basis of breakthroughs in key core technology points, we have developed an independent and controllable blockchain platform with financial-level reliability and security, and deployed it globally. On the basis of the underlying platform, we have opened the BaaS platform to lower the threshold for using blockchain services. At the same time, in order to better help partners and various developers develop various blockchain industry solutions, we have built a layer of PBaaS on top of BaaS to provide some core auxiliary modules for blockchain application integration, including real person authentication, Electronic signing, contract management and trusted data, and more. On the platform are standard industry solutions, including some cases just shared. In the early stage of these solutions is the Alipay applet to be discussed in the next topic, which helps the trusted data and assets of the c-end to circulate on the chain.
Here, let's summarize the practical experience of Ant Blockchain in the past two years. First, the technical challenges of the blockchain are gradually breaking through, and the commercial era of the blockchain is accelerating, and we are beginning to see more and more valuable blockchain applications. Second, the Ant Blockchain, which has accumulated for many years, has opened up 3 suites of industry solutions, BaaS+PBaaS+industry applications. Third, an open blockchain ecosystem can promote the prosperity of the entire blockchain industry application. --The assertion part also needs to be expanded
The essence of the blockchain lies in the "chain". Technology leadership does not mean commercial success. We believe that the prosperity of the blockchain industry requires industry partners to break through boundaries, integrate with each other, and link to the future. Therefore, Mr. Jing has just released the ant blockchain cooperation plan to open up the ant blockchain technology and promote the group to accelerate innovation. Here I will briefly introduce the content of the partner program. The first is professional training. We will provide blockchain professional knowledge training for partners to help understand the charm of blockchain technology and inspire customers.
In terms of business cooperation, we provide platform empowerment and expert support in customer development. The development of any emerging industry is inseparable from the fueling of the market. Therefore, in terms of marketing and marketing, Ant will also give full support to its partners, jointly build brands, and jointly promote. We also welcome more partners with common aspirations to join us, on the eve of large-scale commercial use of blockchain technology, to jointly tap the rolling dividends brought by new technologies.
At the beginning of the year, Alibaba Dharma Institute had a forecast for annual technological development, and our predictions in terms of blockchain are about to become reality. The commercial era of the blockchain has accelerated, and it is foreseeable that the application of the blockchain will exceed AI. We look forward to working with our partners, hand in hand, chain to the future, and jointly promote the prosperity of the blockchain ecology. thank you all.
