After several years of "entering China", the blockchain has experienced many ups and downs.
At first, Bitcoin practitioners were looked down upon by others, but today they are labeled as "tall" and "get rich overnight". Even though the controversy continues, it is finally possible to "raise your head and buy coins". From the perspective of the bottom layer, the industry has a different understanding of the use scenarios of blockchain technology. From 2015 to 2016, there were a number of companies in China that focused on the underlying technology, but at that time it was generally optimistic about the alliance chain, so this is become the business focus of these companies.
There are indeed many cases of alliance chains, but due to the limited access to information on alliance chains, some people believe that alliance chains cannot be regarded as blockchains and belong to distributed database technology. If the "block chain" is regarded as a value, that is, to satisfy "access rights are open to all" and not controlled by any centralized organization or individual, then the alliance chain is indeed considered by the decentralized fundamentalists not to be a "block chain". block chain".
Year 2014
Year 2014, the 20-year-old founder of Ethereum, Vitalik, came to China to look for investment. After visiting Huobi and OKCoin but failed, he went south to find Shen Bo, the founder of Fenbushi Capital. This is a story that has been eulogized in the currency circle for a long time-today, God V was unappreciated in the past. With the growth of the Ethereum developer community and the rise in the price of Ethereum, the public chain has become the investment darling again. "Only the public chain can make an ecology, and the alliance chain is just a software provider." All those who missed him found themselves slapped in the face, and no longer want to miss the next Ethereum.
With the influx of capital, a public chain war started this year. After thousands of turns, it is back to the bear market. Don’t think that the future of the public chain will be cold in the blink of an eye, and the investment boom will gradually fade.Yunxiang BlockchainHowever, it still promotes the construction of blockchain infrastructure. Yunxiang is one of the earliest companies in China to explore blockchain technology. In the early days, it focused on providing enterprises with blockchain infrastructure based on alliance chains. Its infrastructure will be launched in the first quarter of 2019.
Odaily interviewed Huang Butian, founder of Yunxiang blockchain and co-founder of VNT Chain. He roughly has the following views and judgments on the present and future of the blockchain:
In the future, the technical integration of alliance chain and public chain is an inevitable trend.
In addition to being a technology, blockchain is also a decentralized incentive system.
Trust has not yet "become" a rigid need. But the need for trust is like the need for network security. If there is no accident, it will not be discovered. In the future, it will be gradually valued and a social consensus will be formed.
The technical characteristics of the blockchain have not been deeply understood, resulting in being distorted, as if it can do anything.
The implementation of infrastructure and demonstration applications is the current focus of breakthroughs in the blockchain industry.
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The dialogue between Odaily and Huang Butian is organized as follows:
1. Odaily: Can you briefly sort out Yunxiang's current product line and target users?
Huang Butian: Our overall positioning is a blockchain infrastructure service provider. In terms of products, it includes a BaaS service platform and a developer platform. BaaS can help application partners quickly upload to the chain, providing blockchain node deployment, operation and maintenance services; the developer platform mainly provides contract deployment, API access services and other functions for application developers. These products are mainly aimed at enterprise-level users, and currently more than 30 organizations are our customers.
In addition, we have built a cross-institutional "blockchain infrastructure service open platform" for commercial banks in China, which has already been accessed by Minsheng Bank, China CITIC Bank, Suning Bank, and Bank of China. Its application scenario is in the field of trade financepayment by letter of credit, based on the blockchain, replacing the originalSWIFTAccording to public information
Note:According to public information, Payment by letter of credit is a major payment method in international trade. It is a settlement method in which the bank pays the buyer (importer) to the seller (exporter) under the condition that the documents match, and uses bank credit as a guarantee for payment. The exporter only needs to submit various documents that meet the requirements of the letter of credit in accordance with the requirements of the letter of credit, so that "the documents are consistent and the documents are consistent", and then they can get the bank's payment.
According to the method of opening,There are two types of letter of credit and electronic opening. Letter opening refers to "the letter of credit issued by the issuing bank in letter format and delivered to the advising bank by mail, usually in duplicate or more than two copies"; Divided into telegraph mode, telex mode and SWIFT mode. At present, the SWIFT method is mostly used, and SWIFT has a standard message format of MT700/701 for issuing letters of credit.
Odaily: Can you explain the specific scenario above?
Huang Butian: The traditional letter of credit business process is faced with the fact that after the letter of credit is issued, most of them are transmitted in paper form, which has low security and is difficult to verify. There is currently no electronic channel for inter-bank letter of credit issuance, and most of them are letter-opened. In the event of letter of credit amendments, receipts, notifications, etc., there is no direct information exchange channel.
Use blockchain technology to establish an alliance chain connecting multiple buyer banks and seller banks to realize real-time electronic opening and achieve quasi-real-time delivery. The main body on the chain establishes a position management and netting mechanism through mutual credit to achieve credit Real-time writing, real-time reading and real-time verification and checking on the certificate chain, thereby reducing the transit time of the letter of credit and speeding up the turnover of funds. At the same time, changes in the letter of credit can be obtained by other relevant banks or enterprises and third parties in real time, which can ensure the transparency of information for all parties and ensure the interests of relevant parties. Through the introduction of blockchain technology, letter of credit information can be transmitted safely, quickly and traceably on the chain, and can support Chinese messages, which can replace SWIFT in domestic letter of credit settlement.
2. Odaily: Cloud Elephant, which mainly provides alliance chain services, currently has a layout in the field of public chains, how is it implemented and the main network, and what are the biggest features?
Huang Butian: The blockchain infrastructure VNT Chain we are working on adopts the aggregated chain technology architecture of "consortium chain + cross-chain + public chain" to realize information and assets between the alliance chain and the alliance chain, and between the alliance chain and the public chain. interact. It is planned to launch the main network in the first quarter of next year, and the test network will be launched in December this year, followed by a three-month public beta for developers.
In the design of Yunxiang, there is a multi-layer structure between the public chain and the alliance chain. Many people criticize that the blockchain cannot be linked with entities, and we hope to solve this problem through the integration of the two. For example, in a decentralized shared economic platform, the identity and transaction information require the alliance chain to provide data storage and sharing services; the distribution of rights and interests of the various participants of the platform requires the use of the public chain economic incentive model.
In terms of the characteristics of the public chain, we mainly solve the problems encountered by the current blockchain infrastructure through scalability, performance, and smart contract security. In terms of scalability, it is mainly realized through the aggregation chain architecture; in terms of consensus, we use a consensus algorithm combining Vortex, DPOS and BFT, and mainly use FPGA and GPU hardware to achieve consensus efficiency improvement; in terms of smart contract security, A programming language with formal verification capability is designed. Now the biggest problem of the public chain is the security of the contract, because the quality of developers is uneven, and the contract is prone to loopholes.
3. Odaily: How does Cloud Elephant view the roles of alliance chains and public chains? What are their application scenarios?
Huang Butian: Generally speaking, the alliance chain is used for information storage and the public chain is used for token incentives.
Still take the decentralized sharing economy platform as an example. First, the alliance chain supports the storage of identity information, and task release can also be based on the alliance chain for data storage, so as to ensure the transparency of platform information. The public chain is mainly to issue platform certificates, one is to issue the rights and interests of the supply and demand parties, and the other is to map the digital assets issued by each alliance chain on the public chain to realize the exchange of digital assets between alliance chains.
Odaily: In this scenario, who are the nodes of the alliance chain?
Huang Butian: Platform operator, major business participants, and third-party auditing agencies.
4. Odaily: Are there any scenarios where blockchain would be better? For example, there are also sharing economy platforms now, why do they still need to be put on the chain?
Huang Butian: It is true that everyone does not pay attention to safety issues now. Everyone is talking about the blockchain as a machine of trust. Whether trust can become a requirement has not yet become a complete consensus.
However, I think that the need for trust and the need for security are very similar. In the early days, many companies were able to run their own systems as long as they could. As the business value increases, the need for security arises. The same is true for trust. The platform was originally very good; after a certain event, like the recent Didi incident, the credibility of the platform was weakened. At this time, the public needs openness and transparency.
Other suitable scenarios include IP copyright. The entire process of IP copyright generation should be on the chain, and through token incentives and a transparent community governance mechanism, it may be more efficient than the existing legal system. Set up a contract online and put in the hash certificate of digital copyright, even if subsequent infringements occur off-chain, it can be fed back through the incentive mechanism.
For example, in new drug research and development, the research data and experimental process of pharmaceutical companies, universities and research institutes are uploaded to the chain, and the certificates are stored on the chain, and third-party audit agencies are introduced to audit, so as to build a whole-process on-chain and off-chain governance system.
Odaily: Compared with the previous distributed database, what changes have the alliance chain made?
Butian Huang: Compared with distributed databases, alliance chains differ in that they provide smart contracts and decentralized governance structures.
Odaily: How can users perceive the changes brought about by blockchain?
Huang Butian: For C-end users, take games as an example. Of course, the biggest pain point of the game itself is whether it is fun or not. What does the blockchain do? In the game world, it is also a virtual society, and a transparent social governance mechanism is built through the blockchain, such as the issuance of virtual props and the change of game rules.
5. Odaily: Which scenarios do you think are exaggerated by the market, but have not changed much?
Huang Butian: The big problem in the entire industry is that everyone does not have a deep understanding of the technical characteristics of the blockchain itself, which leads to the distortion of the blockchain. Everyone thinks that the blockchain is omnipotent, as if it can do anything. It is actually unrealistic to use blockchain for securitization of physical assets. For example, it is difficult to guarantee offline assets on the real estate chain, and there are supervision offline. Many blockchain companies are not blockchain companies in the early days. Chain companies encountered some financing problems and imposed the concept of a blockchain.
6. Odaily: What other implementation cases and partners does Yunxiang have?
Huang Butian: Our partners include Minsheng Bank, China CITIC Bank, Bank of China, Zhejiang Provincial Financial Assets Exchange Center, Zhejiang Provincial Intellectual Property Exchange Center, etc. Currently, the cases that are being implemented include letters of credit, forfaiting, supply chain finance, asset securities globalization, digital education copyright, technological achievement transactions, etc.
7. Odaily: What stage do you think the blockchain is at now, and what is the most urgent or problem that needs to be solved?
Huang Butian: The most important issue is the blockchain infrastructure. In 2016, I proposed that the technical architecture of consortium chain and public chain integration is an inevitable trend. At present, the blockchain infrastructure needs to solve the three problems of privacy protection, contract security, and efficiency.
The second is landing. Although some application scenarios are currently implemented, most of them are still difficult to generate great benefits. In addition to finance, in scenarios such as traceability and electronic evidence, it is actually difficult for participants to abandon the original system and adopt blockchain. This is a very big dilemma at present, which requires social consensus and industrial policy promotion. The blockchain will become a storage platform for key asset data in the future.
8. Odaily: Compared with other blockchain companies, what are the biggest differences or characteristics of Yunxiang, and what are the core technologies?
Huang Butian: We focus on promoting the implementation of blockchain technology and applications. We have applied for 45 invention patents in the fields of blockchain security, consensus algorithms, smart contracts, and privacy protection. In the 2018 global blockchain patent rankings, weNo. 15, We have also established research cooperation with Zhejiang University, National University of Singapore, Shandong University and other universities.
9. Odaily: How do you view the financial attributes of the blockchain?
Huang Butian: In the future, when it comes to issues related to digital assets, the biggest problem now is that the market is obviously speculative. In fact, many digital assets have no corresponding relationship with the rights and interests behind them, and have no real value. If a digital asset has no functionality, it is a financing tool.
I am Lu Xiaoming, editor of Odaily. I am exploring the real blockchain. Please add lohiuming for breaking news and communication. Please note your name, unit, position and reason.
I am Lu Xiaoming, editor of Odaily. I am exploring the real blockchain. Please add lohiuming for breaking news and communication. Please note your name, unit, position and reason.
