The block chain has been blown to this day, and it has cooled down a lot.

It is in a bear market, and the blockchain, which has been "controversial" due to the lack of applications, has recently attracted a lot of hackers. However, many people in the industry believe that now is the time for the industry to return to rationality and normality, and it is a good time to do things in a down-to-earth manner. Zhong Jiaming, the founder of IOST, is one of them. This issue of Public Chain 101 interviewed him, "There are only four industries that I am optimistic about for a long time, cryptocurrency (blockchain), bioscience, AI (artificial intelligence), and energy."

Unlike the previous long introduction, I decided to directly highlight the golden sentence this time. Zhong Jiaming mainly has three judgments:

• Use Case is the most important.In the early days of the industry, many people felt that infrastructure should be paid attention to, but he believes that the most important thing is use case (application case). "A few days ago, the TPS of EOS was only 1, not because it could not be higher, but because not many people were using it. This is why I have been emphasizing that the more important thing is the use case. No one is using it. TPS can do it well. No matter how high it is, it doesn’t make sense.” Even if there are a large number of applications that seem to be shoddy, as long as there are enough explosive models, it will prompt more people to understand the blockchain. This is similar to the early popularization process of the Internet.

• Changing the user experience doesn't need to be disruptive.The subversiveness of the blockchain has been touted too much, but Zhong Jiaming believes that user experience is actually a very subtle thing, and subtle changes can have a huge impact. The best examples are food delivery platforms such as Ele.me and Meituan Waimai. Before these platforms, you could also call for food delivery. This change is very subtle, but everyone is using it today.

• The security blind spot of PoS is the time cost.secondary title

The interview between Odaily and Zhong Jiaming is organized as follows:

1. Everyone is talking about expansion is ridiculous, the most important thing is use case

Odaily: What are the latest developments and actions of IOST?

Zhong Jiaming: In the current public chain, many projects are actually unusable. There are roughly two types. One is to plagiarize the EOS code, a clumsy version of EOS; Now only EOS is barely available, but the cost is too high, and each developer needs to mortgage at least 15,000 EOS.

IOST is currently positioned as a public chain with higher performance than Ethereum and more decentralized than EOS. In terms of performance, IOST has similar scalability to EOS, but it is more friendly to developers. We plan to launch it in early 2019, and the second version of the test network will be launched at the end of September.

We believe that the expansion goals of all public chains are the same, mainly to achieve three things:

1. Decentralization. The scalability is better and safer, but it needs to be sufficiently decentralized. If you put aside the problem of decentralization, it is actually meaningless. Traditional centralized systems far outperform blockchains in terms of performance.

2. Pay attention to landing. Why expansion is important, and in the end it is because of landing.

3. Friendly to developers. Ethereum is currently the largest public chain in the developer community. One is because of the first-mover advantage, and the other is because it is friendly to developers. They have also established a foundation for this purpose, and we have similar actions.

In addition to technology, the most important thing is ecological construction. The things in the blockchain are all open source. Why a certain network is valuable, at the core, it still needs to have enough ecology. Bitcoin is a value storage tool and does not need to be expanded. Ethereum is an operating system that can judge its specific value and bring real use cases to the blockchain. The positioning of the two is different. At present, most public chains still pursue the latter.

In terms of ecological construction, we have more than 80 people around the world. We have also established an ecological cultivation fund in New York, Berlin, Singapore, and Germany. Now we mainly invest and support developers.

In order to inspire developers, we are also developing some IOST-based applications, just like Microsoft does both Windows and browsers. The public chain team cannot expect a large number of developers to come and cooperate with you when the public chain is first launched.

Now at the core, if you really want this industry to reflect its value, you must use a use case (landing case).

In terms of scenarios, we are now optimistic about several directions: PGC-led content distribution, to B such as liquidation between public welfare and traditional finance, including the water delivery industry for these industries, such as the emergence of DApp, there are many different Tokens, yes No need to have a wallet. Although the market value has shrunk dramatically, it is different from the Internet industry. The competition on the Internet is already fierce; but the blockchain has just started, and what it changes is the production relationship between people, unlike the Internet that changes productivity. Today is the normal development speed of this industry, so that everyone can do things more practically.

Odaily: What do you think is the biggest bottleneck facing the blockchain or the problem that needs to be solved the most?

Zhong Jiaming: Everyone is talking about capacity expansion, which is actually ridiculous; as I just said, the most important thing is use case. do you know? A few days ago, the TPS of EOS was only 1, not because it could not be higher, but because not many people were using it. This is why I have been emphasizing that the more important thing is the use case, no one is using it, and no matter how high the TPS is, it does not make sense. It’s like when the Internet first entered China in 1998, and the mobile Internet has not yet arrived. Everyone can only send text messages, and there is no Monternet. You directly develop 4G, and no one uses it.

Therefore, what should be done today is to overcome the threshold for ordinary people to use blockchain-related applications. Although the previous Ethercat and Fomo3D seem very rough and have their own life cycle, but these cases really cannot be done without the blockchain. Moreover, there are some cases that allow more and more people to understand this thing and inspire developers. I think it is still very meaningful. The industry is still in the early days, and many applications are experimental, such as the early days of the Internet, China Yellow Pages, Kaixin.com, etc. created by Jack Ma. These are all dead now. Looking back, I feel that the products are very stupid. Who would have thought that there are WeChat and live broadcasts today? application.

We develop various tools and games ourselves, and set up a foundation for incubation, all in order to inspire more developers to make more influential applications on IOST.

We are also cooperating with non-profit organizations. A non-profit project we are cooperating with is cooperating with social enterprise Mantra to help Yunnan children get glasses with a buy-one-get-one-free approach (users buy a pair of Mantra sunglasses and donate a pair of myopia at the same time) glasses), the blockchain can achieve more transparent sharing and increase the credibility of the project. These are the scenarios where the blockchain can play a role. You can read the latest paper published by V God, which discusses many scenarios, but it is almost ideal. Indeed, as you said, there is no way to be transparent in the whole process of fundraising and distribution, because there is no way for everyone to use or accept cryptocurrencies, and now it mainly plays the role of formulas and deposit certificates. The future will be closer to the ideal state. I believe there will be use cases for C-end users in 2019.

2, The user experience is very subtle, the best example is Ele.me

Odaily：Let’s discuss the implementation first. You mentioned that the most important thing is to use implementation cases. At present, most implementations are still to B scenarios. How do you think the blockchain can change the user experience?

I think it's still ok. For example, content distribution, we are working on a protocol BRM internally, which is a PGC content distribution protocol. Traditional PGC content distribution is a centralized news aggregation like Apple News. Everyone is doing machine learning to push the things users like to watch to users. However, for judging the quality of news, there is no corresponding incentive to tell the community whether it is good or bad. Your own judgment will not affect news distribution. The media is not neutral, headlines, and low-quality articles can be seen everywhere, so everything is rated. Without going to the blockchain, it's hard to keep things neutral. From the perspective of the community, there is no gain after reading it, at most it will be a fun headline, and you will give me money after I read it. However, if part of the equity of this platform is opened to the community today, it is possible to form a healthy incentive mechanism.

According to public informationStack Overflow。（According to public information, Stack Overflow is a program-related IT technical question-and-answer site. Users can submit questions on the website for free, and browse the questions on the question page without any advertisements popping up. Stack Overflow has established a set of incentive mechanisms to improve content. Its approach is to establish a trust evaluation system through Reputation Point prestige and Badge badges, and to achieve effective incentives for participants. Similar community governance models are more likely to be realized in groups with high professionalism, relatively unified values ​​and industry norms. This may be the reason why IOST thinks that a similar model is more suitable for the PGC model. )

However, our idea is not the existing UGC model in the market. We think PGC is more suitable for this model, where P is a media organization. Through token incentives, there will be professional organizations in the community to maintain the content, and the C-end users will be used in the end, so this is a change for users. At the same time, from the perspective of developers, if there is such a database, it will be much easier to make a headline today. Leaving aside the Chinese market, in the United States and other developed countries, if you want to build a news aggregation application, copyright becomes the initial competition threshold. Once our content distribution protocol is popularized and there is a lot of PGC content in the data, it will become a decentralized news database containing content from all over the world, and developers can directly use it to build a lot of content.

Odaily: Many people think that these things can also be done on the Internet. What do you think?

Blockchain is not a pure technological innovation, it really has a significant change in social relations. You just mentioned that the popularization of the blockchain may require a change in people's views, and I disagree with this. On the contrary, I think people's concepts are driven by social events, just like many people used to have the concept of gold and religion, and many people have no impression of the community.

There is a shared travel start-up company Juno in the United States. Their biggest feature is the division of labor for drivers, hoping to reduce the company's financial risks and motivate employees to provide users with better services. The blockchain can actually be used in this regard. You would say that this thing is very similar to the original employee stock ownership, but the blockchain can improve the liquidity of equity. While this might seem trivial to you, user experience is actually a very subtle thing. The best examples are food delivery platforms such as Ele.me and Meituan Waimai. Before these platforms, you could also call for food delivery. This change is very subtle, but everyone is using it today.

Odaily: What do you think blockchain has changed?

The core is the relationship of production and trust, as well as the birth of digital assets, which were originally impossible. Now the question of trust is changed, so digital assets become possible. There are only 4 industries that I am optimistic about in the long term, cryptocurrency (block chain), bioscience, AI (artificial intelligence), and energy.

Odaily: Some people think that the high redundancy of the blockchain is very wasteful, which is contrary to the principle of business efficiency.

Storage space is cheap, and not everything fits on the blockchain.

3. Why PoW is safer than PoS: because it takes time to process mining machines

Odaily: In terms of technology, what is the biggest feature of IOST?

Our biggest feature is the PoB (Proof-of-Believability) consensus mechanism. The current consensus mechanism is basically a variant of PoS and PoW, and we have made improvements based on PoS. What's wrong with PoS compared to PoW? Theoretically, the two are similar - greater computing power is the same as holding more coins, both require costs, and those who hold a large amount of computing power or Token have the same interests as the network, but in operation, I think that because of one point, PoS is not enough for PoW Safety. That is, it takes time to sell mining machines, so PoW is safer than PoS. Mining machines take a lot of time to buy and sell, but Token can be sold immediately, because it is too flexible, and your voting rights can surge immediately through capital operations Or clear.

As for DPOS, it is essentially a consensus with few nodes, and it is indeed easy to achieve dozens of times faster. However, security cannot be guaranteed. For example, under the mechanism of PoS and PoW, if a DDos attack is to be carried out, it is difficult for the attacker to know who will generate the block in the next round, but it becomes very easy under the mechanism of DPoS. EOS also had many RAM problems later, so I won’t go into details.

PoB can do it, and even in the case of consensus with few nodes, it can be guaranteed to be safer than EOS. The main way is to join the credit mechanism to encourage miners to continue to do good deeds. The ownership of bookkeeping rights in IOST is random, but there is a second-tier token called servi that affects the probability of miners obtaining bookkeeping rights. It is not tradable and will disappear by itself. Under the original PoS mechanism, the shares of the holders cannot be confiscated, which will lead to "the rich get richer"-as long as you have money, you will always pack it, and you will be richer and have more Probability of large packed blockchains. However, the servi in ​​IOST can be emptied. Once a miner’s servi gets the opportunity to package a block, after the packaging is completed, his original accumulated servi will be emptied, prompting him to think about acquiring servi. Servi can be obtained through services in the network, such as verifying transactions and maintaining network security; however, there are more than 10 factors that affect servi, including server level, stake (the proportion of holding IOAT), etc., so even if you do not verify transactions, there are still Possibility of obtaining bookkeeping rights.

Odaily: So how can this method be faster?

In fact, the way we improve performance is by allowing fewer nodes to participate in the consensus. However, within the same period of time, the IOST network can always choose people with better reputations to do consensus. As mentioned earlier, IOST is currently positioned as a public chain with higher performance than Ethereum and more decentralized than EOS. Although the DPoS mechanism of EOS can theoretically change the block node, almost no one has the motivation to change it. In the IOST network, the participating consensus nodes are changing every minute. Which dozens of people are selected to participate in the consensus in each round is random, and who among them will become the block producer is also random. On the one hand, it improves security, and on the other hand, it eases decentralization.

Odaily: The IOST white paper mentions that sharding technology will be used. What is the current progress?

The word sharding has been around for a long time. It comes from distributed databases. The reason why it became popular is because Ethereum said to do sharding. There is a problem of data consistency. In the proposition of smart contract execution, that is, state sharding, security and data consistency cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, all the projects that talk about doing sharding today have turned into only doing transaction sharding, and there are almost no projects that are really doing state sharding. Our performance improvement is mainly achieved through PoB. Fragmentation is a very common technology, and we are optimistic about it in the long run, but it has not yet been realized. DAG is not a blockchain at all, so it will not be discussed.

Odaily: At present, there are many public chains, which public chains do you pay more attention to?

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.