Text / 31QU Yu Nakamoto

Huawei builds blockchain cloud

On March 20 this year, at the HUAWEI CLOUD Hong Kong Summit, Deng Tao, President of HUAWEI CLOUD Global Marketing, announced that the HUAWEI CLOUD service system based on blockchain technology is progressing smoothly. A global financial and logistics center," said Deng Tao boldly.

On April 17th, at the Huawei Global Analyst Conference in Shenzhen, opposite Hong Kong, Huawei Cloud BU President Zheng Yelai not only announced 40 5G contracts, but also released the "Huawei Blockchain White Paper".

For the private communication technology company born in 1987, in addition to the 5G folding screen, it also turned its attention to the blockchain.

Huawei's plans and ambitions for the blockchain are condensed in this 59-page white paper.

On the whole, Huawei mentioned two things in the white paper. One is how to continue to expand the market of Huawei's cloud service platform, and the other is to think about how to implement blockchain application scenarios.

I remember that Ren Zhengfei, the head of Huawei, said in April 2018 that the blockchain has not yet been mentioned on the agenda for Huawei.

But in fact, as early as 2016, Huawei had already started to work in the blockchain field.

On May 31 of that year, Huawei joined the Financial Blockchain Cooperation Alliance (Golden Chain Alliance) to explore alliance blockchains and application scenarios dedicated to financial institutions. This is the earliest available layout of Huawei in the blockchain industry.

In October 2018, Huawei also joined the Hyperledger Blockchain Alliance.

"Hyperledger" was established at the end of 2015, and more than 200 companies and organizations have joined, including world-class enterprises such as Cisco, Hitachi, Intel and JP Morgan.

On September 5, 2017, Huawei announced the signing of a cooperation agreement with the blockchain platform Qulian Technology. The two parties will cooperate in depth on the blockchain technology platform and industry applications.

On January 9, 2018, Huawei joined hands with Panda Green Energy and New Energy Exchange to officially launch the blockchain project to jointly discuss the principles and development status of blockchain technology in physical business applications, and to study microgrid and blockchain applications in blockchain applications. Smart grid case, etc.

After a long period of hard work, Huawei has reaped its own achievements in the blockchain.

In March 2018, Huawei announced the cloud blockchain service platform and announced that it had officially "entered" Russia. Based on open source blockchain technology, the platform aims to provide enterprises and developers with public cloud blockchain services and promote the implementation of enterprise blockchain application scenarios.

One year later, in March of this year, the number of Huawei Cloud services increased from 20 to 50, and the availability zone (AZ) also increased from one to three.

Cloud services are the breaking point of Huawei's blockchain, which is reflected in the recent Huawei blockchain white paper.

According to the white paper, the purpose of Huawei Cloud (BCS) is to "help enterprises easily enter the cloud era on the basis of security, efficiency, and immutability, and quickly deploy new solutions and applications."

In addition to cloud services, Huawei's blockchain also focuses on the implementation of application scenarios. The white paper summarizes it into "4 categories and 9 subcategories", including data assets, IoT, operators, and financial fields.

"2018 is a year of loose soil, and 2019 will have a large-scale explosion." Huawei Blockchain Industry Director Zhu Zhaohui commented on the blockchain.

Unlike Internet giants such as BAT, Huawei, which has continuously achieved results in chips, mobile phones and communication equipment, has particularly prominent technological advantages.

Therefore, from the actual layout to the blockchain planning, Huawei has made solid progress in every step in the blockchain field.

Traceability is the main battlefield of JD.com

JD.com also released a white paper at the same time as Huawei.

During this period of time, Liu Qiangdong, the head of JD.com, has been in constant misfortune. On the one hand, he was trapped in the sexual assault family and couldn’t extricate himself. On the other hand, he was criticized by netizens because of his inappropriate remarks about "996".

Affected by these two events, JD.com's share price has continued to decline since April. Shares have slipped from $31.26 on April 1 to $29.65 most recently.

Since the beginning of this year, Jingdong’s development has shown signs of weakness, and the previous results of Jingdong’s financial transformation technology have not been satisfactory. In 2017, its net loss reached 2.1 billion US dollars. But this did not stop JD.com from investing in technology and blockchain.

On April 9, JD.com released the "JD.com Blockchain Technology Practice White Paper (2019)".

According to the white paper, JD.com’s blockchain has now been applied in five major fields: quality traceability, digital certificate storage, credit network, financial technology and value innovation.

The technologies required to realize the five major application scenarios are exactly what JD.com has prepared for the transformation of technology.

JD.com also regards blockchain technology as a key area of ​​development. According to Cao Peng, vice president of JD Digital Technology, blockchain technology has also become the fourth core technical capability of JD Digital Technology after data technology, artificial intelligence and IoT.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time JD.com has released a blockchain white paper. As early as April last year, JD.com had released the first blockchain white paper.

Compared with last year's white paper, this year's white paper not only further clarified the five application scenarios, but also added a series of JD.com's landing cases in the blockchain field.

JD.com also thinks more deeply about the blockchain. The white paper points out the future development trend of blockchain technology: the rise of self-developed bottom layer, large-scale application of BaaS platform, and more in-depth development in the field of financial technology.

In addition, this year's white paper also introduced the JD blockchain architecture system in detail, in which "JDChain" is the core engine, which is open source, and the JD BaaS platform is committed to providing flexible, easy-to-use and scalable blockchain system management capabilities.

Like Huawei, JD.com has been paying attention to the blockchain for a long time.

As early as June 2016, JD.com, Huawei and Tencent joined the Golden Chain Alliance. Before June 2017, JD.com had been experimenting with the combination of finance and blockchain.

After that, JD.com shifted its focus to the field of traceability.

Half a year later, JD.com established the Safe Food Blockchain Traceability Alliance, and successively added blockchain traceability services to its products. ".

We have seen that compared to Huawei's focus on the implementation of Huawei's cloud services and application scenarios, JD.com puts more experience in traceability. And traceability has gradually become the main battlefield of JD blockchain.

One detail is that at the end of March this year, among the 197 filing service projects disclosed by the Cyberspace Administration of China, JD.com filed 4 blockchain services, far ahead of BATJ, and became the Internet giant with the most blockchain information filings. However, technology giant Huawei did not check the reported filing.

As the second largest e-commerce service platform in China by market value, JD.com has lost one after another in the competition with established giants such as Taobao and Tmall. However, in the field of blockchain, JD.com’s layout is not far behind.

Tencent Releases Blockchain Game

While JD.com and Huawei successively released white papers, Tencent took another approach and released a "blockchain game".

As early as April 12, 2018, Cai Yige, general manager of Tencent’s blockchain business, released the blockchain game “Let’s Catch the Monster Together” code-named Z. One year later, "Let's Catch Monsters" officially launched its public beta, dominating the app list.

This is an AR game. In "Let's Catch Monsters Together", the player becomes a spirit master, explores the surrounding real world, and collects demon spirits around him.

However, in the game, players hardly feel the existence of "blockchain". Although Tencent previously defined "Let's Catch Monsters" as a blockchain game, most of the introductions on the official website of "Let's Catch Monsters" are about AR, and the word "blockchain" never appeared.

So, does this game actually use blockchain technology?

The answer is yes. When the player's game level reaches level 22 or above, he will get an "exclusive cat" equipped with blockchain technology. This brightly colored and cute-looking cat can "link game assets" so that players can truly The assets that own this game will not be changed by the developer.

In addition, there is no trace of the blockchain in the game.

For players in the currency circle, "Let's Catch Monsters" is not a standard "blockchain game". It does not have a Token economy, and it is still a traditional point card and prop sales model. "The gimmick effect.

However, this is still an attempt to graft blockchain technology into the traditional game mode, but it is not a substantive exploration for the entire cryptocurrency world.

In fact, as early as 2015, Tencent had established a blockchain team and began to explore the development path of blockchain.

On January 8 last year, Tencent announced the Trusted Blockchain (TrustSQL) project, calling it "a safe and efficient solution for building blockchain infrastructure."

A few days later, Tencent released the "Blockchain Solution White Paper", which stated that Tencent will provide users with enterprise-level blockchain solutions with its own and controllable blockchain infrastructure.

This also means that Tencent has a complete strategic layout in the blockchain field.

Comparison of Similarities and Differences of White Paper

In addition to the above three companies, other Internet giants such as Alibaba, Baidu, and NetEase have also published their own blockchain white papers at different times.

Interestingly, the white papers of each company have many similarities.

First of all, the major Internet giants are silent about cryptocurrencies.

In March 2018, Tencent Security Anti-Fraud Laboratory and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (Shenzhen, Guangdong) Anti-MLM Monitoring and Governance Base officially released the "Tencent 2017 MLM Situational Awareness White Paper". The white paper stated that overseas funds, virtual currency, and ICO projects are all pyramid schemes.

Tencent CEO Ma Huateng even said that the blockchain is an innovative technology, but the issuance of cryptocurrency is very risky, and Tencent will not get involved.

Zheng Yelai, President of Huawei Cloud BU, once said that Huawei is in the business of technology, and Huawei is worried about the money that comes too fast.

Meng Zhaoli, dean of Jingdong Financial Research Institute, said that the blockchain is not equal to the currency circle. Technology is neutral, and the key depends on the application field and scenario.

The difference is that each company has different choices in the specific implementation scenarios of the blockchain.

Zhang Xiaojun, director of Huawei's blockchain project, said that the future blockchain will be an ecology that integrates cloud, network, and chips.

Among the 4 categories and 9 typical application scenarios of Huawei's blockchain layout, Huawei also focuses more on data collection, IoT device management and new energy.

JD.com, on the other hand, focuses on the practice of quality traceability, logistics documents and other aspects. From this point of view, JD hopes to apply the dividends brought by blockchain technology to its pillar industry e-commerce.

In general, unlike blockchain-native companies, traditional Internet giants’ attitude towards blockchain is more about the application of their technology, and ultimately they want to feed blockchain technology back to traditional industries.