On May 27, sponsored by the Organizing Committee of the 2019 China International Big Data Industry Expo, co-sponsored by CCTV Finance Channel of China Central Radio and Television Station, undertaken by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, co-organized by Tier Yingfu, and reported by Odaily exclusive media The high-end dialogue of the chain sector - the cornerstone of digital civilization" was grandly opened in Guiyang.
Kevin Kelly, the author of "Out of Control", and Wu Jihan, the co-founder of Bitmain, and other top blockchain experts and scholars, focused on the theme of blockchain promoting the development of a trusted digital society, and explored the ecological construction of "blockchain +" and other content Deliver speeches and carry out peak dialogues.
In the morning, Cao Jiannong, Director of the Department of Computing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and IEEE Fellow, delivered a keynote speech on how to use blockchain to assist data sharing.
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The following is the full text of Cao Jiannong’s speech edited by Odaily:
Good morning everyone, I am Cao Jiannong from the University of Hong Kong. In the past, the research was all around the Internet and mobile computing. In recent years, the school has established a big data analysis research center. The scope of research has expanded from traditional distributed research and mobile wireless networks to the current big data analysis, cloud computing, and edge computing. and blockchain technology.
First, let’s talk about why big data exchange is needed, why blockchain is a useful solution as a technical support for big data exchange, and finally talk about the direction of future research and development.
Everyone knows that big data is very hot now, including the Guiyang Big Data Expo, which has been held for four times. Since the conference just started, everyone talked about applications, but there are many challenges.
First, big data is diverse and comes from different fields. To solve a phenomenon, many data sets from different fields are used, which are not available from a single source. This involves a question, how to "share" our data.
One of the biggest challenges is how to share data. Under what circumstances is there a need to share data? First of all, there is a strong need for data to be shared by governments and startups at the bottom. Why hasn't open data been pushed forward for so many years? The very important reason is because there is no data support, and one of the reasons why data cannot be shared is the lack of trust. For example, if you use my data, will it be misused? Will it be tampered with and used by others without authorization? Disclosing data is now a movement, but this movement cannot be promoted because the technical solutions for data sharing have not been well resolved.
Second, we need to cooperate with each other. For example, smart home, there are many companies that do smart home now. You bought refrigerators, washing machines, and TVs, all of which come from different smart home service providers. Their data is not disclosed to each other. How do you form a unified solution for smart home?
Third, big data transactions. Data is an asset. When my data is used for you, it is not unlimited for you. Guiyang has launched a big data trading platform many years ago. There are also trust issues in the data sharing in the trading platform, such as how to set prices. This is also one of the application scenarios for data sharing.
In response to different needs, there are now many big data sharing platforms in China and around the world. Although there are various big data sharing platforms, they can be summarized in several ways.
First, data hosting. A data provider uploads the data to the hosting center, and different agents query the data, and use the data after obtaining it. The data hosting center is still centralized, requiring everyone to upload the data to the hosting platform.
Second, the data aggregation platform. There is no need to upload the original data and a large amount of data to the platform, but you upload the original data information of the data to form an index of the file for everyone to query. When they exchange and share privately, they are transmitted in a peer-to-peer manner.
They have various advantages and disadvantages.
Data hosting is more authoritative, and most data hosting centers are certified or authorized by the government and some trusted institutions. The applicability of the data aggregation platform is relatively stronger, but it allows users to upload raw data, so its credibility is relatively reduced.
We need to find a solution that is both authoritative and private and secure. Blockchain provides a great solution.
Blockchain is a distributed ledger and a distributed central library. It can be decentralized, and has the characteristics of data immutability and transparency.
First of all, decentralization can guarantee privacy. When data is shared, you don't even know who shared the data, you can only see the data. Second, transparency and immutability guarantee authority, and everyone trusts each other.
We have three principles in the design of blockchain solutions. First, application-independent; second, safe and reliable; third, flexible control of data sharing content.
First: There are many data platform applications, and it is best that this platform has nothing to do with specific data applications, so we need a general expression method;
Second: It must be safe and reliable. This requires decentralization, consensus, tamper-proof, and distributed ledgers;
Third: To ensure the content of data sharing and the way of data sharing, there are various control methods for everyone to enjoy this data.
It looks simple on the surface, but in fact there are many challenges. I will talk about four challenges.
How to allow users to control data sharing flexibly;
Find data in different ways;
How to reduce latency;
How to solve fairness.
Here I only talk about the four challenges, and there may be more challenges later, such as how to ensure anonymity. Our laboratory has done a variety of research on various levels. From the lowest level of data packaging, to the latest desensitization, as well as asymmetric digital encoding and signatures, new consensus algorithms for the consensus layer, etc.
We now have three projects, the first is a project shared with Huawei, the second is a supply chain data management project with Alibaba, and the third is a supply chain in the direction of food safety that has just been supported by the Hong Kong government. Blockchain application research methods.
