Exclusive report On May 28, the Blockchain Technology Development Forum (GBF) with the theme of "Technological Innovation and Integration" was held at the Guiyang International Ecological Conference Center.

The 2019 Global Blockchain Technology Development Forum (GBF) is hosted by the Organizing Committee of the 2019 China International Big Data Expo, organized by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, and co-organized by Teleinfo and Odaily.

At the forum, Wang Menghan, product leader and senior product director of Ping An Financial's OneConnect blockchain team, delivered a speech on the theme of "Blockchain from concept to large-scale production".

She said that there are currently three major bottlenecks encountered in the implementation of blockchain applications: data privacy issues, system dominance disputes, and performance dilemmas.

In response to data privacy issues, OneConnect chose to encrypt and upload all data, and made two technological innovations at the same time: field-level authorized encryption and decryption, and 3D zero-knowledge proof. Encrypted uploaded data will be less efficient if it cannot be used. Field-level authorized encryption and decryption can make specific fields visible to specific people and ensure authenticity. 3D zero-knowledge proof can do it. Data is calculated under encryption, and all relational verification of the calculation results can be performed under ciphertext, with a delay of within 3.5 milliseconds.

In terms of system dominance, Wang Menghan said that what Ping An is doing is a network, which is only responsible for connecting all parties. At the same time, enterprises can deploy all nodes locally to ensure their own dominance over data.

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Hello everyone, I am Wang Menghan, from the blockchain team of Ping An Financial OneConnect. Ping An OneConnect is one of the 32 subsidiaries of Ping An Group, and Financial OneConnect is a carrier representing Ping An Group's technology export.

I am from the blockchain team, let me introduce to you.

Our next content is mainly divided into two parts, the first is the technology of Ping An blockchain, and the second is the application of Ping An blockchain.

It has been 11 years since we published our first paper in 2008. Whether it is BATJ or Ping An, all major technology companies are laying out the blockchain, and there are hundreds of startups, large and small. , Thousands, so many people are deeply involved in this field, but if you think about it carefully, are there many scenarios where the blockchain can generate value and be applied on a large scale? In fact, there are only a handful of them.

During our many years of application and market expansion of the Ping An blockchain, we have concluded the following three reasons that hinder the large-scale application of the blockchain: data privacy issues, system dominance disputes, and performance dilemmas.

Privacy protection mainly means that your data is actually the lifeblood of an enterprise, why should I share it with others? Blockchain is a shared ledger, which involves privacy. This is the first one.

The second is who will build the system, and who owns or takes the lead in the system.

The third question is whether the performance can really be applied to real financial-level and enterprise-level applications.

Let's talk about why we think privacy is the first problem that needs to be solved.

It is because most commercial-level and enterprise-level applications now use alliance chains, which must be used in a specific business scenario.

That involves a problem: the participating companies are either cooperative or more competitive. How to bring competing companies together and let them share the same ledger? In fact, it is a difficult problem to solve.

We have cooperated with 12 large banks established by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to build a cross-border trade financing network. It is very difficult to pull 12 banks into this network. Because those big banks, including Standard Chartered, HSBC, etc., actually have a very complete mechanism for the privacy protection of their own data and the ownership of customer data. Therefore, in the era of big data, even if you are not a competitive relationship, you are a company without any relationship, I don’t want to say that I will contribute my data to you. Everyone is very taboo about protecting their privacy. .

So what does Ping An blockchain do? The Ping An blockchain has done something that seems relatively extreme in the technical field-we upload all the data, and all the data in the Ping An blockchain is encrypted and uploaded. All data is encrypted, instead of saying that I can choose to encrypt some and not to encrypt, all our data is encrypted.

At the same time, we have also made two technological innovations: field-level authorized encryption and decryption, and 3D zero-knowledge proof.

If the encrypted data cannot be used, it is a string of garbled characters, or something that cannot be understood by everyone is placed on the chain, wouldn't that create a larger island of data or make it even less usable by everyone?

We have made a cutting-edge cryptography solution called field-level authorized encryption and decryption. For example, in a cross-border trade blockchain led by the General Administration of Customs of China, this project was implemented in the Tianjin Port Office. At that time, we put all the blockchain Participants in cross-border trade on the Internet choose 16 themes, all of which are uploaded to the chain.

At that time, for example, a foreign export company wanted to send my goods to China. He would find his carrier or freight forwarder, and find these logistics companies to deliver the goods to China. At this time, there will be a problem: should I provide all my contracts, the unit price and total amount on the invoice to the logistics party?

Others they don't want to, but there is no way to solve it. This problem can be solved by using blockchain technology. How to deal with it? I can hide the unit price information and total amount information at the field level, and I only tell him what my quantity is, because you are only responsible for the transmission of my logistics information. So you just need to know what you should know, and I will show all other things you shouldn't know in the form of ciphertext. At the same time, it must be true.

Zero-knowledge proof is the verification of your data without decrypting it. Ping An blockchain made a 3D zero-knowledge proof, what is this concept?

Zero-knowledge proof is in one ledger, what if I have multiple ledgers? If trade ledgers, logistics ledgers, and enterprises may not yet have their ERP ledgers, how can these data be linked between these ledgers? How to apply it in the case of ciphertext?

Our 3D zero-knowledge ledger is not only encrypted by me, but also can be calculated under encrypted conditions. At the same time, the results of the calculation can also be checked for the relationship, that is, greater than, less than, Equal to, all relationship checks can still be verified in the case of ciphertext. At the same time, after completing all the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, my performance is less than 3.5 milliseconds, so my performance is at a usable level.

Of course, Zcash, another company in the world that can compete with our technology, is mainly engaged in cryptocurrency. His delay performance is at the minute level, what is this concept? For 3 milliseconds and minutes, to put it simply, one is available, one is a concept, and the other is not available. This is the issue of digital privacy protection.

The second is the issue of data dominance.

Everyone knows that traditional platforms, or making a large-scale application system, are done by some big companies. For example, do you use Baidu, Ant, Tencent, or Ping An for your blockchain system?

In fact, everyone is standing on their own hills, why is this happening? Because these platforms or applications, in the case of asymmetry or unequal information, I will have a lot of benefits. If I dominate this platform, I will get this benefit.

If you use his platform, or if you use the platform of a big company, your data will become his data.

I may give an example that is not particularly appropriate for everyone to understand. For example, if I went to an e-commerce platform to buy something from Uniqlo, I became a customer of Uniqlo, but Uniqlo registered on this e-commerce platform, did Uniqlo’s customers become customers of this e-commerce platform again? ?

If it is for any enterprise, why should I contribute my customers to you? Any company will have this plan. So, who will dominate this blockchain network?

We put forward another concept: we always say Ping An blockchain, what we do is not a platform, but a network. How do you understand this? That is, Ping An is not as simple as collecting data, or pulling everyone together to make an application. Rather, your application is your application. The Ping An blockchain only does one thing, that is, I link everyone together and let data flow. All my nodes are deployed locally or I will encrypt you with all encryption technologies, and your data will not be seen by anyone except you. This is an innovation and application of our technology.

At the same time, we work in the Hong Kong Regulatory Authority or Tianjin Port, and cooperate with some government financial background enterprises to implement the application, so we will also have a very complete blockchain alliance governance structure and relatively rich construction experience. This is a question of system dominance.

The last question may be more technical, that is, the throughput and latency of my system.

How to understand this? In the blockchain, for example, if 1000 transactions are packaged, and then the transaction and consensus are done, the throughput may increase, but when I apply it to some low-frequency enterprises, my performance will definitely drop. Performance and throughput are also incompatible.

We propose a concept called smart block, what is the concept of smart block? Any transaction can be packaged at any time, or any number of transactions can be packaged for you at any time, no longer limited by the number of transactions and time, and can be quickly applied.

We can give you a piece of data. We also said before that it is quite irresponsible to only talk about performance without clearly explaining the test hardware environment or network environment. Because you are running on a PC, you are still running on a server. In fact, the performance gap is huge. In our 2.3Ghz 8-core CPU national secret environment, the average TPS is greater than 1000, and the delay is less than 0.001s. This is one of our delays.

In addition to the above three bottlenecks - the core advantages of Ping An blockchain: full encryption framework, 3D zero-knowledge proof, and smart blocks - there is the last problem is CA certification.

Now you can guarantee that the data you upload to the chain is private, and the data you upload to the chain belongs to you, but can you guarantee that this behavior happened by yourself, or that your identity must be you? This involves a problem, that is, the authentication of identity - the specification of CA.

There is a cryptography team behind us, a team that is still in the confidentiality period and is restricted from going abroad. It is very expert in this domestic CA certification and the encryption algorithm of the blockchain. He helped us create a set of CA standard system of the National Bureau of Secrets, which realizes that in terms of security, it must be able to prove that the behavior happened by you, and your data must be your data. This is the biggest difference between Ping An blockchain and others.

After talking about technology, in what areas does Ping An have applications?

Everyone knows that Ping An has a lot of sectors. We have 32 subsidiaries and have deployed five major sectors in the blockchain industry: finance, medical care, automobiles, real estate, and smart cities.

As the bottom layer of the only blockchain of Ping An Group, we also undertake the needs of all blockchain applications of Ping An Group, including medical care, electronic medical records, drug traceability, and automobiles. Last year, we acquired Autohome and became the vehicle management office of Autohome; we have mortgages for real estate, safe and good housing; smart cities have smart environmental protection and smart transportation.

As for the financial sector, Ping An is still a company with very strong financial attributes. This project is led by the General Administration of Customs of China and is a pilot project at Tianjin Port. The General Administration of Customs launched this project on August 30, 2018 last year. We took half a year to put it on the chain. Now it is serious. A real business is running, and it is deployed in the customs production system.

In fact, everyone, I remember Mr. Deng said just now that it is a very difficult process for you to deploy your blockchain to someone else’s production link. I agree with this concept very much. We have now deployed it to the real production of the customs. During the link, the customs clearance system is already applying the verification results of our blockchain.

There are 16 participants, all import and export enterprises, and we have all the participants in the import and export trade link. If you are interested, you can pay attention to this report.

This is a project we did at the beginning of 2018 at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. At that time, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority united 12 large international banks to build a trade financing network. In 2012, a terrible financial systemic risk occurred. This case is to solve this problem and prevent double financing.

The last one is my IFAB trade finance network, which has been done in Hong Kong and Singapore, and has done the customs clearance of the entire cross-border logistics of the General Administration of Customs.

So what did you do at home? IFAB is based on our Ping An Transportation, and there are 40 city commercial banks in it. We link all these banks to our trade finance network as capital, and at the same time open up all logistics links, business flow links, transaction links, and payment information. Do multi-party verification to ensure that this must be true.

It is the biggest with the traditional supply chain finance or trade finance network, and it is also the point I mentioned just now: your data must be your data. I am not a platform, I am just a network, I am just a third party that brings everyone together, I provide a place for everyone to communicate, without any processing or control of your data.

At the same time, after we have done so many trade financing networks, we are still going out in Ping An, and we are doing it in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Europe.

In the foreseeable future, it may be the end of this year, and it may be the second half of next year that we will have a larger trade network, and everyone will hear the news.

That's all for my speech, thank you all!