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World War II and Cryptography

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Post-war cryptography masters emerge in large numbers

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Industry guru David Chaum

In 1982, David Chaum graduated from the Department of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley."For the first time, the idea of ​​blockchain was proposed. David Chaum spent the next few years diving into digital signatures, anonymous communications, and anonymous digital currencies. In 1983, he published a pioneering work on digital currency: "Numbers Can Be a Better Form of Cash than Paper". And established DigiCash company in 1989, launched the world's first strictly encrypted currency ecash, but unfortunately it was not very successful and the company went bankrupt in 1998.

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Cypherpunk--Whampoa Military Academy in the Encryption World

The purpose of Cypherpunk is to use encryption cryptography to protect personal privacy. They try to use encryption technology to allow "the country and individuals to achieve a certain balance between privacy." The manifesto of their organization was written by Eric Hughes, a genius mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. The elaboration on privacy is very trans-epochal, and some points of view are worth thinking about in our current information society:

"In an open society in the electronic age, personal privacy is a must."

"Individual privacy requires an anonymous transaction system in an open provincial capital. Until now, cash has been the main anonymous transaction system....Anonymous transaction systems enable individuals to choose whether and when to reveal their identity to the outside world. This is the basis of privacy."

"Personal privacy requires encryption technology in an open society. If I say something, only the person I am talking to can hear it. If my speech is known to the whole world, then there is no privacy."

"We cannot expect governments, corporations, and other large faceless organizations to give us privacy at the expense of their interests... If we want it, we must defend our privacy. Humans have previously used whispers, coded words, envelopes, secret rooms, mysterious Handshakes, messengers, etc., these past technologies cannot allow us to effectively protect privacy, but electronic technology is different."

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Satoshi Nakamoto and Bitcoin

Satoshi Nakamoto's creation of Bitcoin is a great initiative and the greatest practice of the blockchain so far, but the blockchain technology was not invented by him. Although David Chaum was the first to propose the blockchain prototype, the technology was immature at that time. In the 26 years since the blockchain prototype was proposed, no successful applications have been produced. Blockchain technology has matured thanks to two groups of scientists. In the 1990s, with the prevalence of computers and the Internet, digital files gradually replaced paper files. How to ensure the authenticity and reliability of digital files has become a topic for computer experts and cryptographers. In 1991, two cryptography professors, Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta, invented the Timestamp chain mechanism to ensure that digital files are authentic and cannot be tampered with. But the link is there, but how to put the file? You can't connect only one file per link. In 1992, professors Bayer, Haber and Stornetta used the Markle tree data structure proposed by Ralph Merkle in 1974 to allow a large number of files to be concentrated in one block, which solved the problem of file storage size.

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V God and Ethereum

Bitcoin is growing rapidly. It turned out to be a simple encrypted point-to-point payment system. Unexpectedly, in just 10 years, it has attracted 20 million encrypted digital currency users around the world, and the price of the currency has risen from worthless to a maximum of 18,000 US dollars. Focus and research on blockchain technology. After Bitcoin, a wide variety of encrypted digital currencies emerged, including forked coins from Bitcoin and other innovative currencies. The most notable of these is Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency.

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Stablecoins become dark horses

Bitcoin creates a super application of the "Blockchain 1.0" version, and Ethereum lays the foundation for "Blockchain 2.0". The easy-to-use and Turing-complete functions of the Ethereum smart contract, as well as the implementation of the ERC20 token standard, have allowed people from all walks of life to flock into the digital currency industry to find an extremely simple way to issue digital currency, resulting in the "Thousand Coins All Issued" "The chaos. Therefore, the chain circle (focusing on the blockchain circle) despises the phenomenon of mixed good and bad in the currency circle (digital currency circle). Also because the currency circle has not yet been standardized, the participants are still very impetuous, and there are too many variables in various technical, policy, operational, and security aspects of the digital currency itself, so the price of the digital currency fluctuates hugely, causing users to value The growing demand for stable, stable digital currencies has prompted the emergence of stablecoins.

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China's central bank joins the fray

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Libra's grand and difficult road

In June 2019, after more than a year of preparation, Facebook officially released the Libra white paper. Libra plans to create a global non-sovereign stable currency and a corresponding financial system through an alliance of 100 big-name companies and institutions, so that more than half of the world's population can easily make payments and settlements. It has so many potential users and a wide range of uses, not to mention unprecedented in the digital currency industry. Even in the existing financial world, no country or financial institution has ever reached this ambitious goal. Libra has attracted 28 big-name companies and institutions including Paypal, Visa and Master. The release of its white paper has aroused the attention of people from all walks of life around the world, and its influence far exceeds the field of digital currency. Libra has become a continuous hot topic in the financial world.

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China attaches great importance to blockchain and industrial innovation

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Briefly summarize the history of blockchain

World War II radio communication triggered the rise of cryptography and cultivated a large number of cryptography experts. After the war, a group of people joined the national security agencies and school services, developed a wide range of encryption technology and the basic theory of blockchain, and carried out The exploration of early digital currency. Another group of people pursued privacy and personal freedom, and established cypherpunk, a geek organization that uses encryption technology to protect personal privacy. In 2008, the financial turmoil induced Satoshi Nakamoto, a member of the cypherpunk organization, to launch Bitcoin to realize "Blockchain 1.0"."secondary title

Should the Nobel Prize be awarded?

Talk about whether blockchain and Bitcoin deserve a Nobel Prize.

The digital currency led by Bitcoin has undoubtedly had a profound impact on the world economy. According to the current development momentum, it is very likely that it will meet the criteria for the Nobel Prize in Economics in the near future. However, it is stipulated that the Nobel Prize can only be awarded to living real people. Although many professors want to nominate Satoshi Nakamoto because of his mysterious identity, they cannot achieve it. They can only hope that Satoshi Nakamoto will show up one day in the future.

In addition to Satoshi Nakamoto, there is another person who has contributed, that is David Chaum, who laid the foundation for the entire field of cryptography, blockchain, and digital currency. If the blockchain technology can continue to develop and produce more far-reaching applications like Bitcoin, then David Chaum has contributed a lot and is likely to meet the criteria for the Nobel Prize. However, the Nobel Prizes include physics, chemistry, economics, literature, medicine, and peace prizes, none of which involve blockchain. It can be seen that the setting of the Nobel Prize has been far behind the trend of the times. In contemporary society, new information technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain have increasingly profoundly affected human life. The Nobel Prize Committee should regain the courage to add an economics award and add an information award. I believe that high-tech companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Tencent, Ali, and Apple will scramble to donate money for the new information award. At that time, David Chaum will be able to take the Nobel Prize in Informatics as expected, or take it with Satoshi Nakamoto, if he is willing to show up.

Of course, no matter whether we win the Nobel Prize or not, we still want to thank the following people who have made outstanding contributions to technological progress. The achievements of blockchain and digital currency cannot be separated from their great innovations.

1970 James Ellis, public-key cryptography discovered at GCHQ in secret

1973 Clifford Cocks, RSA cryptosystem discovered at GCHQ in secret

1974 Ralph Merkle, cryptographic puzzles (paper published in 1978)

1976 Diffie and Hellman, public-key cryptography discovered at Stanford

1977 Rivest, Shamir, Adleman, RSA cryptosystem invented at MIT

1979 David Chaum, vaults and secret sharing (dissertation 1982)

1982 Lamport, Shostak, Pease, Byzantine Generals Problem

1991 Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta,Timestamp

1992 Bayer, Haber and Stornetta,using Merkle tree in blockchain

1992 Dworkand Naor, combating junk mail

2002 AdamBach, Hashcash

2008 Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin

2014 Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum