Produced | Odaily (ID: o-daily)

Produced | Odaily (ID: o-daily)

From 5G to blockchain, technology is the biggest trump card on China's way to break through.

Entering 2020, my country's economic and social development is facing new requirements. Today's China is accelerating its pursuit of global leadership in key technologies, and China has not missed almost every deployment of new technologies.

According to the Wall Street Journal, China plans to inject $1.4 trillion into the economy by 2025 through the deployment of everything from wireless networks to artificial intelligence.

As one of the important technologies of the new infrastructure, the blockchain was mentioned as an important national strategic position last year, empowering China's technological road. Because blockchain has the potential to subvert existing technologies and business collaboration models and become a new bottom layer of the Internet, countries have launched an "arms race" in the process of competing for the throne of standards.

In 2019, led by the State Information Center, China Mobile, China UnionPay, and Jujube Technology jointly launched the Blockchain Service Network (BSN). This move was once interpreted by overseas media as a signal for the official entry of the Chinese national team.

A few days ago, BSN spread new news again, not only splitting BSN International and BSN China, but also naming and integrating six major public chains such as Ethereum, EOS, and Nervos for the first time. Currently, developers of the six major public chain platforms can use BSN’s overseas data Central data storage and bandwidth to build DApp.

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New battle in the blockchain arena: service developers

For a long time in the past, the industry likes to compare the blockchain to the Internet in the 1990s. Part of the reason is that the ecosystems of alliance chains and public chains that used to be diverse and diverse are like local area networks in those days.

However, if the local area network cannot be connected into the Internet, the data and ecology will always be isolated, and the business that developers can realize on the chain is also very limited.

Today's blockchain is facing the same problem: on the one hand, the blockchain needs to implement more large-scale applications; on the other hand, facing a wide variety of blockchain markets, there is no infrastructure service provider yet. It can "unify the rivers and lakes" and help developers solve the problems of building and maintaining nodes. The barriers to use, maintenance costs, and fragmented on-chain ecology all make developers stay away from the blockchain.

Therefore, in the 2020 blockchain landing competition, the bottom layer and middleware have identified the key direction-service developers. Only by serving developers well can we build more blockchain applications and promote the implementation of blockchain in more scenarios.

BSN, which has always been regarded as the representative of the Chinese national team by overseas markets, is building a blockchain public infrastructure environment against the Internet. The ecology of BSN is more like Taobao than JD.com, which provides a platform for third parties to come to the platform to tell their own application stories.

Specifically, BSN has achieved two things: one is to establish an interconnected environment to allow data exchange between different chains; the other is to lower the cost and usage threshold so that more developers can use the zone "regardless of cost". blockchain.

With these two points, BSN has the opportunity to become the entrance for SME developers to experience blockchain, use blockchain and promote blockchain.

So how does BSN meet the needs of developers?

First of all, BSN provides developers with one-stop blockchain deployment and operation services including cloud resources, underlying framework, operating environment, key management, development SDK and gateway API. Developers can choose any BSN portal (public city node) nearby or on demand to easily deploy and run blockchain and distributed ledger applications.

According to official data, as of April this year, BSN has deployed 128 public city nodes, of which 76 Chinese nodes have entered the network, 44 are under construction, and 8 overseas nodes. Cloud service providers include China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, AWS, Baidu Cloud, and Azure.

Secondly, on public city nodes, application publishers and users can use unified identity certificates to publish and manage an unlimited number of blockchain applications, eliminating the need to build independent blockchain operating environments for different applications. Based on the characteristics of BSN, regardless of whether the underlying layer of the application is heterogeneous or not, all applications on the BSN can interact with data, bringing developers a high-quality experience similar to the rapid construction of websites on the Internet and efficient interconnection.

Finally, in terms of cost, according to public introduction materials, the cost for developers to operate through BSN is only 20% of traditional blockchain cloud services. Through BSN, a decentralized application only needs 2000-3000 RMB per year to run.

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Integrate six public chains, expand business, and achieve win-win results

For an infrastructure service provider like BSN, in order to better serve developers, it is necessary to meet the diverse needs of developers for the underlying framework.

In fact, in terms of serving the needs of developers, BSN has moved from focusing on alliance chains to open and integrated public chains.

When it was first released for commercial use in April this year, BSN only announced the integration of Hyperledger Fabric, FISCO BCOS, Baidu super chain XuperChain, CITA and other alliance chain frameworks.

In the commercial run-in with the alliance chain, BSN teamed up with the developers of the alliance chain to make many interesting applications, such as the CITA parking alliance chain jointly launched by Ningbo Mobile and Xita Technology, a leading domestic blockchain network service provider. A new generation of smart parking lot system based on blockchain and 5G technology. At the end of the chain, the parking lot flow data will be stored on the CITA parking alliance chain deployed on the BSN at the same time, while improving the credibility of the data. Realize self-certification.

At the end of July this year, BSN officially announced that it will integrate the six major public chains of Nervos, Tezos, NEO, EOS, IRISnet and Ethereum to expand its global business. This news has attracted attention in overseas markets, because this integration allows developers of the six major public chains to build dApps and run nodes directly through the data storage and bandwidth of the BSN overseas data center.

In terms of technical implementation, Nervos founder Lu Guoning explained to Odaily how the public chain can access the BSN network:

First of all, BSN provides a set of node access standards based on BSN, and each public chain adapts according to the BSN standard. With the adaptation solution, the public chain can run its own nodes in the BSN environment, and then provide services to developers through BSN.

Unlike the industry alliance chain that focuses on scenarios and compliance, the public chain has a broader market. Integrating the public chain also indicates BSN's ambition - business expansion.

As the basic service provider of the blockchain, BSN wants to get more developers and users, it must support as many underlying blockchain frameworks as possible. Lower fees and richer services are the key for BSN to harvest the market.

In addition to providing technical cooperation, the public chain will also help BSN find blockchain developer groups more quickly and accurately. For BSN, it also means that it will be able to serve more and larger users.

From the demand side analysis, developers on the public chain also have the need to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

For example, as a blockchain entry wallet, the product attributes of the wallet require developers to support assets of multiple different chains, which requires wallet developers to maintain multiple chains by themselves and follow the official teams of different chains to upgrade. Since wallets on the market have common maintenance requirements for chain nodes, it is entirely possible to use an infrastructure service to help wallet developers omit these troublesome node management and maintenance steps.

Of course, in addition to saving long-term costs such as servers and operation teams, developers who want to maintain a node by themselves must also work closely with the public chain development team. Usually, only after gaining the experience and support of the public chain development team can they reduce the cost. Take a detour.

Now the public chain team is working closely with BSN's technical team. The public chain side gives the best solution to BSN, and BSN uses the most mature solution to help developers operate nodes well.

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Why are these six public chains the first batch?

From the perspective of BSN, it should spare no effort to support more chains, so as to gain more developers. Then the first batch of official announcements only support the six major public chains of Nervos, Tezos, NEO, EOS, IRISnet and Ethereum. What is behind the choice? standard?

According to Odaily’s analysis, for BSN, the selection of the first batch of public chain partners not only takes into account the popularity, but also deeply examines the community advantages and development prospects of each public chain.

For example, Ethereum and EOS are the leading public chains with the largest number of applications in the current blockchain track, with a large number of developer needs; NEO is an old Chinese public chain, and the domestic and foreign communities are relatively popular; IRISnet It is a self-evolving BPoS cross-chain service hub that supports seamless integration between public chains, alliance chains, and traditional business systems. It has more experience in cross-heterogeneous network interconnection and cross-chain calls; The PoW chain, which is benchmarked against Ethereum, is characterized by its self-correction mechanism; the PoW public chain Nervos has better inclusiveness and security, and has obvious technical advantages.

Take Nervos as an example and expand further.

Nervos' unique layered architecture is its core competitiveness that differentiates it from the other five major public chains. In fact, the architectural design of Nervos is a very unique public chain system in the entire market. Its layered architecture allows developers to provide unlimited expansion of Layer 2 without any compromise on security.

Specifically, Nervos Layer 1 is a basic public chain without permission, designed with PoW consensus algorithm to meet on-chain verification and security; and combining this bottom layer with a variety of application layers focusing on performance, privacy, etc., Provides more diverse scalability for DApp and Layer2 solutions.

When asked about the advantages of Nervos, Lu Guoning also said that Nervos has a higher acceptance of new things and covers a wider range of applications.

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After accessing the public chain, what can we expect in the future of BSN?

After integrating the above powerful public chains, what kind of future will BSN have?

Grab the right to speak in blockchain standards

Whether it is the central bank's digital currency plans launched by various countries one after another, or the giants riding the wind and waves on the blockchain track, they all reflect an indisputable fact-blockchain is the ticket for the next era.

You must know that the blockchain track is still growing wildly. The project parties of various public chains and alliance chains are currently developing according to their own standards, and there is no unified standard yet. With the acceleration of blockchain standardization, countries are vying for the right to set standards.

Lu Guoning once pointed out in a media interview that BSN can provide customized infrastructure services for blockchain developers. Essentially, blockchain companies use BSN’s standardized Internet services instead of adjusting their own technical frameworks to use these Serve.

Lu Guoning gave an example to Odaily for further analysis. Identity protocols such as DID are independent of the blockchain. There are many DID protocols on the market, but each service is not a standard protocol.

"This is because it is difficult for any project party to introduce a general standard to be accepted by other project parties. In the current domestic blockchain industry, if you want to quickly promote the development of the industry and the industry, you need to have a common standard that everyone is convinced." , Organizations that are willing to cooperate come out to play the role of 'alliance big brother'." Lu Guoning said.

The BSN happens to be just such a Big Brother role. When BSN-based blockchain infrastructure services are more and more widely used, the BSN protocol will become the de facto "standard" more easily. When more users and a more scalable ecology are acquired, more and more project parties will be driven to follow up on this standard. Therefore, BSN may be the best subject to promote protocol standardization.

Connectors for permissioned and permissionless chains

The characteristics of data interconnection based on BSN, the link between permission chain and non-permission chain, will become another highlight in the future BSN ecology.

The interaction, value transfer and message transmission on the permissioned chain and the non-permissioned chain are often considered difficult to achieve mutual trust, because the trust of the permissioned chain does not come from cryptography and game theory, but from the trust subject of the alliance .

Lu Guoning analyzed for Odaily that currently, BSN supports both permissioned chains and non-permissioned chains. In the future, BSN can introduce a set of common cross-chain standards for value transmission to facilitate the intercommunication between chains.

"For example, between two licensed chains, you can choose to issue all its assets on the public chain, then lock them on the public chain, and then map the assets on the public chain to the business side. Use the public chain for liquidation. This direction is very Interesting, and it will definitely come." Lu Guoning said, "For example, how does the modern financial system combine with the decentralized financial system of the blockchain? Under the BSN scheme, can decentralized assets be obtained? Assets are mortgaged on a centralized financial platform, is it possible for decentralized financial assets to obtain corresponding financial services? As an intermediate bridge, BSN can create bridging opportunities for the community of the alliance chain and the public chain, and connect the users of the public chain and the users of the alliance chain The users are all brought together, and then the services are pinched together and transformed into each other."

Help the public chain to create a community ecology

Maybe one day in the future, BSN can abstract away the underlying framework brand, and developers don't even need to care about who the public chain behind it is. So, for the public chain team, is it really willing to be "incorporated" by BSN?

In fact, the public chain team will also benefit from joining hands with BSN. It can be expected that BSN can help the public chain to expand the user base of institutional developers and increase the liquidity and application scenarios of the public chain, which is conducive to the development of the public chain. The ecology and community are further prosperous.

Lu Guoning believes that whether it is the BSN or the Nervos public chain, the purpose is to better serve developers. For the current public chain, both users and developers are crucial.

"The purpose of BSN is to establish a global infrastructure network for low-cost deployment and operation of various blockchain applications, which is in line with Nervos' needs for the underlying infrastructure layer. From the perspective of the Nervos public chain, it can take advantage of the BSN The high-reliability and low-cost node deployment and operation scheme will undoubtedly greatly promote the entire community and ecology." Lu Guoning said.

Previously, Nervos also set up a $30 million Nervos Grants program to fund infrastructure development teams on Nervos; in May this year, Nervos also launched the cklabs program, allowing many development teams who want to do application projects on Nervos to enter CKlabs. in the virtual incubator.

It is understood that in addition to technical integration cooperation, BSN and Nervos will also cooperate in digital identity, common access layer standards, and cross-chain collaboration in the future.

BSN, after integrating the six major public chains and splitting into two major businesses of BSN International and BSN China, has embarked on the road of Chinese blockchain products going overseas. This also makes us expect more that China will have more say in the future blockchain international standards.