Three questions about blockchain (economic hot spots)
In recent times, news about Bitcoin has been very eye-catching, and blockchain has also become popular. In the capital market, the stock prices of various blockchain concept stocks rise and fall like a thrilling roller coaster. It can be seen from the responsive capital market that blockchain is on the forefront and has received great attention from all parties.
What is blockchain?
A decentralized distributed ledger database. There is no center. Each node of data storage will replicate the entire ledger synchronously. The information is transparent and difficult to tamper with.
In recent years, more and more More and more institutions are beginning to pay attention to and participate in blockchain technology research and development. From the original Bitcoin and Ethereum to various types of blockchain startups, venture capital funds, and financial institutions, if they are labeled as "blockchain", they will immediately become "golden". Not only that, many people’s WeChat Moments have also been flooded with various articles explaining blockchain.
So, what exactly is blockchain?
The "China Blockchain Technology and Application Development White Paper 2016" issued under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology explains: Broadly speaking, blockchain technology uses block chain data structures to verify and store data, and uses distributed A new distributed infrastructure and computing that uses node recognition algorithms to generate and update data, uses cryptography to ensure the security of data transmission and access, and uses smart contracts composed of automated script codes to program and operate data. paradigm.
He Fei, a senior researcher at the Bank of Communications Financial Research Center, gave a popular explanation: "Simply put, blockchain is a decentralized distributed ledger database." Decentralization is different from traditional centers. The way of digitalization is different. There is no center, or everyone is the center; the distributed ledger database means that the recording method is not only to store the ledger data in each node, but also that each node will synchronize and share the entire copy. Ledger data. At the same time, blockchain also has the characteristics of disintermediation and information transparency.
“Blockchain technology is essentially a database technology, specifically a ledger technology. The ledger records one or more account asset changes and transactions, and is actually a database with the simplest structure. "The running accounts we usually write down in small notebooks and the statements sent by the bank are all typical account books." Wang Jun, chief researcher of Tencent Financial Technology Think Tank, said that security is a major feature of blockchain technology, which is mainly reflected in two aspects. Aspects: First, the distributed storage architecture. The more nodes there are, the higher the security of data storage; second, its tamper-proof and decentralized ingenious design makes it difficult for anyone to modify the data without following the rules.
Take online shopping transactions as an example. The traditional model is that the buyer purchases the goods and then transfers the money to the intermediary platform of a third-party payment institution. After the seller ships the goods and the buyer confirms receipt, the buyer will then notify the payment The institution transfers the money to the seller's account. The transaction model supported by blockchain technology is different. Buyers and sellers can trade directly without going through any intermediary platform. After the buyer and seller trade, the system releases the transaction information through broadcast. All hosts that receive the information record the transaction after confirming that the information is correct, which is equivalent to all hosts making data backups for this transaction. Even if there is a problem with a certain machine in the future, it will not affect the data recording, because there are countless machines as backup.
When it comes to blockchain, many people associate it with Bitcoin, and many people even equate blockchain with Bitcoin. He Fei said that Bitcoin is a presentation method of blockchain, but blockchain is not the same as Bitcoin. Blockchain is the underlying technology and infrastructure of Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is a successful application of blockchain, but it does not mean that blockchain can only be applied to Bitcoin.
What is the use of blockchain?
It can solve the pain points and difficulties in many fields such as finance, public welfare, supervision, and anti-counterfeiting, but there are many applicable conditions
Financial services are the first application field of blockchain technology. The use of blockchain technology can solve pain points in many fields such as payment, asset management, and securities.
Take the payment field as an example. The cost of reconciliation, clearing and settlement between financial institutions, especially cross-border financial institutions, is high and involves many manual processes, which not only leads to problems on the user end and the backend business end of financial institutions. The high fees also make it difficult to carry out micropayment business. The application of blockchain technology can help reduce the cost of reconciliation and dispute resolution between financial institutions, and significantly improve the processing efficiency of payment services. In addition, the cost and efficiency advantages that blockchain technology brings to the payment field enable financial institutions to better handle small-amount cross-border payments that were previously considered unrealistic due to high costs, helping to achieve inclusive finance.
For example, in order to solve the problem of high reconciliation costs among financial institutions, in August 2016, WeBank and Shanghai Huarui Bank launched the Weilidai inter-institution reconciliation platform, which is also the first in production in China. Banking industry consortium chain application scenarios running in the environment. Kaixiang Zhang, chief architect of WeBank’s blockchain, believes that the high cost problem that the traditional “batch file reconciliation” model has not been able to solve for a long time is where blockchain technology comes in. Subsequently, Luoyang Bank and Changsha Bank also successively connected to the inter-institution reconciliation platform, and used blockchain technology to optimize the inter-institution reconciliation process in the micro-loan business, achieving quasi-real-time reconciliation, improving operational efficiency, reducing operating costs, etc. Target.
Up to now, the platform has been running stably for more than a year, maintaining zero failures, and the number of real transactions recorded has reached tens of millions.
In the field of public welfare, blockchain technology also has great potential. Ant Financial's first application scenario involving blockchain was public welfare, helping a group of hearing-impaired children obtain a donation, and then using blockchain technology to promote public welfare to be more open and transparent. Hu Danqing, senior product expert at Ant Financial Technology Lab, said: "The blockchain public welfare platform is like us building a post office on the Internet specifically for mailing funds. Every money donated by users, we will package it into a The package is delivered through the blockchain platform. Every time it passes through a node, we will stamp it with a postmark and finally deliver it to the recipient. This ensures that every money donated by users is transparent, traceable, and difficult to tamper with. ”
Blockchain technology can play a big role in combating counterfeit goods. Hu Danqing introduced that Ant Financial uses blockchain technology to trace the origin of authentic products. At present, there are some overseas shopping products from Australia and New Zealand, such as milk powder. You can use Alipay to scan the products to know whether they are genuine. "Unlike the previous self-entered product information by merchants, blockchain allows multiple 'bookkeepers' to complete accounting fairly, independently, and non-repudiation."
For financial supervision, blockchain Technology can also play a role. The "Financial Blockchain Underlying Platform FISCO BCOS White Paper" released by the Financial Blockchain Cooperation Alliance (Shenzhen) in 2017 believes that blockchain provides financial regulatory agencies with consistent and easy-to-audit data. Data analysis can supervise financial businesses faster and more accurately than traditional audit processes. For example, in an anti-money laundering scenario, the balance and transaction records of each account are traceable, and no aspect of any transaction will be out of sight of supervision, which will greatly enhance anti-money laundering efforts.
Some people in the industry believe that blockchain 1.0 is mainly aimed at digital currency; blockchain 2.0 is aimed at smart contracts and can be applied in the financial market; blockchain 3.0 will be applicable to more scenarios, and even Create a "blockchain era".
He Fei believes that blockchain can indeed solve the pain points and difficulties in many fields, but blockchain is not a panacea and has many applicable conditions.
For example, the decentralized nature of blockchain technology is suitable for scenarios involving multi-party participation. If it is only unilateral or bilateral participation, it will be of little value. Since each node needs to be checked, blockchain technology is not suitable for high-frequency trading activities.
For another example, blockchain emphasizes openness and transparency and is not suitable for scenarios with particularly high data privacy requirements.
Will blockchain become a new trend?
The technology is not very mature yet, so we must be wary of concept hype, and we must distinguish between technological innovation and fund-raising innovation. We cannot use blockchain for the sake of blockchain
The concept of blockchain is so Will Fire become another “Internet+” in the future?
In recent years, the development ecosystem of blockchain has gradually been improved and enriched. Industry insiders believe that with national policy support, widespread attention and financial support, blockchain technology can achieve gradual and stable progress. Although the upside prospects of blockchain technology are broad, we must remain calm about this.
“Although blockchain is currently very popular, we still believe that it is still in a very early stage.” Hu Danqing said that there is currently false enthusiasm in the blockchain concept, and it is not that the technology is used to solve the problem. The real problem is that the focus is on raising funds to make money and hyping valuations. In particular, most of the so-called ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) that are so popular are innovations in fundraising tools and have nothing to do with technological innovation.
Blockchain technology can indeed create great value, but some risks cannot be ignored.
“Blockchain technology is not yet mature, and its application scenarios are relatively limited. We should be more wary of the concept of capital market speculation.” He Fei said that behind the blockchain boom, there will inevitably be some gimmicks and speculation. Companies that do not really carry out business, but just try to make a profit in the capital market and leave. We must be careful to prevent the occurrence of "bad money driving out good money", causing institutions that really want to do business to withdraw from the market, affecting the development of blockchain technology. application.
Hu Danqing suggested that for the current blockchain craze, regulatory authorities should intervene more proactively, distinguish between technological innovation and fund-raising innovation, and encourage government organizations, credible experts, and industry participants*** At the same time, it helps the public to identify and comprehensively curb the innovation of fund-raising in the name of blockchain, so that the actual controller of ICO must bear responsibility for the fund-raising behavior. "The basis for judging whether it is technological innovation or fund-raising innovation is actually very clear, that is, whether it starts with trust and whether it creates actual value by solving the trust problem."
Better promotion and use of blockchain technology in the future , it is necessary to continue to improve infrastructure and strengthen the formulation of relevant laws and policies.
Wang Jun believes that there is still room for optimization and improvement in the core technologies of the blockchain such as the encryption algorithm; on the other hand, the processing efficiency of the blockchain is still difficult to reach some high-frequency applications in reality. application environment requirements. At present, the mainstream blockchain technology platforms all originated from abroad. Domestic blockchain technology service providers must patiently start from the bottom development, achieve independent and controllable technology, and strive to lead the development of global blockchain technology. Enterprises with blockchain application scenarios must actively embrace new things and scientifically evaluate their on-chain needs. They cannot use blockchain for the sake of blockchain.
He Fei believes that the government can introduce relevant policies to guide companies interested in participating in the research and development and application of blockchain technology, and at the same time clarify some suitable application scenarios of blockchain and areas encouraged by the state.
The "China Blockchain Technology and Application Development White Paper 2016" recommends that government departments at all levels learn from the advanced practices of developed countries and regions and combine the development of my country's blockchain technology and applications to promptly introduce blockchain Technology and industrial development support policies focus on supporting key technology research, major demonstration projects, "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" platform construction, system solution research and development, and public service platform construction. At the same time, it is recommended that key domestic enterprises, scientific research, universities and user units strengthen cooperation to speed up research on core key technologies such as security mechanisms, programmable contracts, distributed storage, and digital signatures.
If it can bring money to the enterprise, it will become a hot topic.