Doing bad things can’t be erased. Blockchain is too expensive, too real, and too difficult to manage?
- Blockchain, from the proposal of a digital concept, to the derivation of digital currency, and to today’s countries all over the world seizing the field of innovation and technology, in just 30 years, but the turmoil it has caused worldwide is no less than industrial Revolution and the Internet revolution.
- Can blockchain really change the world like the Internet? How far is this day from us?
- Blockchain is too expensive for ordinary people to consume. The blockchain is too real, "Li Kui" can't beat "Li Gui". Blockchain is too difficult to manage, how to manage a decentralized technology?
In October 2019, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized when presiding over the collective study of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee that "blockchain should be used as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies, and the development of blockchain technology and industrial innovation should be accelerated." Blockchain is rapidly gaining popularity in the country. Just like "on the cloud", "on the chain" is becoming the choice of more and more industries.
In "Linking the Future-Pujiang Innovation Forum Blockchain Development Special Forum", the industry tried to stand at the forefront of the blockchain world and continue to look forward.
01
Blockchain is "too expensive"
"Any scenarios where multi-party participation and trust is essential can be empowered by blockchain. If blockchain technology is used in these fields, blockchain can change the world. This is what we see in the future. Blockchain world." said Long Fan, dean of Shanghai Treemap Blockchain Research Institute and professor at the University of Toronto.
In the eyes of this leading scientist in China's blockchain technology, although most people in the industry believe in this vision and work hard for it, the public's attention to blockchain is still more focused on Bitcoin.
"In the eyes of the general public, the blockchain is more like Las Vegas. Everyone regards it as an airport, and they are more concerned about the rise and fall of virtual assets. This is a pretty sad thing." The reason for blockchain technology There is still a huge gap between empowering the whole society. Long Fan believes that there are two main reasons, one is the performance bottleneck, and the other is to reconstruct the social consensus.
"We need to slow down the block generation speed of the blockchain, which will cause the capacity of the entire blockchain to be limited. Everyone has to use the platform for transactions. The use of limited existing blockchains is very expensive.
This raises a question. Can ordinary consumers afford blockchain applications that are close to the real economy and real life? "
For example, Long Fan said, “For example, to deal with the problem of getting familiar with the online car-hailing platform, part of the logic of the online car-hailing platform can be deployed on the blockchain to make it more fair, but an order must at least be positioned with the blockchain. , Make a reservation for a vehicle, and pay for three interactions. If you deploy to Ethereum, it costs at least 45-50 US dollars. This money can be used to take a taxi around the city in Shanghai."
At the same time, according to the "Impossible Triangle" of blockchain technology (transaction processing performance, decentralization, security), improving transaction processing performance will inevitably sacrifice both decentralization and security. This is also not what users want to see of.
The development and realization of a higher-performance blockchain consensus mechanism has become the key to breaking through the performance bottleneck.
In October 2020, a new generation of tree map public chain will be launched. Due to the tree map structure, concurrent blocks will not affect security, so concurrent blocks can be effectively used and the confirmation time is very short. From the perspective of the number of nodes, the tree graph blockchain is already the third largest public chain in the world.
02
"Li Kui" wants to defeat "Li Gui"
If the performance problem can be solved by technology, then the social consensus problem is the key to the reconstruction of social relations beyond technology.
"It takes time to promote the real blockchain technology. Sometimes what everyone wants is not the real blockchain, but the blockchain label. At this time, Li Kui can't beat Li Gui." Long Fan introduced him. A colleague once encountered a real case. After the blockchain was applied in the government and enterprise fields, although the problem of transparency in management was solved, the managers also found that they were also "transparent", and some of the original irregular operations were also exposed. .
"Everyone has an illusion that the blockchain is too terrible and cannot be tampered with. In fact, it is not. You can deploy it, but the logic of the blockchain system determines that your modifications must leave traces." Long Fan said.
Long Fan believes that in order to overcome the social consensus problem, more people need to understand the nature of the blockchain. At the same time, they also need to realize that the application of the blockchain is a scenario that benefits most people. It just puts a curse on a few people, because The entire rule will definitely become more transparent and fairer.
03
Clarify the real world
The border with the blockchain world
Supervision is the cornerstone of ensuring the healthy development of the blockchain industry and ecology.
Recently, the "blockchain" key special project was included in the "14th Five-Year" national key research and development plan, which specifically mentioned "strengthening blockchain supervision and governance technology research."
Several live speakers at the Pujiang Innovation Forum all pointed out that one of the focuses of the future development of blockchain is to strengthen supervision.
"We have to explore the innovative development path of the blockchain of'strong trust + strong supervision'. The development of the blockchain must be under the principle of strong supervision. Whether it is a blockchain enterprise or a blockchain application, it must be active Embrace supervision." said Si Xueming, chief scientist of the Blockchain Research Center of Shanghai Jiaotong University and director of the Blockchain Committee of the China Computer Society.
But as a decentralized technology, blockchain supervision is naturally a complicated subject.
"Domestic blockchain supervision started late, capacity building is relatively lagging, and it is difficult to meet the needs of application landing. The platform has developed a lot, and the technology of supervision can be improved. Supervision theory comes from practice." Si Xueming said, supervision It will definitely have an impact on system performance, security, and privacy protection. How to effectively monitor and minimize the impact is a problem that needs to be considered as a whole. "I think the core of solving the problem lies in theoretical and technological innovation. Innovation in system architecture, core technology, and platform design."
Long Fan said that supervision must first fully understand the nature of technology. He hopes that supervision can purify the blockchain industry and guide the development of blockchain technology in a good way.
Long Fan proposed that the most convenient way to supervise is to deploy the system on the boundary between the real world and the blockchain world. "The bad side of the blockchain world will affect the real world. If you can first understand the blockchain world and reality The mapping of the world is to figure out who is behind the account and what is the entity corresponding to the blockchain asset. When the mapping is figured out, supervision on the border can get twice the result with half the effort.”
"All transactions on the blockchain are transparent. One person can do bad things on the blockchain, and no one can erase it. Big data analysis technology can be used to realize real-name analysis of the mechanism on the chain. Based on a certain amount of data, an accuracy rate of 95% can be achieved." Long Fan said that Silicon Valley is already doing similar things to help the U.S. Taxation Office check taxes.