区块链技术的去中心化本质是去除,区块链去中心化的本质是什么

㈠ The decentralized nature of blockchain digital currency

For blockchain practitioners, if there is any word that has been heard in the past two years, , then "decentralization" can fully occupy a place in this. From being confused when I first came into contact with it, to being a mantra on my lips all the time now, the word "decentralization" went from being in the spotlight in 2018 to sweeping the world today, and it only took a year to fully calculate it. Much time. So far, the "decentralization" of various behaviors has become a political correctness in the blockchain industry.

Practitioners hate the cloud platforms of Internet giants because it makes data storage not decentralized enough. They hate the emergence of monopoly giants in the industry because it makes the industry structure not decentralized enough. Leaders, because this makes the decision-making mechanism not decentralized enough, may even hate working in one office, because it makes people's activities not decentralized enough... which makes the words and deeds of many practitioners now a little more "centralized". They will look forward and backward, fearing that they will be criticized by the outside world.

So, what exactly is “decentralization”? What is its essence?

The sinking of power: the true essence of decentralization

In fact, regarding the matter of decentralization, the author has already stated in ["Prospects of Blockchain 3.0: Are decentralized communities useless or the future? "It was once stated in the article: Decentralization is not a trend that people subjectively promote, nor is it a false proposition wantonly advocated by blockchain practitioners, but an objective and inevitable result of economic and technological development. In other words In other words, the decentralization trend of society is the result of everyone voting with their feet under the current situation, and it is not based on people's subjective will.

If you don’t believe it, let’s look back at the technological products before the blockchain industry exploded - the abundance of civilian cars has enabled more and more people to participate in what used to be only passenger transport and transportation. Among the passenger transportation services that taxi companies can only engage in, the decentralization of driving services has been achieved; a smartphone in everyone’s hand has given everyone the opportunity to record the world around them with a lens, thus achieving the decentralization of photography and video rights. ization; the Internet that extends in all directions allows every individual to have the opportunity to express his or her own voice, thereby decentralizing the right to speak; and the popularity of e-commerce platforms allows those who have the ability and intention to open a store. Opportunities to run your own business, thereby realizing the decentralization of the right to open a store...

From the above cases, it is not difficult to see that as early as with the help of the last bull market and Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin Before the currency white paper became famous, the phenomenon of “decentralization” was already everywhere. Why is there such a situation?

Regarding this point, the author has previously discussed it in ["BlockChain: The Last Internet Celebrity in the Digital World"] mentioned briefly: For individuals, the biggest benefits that digital technology and the digital economy bring to them are two points: First, some of the costs that hindered their actions in the past are concentrated in the center For example, time-sharing leasing in the sharing economy can eliminate the need for many people to carry various necessities; the second is to sink various rights and interests into the hands of individuals, such as what we mentioned above The right of car owners to transport passengers, the right of smartphone holders to take pictures, the right of Internet users to speak, and the right of goods and service providers to open stores...

In other words, no matter what The essence of decentralization actually refers to the sinking of various powers from top-level centralized institutions to grassroots individuals. As long as the development of economy and technology continues to benefit every smaller group, Or personally, this downward trend will not stop. The "decentralization" advocated by the blockchain is actually just one of the countless decentralized powers in this technological wave - that is, the right to mint money (or the right to record information). In other words, Blockchain digital currency, including Bitcoin, is not the first decentralized product, and it will definitely not be the last decentralized product.

The boundaries of freedom: any decentralization has limits**

However, we should also pay attention to one thing: although in theory, "decentralization" The ultimate goal is to sink power into everyone's hands, but in reality, since the proper use of any power is inseparable from the user's good professionalism and moral standards, from a longitudinal perspective, the power of these powers There is a bottom line for many sinking rates. From a horizontal perspective, the degree of decentralization is limited (that is, what many people often call "polycentering").

If certain powers are allowed to continue to sink vertically, that is, the industry continues to be decentralized from the front, it is likely to lead to certain uncontrollable situations, such as the well-known Passenger transportation rights (that is, online ride-hailing), this kind of power to provide passenger transportation services can only sink to the level of car owners with driver's licenses and good conduct. If this bottom line is exceeded and continues to sink, various online ride-hailing services last year The chances of violence will skyrocket.

By the way, as the saying goes, every industry is like a mountain. Since different industries have different requirements for the professionalism of power users, the maximum sinking degree of different powers is often different, and what they can tolerate The degree of decentralization also varies. For example, regarding the sinking of photography rights, since a single video itself generally does not have a great negative impact on society, even if it is not professional enough and it is shot randomly, it may be understandable. Therefore, as long as no darknet-style works are produced, let There is often no problem with this kind of power sinking into everyone's hands.

But like blockchain mintingAs for rights, if it falls into the hands of those who are not objectively competent enough or subjectively irresponsible, we will see a lot of money-trapping projects in the digital currency market. Under such circumstances, the minting power can only be transferred to those individuals or teams that are professional, marketing and ethical at most (that is, the author previously mentioned in ["Practical, Positive and Kind: One of the Most Suitable Blockchains for Ordinary People"] The three elements mentioned in the article "Road"), otherwise, the grand scene of "the city is full of air coins" in 2017 and 2018 will soon reappear in our world.

However, it is a pity that many people do not have an objective and correct understanding of "decentralization has limits". In reality, they love to go to extremes. When they first came into contact with blockchain and digital currency, they believed that the astonishing price increase of this new thing came largely from the distributed minting rights, so whenever there was any regulatory disturbance, they would shout out ideals and freedom with great resistance. slogan, as if all of them were anarchists; but after the collapse of air coins and altcoins, and their own interests were damaged, they threw down the decentralized flag they had previously waved, and cried everywhere why Master Qingtian didn't care. Take care of this lawless and barbaric land.

The swing between the two poles gives people a sense of confusion. The reason for this situation is ultimately because they do not realize: decentralization, that is, the sinking of various powers, It has limits, especially for the highly professional blockchain minting rights. The "everyone can mint money and print money" imagined by some people before can only be an ideal. If you are not aware of this objective fact, it is very likely that a funny situation will arise where "the front foot loves freedom and the back foot advocates authority."

Nonetheless, even if power cannot be decentralized without limit and decentralization cannot be too distributed, it does not mean that related initiatives are meaningless. The decentralization of minting power represented by Bitcoin and blockchain may be difficult to completely sink into the hands of every individual as Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned, but it has combined the word "decentralization" and related The concept of freedom is rooted in the hearts of countless investors and practitioners. Let them have a clearer understanding of the issue of "whose hands should hold various powers in the future?"

Although many people’s current accusations against centralized institutions are not entirely true, such as the accusation that one mining machine manufacturer is the dominant one; and some current “forced decentralization” behaviors are not entirely valid. Not particularly successful, just like Bitmain’s dual-CEO structure. But from a long-term perspective, these immature words and deeds are just a small wave at the beginning of the development of social decentralization. Just as once the floodgates are opened, the water flow cannot be stopped; when the concept of "decentralization" is rooted in people's hearts, the equal rights movement in various vertical fields is inevitable. The key is that power will sink from the original centralized institutions. The question is which level to go to.

From this point of view, decentralization has become an unstoppable torrent of social development, and the redistribution of a large number of social resources that we have seen in the past decade or so is largely due to As a result of this decentralization of power. Under such circumstances, people, including some blockchain practitioners, began to pursue the victory and targeted another "Chinese-prefixed" target - that is, intermediaries. However, "decentralization" is equal to "decentralization". Intermediation”? Is the latter, like the former, an irreversible trend? The author will introduce the relevant content in detail in the next series of articles.

㈡ How to understand the decentralization of blockchain technology

From an academic perspective, blockchain is a distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanism, encryption algorithm and other computers New application models of technology. Blockchain is essentially a decentralized database.

For example, if you are a woman, every time your boyfriend says something disgusting to you or promises to buy you something, you immediately record it and send it to all of your and his Best friends, classmates, colleagues, and various groups and circles of friends make it impossible for him to deny it anymore. This is called blockchain.

The core advantage of blockchain technology is decentralization. It can realize based on data encryption, time stamping, distributed consensus and economic incentives in a distributed system where nodes do not need to trust each other. The peer-to-peer transactions, coordination and collaboration of decentralized credit provide solutions to the common problems of high cost, low efficiency and insecure data storage in centralized institutions.

The application fields of blockchain include digital currency, certificates, finance, anti-counterfeiting and traceability, privacy protection, supply chain, entertainment, etc. With the popularity of blockchain and Bitcoin, many related top All domain names have been registered, which has had a relatively large impact on the domain name industry.

㈢ Principles of Blockchain

Blockchain is a technology, but it is not a single technology, but the result of the integration of multiple technologies, including cryptography, Mathematics, economics, network science, etc. You can think of it as a distributed shared accounting technology, or as a database, but this database is jointly maintained by all nodes on the chain, and each node has a ledger, because all nodes The ledgers are consistent, different nodes can trust each other, and there is no doubt about the data, so everyone says that the blockchain has technically achieved trust. For detailed professional technology, you can consult some professional technology companies. For example: Jinbo Technology, which focuses on developing blockchain-related products, has a professional R&D team and complete after-sales service. You can call for consultation.

㈣ What is the meaning of blockchain?

Blockchain is a shared database. Blockchain is a combination of distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanism, encryption algorithm and other computer technologies. New application models.

Blockchain does not belong to any industry, blockchain is distributed dataNew application models of computer technologies such as storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanisms, and encryption algorithms. In a narrow sense, blockchain is a chained data structure that combines data blocks in a sequential manner in chronological order, and is a cryptographically guaranteed distributed ledger that cannot be tampered with or forged.

Features

Decentralization. Blockchain technology does not rely on additional third-party management agencies or hardware facilities, and there is no central control. In addition to the self-contained blockchain itself, each node realizes self-verification, transmission and management of information through distributed accounting and storage. Decentralization is the most prominent and essential feature of blockchain.

Openness. The foundation of blockchain technology is open source. In addition to the private information of the transaction parties being encrypted, the data of the blockchain is open to everyone. Anyone can query the blockchain data and develop related applications through the public interface. Therefore, the entire System information is highly transparent.

㈤ What exactly is blockchain

Let’s talk about some basic concepts first.

The network said that blockchain is a new usage model of computer technologies such as distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanisms, and encryption algorithms. It is essentially a decentralized database, and as the underlying technology of Bitcoin, it is a series of data blocks generated by cryptography.

We try to translate "what is blockchain" into "human language".

The definition refers to the "decentralized database" nature of blockchain3354. This is very different from the traditional "centralized database" in storage, update and operation.

A centralized database can be thought of as having this shape:

For example, if I want to use Alipay to pay a Taobao seller, all data requests from when I make money to when he receives the money will be centrally processed by Alipay. The advantage of this data structure is that as long as Alipay is responsible for the efficient and safe operation of the system, others can unconditionally believe it without worrying; the disadvantage is that if there is a problem with Alipay, such as being hacked, the server being burned, a traitor appearing, and the company running away (Of course, the possibility of the above is extremely low), the balance details and other information in our Alipay will be confused.

Then some people think that this kind of low-probability event can use any technical means to avoid individual risks, and not only hand over the data to a centralized organization. For example, everyone can store and process data.

The database structure may look like this:

This picture is a schematic structural diagram of a "distributed database". Each point is a server, they all have equal rights to record and calculate data, and information is spread point-to-point. At first glance, it seems that it can indeed resist the risk caused by the crash of a certain node, but it is also very confusing and inefficient intuitively. Who will handle my information, and who has the final say on the outcome?

At this time, the "consensus mechanism" in the definition of blockchain comes into play. The consensus mechanism mainly "stipulates" the following things: who will process a data request (what qualifications are required); who will verify the results (to see if he has handled it well); how to prevent processors and verifiers from colluding with each other, etc.

Being a "rule"Some people may like to be questioned when it is formulated. In order to form a stronger consensus, in addition to making the rules more reasonable, they must also be more attractive so that people are interested and motivated to participate in data processing. This involves the incentive mechanism of the public chain. We will start again later when we discuss the classification of blockchain and the role of digital currencies.

When we hand over a transaction to a distributed network, there is also a "psychological threshold": there are so many nodes that can process information, and I don't know any of them (unlike Alipay, if it hurts me, I can go and file a lawsuit against it). They all have my data, why should I trust them?

At this time, encryption algorithm (the last descriptive word in the definition of blockchain) comes on stage.

In the blockchain network, the data requests we send will be encrypted according to cryptographic principles into a string of characters that the recipient cannot understand at all. Behind this encryption method is the support of a hash algorithm.

Hash algorithms can quickly convert any type of data into hash values. This change is one-way irreversible, deterministic, random, and anti-collision. Because of these characteristics, the person handling my data request could record the information for me, but they had no idea who I was or what I was doing.

So far, the working principle of the decentralized network has been introduced. But we seem to have overlooked one detail. The previous diagram is a net. Where are the pulleys and chains? Why do we call it blockchain?

To understand this matter, we need to clarify a few knowledge points first:

The previous picture is actually a "macro" database perspective, showing the basic rules and processes of the blockchain system for processing information. . And specifically at the "micro" data log level, we will find that the ledger is packaged, compressed, stored in blocks, and strung together in chronological order to form a "chain structure", like this:

Figure Each ring in can be regarded as a building block, and many links are linked together to form a blockchain. Blocks store data, unlike ordinary data storage: on a blockchain, the data in a later block contains the data in the previous block.

In order to academically explain the fields of each part of the data in the block, we tried to use a book metaphor to describe what a blockchain data structure is.

Usually, when we read a book, we read the first page, then the second and third pages. The spine is a physical existence that fixes the order of each page. Even if the book is scattered, the order of each numbered page can be determined.

Inside the blockchain, each block is labeled with a page number, the second page contains the first page's content, the third page's content contains the first and second page's content. The tenth page contains the previous Nine pages of content.

It is such a nested chain that can be traced back to the original data.

This brings up an important attribute of blockchain: traceability.

When the data in the blockchain needs to be updated, that is when new blocks are generated in sequence, the "consensus algorithm" comes into play again. This algorithm stipulates that a new block can only be formed if it is recognized by more than 51% of the nodes in the entire network. To put it bluntly, it isBy voting, more than half of the people agree. This makes the data on the blockchain difficult to tamper with. If I were to force a change, there would be too many people to bribe and the cost would be too high to be worth it.

This is what people often call the "non-tamperable" feature of blockchain.

Another reason why blockchain gives people a sense of trust is because of "smart contracts."

Smart contracts are commitment agreements defined and automatically executed by computer programs. It is a set of transaction rules executed by code, similar to the current automatic repayment function of credit cards. If you turn on this function, you don’t have to worry about anything. The bank will automatically deduct the money you owe when it is due.

When your friend borrows money from you but doesn't remember to pay it back, or makes excuses not to pay it back, smart contracts can prevent breach of contract. Once the terms in the contract are triggered, such as when it is time to repay the money, or there is a limit in his account, the code will automatically execute, and the money he owes you will be automatically transferred back whether he wants it or not.

Let’s briefly summarize. Blockchain technology is mainly decentralized, difficult to tamper with, and traceable, which represents more security and trustlessness. But it also brings new problems: redundancy and inefficiency, which requires many nodes to agree with the rules and actively participate.

This concludes the "drying" section. Next, let’s talk about unofficial history and the official history of blockchain.

A new technology is often used to serve a certain task.

Or goals. So where was blockchain first used, and who came up with it first?

Let's go back to 2008.

On September 21, Wall Street investment banks collapsed one after another, and the Federal Reserve announced that it would convert the only two remaining investment banks (Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley) into commercial banks; it hoped to survive the financial crisis by absorbing savings. On October 3, the Bush administration signed a $700 billion financial rescue package.

Twenty-eight days later, on November 1, 2008, a new post appeared in a cryptography mailing group: "I am developing a new electronic currency system that is completely peer-to-peer and does not require a third party. Three-party trust institution." The text of the post is a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", signed by Satoshi Nakamoto.

The paper explains the design of this peer-to-peer electronic cash system with a more rigorous logic. It first discusses the problem that financial institutions are subject to "trust based" (based on credit), and then explains step by step how to achieve "no third-party agency" , and cleverly solved the technical problems left by the predecessors.

Two months later, Satoshi Nakamoto released the first version of the open source Bitcoin client and mined 50 Bitcoins for the first time. The block that generated the first batch of Bitcoins is called the "Genesis block". The genesis block was compiled into block 0 and was not uploaded to the chain. It took Satoshi Nakamoto 6 days to mine this block. This also sparked discussion in the bitcointalk forum. Bitcoin "believers" thought of the Bible, "God used six days to create the heavens, the earth, and all things, and then stopped working and rested on the seventh day."

Although concepts such as decentralized, token, and economy did not appear in the paper, Satoshi Nakamoto explained in detail the role of blocks and chains in the network. working principle. So, there is Block Chain.

This paper later became the "Bible" of the "Bit Cult", technology became the cornerstone of faith, and developer documentation became the "Code of Hammurabi".

After that, Bitcoin realized the first real-life payment by exchanging pizza, WikiLeaks, whose account was blocked by the US government, miraculously survived by relying on Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto's "decentralization" and retirement, and the appearance of the real and the fake A series of legends such as and refutation of rumors, combined with the expectations, imagination and speculation of later generations, became "Bible stories".

There are also people who are not satisfied with the world described in the "Old Testament" and start new sects, write the doctrines into white papers, and tell the story of their faith in the ten years after Bitcoin. Just like the writing of the 66 books of the Bible spanned 1,500 years, and after 2,000 years of interpretation, Christianity has divided into 33,000 branches.

CoinMarketCap shows that there are more than 4,900 types of digital currencies, and the overall digital currency market size is nearly 140 million yuan. Bitcoin still leads the entire digital currency market with a market share of 66%, and the recent price has been hovering around US$7,200 per coin.

So many currencies have different functions and are divided into different categories: digital currencies represented by Bitcoin are positioned as "digital gold" and have certain value storage and hedging characteristics; Ethereum The digital currency represented by Bitcoin has become the "operational fuel" in its network system; the stable currency represented by USDT and Libra has good payment properties due to its low volatility; the digital currency issued by the central bank represented by DCEP will definitely To a certain extent, it replaces M0, allowing commercial institutions and ordinary people to receive and pay without delay when they are out of cash and disconnected from the Internet.

It can be seen that after 10 years of development of blockchain technology, the first and largest application is digital currency.

Digital currency has also become an attractive reward for participants to maintain the public chain.

So besides digital currency, where else can blockchain technology be used?

Let us recall what the essence of blockchain is—a decentralized database, and its corresponding characteristics: traceability, publicity, anonymity, and tamper-proofing. In theory, you can try to use blockchain to transform traditional scenarios that use centralized databases to see if they are suitable.

Next, let’s talk about several industries and scenarios where blockchain has been successfully implemented:

Blockchain can prove the existence of a certain file or digital content at a specific time through hash timestamps, providing judicial authentication, Identity proof, property rights protection, anti-counterfeiting traceability, etc. provide perfect solutions

In the field of anti-counterfeiting traceability, blockchain technology can be widely used in food, medicine, agricultural products, and alcohol through supply chain tracking, luxury goods and other fields.

Give two examples.

Blockchain can allow government data to be run, greatly streamlining service processes

The distributed technology of blockchain can allow government departments to be centralized on one chain, and all service processes are delivered to smart contracts, and the workers only need to be in one department Through identity authentication and electronic signature, smart contracts can be automatically processed and transferred, and all subsequent approvals and signatures can be completed in sequence.

Blockchain invoices are the earliest use of blockchain technology in China. The tax department launched the "Tax Chain" platform for blockchain electronic invoices. The tax department, the issuer, and the payee join the "Tax Chain" network through unique digital identities, truly realizing "instant invoicing for transactions" and "instant reimbursement after invoicing" - in seconds Level invoicing and minute-level reimbursement accounting significantly reduce tax collection and management costs, and effectively solve problems such as data tampering, over-reporting of one ticket, and tax evasion.

Poverty alleviation is another practical application of blockchain technology. Utilize the characteristics of openness, transparency, traceability, and non-tampering of blockchain technology to achieve transparent use, precise investment, and efficient management of poverty alleviation funds.

Give two examples as well.

The eID network identity operation agency guided by the Third Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security is jointly developing a "digital identity chain" with Gongyilian, which will be issued to Chinese citizens based on the citizen's identity number as the root and cryptographic algorithm. Since it was put into operation, the eID digital identity system has served the full life cycle management of 100 million eIDs, effectively alleviating the problems of personal identity information being fraudulently used, abused and privacy leaked.

Odaily Planet Daily compiled 5 identity chain projects registered with the Cyberspace Administration of China

Blockchain technology naturally has financial attributes

In terms of payment and settlement, under the blockchain distributed ledger system, there are many markets Participants jointly maintain and synchronize a "general ledger" in real time. In just a few minutes, they can complete payment, clearing, and settlement tasks that currently take two or three days to complete, reducing the complexity and cost of cross-bank and cross-border transactions. At the same time, the underlying encryption technology of the blockchain ensures that participants cannot tamper with the ledger, ensuring that transaction records are transparent and safe. Regulators can easily track transactions on the chain and quickly locate high-risk capital flows.

In terms of securities issuance transactions, the traditional stock issuance process is long, costly and complicated. Blockchain technology can weaken the role of underwriting institutions and help all parties establish a fast and accurate information exchange and sharing channel. The issuer can handle the issuance on its own through smart contracts. , regulatory authorities conduct unified review and verification, and investors can also bypass intermediaries for direct operations.

In terms of digital bills and supply chain finance, blockchain technology can effectively solve the financing difficulties of small and medium-sized enterprises. It is difficult for current supply chain finance to benefit small and medium-sized enterprises in the upper reaches of the industrial chain, because they often do not have direct trade relations with core enterprises, and it is difficult for financial institutions to evaluate their credit qualifications. Based on blockchain technology, we can establish a consortium chain network covering core enterprises, upstream and downstream suppliers, financial institutions, etc. The core enterprises issue accounts receivable vouchers to their suppliers. After the bills are digitized and uploaded to the chain, they can be uploaded to the supplier For transfers between suppliers, each level of supplier can use digital receipts to prove the corresponding amount.Financing.

Give me an example.

The China Enterprise Cloud Chain, jointly launched by ICBC, Postal Savings Bank of China, 11 central enterprises, etc., has covered 48,000 companies since its establishment in 2017, with the amount of rights confirmed on the chain reaching 100 billion yuan, and factoring financing of 57 billion yuan. , cumulative transactions reached 300 billion yuan. After receiving the loan application, financial institutions can verify the authenticity of the contract on the chain and whether the contract has been verified multiple times (multiple loans); the smart contract automatically clears and settles, reducing costs and increasing efficiency; at the same time, the accounts payable of core enterprises can have The corresponding vouchers will be split by the first-level suppliers and handed over to the second- and third-level suppliers in the chain to help them with financing; core enterprises can also use this to understand whether the entire chain is operating normally and avoid emergencies. Redemption pressure.

Blockchain technology will greatly optimize the existing use of big data and play a huge role in data circulation and sharing

The aforementioned areas are areas that we are relatively familiar with. As more new technologies develop, blockchain may be able to be combined with them and play a role in unexpected cross-fields and new scenarios that are currently unforeseen.

In the future, the Internet, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things will generate massive amounts of data. The existing centralized data storage (computing model) will face huge challenges. Edge storage (computing) based on blockchain technology is expected to become a future solution. Furthermore, the non-tampering and traceability mechanism of blockchain ensures the authenticity and high quality of data, which becomes the basis for the use of all data such as big data, deep learning, and artificial intelligence.

Finally, blockchain can realize multi-party collaborative data calculations while protecting data privacy, and is expected to solve the problems of "data monopoly" and "data islands" and realize the value of data circulation.

In response to the current blockchain development stage, in order to meet the blockchain development and use needs of general business users, many traditional cloud service providers have begun to deploy their own BaaS ("Blockchain as a Service") solutions. The combination of blockchain and cloud computing will effectively reduce enterprise blockchain deployment costs and promote the implementation of blockchain usage scenarios. In the future, blockchain technology will also play an important role in many fields such as charity, insurance, energy, logistics, and the Internet of Things.

During this trial process from traditional technology to blockchain, we found that when certain scenarios have stronger demands for traceability, tamper-proofing, and decentralization, they also have problems with the weaknesses of blockchain (such as performance). , the requirements are not high, and this field is quite suitable for combining blockchain.

At the same time, in the process of blockchain evolution, it has also developed from a highly decentralized public chain accessible to everyone to a consortium chain with different permissions and maintained by multiple centers. Balances the advantages and disadvantages of the two systems.

Typical examples of alliance chains include: FISCO BCOS jointly developed by WeBank and the Golden Alliance Open Source Working Group, Fabric, a major contribution from IBM, and Ant Alliance Chain led by Ant Blockchain, etc.

These trustless systems represent more secure data authentication and storage mechanisms, where data is effectively authenticated and protected. Businesses or individuals can exchange or enter into contracts digitally, where thisThese contracts are embedded in the code and stored in transparent, shared databases where they cannot be deleted, tampered with, or revised.

It is boldly predicted that in the future, contracts, audits, tasks, and payments will all be digitized with unique and secure signatures. Digital signatures will be permanently identified, authenticated, legalized, and stored, and cannot be tampered with. There is no need for an intermediary to guarantee each of your transactions. You can conduct transactions without knowing the basic information of the other party. While improving information security, it effectively reduces transaction costs and improves transaction efficiency.

Generally speaking, there has been a lot of progress in the implementation of blockchain compared to two years ago.

Many improvements are at the bottom of the system, and users cannot directly see that blockchain is used, but they have actually benefited from it; some applications are still in pilot mode, and users have not yet been able to experience it. In the future, blockchain is expected to be used on a large scale and become one of the Internet infrastructure.

I hope that after reading this, you have a general understanding of what blockchain is and what blockchain can do.

Related Q&A: What is blockchain

Blockchain is actually equivalent to a disintermediated database, which is composed of a series of data blocks. Each of its data blocks contains information about a Bitcoin network transaction, which is used to verify the validity of the information and generate the next block.

In a narrow sense, blockchain is a chain data structure that combines data blocks in a sequential manner in chronological order, and is cryptographically guaranteed to be non-tamperable and non-forgeable. distributed ledger.

In a broad sense, blockchain is actually a distributed infrastructure and computing method, which is used to ensure the security of data transmission and access.

Blockchain infrastructure:

Blockchain is composed of six infrastructures: data layer, network layer, consensus layer, incentive layer, contract layer and usage layer.

㈥ What does the decentralization of the blockchain mean?

The decentralization of the blockchain refers to the form of social relations and content generation formed during the development process of the blockchain. A new online content production process relative to "centralization".

Blockchain is an important concept of Bitcoin. It is essentially a decentralized database. As the underlying technology of Bitcoin, it is a series of data blocks generated using cryptographic methods. , each data block contains a batch of Bitcoin network transaction information, which is used to verify the validity of its information (anti-counterfeiting) and generate the next block.

The blockchain is unified across the entire network, so it is logically centralized. From an architectural point of view, blockchain is based on a peer-to-peer network, so it has a decentralized architecture. From a governance perspective, blockchain uses consensus algorithms to make it difficult for a few people to control the entire system, so its governance is decentralized.

(6) The essence of blockchain decentralization is to remove further reading:

Characteristics of blockchain decentralization:

Decentralization does not mean that there is no center, but that it is done by nodes.Free choice center, free decision center. Simply put, centralization means the center determines the node. Nodes must rely on the center. Nodes cannot survive without the center.

In a decentralized system, anyone is a node, and anyone can become a center. No center is permanent, but is temporary, and no center is mandatory for nodes.

With the diversification of network service forms, the decentralized network model is becoming more and more clear and becoming more and more possible. After the rise of Web 2.0, the services provided by network service providers such as Wikipedia, Flickr, and Blogger are all decentralized. Any participant can submit content, and netizens can jointly create or contribute content.

Reference source: Network-Blockchain

Reference source: Network-Decentralization

㈦ What is the essence of blockchain and the principle of Bitcoin? What is the difference between the two?

The price of one Bitcoin has skyrocketed from more than 20,000 US dollars to 40,000 US dollars. This can't help but arouse my research interest, or to briefly understand what Bitcoin is, what its mechanism is like, and to uncover its mystery. Therefore, I simply searched for some information and learned a little bit about Bitcoin, so I sorted out the information on hand.

(3) Purpose: decentralization, reducing risks

Centralized network Only the central server can store and process data. The disadvantage is that the workload is large. Once it is paralyzed, the entire system will be paralyzed; the data storage volume is large; the central manager has great authority.

All servers in the distributed network can store and process data. Each server has an equal status and can store more data and have higher security.
The general popular science content is like this. If you want to know more, you can take a look at Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper and the official popular science video below.