The development status and prospects of blockchain technology
Blockchain technology originated in 2008 by a scholar with the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" in the cryptography email group Published the foundational paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". In the past two years, the research and application of blockchain technology have shown explosive growth. It is considered to be the fifth disruptive innovation in the computing paradigm after mainframes, personal computers, the Internet, and mobile/social networks. It is also the evolution of human credit. The fourth milestone in history after blood relatives credit, precious metal credit, and central bank banknote credit. Blockchain technology is the prototype of the next generation of cloud computing. It is expected to completely reshape the form of human social activities like the Internet and realize the transformation from the current information Internet to the value Internet. Technical characteristics of blockchain
Blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization, time series data, collective maintenance, programmability, security and trustworthiness. Decentralization: The processes of verification, accounting, storage, maintenance and transmission of blockchain data are all based on the distributed system structure. Pure mathematical methods are used instead of central institutions to establish trust relationships between distributed nodes, thus forming a decentralized system. Centralized and trustworthy distributed system; Time series data: Blockchain uses a chain block structure with timestamps to store data, thereby adding a time dimension to the data and having strong verifiability and traceability; Collective maintenance: The blockchain system uses a specific economic incentive mechanism to ensure that all nodes in the distributed system can participate in the verification process of data blocks (such as the "mining" process of Bitcoin), and through the *** recognition algorithm Select specific nodes to add new blocks to the blockchain; Programmable: Blockchain technology can provide a flexible script code system to support users to create advanced smart contracts, currencies or other decentralized applications; Safe and trustworthy: Blockchain Chain technology uses the principle of asymmetric cryptography to encrypt data. At the same time, it uses the powerful computing power formed by proof-of-work and other consensus algorithms of each node of the distributed system to resist external attacks and ensure that the blockchain data cannot be tampered with or forged. , thus having higher security. Blockchain and Bitcoin Bitcoin is by far the most successful blockchain application scenario. Blockchain technology has solved the double payment problem and Byzantine Generals problem that the Bitcoin system has long faced in the field of digital cryptocurrency. Different from the credit endorsement mechanism of traditional central institutions (such as central banks), the Bitcoin blockchain forms software-defined credit, which marks a fundamental change from centralized national credit to decentralized algorithmic credit. In recent years, Bitcoin has relied on its first-mover advantage to form a complete ecosystem and industry chain covering issuance, circulation and financial derivatives markets. This is also the main reason why it has occupied the vast majority of the digital cryptocurrency market share for a long time. The development context and trends of blockchain
Blockchain technology is a universal underlying technology framework that can bring profound changes to various fields such as finance, economy, technology and even politics. According to the current development trend of blockchain technology, blockchain technology will experience the blockchain 1.0 model with programmable digital encryption currency system as the main feature, the blockchain 2.0 model with programmable financial system as the main feature, and the blockchain 2.0 model with programmable financial system as the main feature. The blockchain 3.0 model is characterized by a programmable society. However, the above-mentioned models are actually developing in parallel rather than in an evolutionary manner. The digital cryptocurrency system of the blockchain 1.0 model is still far from mature, and is actually farther and more difficult from its vision of global currency integration. At present, the blockchain field has shown an obvious development trend driven by technological and industrial innovation, and relevant academic research is seriously lagging behind and urgently needs to be followed up. Basic models and key technologies of blockchain
Generally speaking, a blockchain system consists of a data layer, a network layer, a consciousness layer, an incentive layer, a contract layer and an application layer.
Among them, the data layer encapsulates the underlying data blocks and related data encryption and timestamp technologies; the network layer includes distributed networking mechanisms, data dissemination mechanisms, data verification mechanisms, etc.; the identity layer mainly encapsulates the information of network nodes. Various types of identification algorithms; the incentive layer integrates economic factors into the blockchain technology system, mainly including the issuance mechanism and distribution mechanism of economic incentives; the contract layer mainly encapsulates various scripts, algorithms and smart contracts, and is the area The basis of the programmable features of the blockchain; the application layer encapsulates various application scenarios and cases of the blockchain. In this model, the chain block structure based on timestamps, the identification mechanism of distributed nodes, economic incentives based on identification computing power and flexible programmable smart contracts are the most representative of blockchain technology. of innovation. Application scenarios of blockchain technology
Blockchain technology can not only be successfully used in the field of digital cryptocurrency, but also has a wide range of application scenarios in economic, financial and social systems. According to the current status of blockchain technology applications, this article broadly summarizes the current main applications of blockchain into six scenarios: digital currency, data storage, data authentication, financial transactions, asset management and election voting: Digital currency: Represented by Bitcoin, it is essentially a digital currency generated by a distributed network system, and its issuance process does not rely on a specific centralized institution. Data storage: The characteristics of blockchain such as high redundant storage, decentralization, high security and privacy protection make it particularly suitable for storing and protecting important private data to avoid attacks caused by centralized institutions or improper permission management. Massive data loss or breach. Data authentication: Blockchain data has timestamps, is unanimously verified and recorded by independent identification nodes, and cannot be tampered with or forged. These characteristics make the blockchain widely used in various data notarization and audit scenarios. For example, blockchain can permanently and securely store various permits, registration forms, licenses, certificates, certifications and records issued by government agencies. Financial transactions: Blockchain technology has a very high degree of compatibility with financial market applications. Blockchain can spontaneously generate credit in a decentralized system and can establish a financial market without credit endorsement by a central institution, thereby realizing "financial disintermediation" to a large extent; at the same time, the blockchain can be used to automate smart contracts and trustworthy transactions. The characteristics of programming can greatly reduce costs and improve efficiency. Asset management: Blockchain can realize the confirmation, authorization and real-time monitoring of tangible and intangible assets. Intangible asset management has been widely used in intellectual property protection, domain name management, points management and other fields; tangible asset management can be combined with Internet of Things technology to form "digital smart assets" to achieve distributed authorization and control based on blockchain. Election voting: Blockchain can realize political elections, corporate shareholder voting and other applications in a low-cost and efficient manner. At the same time, based on voting, it can be widely used in fields such as gambling, prediction markets and social manufacturing. Existing issues with blockchain technology
Security threats are the most important issues faced by blockchain so far. Among them, the blockchain based on the PoW authentication process mainly faces the 51 attack problem, that is, the node has the ability to successfully tamper and forge the blockchain data by mastering more than 51 computing power of the entire network. Other issues include the potential threats of emerging computing technologies to crack asymmetric encryption mechanisms and privacy protection issues. The efficiency of blockchain is also an important factor restricting its application. Blockchain requires each node in the system to save a data backup, which is extremely difficult to store the growing mass of data. Although lightweight nodes can partially solve this problem, industrial-grade solutions suitable for larger scales still need to be developed. The Bitcoin blockchain can currently only process 7 transactions per second, and transaction confirmation time is generally 10 minutes, which greatly limits the application of blockchain in high-frequency trading scenarios in most financial systems. The PoW recognition process is highly dependent on the computing power contributed by the blockchain network nodes. These computing power are mainly used to solve SHA256 hashing and random number searches. In addition, they do not produce any actual social value, so in a general sense, it is considered These computing resources are "wasted", and a large amount of power resources are also wasted.
How to effectively pool the network computing power of distributed nodes to solve practical problems is an important issue that blockchain technology needs to solve. As a decentralized distributed system, the blockchain network will inevitably have game relationships of competition and cooperation between its nodes during the interaction process, such as the block interception attack game of the Bitcoin mining pool. The blockchain consensus process is essentially a crowdsourcing process. How to design an incentive-compatible consensus mechanism so that self-interested nodes in a decentralized system can spontaneously implement block data verification and accounting work? , and increasing the cost of irrational behavior within the system to suppress security attacks and threats are important scientific issues to be solved in the blockchain. Smart contracts and blockchain technology
Smart contracts are a set of scenario-responsive programmed rules and logic. They are decentralized, trusted and shared programs deployed on the blockchain. code. Usually, after the smart contract is signed by all parties, it is attached to the blockchain data (such as a Bitcoin transaction) in the form of program code, and is recorded in a specific block of the blockchain after being propagated through the P2P network and verified by nodes. . Smart contracts encapsulate a number of predefined states and transition rules, scenarios that trigger contract execution (such as reaching a specific time or occurrence of a specific event, etc.), response actions under specific scenarios, etc. The blockchain can monitor the status of smart contracts in real time, and activate and execute the contract by checking external data sources and confirming that specific trigger conditions are met. Smart contracts are of great significance to blockchain technology. On the one hand, smart contracts are the activators of the blockchain, giving flexible and programmable mechanisms and algorithms to the static underlying blockchain data, and laying the foundation for building programmable financial systems and social systems in the blockchain 2.0 and 3.0 eras. On the other hand, the automation and programmable characteristics of smart contracts enable it to encapsulate the complex behavior of each node in the distributed blockchain system and become a software agent robot in the virtual world composed of blockchain, which helps Promote the application of blockchain technology in various distributed artificial intelligence systems, allowing the construction of various types of decentralized applications (Decentralized applications, Dapps), decentralized autonomous organizations (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, DAOs), and Decentralized Autonomous Corporation (DAC) and even Decentralized Autonomous Society (DAS) become possible. The main development trend of blockchain and smart contract technology is from automation to intelligence. The essential logic of various existing smart contracts and their applications is mostly based on "IF-THEN" type conditional response rules based on predefined scenarios, which can meet the current needs of automated transactions and data processing. Future smart contracts should have "WHAT-IF" deductions based on unknown scenarios, computational experiments, and a certain degree of autonomous decision-making functions, thereby achieving a leap from current "automated" contracts to true "smart" contracts. Blockchain-driven parallel society
In recent years, a parallel society based on CPSS (Cyber-Physical-SocialSystems) has emerged. Its core and essential feature is virtual-real interaction and parallel evolution. Blockchain is one of the infrastructures for realizing CPSS parallel society. Its main contribution is to provide a set of effective decentralized data structures, interaction mechanisms and computing models for distributed social systems and distributed artificial intelligence research. And it has laid a solid data foundation and credit foundation for the realization of a parallel society. As far as the basis of data is concerned, management scientist Edward Deming once said: Everyone except God must speak with data. However, in a centralized social system, data is usually in the hands of a "few people" such as governments and large enterprises. It "speaks" for a few people, and its fairness, authority and even security may not be guaranteed.
Blockchain data is stored in highly redundant distributed nodes and is in the hands of "everyone", enabling true "data democracy". As far as the basis of credit is concerned, centralized social systems will inevitably have the characteristics of "Mertonian systems" due to their high engineering complexity and social complexity, that is, uncertainty, diversity and complexity, which are the center of social systems. Institutions and rule makers may behave dishonestly due to individual interests; blockchain technology helps realize a software-defined social system. Its basic idea is to eliminate centralized institutions and convert unpredictable behaviors into programmed codes of smart contracts. The form is deployed and solidified in the blockchain data in advance, and cannot be forged or tampered with afterwards and is executed automatically. This can, to a certain extent, transform the "Merton" social system into a "Newton" that can be fully observed, actively controlled, and accurately predicted. "Social system. The ACP (Artificial Societies, Computational Experiments and Parallel Execution) method is the only systematic and complete research framework in the field of parallel society management so far. It is the logical extension and logical extension of complexity science in the parallel social environment in the new era. Innovation. The ACP method can be naturally combined with blockchain technology to achieve blockchain-driven parallel social management. First of all, mechanisms such as blockchain's P2P networking, distributed knowledge collaboration, and contribution-based economic incentives are themselves natural modeling of distributed social systems, in which each node will act as an autonomous agent in the distributed system. and autonomous agents. With the improvement of the blockchain ecosystem, various knowledge nodes in the blockchain and increasingly complex and autonomous smart contracts will form specific organizational forms of DAC and DAO by participating in various forms of Dapp, and ultimately form DAS, that is, Artificial Society in ACP. Secondly, the programmable nature of smart contracts allows the blockchain to carry out various "WHAT-IF" types of virtual experimental design, scenario deduction and result evaluation. Through this computational experiment process, optimal decisions are obtained and executed automatically or semi-automatically. Finally, the smart assets formed by the combination of blockchain and the Internet of Things make it possible to connect the real physical world and virtual cyberspace, and can achieve collaborative optimization of social management and decision-making through virtual-real interaction and parallel tuning of real and artificial social systems. It is not difficult to predict that in the future, when all physical assets in the real physical world are registered as smart assets on the chain, the blockchain-driven parallel society will arrive.