Collect quickly! Blockchain is difficult to understand? Look here!


Li Huohua and Shen Qihong
Recently, a news has become the focus of attention. the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee has made a collective study on the development status and trend of blockchain technology, emphasizing that blockchain should be regarded as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technology and accelerate the development of blockchain technology and industrial innovation.
So what is blockchain technology? What is its development process and current situation? What application scenarios are there in the future? Let’s talk about it here.
The Origin and Development of Blockchain Technology
When it comes to blockchain, many people may think of Bitcoin. In fact, the two are not the same thing. Blockchain is the underlying technology of Bitcoin.
In 2008, a self-proclaimed "Satoshi Nakamoto" published a white paper, hoping to build an electronic money system that won’t be spammed. In January 2009, Bitcoin was officially born, with a total limit of 21 million pieces. The distribution rules are transparent, and there is no central issuer, which is automatically executed by code. The code and operation of Bitcoin are maintained by the participants, and anyone in the world can participate in it.
At first, Bitcoin was only circulated among computer geeks. Some people tried it as a new gadget, while others were attracted by its utopian ideal of not spamming and circulating freely. In 2010, there was even a story that a programmer exchanged 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas. In any case, few people would have thought that bitcoin would have such a great influence later.
With the passage of time, bitcoin gradually spread from the computer geek circle. As more and more people participate, capital speculation and speculation follow one after another, and the price of Bitcoin has also started the skyrocketing and plunging mode, which has attracted the attention and reports of some mainstream media and attracted more and more people to study Bitcoin.
After studying the code of Bitcoin, people collectively refer to the underlying technology adopted by Bitcoin as blockchain technology, and Bitcoin is the first application of blockchain technology. If bitcoin is compared to bread, then the blockchain is flour. Flour can be made into bread, noodles, rolls, steamed bread and cakes. Similarly, you can use blockchain technology to create bitcoin, and you can also use blockchain technology to do many other things to benefit the whole society.
Blockchain is a "trusted machine"
As the name implies, blockchain is a combination of "block" and "chain", which is essentially a distributed account book. So, how does this account book keep accounts and how does it work? We might as well use an analogy to illustrate.
At the beginning, a group of people first stood up and took a blank piece of paper for bookkeeping, and the system gave this bookkeeper a certain amount of reward (such as 50 bitcoins). After recording the bill, generate an anti-counterfeiting code from this page of bill through encryption algorithm, and copy the bill to all other people at the same time. Next, by calculating a difficult problem, the person who works out first can keep accounts and enjoy the rewards given to the bookkeeper by the system. When recording the bill on the second page, you need to write the anti-counterfeiting code of the bill on the first page at the beginning, and then make an account. After recording, you can also generate an anti-counterfeiting code of the bill on the second page through encryption algorithm, and then copy the bill to everyone else. Then, everyone will compete for the right to charge the bill on the third page by calculating the next difficult problem. This bill will also be marked with the security code of the bill on the first page, and after recording, it will also generate an security code and synchronize the bill to others, and so on. This page-by-page bill is turned into an increasingly thick general ledger through the binding line in sequence, and each participant has one copy.
In the above analogy, the bill page by page is called a "block" and the binding line is a "chain". By binding the bill page by page in sequence into a general ledger, a "blockchain" is formed, and its essence is still an account book. Only this account book has one person, and there is no central person or organization. Everyone is equal, and everyone can compete for the right to keep accounts by calculating difficult problems. The whole account book is jointly maintained by all participants.
Since there is no central person or organization, how can this jointly maintained account book prevent malicious people from making false accounts or tampering with account book records? Suppose Zhang San grabbed the right to charge the bill on page 100. His good friend Li Si had only 3,000 yuan in his account, but Zhang San helped him secretly change it to 30,000 yuan. After recording the account, he synchronized the account book to others. At this time, others will immediately find that there is something wrong with this account, because there is one account book, and the ins and outs of Li Si’s assets are recorded in the previous account book. Therefore, others will refuse to add the bill on page 100 with wrong records to the general ledger, and will choose another honest person to record the bill on page 100 through calculation problems.
Therefore, we can see that blockchain technology has these characteristics: openness and transparency (everyone has one account book, everyone can check it), decentralization (there is no central person or organization), and it cannot be tampered with (because any tampering or false accounting will be discovered).
In daily life, many people are used to paying with WeChat and Alipay, and WeChat and Alipay act as bookkeepers. We need to trust this bookkeeper not to misremember or falsify accounts. Blockchain is different. Hackers may attack and modify the account books in a computer, but if they want to really modify the blockchain data, they need to attack more than half of the account books in computers, which is very difficult, especially in a blockchain like Bitcoin. There are tens of thousands of accounting nodes, and one account book is distributed all over the world. Therefore, blockchain technology also has great advantages in security.
Openness, transparency, decentralization and non-tampering … … Because of these advantages, the famous British financial magazine The Economist praised the blockchain as a "machine of trust".
Blockchain empowers future social development.
For more than a decade, blockchain technology has gone from the 1.0 era to the 2.0 era, and now it is moving towards the 3.0 era.
In the 1.0 era of blockchain, Bitcoin is a typical representative, mainly recording transaction information simply, with very single function and limited application scenarios. In the 2.0 era of blockchain, the Ethereum project is a typical representative. Different from bitcoin with single function, Ethereum has added the function of "smart contract", which can be simply understood as a program that can be automatically executed. Because of this automatic program, the blockchain has been upgraded from a single-function account book to a world computer, on which people can develop various blockchain applications.
As for the 3.0 era of blockchain, just like the 5G era, only after it really comes can people know what it looks like and what new business models and social impacts it will have. The blockchain we are talking about now empowers social development, mainly based on blockchain 2.0.
So, in what ways will the blockchain empower social development?
The first is the financial industry. The financial industry has to deal with all kinds of accounts every day. The blockchain is essentially a distributed ledger. Using the blockchain as a "trusted machine", it has obvious advantages to use blockchain technology to realize the work that needs multi-party information synchronization, such as bookkeeping, accounting, reimbursement, settlement and tax return. On August 10th last year, Shenzhen Taxation Bureau and Tencent Company launched the blockchain electronic invoice, which realized that the electronic invoice can’t be forged, the data can be inquired, the transaction can be invoiced, and the invoice can be reimbursed, which greatly simplified the traditional financial and taxation workflow.
In addition, cross-border payment is also a major application of blockchain in the financial field. Using the advantages of blockchain technology, such as openness, transparency, non-tampering, and distrust of intermediaries, various cumbersome procedures between different banks can be reduced and the process can be accelerated in cross-border payment. On June 25th last year, Alipay launched the cross-border remittance service of e-wallet based on blockchain in Hong Kong. With the Hong Kong version of Alipay, cross-border remittance can be made to Philippine wallet Gcash through blockchain technology. At the press conference, the whole remittance process took only 3 seconds, while it took several days through the traditional cross-border transfer method.
In addition to the financial sector, blockchain technology is also promising in business. JD.COM launched the JD.COM Zhizhen Chain a long time ago, using blockchain technology to build an anti-counterfeiting traceability platform, recording the important data of every link of goods from raw material procurement to after-sales, and jointly cracking down on counterfeiting with regulatory authorities, third-party institutions and brands. Last year’s Double Eleven, Tmall International Mall had more than 150 million cross-border goods, which made use of the traceability and non-tampering characteristics of blockchain technology to achieve permanent traceability, prevent false information and protect consumers’ rights and interests.
In the field of people’s livelihood, the application prospect of blockchain technology is also very broad. For example, charity can use the openness and transparency of blockchain technology to monitor the flow of each charity fund and ensure that the money finally reaches the recipients.
Blockchain technology can also simplify government affairs and realize the interconnection of various functional departments. On November 13th last year, Loudi City, Hunan Province issued the first real estate blockchain electronic certificate, which realized the interconnection between real estate registration and the data of government functional departments such as land, taxation and real estate.
Storing data on the blockchain also has legal effect. On June 29 last year, the first case of blockchain deposit in China was pronounced in the first instance of Hangzhou Internet Court, which confirmed the legal effect of using blockchain technology to deposit electronic data and clarified the review and judgment methods of blockchain electronic deposit.
For many people who pay attention to privacy protection, blockchain technology is a great boon. All kinds of usage data we leave on the Internet every day, including sensitive information such as identity, mobile phone number, hobbies, shopping records, location, etc., may be leaked directly or indirectly, which will bring great threats and troubles to our lives. Blockchain technology combines cryptography and encryption technology, which can realize the separation of user identity and data, encrypted storage and distributed storage, and make your own data completely in your own hands.
The current blockchain technology is still in the early stage of development, just like the Internet around 2000. Although it is full of various possibilities, it is not mature, and there are very few successful large-scale applications, and it is also full of capital speculation and speculation. For this emerging technology, we can’t overestimate its short-term impact, nor can we ignore its long-term changes.
(Zhan Rongrong, Lu Bufan, Ma Dan and Wu Jie also contributed to this article. Special "Vernacular Blockchain" contributed by WeChat official account)




























