Babbitt Column | Blockchain industry to land, these areas still need to be greatly improved

I. Status

Although each of us hopes that the blockchain can land as early as possible, and from the daily news, it seems that some blockchain products have been landing one after another, such as Tencent's blockchain invoice, such as the central bank's Blockchain's digital bill system, such as Alibaba's blockchain-based cross-border remittance system and so on.

This news gives us the feeling that the blockchain seems to have landed in many aspects, and it is not far from the large-scale landing. But go deep into these projects. The blockchain elements inside these projects are actually not too many. Their landing is more to use the original energy of traditional Internet company giants to make some technical improvements.

In other words, their successful ordinary small and medium-sized blockchain projects may be difficult to learn from, but only small and medium-sized blockchain projects can be rolled out on a large scale. If someone really starts to use them, then it can be called the landing of the blockchain industry. It may be a long way from this day.

This remoteness is mainly reflected in the fact that the infrastructure of the blockchain is still very imperfect and very impersonal. When the blockchain is launched on a large scale, it must be the time when many people participate, and it must be the time when the blockchain can benefit every ordinary person, and at that time the requirements for infrastructure are very high. Just like the Internet, if today's Internet still uses the DOS system or the command line mode, there is no such thing as mailboxes and WeChat, you want to achieve great business success on the Internet, letting everyone connect to the Internet is not a thing It is possible, and the current blockchain is exactly in this situation.

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I personally think that if the blockchain industry is to really land, at least the following aspects need to be greatly improved:

Account and password

Accounts and passwords are a problem that every project will encounter, and it is also a very headache. To put it mildly, as far as the current blockchain account and password system can successfully "dismiss" half of them who want to participate People.

At present, many blockchain projects are account systems based on public keys and private keys. At the same time, with the aid of mnemonic words, if you have a private key, you have assets. Losing the private key is equivalent to losing assets.

But private keys and mnemonics are a bit anti-human. For example, private keys, so long strings of irregular numbers and letters, cannot be remembered by the human brain, so you must use other means of memory. For example, the physical method is to write down the private key on the paper, and then the question becomes how to save this paper: I am afraid that I will lose it if I am caught in a notebook, and I am afraid that it will be stolen in a safe. It will naturally turn yellow in ten years. In case a private key of a huge sum of money has not been moved for a long time, it may not be possible to retrieve it after a decade or two.

If you keep it online, once you go online, you will face various risks of being stolen by hackers. The security of this method is not as good as that of the exchange. At least the risk control ability of the big exchange is stronger than that of ordinary individuals.

Even if the problem of theft is not considered, the input of the private key is a big trouble. So many letters have to be entered one by one, one by one, and the wrong one has to be checked for a long time. This account password system is too anti-human, although it itself It is a very delicate and safe design.

If the blockchain is to be popularized on a large scale, this problem must be solved first. It not only retains the security of the current public-private key password pair, but also facilitates human brain memory. If it is lost, there must be a way to find it back. There must be some way to do this, such as a mapping of the private key with personal biometric fingerprints, eye masks, etc., or it can be retrieved through methods such as big data and social relationships. The methods may be different, but the goal is the same, which is to greatly reduce the difficulty of ordinary users.

Third, the payment model

In the Internet era, a classic phrase is popular, called "wool comes out of pigs, dogs pay for it." The main mode of the Internet is free, which attracts traffic by free of charge, and uses traffic to do other business to make money.

Users in the Internet era are basically accustomed to the free model, and now all blockchain transactions are handled by users, which is cumbersome and technically complicated. For example, Ethereum's GAS system. If you want to use Ethereum's business, you must first have Ethereum. If not, you must first purchase Ethereum, that is, you must go to the exchange to make a circle and then come back. Some novice friends may simply want to use a certain feature of Ethereum. He may not be familiar with the features of the exchange, but there is no way. If you want to use this feature, you must buy it first.

Ethereum is relatively simple, and the setting of EOS's CPU and NET is more complicated. Not to mention new friends, even if you are a "old bird" who has been mixing for a year or two, it is easy to "get lost."

There must be corresponding technology to greatly optimize the transaction habits of the blockchain, such as changing from the current user payment model to the merchant payment, but in fact, the user pays in the end, because it will ultimately be passed on to the consumer, but in this case the user experience It will be much better, many unnecessary procedures will be omitted, and it is more in line with consumer psychology.

Fourth, stablecoin

The digital assets on the blockchain are highly volatile, and there needs to be something that can keep the value stable and give a value anchor.

Although we now have USDT, USDT can also complete the task relatively well, but USDT is anchored to the U.S. dollar after all, and there is a need to add a layer of price conversion procedures between the U.S. dollar and the Renminbi, which has some trouble in the middle. Moreover, it is not so obvious in currency transactions. If digital assets can be connected to real business one day, everyone will find the inconvenience of USDT because domestic real business rarely has USD-denominated commodities.

The central bank's DCEP can solve this problem, but at present, there is still a big difference between the central bank's DCEP and USDT, and there are still many questions about the quota and whether it supports digital currency transactions, so we can only wait and see first, wait It's landing.

Of course, in fact, there is no need to wait for DCEP, as long as Alipay opens the digital currency payment interface, this problem can be basically solved, so the focus of this problem is not on technical issues, but on policy issues.

V. Decentralized exchanges

At present, our centralized exchanges are relatively mature, and decentralized exchanges are in full swing, but I think that the current decentralized exchanges generally lack a dimension.

Although the efficiency and depth are far inferior to centralized exchanges, some decentralized exchanges are basically available. These exchanges basically focus on security. Security means that you are in charge of your private key. Unless your private key is leaked, your assets will always be yours. Even if the exchange is stolen, your assets will not be stolen. This will completely resolve the exchange. Theft.

However, with security and anonymity, many decentralized exchanges can now trade without real-name systems, and can carry out large-scale asset transfers without revealing their identities, so that it can easily become money laundering, etc. Such a hotbed of criminals, if this behavior is not restricted, the impact on the entire economic system will also be very large.

For decentralized exchanges, what we really need is the technology behind it, such as the UTXO account system, such as the public key and private key system that allows you to manage assets yourself, such as its efficient confirmation features, etc. These technologies are decentralized The real advantage of the exchange is that security is the core feature of decentralization, and anonymity is not.

What is said here is not to be anonymous, but not absolutely anonymous. For example, we can use technical means to ensure that our true identity is not exposed at all during the transaction transfer process. Even major exchanges, decentralized exchanges, and counterparties do not know our true identity, but in The lowest level, that is, the police, government agencies, must have real-name identity, because to ensure that when an accident occurs, if you want to trace the identity can be traced.

How to coordinate the anonymity and decentralization, and how to achieve a crackdown on crime while guaranteeing the decentralized nature (because one day, we will be the victim), this is a very challenging topic.

Six, financing

Financing is the throat of the development of the entire industry. After all, funds are like grains and grasses.

However, the current state is very strict in investing in financing. After all, it is early in the development of the industry and there are many chaos in the industry. The formulation of government rules and the promulgation of laws also require a process. Reopening requires some conditions.

First of all, the formalization of blockchain financing must occur under the general background of the overall shift of the capital market in China to the registration system. The revised draft of the Securities Law on December 28, 2019 was passed at the closing meeting of the 15th Session of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress. The revised Securities Law clearly implements the full registration system in the capital market. This is a very important prerequisite. . China's new third board and science and technology board are now basically registered. Blockchain projects, as earlier projects, are more difficult to control risks. It is very difficult to rely on human review for risk control. The chain project must implement a registration system in the future.

Under this premise, it also cooperates with the standardization of various systems, such as measures similar to mandatory third-party audits, such as the formulation of various financial standards and mandatory information disclosure standards, such as the regular publication of monthly, quarterly, and annual reports, such as It is said that the qualification of qualified investors and the warning of account opening risks are equivalent to achieving lenient entry and strict exit. The state focuses on system construction and investigating fraud projects, which not only protects investors to the greatest extent, but also to the greatest extent Innovation and vitality.

The current financing model that relies on civilians without any risk control is obviously unsustainable and it is necessary to suspend it first. After these measures are completed, the blockchain industry's financing system will truly mature.

The points I mentioned above are the most basic facilities of the entire industry. Accounts, passwords, exchanges, fiat currencies, and financing are all things that every project will inevitably encounter. Before these most basic things are not resolved, I personally think that it is difficult for the entire industry to develop explosively.

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