Baidu Blockchain Xiao Wei: Focus on Exploring "Trusted Computing + Blockchain" Next Year

Securities Daily Reporter Li Bing

Source: Securities Daily

At present, blockchain is being deeply integrated with finance and the real economy to promote industrial transformation and upgrading. But it cannot be ignored that during the development of domestic blockchain, foreign open source blockchain technology still occupies the mainstream in the Chinese market.

An unavoidable problem is that the current overall development of domestic blockchain technology in terms of code originality is relatively backward.

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As early as 2015, Baidu began to set up a team to explore the field of blockchain. It seems to have realized the above problems early. With the keywords of "self-developed" and "open source", it has taken root in the independent development and innovation of the core technology of the blockchain. Take control of yourself and enable open source empowerment. As early as October 2017, Baidu officially joined the Hyperledger open source project under the Linux Foundation, became a core board member of the project, and began to promote the establishment of global open source specifications and standards for blockchain technology.

At present, the Baidu blockchain has landed in many aspects such as finance, administration, justice, and people's livelihood. The blockchain business of Baidu's platform, core technology and application has obtained the first batch of information service filings, and is actively participating in the establishment of industry standards in the judicial and other fields.

Under the helm of Li Yanhong, known as "Mr. AI", what exactly is the self-developed and open source underlying blockchain XuperChain (Baidu Super Chain) technology? What can Baidu's self-developed and open source research projects bring to other blockchain-related companies? With these questions in mind, a reporter from the Securities Daily spoke with Xiao Wei, general manager of the Baidu blockchain, to explore the underlying logic of Baidu's layout of the blockchain.

"Securities Daily": In May 2019, Baidu released the blockchain brand-Xuper for the first time, and announced that the self-developed underlying blockchain technology was officially open sourced. Can you elaborate on the details?

Xiao Wei: In recent years, Baidu has deeply cultivated the underlying technology, and has introduced various solutions such as justice, medical treatment, copyright, and smart cities, actively promoting the integration of blockchain and industry, and taking the lead in the new track of blockchain. Among them, XuperChain has more than 160 patents, which are all based on core and key underlying technologies. For example, the XuperModel model divides the execution of smart contracts into a pre-execution phase and a submission phase, and avoids overall locking through a mechanism similar to MVCC, so that the read set reference of a transaction does not need to be bound to the block height, and the output of unconfirmed transactions can Cited, further improving overall throughput of performance. After the evaluation of the national industrial information security development research under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the single chain reached 87,000 TPS and the overall network reached 200,000 TPS, leading the industry.

"Securities Daily": In terms of blockchain technology and application scenarios, what is Baidu's overall thinking? In addition, what do you think are the characteristics or advantages of Baidu in enabling financial institutions?

Xiao Wei: At present, Baidu is actively promoting the integration of blockchain and industry. In the process of doing blockchain, Baidu's general idea is a solution for infrastructure construction and integration capabilities. Open source and open XuperChain to create an independent, reliable and controllable blockchain underlying technology; launch XuperOS to build the next-generation blockchain basic network; better serve enterprise customers through the intelligent cloud sky chain platform; launch privacy protection that enables multi-party collaboration and data exchange The technology XuperData makes the data available invisible.

Baidu has certain advantages in the field of blockchain technology. The first is technology. The threshold of blockchain technology is relatively high, and the requirements for developers will be relatively high. Technically, our enterprise service platform has supported all the industry's most mainstream technology frameworks.

Second, we have abstracted an intermediate layer at the favorite point of the bank's landing customers and provided more than ten kinds of intermediate layer services, such as on-chain, off-chain, cross-chain, data on-chain, monitoring and alarm events, etc. . The way for users to directly use the API is that they only need to write HTTP or RESTful API, and they can use it. There is no need to hire a blockchain engineer to use our platform.

Third, at the solution level, the main focus is on the seamless integration of blockchain with other technologies. Blockchain cannot exist as a single technology and needs to be integrated with other technologies. It has combined with 5G edge computing, IoT, trusted computing and other aspects to expand the boundaries of the blockchain itself.

"Securities Daily": We noticed that Baidu's preferred industry in the application and layout of blockchain scenarios is the financial industry. Can you talk about the exploration and assistance of Baidu's blockchain technology in traditional financial institutions and the financial sector?

Xiao Wei: Baidu ’s preferred industry in the blockchain field is indeed the financial industry, because the financial industry scene is more integrated with the blockchain. Baidu focuses on the field of blockchain ToB and enterprise services. The most important one is finance. For example, the exploration of the field of traditional financial institutions may be more vivid. Pudong Development Bank is a partner of the Baidu blockchain and has already done three phases of projects.

Among them, the first phase was Baidu Smart Cloud's earliest blockchain BaaS platform for SPDB, which was privatized and deployed to SPDB's data center. At the same time, based on the BaaS platform, an "intelligent collection alliance chain" was optimized to collect collections. SPDB and its collection agencies formed an alliance to open up information silos and other issues. Afterwards, the Pua Blockchain BaaS platform was expanded and upgraded to support the alliance's capabilities.

The second phase is based on the alliance, and made more financial business explorations, including the sharing of blacklists and the listing of notes. In fact, it is the collaboration between multiple banks. The Baidu blockchain makes it easy for SPDB to join other people's alliances, and also allows other nodes to join SPDB's alliance. This is called the upgrade of alliances.

The third phase is the integration of blockchain and trusted computing technology. Through the capabilities of trusted computing + blockchain, a multi-party joint data privacy computing platform is constructed, allowing participants to protect their privacy without exposing the original data. The joint calculation of some data under the premise of safety, fairness and traceability is also the main thing Baidu does this year.

"Securities Daily": Currently relying on XuperChain technology, Baidu blockchain technology has also achieved certain results in government affairs, legal certification, and implementation of the new medical reform and medical separation policy. Can you talk about the application of the scene in detail?

Xiao Wei: Baidu Superchain has built a credible universal basic ability to deposit certificates, and provides one-stop electronic data security solutions for evidence collection, deposit, certification and legal assistance. Currently, it works with Beijing Internet Court, Guangzhou Internet Court, Qingdao The arbitration commission and other authoritative public prosecution law organizations are synchronized across the chain, making electronic data a testimony, reducing the cost of defending rights and improving judicial efficiency.

At present, Baidu is accelerating the application of blockchain in education, employment, medical health, and anti-counterfeiting of commodities. For example, in the medical scenario, Baidu Super Chain is currently using the blockchain electronic prescription review and transfer platform in Yuzhong District, Chongqing City. The plan will include patient information and medical treatment information after being “stamped” to ensure the credibility of the electronic prescription data. , Using smart contracts, encryption and other technologies to ensure the fairness and transparency of business, the security and compliance of data flow, and the use of blockchain technology to promote the implementation of the new medical reform and medical separation policy.

In the field of traceability, key traceability data records such as production, logistics, and sales are on-chain and synchronized with public inspection agencies, which further restrict the tampering and falsification of traceability information and further protect consumers' rights in subsequent product disputes.

In the field of government affairs, assist the government to build a government affairs system of "No. 1 application, one window acceptance, one Netcom office". Through the data collaboration platform, on the basis of protecting user privacy from infringement, state secrets, security, and reliability, cross-chain computing is used to achieve collaborative work, breaking data barriers and information islands from the root. Achieve data coordination among various government departments and openness and transparency in the control of information security of various agencies, improve work efficiency, respond to the state's "run once" policy, and bring a better government service experience to the people.

In addition, Baidu also launched the first domestic solution for digital identity applications-Baidu Smart Cloud 5G Blockchain Face Digital Identity Solution. This solution combines 5G with actual application scenarios and is based on Baidu Smart Cloud Skychain platform protection. Privacy and confidence in identity will play a huge role in the coming 5G era.

"Securities Daily": As 2020 is approaching, what plans does Baidu have for the implementation of blockchain technology and scenario applications?

Xiao Wei: In 2020, the blockchain has three major areas: First, the basic direction of the alliance chain is the core, and it will do its best. Second, trusted computing plus blockchain is also a very important direction that needs to be invested to solve the problem of data circulation and solve the invisibleness of data availability. Third, we will explore some distributed identity applications, as well as vertical applications such as copyright and supply chain finance. The first two are big technical directions, and the latter are some scene applications. At present, Baidu has released copyright protection business, evidence preservation business, and the world's first blockchain-based + distributed identity, which is also a preliminary layout.

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