Comments | There is no "prospect" for the public chain. Is it easy for the alliance chain?

Author 丨 Fuji

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"Don't feel that the development momentum of the alliance chain is strong now, just blindly praise the alliance chain and devalue the public chain." Said Huang Butian, the founder of Yunxiang Blockchain.

After the blockchain has risen to the national level in China, as many star public chains have fallen to the throne, the endless disputes over the supporters of the public and alliance chains and the competition of "separation" seem to have decided the first stage. The winner-the alliance chain.

Under the guise of policy, the argument that "the alliance chain is the future of the blockchain" has gradually become the "mainstream" voice. The alliance chain companies that have been working on it before have received the attention of the government, enterprises, management and the media. It has greatly increased, and many teams that were originally engaged in the research and development of the public chain have begun to turn to the research and development and service of the alliance chain technology, and they are afraid to miss this train to the future.

Huang Butian, who has been in the alliance chain field for six years, has doubts about the transformation of the public chain team of the alliance chain, and he also disagrees with the change in attitude of the heavy alliance chain and the light public chain. However, in the trend of the public chain transformation alliance chain, some people have also made different voices.

"The public chain is not without prospects, and the alliance chain is not smooth."

"Is the alliance chain a false proposition?"

"Actually, the alliance chain is not a new concept." Yang Hui (pseudonym), a former head of an alliance chain team, told DeepChain. "As early as 2015, the concept of the alliance chain appeared. In the next two years, It can be said that it is the spring of the development of the alliance chain. "

During that time, alliance teams such as Cloud Elephant Blockchain, FunChain Technology, and Bubby Blockchain raced to form.

In addition, in January 2016, the China Blockchain Research Alliance (CBRA) was established; in April, the China Distributed General Ledger Basic Protocol Alliance (ChinaLedger) was established; in May, Ping An of China joined the blockchain top alliance R3; in June, Micro Public banks, JD Finance, Huawei and others jointly established the Financial Blockchain Cooperation Alliance (Gold Alliance).

The alliance chain has taken root.

In 2019, the Cyberspace Office released the first batch of domestic blockchain information service filing numbers, with 197 blockchain information service projects from 18 provinces and cities nationwide among them. Among them, the number of alliance chains is as high as 116, accounting for 59%, which is close to 60%. There are only 25 public chain projects, accounting for 13%. The momentum of the alliance chain is not weak.

But it is interesting that almost at the same time as the large-scale development of the alliance chain, in the field of blockchain, the doubts about the alliance chain are also very loud.

Different from the traditional concept of public chain, in the alliance chain, each participant can only consult and trade, but in order to verify the transaction, the consent of the alliance node must be obtained. In simple terms, the information on the alliance chain is read-only for everyone, and only nodes have the right to verify or publish transactions, and these nodes form an alliance. Therefore, although the alliance chain reduces the node verification time, it is closer to the traditional management essence of "centralization", which is considered to be a departure from the core idea of ​​"decentralization" of the blockchain.

"In the alliance chain, the code Is The Law no longer works, but it becomes people to govern." Yang Hui believes that the emergence of the alliance chain departs from the spirit of the blockchain and Satoshi Nakamoto.

In fact, to some early blockchain evangelists, the alliance chain is a castrated version of the blockchain.

In addition, some people think that the alliance chain is a big scam in the blockchain. I believe that the alliance chain code is not open source and the nodes are not open, making it difficult for others to believe that it is a blockchain.

Even in the early years, Ethereum founder V Shen once said that incentives and tokens are the spirit of the blockchain, and it is difficult to imagine what a "currencyless blockchain" would look like.

"In fact, this is a misunderstanding." Li Kai (a pseudonym) of Xunlei Chain said that the alliance chain and the public chain have their own user groups, and they can learn and promote each other in terms of technology and business models, and they cannot replace each other.

"In the strict sense, the alliance chain and the public chain are level, but they are just two directions for the development of the blockchain."

Huang Butian also believes that the public chain and the alliance chain are not false propositions. The true judgment of the blockchain depends on whether the application scenario adopts a decentralized business governance model.

"The purpose of the public chain is to solve the wider range of credit problems, and the emergence of the alliance chain is to solve the problem of the efficiency of collaboration between a single field or a small group." Huang Butian explained to DeepChain, Both solve different problems. "

"Therefore, in terms of ideas, the two are not the same." Li Kai said that the alliance chain needs to think more about customer use scenarios and technologies that can be applied to specific scenarios. Therefore, in research and development, the alliance chain can have higher configurability and scalability, and the public chain needs to find a common solution.

Nevertheless, in the view of Yang Hui, the phenomenon that the public chain team transforms the alliance chain is more out of "frustration".

"Choose public chain or alliance chain?"

"Now the market is so poor, and the public chain project is not afraid to issue coins blatantly." Yang Hui said that the public chain team she had previously worked with, under the pressure of the form, chose to transform the alliance chain and publicize it, just a technology Provider.

In Yang Hui's view, issuing coins is the biggest charm of blockchain technology. "Can projects that do not issue coins be called blockchains?" Therefore, Yang Hui chose to leave.

At present, Yang Hui's team is not an example of a public chain transformation alliance chain.

As of December 21, 2019, the public chain project IOST announced that it will develop together in the two fields of public chain and alliance chain.In addition, the public chain project Conflux also established an alliance chain department earlier in 2019. The public chain projects THINKEY and BOS of the blockchain operating system have also chosen the alliance chain technology.

2020 is just the beginning. In the future, more and more public chain teams will choose the alliance chain.

"But don't be too optimistic."

Huang Butian believes that although the alliance chain is a boom in development today, it does not mean that teams that have transitioned to the alliance chain field can be successful.

First of all, most public chain teams received a lot of funds in the early stage, so that these teams could easily become blindly optimistic without having long-term plans for the future.

"The consequences are now obvious."

In addition, Huang Butian also believes that the blockchain entrepreneurial team, especially the public chain team, often has a problem, which is technicalism.

"In other words, it's too idealistic. We can't block the blockchain for the sake of the blockchain."

As everyone knows, whether it is the public chain or the alliance chain, it will ultimately be used by the people.

Putting it in a realistic scenario, the criterion for measuring the quality of a team is whether the team has the ability to create, research and develop, solutions, product design and field implementation at the same time.

In addition, Huang Butian said that for these transformed teams, even if all of them have the above five capabilities, their financing capabilities also restrict their development to a certain extent.

"To put it bluntly, is how much money do you have?" Huang Butianshi told DeepChain, "Just like the Internet company, whoever burns the money can live to the end."

"Therefore, I am worried and not optimistic about the transformation of many public chain teams into alliance chains." Huang Butian said that it is best to focus on a specific business to develop.

Perhaps, in a sense, the public chain is just another flower that geeks are constantly pursuing. It is infinitely beautiful, but it is difficult to achieve, and the alliance chain is a realistic flower with a landing value.

However, in the view of Yang Hui, the reason why this flower of the alliance chain can bloom is nothing more than the current "policy atmosphere", but its real benefits may not be satisfactory.

Earlier, Lu Xujun, CEO of Netbook Technology, which focuses on Alliance Chain Technology, said in an interview that from the beginning of the research and development of Alliance Chain in 2016 to 2018, there were only four or five customers of Netbook Technology. In these cooperations, Netbook Technology Both exist as a "technology provider". In addition, Lu Xujun also said that the landing of the alliance chain is mostly a proof of concept, which cannot be implemented effectively.

God V has also said that the ceiling of the alliance chain has been revealed.

Even earlier, Huang Butian expressed his helplessness about the development of the alliance chain: "In the early days, it was difficult for you to obtain a direct and clear demand. Many institutions just want to understand the blockchain, not to bring it with demand. of."

From a more practical point of view, although the league is popular, it is a bit awkward in terms of cash.

In 2017, Funchain Technology completed a $ 1.5 billion Series B financing, but its revenue for that year was only 5 million yuan, and its loss reached 15 million yuan.

A well-known alliance chain service provider told DeepChain that, in fact, many companies on the market that have done alliance chain services have been losing money in the early years, and they are all burning funds. Although the current situation has improved, there are still problems in profitability.

"No reason to doubt the future of the alliance chain"

"But now, I think the development of the alliance chain is a big trend." Huang Butian told DeepChain. "The realistic flowers of the blockchain have long been flourishing."

In February 2018, Cainiao and Tmall International jointly announced that they have enabled blockchain technology to track, upload, and verify the full-link logistics information of cross-border imported goods; in August of the same year, Tencent joined forces with Shenzhen State Taxation Bureau to launch a nationwide The first "Blockchain Electronic Invoice"; in 2019, Thunder and the Guangzhou Municipal Government jointly launched a local financial blockchain credit information sharing platform, which can summarize the credit data of various institutions on the chain.

In October 2019, Chen Chun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, also said in a speech that the provident fund data sharing platform of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has connected to provident fund centers in 491 cities across the country, and more than 50 million pieces of data have been uploaded. The application of the blockchain has been extended from a single digital currency application to various areas of the economy and society, with significant effects.

"These are just the tip of the iceberg of the alliance chain." Li Kai said that in terms of industrialization applications in the alliance, blockchain technology has been extended to all areas of society and economy, including finance, law, medical, energy, entertainment, Public welfare and other undertakings.

In addition, Li Kai and Huang Butian also believe that the alliance chain that blooms in various fields will produce the most fruitful fruits in the financial field.

Huang Butian said that at present, there are more than 6,000 domestic financial institutions and similar financial institutions, and there are more than 1,300 banks, large and small. The alliance chain can play a very broad space.

Back in 2018, Ant Financial and Philippine wallet GCash launched a cross-border blockchain remittance, and Standard Chartered Bank provided settlement services.

The time of cross-border payment of Ant Financial, which accesses the alliance chain technology, has been shortened from 10 minutes to a few days to 3 seconds.

Ma Yun said that this project was one of his most concerned projects and called it, and he had asked at least 10 times the progress of the project by Ant Financial Chairman Jingxian Dong.

In addition, in recent years, many banks have announced their own blockchain plans, and their plans are almost all concentrated in the areas of clearing and settlement, payment, bills, and supply chain.

Li Kai said that the financial field is a typical scenario of multi-agent participation and asymmetric information. There is a serious information island problem, and trust is the key to solving the problem.

"It happens that the blockchain is born to solve the trust problem." Li Kai believes that the alliance chain has great potential in this field.

At the same time, Huang Butian believes that China's future level of blockchain development will definitely be better than foreign countries.

Because western social governance structures are relatively complete, the desire to explore new models of social governance will not be very strong, just as China's mobile payment is developed, while credit cards are still used abroad.

"We are more advanced in payments than the West because of the shortcomings of our payment system, which has pushed us to explore new payment systems."

"Therefore, we have no reason to doubt the future development prospects of the alliance chain." Huang Butian finally said.

This article is original for DeepChain Deep Chain (ID: deepchain-eva). Reproduction without authorization is prohibited.

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