How does the blockchain land in the financial sector? Come listen to the experts

“From the second half of 2018 to this year, the blockchain has made a big breakthrough in 'entity + finance'. However, for special reasons, many breakthrough scenarios cannot be widely publicized. If not in the industry, it may not be able to Feel it."

On June 1st, at the China Blockchain Technology and Application Summit hosted by the China Computer Society (CCF), Zhou Wei, senior director of China UnionPay Electronic Payments Institute, shared the practice and thinking of China UnionPay in the application of blockchain. Said.

Li Wei, CEO of Fun Chain Technology, also said that as a first-line blockchain entrepreneur, it can be seen that not only the People's Bank, UnionPay, workers and peasants, but other commercial banks are doing a lot of blockchain-based financial practices. Moreover, the scale of application of financial institutions is getting bigger and bigger, and it is more and more closely related to the lives of ordinary people.

The same is true. From the cases that have already been announced, in recent years, the application of blockchains in bills, letters of credit, Forfaiting, and supply chain finance has become more and more prosperous.

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Blockchain + Finance: Multi-point flowering

Zhang Bin, technical director of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, shared the pain points of the current bill business: 1. The amount is relatively large. 2. Once the bill is opened, it cannot be changed. Once the transaction is completed, it cannot be revoked. 3. The main body of the transaction is financial institutions such as banks and small and medium-sized enterprises. 4. The notes are independently credited by the bank and risk controlled, but once the risks appear, the bills will be transmitted to all parties involved in the bill transaction process.

These characteristics determine the high security, tamper resistance and anti-risk requirements of the bill business. The distributed account book, high transparency, and data not tampering of the blockchain can help solve the above problems.

"For example, using the characteristics of the blockchain that cannot be tampered with, all the participants in the whole network are broadcasted from the ticket sign. When we verify the authenticity of the ticket and whether it has been tampered with, we can use the blockchain consistency certificate in the ticket. On the basis of the exchange, a technically credible certification is made to solve the problem of authenticity in the circulation of bills," Zhang Bin said.

Since September 2016, the Stock Exchange has jointly carried out research on digital bill prototypes with several subsidiaries of the People's Bank of China and several commercial banks. In January 2018, the company officially launched the trial blockchain system, and the system is currently operating stably.

Xing Lei, the person in charge of the blockchain application platform of CCB Financial Technology Corporation, shared the exploration of the application of blockchain in the housing and trade settlement of CCB. Take housing rental as an example. When you rent a house to someone else, you will encounter a problem. If you hang out your rental information on multiple rental platforms, but you don’t have any other platforms in time after a platform is closed. You will receive calls from tenants repeatedly. After the construction bank puts the renting status on the blockchain, it connects the multiple trading platforms through the blockchain platform, so that everyone can synchronize the status of the property and share the information of the house, and bring the renter and the owner Great improvement.

Zhou Wei shared the case of China UnionPay's trusted electronic voucher based on blockchain. To this end, China UnionPay and China Everbright Bank established the first domestic alliance chain based on public network across regions and inter-agency. The reason why the special emphasis on the "public network" is because in order to ensure the security of the system, the docking between the UnionPay or the interbank system is usually a dedicated line, and if the blockchain technology is used, the line is also used. It will mask the point-to-point value of the blockchain and increase the cost.

In addition, Feng Yangyue, senior researcher at the Financial Chain Center of the Financial Technology Center of Suning Financial Research Institute, shared Suning Finance's blockchain-based letter of credit system. Currently, it has access to 1 billion yuan of business volume in Jiangsu Province. Based on the blockchain-based financial blacklist business, there are 10 alliances on the top, which can share the financial blacklists required in various fields of various industries.

Although the blockchain has been implemented in many financial scenarios, there are some scenarios where blockchains are not suitable.

What pits are there in the “blockchain+”?

International cross-border remittances are inefficient and usually take 30 days, so we will see many project parties claim that the use of blockchain can solve the problem of low efficiency of cross-border remittances.

However, Zhou Wei found through field research that the problem in “blockchain + cross-border remittance” is not so simple.

"First of all, we use the alliance chain without Token. How to get the funds is a bottleneck. It was difficult to solve at that time. As for accelerating the flow of funds, the purpose of remittance in real time from the customer's point of view is not necessarily solved by the blockchain. From a business perspective It can also be solved. UnionPay International has a product called Global Express, which has already achieved the effect of real-time or punctual collection of remittances by means of funds advancement."

Therefore, Zhou Wei changed his research direction and found that although cross-border remittances can be delivered in real time, the funds flowed through multiple parties, resulting in opaque information asymmetry, and it is difficult for the payee to quickly find the original remittance party. UnionPay uses the blockchain to place the parties involved in the remittance business on the blockchain node, which makes it easy to synchronize information and multi-party collaboration. It can be turned into a quasi-real-time query from dozens of days of inquiry, as long as the bank card number is entered. Inquiries, like checking the courier can check the situation of remittance tracking.

"Blockchain + traceability" is also the field where the current blockchain application is hot. Li Wei has poured a cold water on this direction.

"For example, we often hear the source of Moutai. I think it is very difficult, because the bottle of Moutai can be changed at will, put a QR code in the Maotai bottle, the factory sweeps no problem. But now the laser drilling technology is very developed, You put a hole in the bottle, the wine is pumped out, and the other wine is poured in. The bottle is real, and the wine is not the wine."

Li Wei pointed out that the blockchain + traceability needs to be carefully considered, because the security guaranteed by the blockchain is the credibility of the entire online or the entire digital world. But the credibility and security of the offline physical world is difficult to use blockchain protection. If you want to ensure the credibility of the data in the physical world, one of the most basic principles is that there must be technical means to ensure the security of the entire physical world to the digital world mapping before the blockchain, such as through genetic technology, biotechnology, and Internet of Things technologies. Wait.

Moreover, the actual business relationship is very complicated. If the blockchain is used to connect two or three enterprises point-to-point, it is said that it is not so simple.

Problems to be further considered

“For example, if a bank access is subject to the same court, for the court to access multiple customers, each customer is not connected to each other, which means that many chains are built.”

Zhang Kaixiang, chief architect of Weizhong Bank Blockchain and FISCO BCOS open source blockchain platform architect, pointed out that multi-chain may be a good solution in the first two years, but it is not the optimal solution because it has a lot of resources. Repeat construction. Therefore, FISCO BCOS proposes a group-based solution, which is like a group and a collaborative relationship. Different groups chat different business, different data will not be clustered together. If you cross-group interaction, you can still connect to each other through cross-group. The benefits of this approach are light and flexible, ensuring that different collaborations and privacy are protected in the same business domain.

And even if the blockchain application is already on the line, it doesn't mean everything is fine. Zhang Bin said frankly that although the digital bills were completed in January 2018, there are still some challenges in the promotion and application. The first is the technical challenge. Since the blockchain technology itself is still in its infancy, there are technical problems such as system performance, consensus, and cross-chain. There are still some technical difficulties in large-scale application. Secondly, in terms of business, how the digital ticket platform connects with the centralized clearing system to realize the function of DVP (ticket payment). How to connect with the bill management system and the risk control system inside the bank to realize straight-through business. Again, in terms of policy, the main policy system is based on the policy system of paper bills and electronic bills. How to form effective supervision methods and policies for the characteristics of digital bills requires further exploration and research.

Zhou Wei also pointed out the problem of the blockchain in the business application level. "The alliance chain usually has relatively limited participants. If it continually converges, it may become a quasi-centralized or even centralized solution. Others will Q. Where is your necessity? What is the value you bring? In many cases, you will kill the case of using the blockchain directly."

Zhang Kaixiang appears to be quite optimistic. He believes that with the evolution of technology, the existing problems will be solved one by one. "I believe that the development of technology will solve a series of pain problems, such as privacy issues, large-scale problems, mass storage problems, and regulatory technology issues. Many problems may not have a definitive answer today, but I believe in the next 1-2 years. Industry and academic cooperation will certainly have good results."

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