How will the public chain break the game in 2020? The project party answered these 3 questions

The large-scale application of blockchain technology is inseparable from the construction of the underlying infrastructure, from Ethereum, which will become a "world computer", to EOS known as a million-level TPS, to Cosmos and Polkadot, which are cross-chain duoes Algorand trying to break the impossible triangle and so on. The mission of each public chain is dedicated to solving the imperfections of the current blockchain infrastructure.

At the same time, the alliance chain also wants to become the infrastructure of the industry, such as the well-known domestic FISCO BCOS, ant blockchain and so on. What are the differences between public chain and alliance chain in building infrastructure? What new problems will the public blockchain face after launching? What challenges do blockchains face? On December 3, at the "2019CAN Summit · Everything Interchain" site, Quantum Chain, Conflux, Behara Chain, and Quarkchain discussed the above issues. These projects are working hard to build a blockchain infrastructure, such as the integration of quantum chains. Bitcoin and Ethereum, Conflux hopes to break the consensus bottleneck without sacrificing decentralization and security, and proposes a "one-master, multi-sided" architecture than the original chain. Quarkchain pursues high TPS. At the beginning of 2020, I hope this question and answer can provide practitioners with thinking.

The following is the core content of the dialogue, organized by Babbitt:

Public and alliance chains tend to converge

VNTChain co-founder Zhou Feng (host): Blockchain is divided into public and alliance chains. From a technical perspective, what are the differences between public and alliance chains? What are the characteristics of each?

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The founder of Quantum Chain Shuai Chu:

The blockchain has experienced 10 years of development. The alliance chain originated in 2014. For the benefit of commercialization, IBM HyperLedger promoted the growth of the alliance chain. At first, there was no such concept as public chain in the industry. Later, in order to compare with the alliance chain, there was a public chain reference.

In terms of network access rights, the alliance chain is generally a controlled and supervised node before joining. There is no threshold for network access of the classic public chain, and anyone has the right to verify all transactions on the network. However, as the consensus mechanism of the blockchain shifts from POW, POS to BFT, PBFT, etc., the access threshold of the network is increased invisibly, and the definition of the public chain is not as strict as initially. Long Yu, CEO of the original chain:

The alliance chain is more of a node access mechanism. Multiple business parties jointly form an alliance to achieve a certain business purpose. The alliance chain ultimately pursues efficiency issues.

Technically, there is an environment of homogeneous nodes in the alliance chain, that is, the operating environment is determined, and everyone's status will pass a certain consensus in advance to form a trusted environment.

The public chain has no threshold and is a heterogeneous node environment. Nodes can run on any single smart device such as a PC, mobile phone, or even a TV or camera. The environment that the public chain faces is more complex, and the security risks are much higher than the alliance chain.

The alliance chain and the public chain will eventually merge to some extent. In some scenarios, the public chain will not be able to land at all, because of some policy or technical restrictions, then you can seek a solution for the alliance chain. Under certain circumstances, the alliance chain is very sensitive to data. If users on the public chain want to use the business of the alliance chain, they can access the services of the alliance chain through the state channel or the second-layer network technology. Wu Ming, co-founder of Conflux:

Let me talk about the differences caused by the differences in access mechanisms.

The advantage of the alliance chain's access mechanism is that the transaction confirmation delay is very low. The disadvantage is that it is sacrificed for decentralization and is less secure.

The public chain has no access mechanism, and the scale can be very large and more secure. The disadvantage is that in an open environment, transactions cannot be confirmed 100%.

The alliance chain and the public chain are complementary to each other, and the alliance chain and the public chain can be combined through a cross-chain approach to bring more selectivity to users. On the other hand, with the progress of public chain technology, the performance bottleneck brought by the consensus mechanism is slowly eliminated, which indirectly promotes the progress of the alliance chain, and the two will tend to be consistent . Qu Yao's Chief Scientist Yang Yaodong:

The thresholds established by the access mechanisms of the alliance chain and the public chain are different, which makes the risks and security requirements of the two types of projects different. The security of the public chain requires a set of consensus and economic models to protect it. The security of the alliance chain can be solved by traditional security methods. From a technical point of view, many technical advantages accumulated by the public chain in the development and research process will greatly help the technological breakthrough of the alliance chain .

Mainnet launch is just the first step

Host: The mainnet is the infrastructure of the blockchain. What are the biggest feelings and differences before and after the mainnet goes live? Where do we go in the future?

Shuai Chu:

The mainnet launch is the biggest test for a blockchain technology team and a comprehensive test. The mainnet environment is a completely open environment, and any potential attack factor can attack such a network. In the case that the mainnet is designed with logic and the underlying code is completely open source, being able to withstand attacks from hackers on the network is a great thing in software science.

After the mainnet is launched, we still have to constantly repair various problems in the network. Like the development of the Bitcoin network today, the 0.19 version was released, which actually brought a lot of inspiration to developers. A network with the longest history in the industry has also been silently developed and maintained. The entire industry needs a more modest attitude and a more focused spirit to promote blockchain technology. Especially in China, I hope that everyone can be at ease in technology development. Although the entire public chain will not explode so quickly, it will bring a lot of influence in the future, and it will even become an experimental field for new technologies. Export a lot of valuable technologies.

In the long run, I also believe that there will be more third-party developers on the public chain to find very good business models on it, but I think these things are still in the process of exploration, I hope you can stick to the technology Innovation and progress. Langyu:

The main chain of the original chain was launched in April 2018, because we are the POW consensus. When the founding block was dug out, the entire team was very excited, which is equivalent to the crystallization of development results in the past year.

We also put forward the concept of "computing power is power". After the main network is launched, for the POW chain, it is equivalent to this chain that we cannot completely control, because all operating rules are determined by computing power.

The development path is clearer than the original chain, and each major product release corresponds to a white paper. Biyuan's main goal is to make assets go on-chain. The core demand is to achieve digital assetization and asset digitization. In terms of industry-side advancement, we believe that blockchain technology cannot just float in the air, nor can it just transfer tokens on the chain. It must go deep into the industry, so it launched the Bystack platform and proposed "One Master Multi-sided "blockchain solution. In terms of public chain technology innovation, we believe that the only scenario in the public chain field that may be legal and can be promoted on a large scale is DeFi , so we propose a MOV decentralized cross-chain protocol. To sum up, it is walking on two legs, part of the landing of the industry, and part of the exploration of the public chain. Yang Yaodong:

After the mainnet is launched, the real blockchain environment will come out, and the team will discover a lot of problems and it is possible to make some improvements. Quarkchain's starting point is to solve the problem of throughput. However, after the mainnet went online, we found that although there was such a high throughput, no one used it.

Since throughput is not the biggest problem, what exactly is the problem? I think the existing problem is how to combine blockchain with real scenarios. But what are the requirements for each scenario? In fact, it is ever-changing.

For example, if you take a bus to deduct a dollar, you need to confirm it in one second. It doesn't take fast to transfer $ 1 billion, it needs to be very secure. Therefore, the same value is transmitted. If the value is not the same, the requirements are completely different.

Different business scenarios have different requirements for the blockchain. How can they meet such diverse requirements? In fact, the network needs to have sufficient flexibility and scalability. After the launch of our mainnet, the focus is on trying to find solutions, combining with specific industries, to really find a solution for the application of the industry. Our mainnet has 8 segments, and a privacy function will be added in the future. Sharding makes the network capable of processing private transactions. Wu Ming:

The main online challenge is great. There are two main problems with public chains. One is that the system must be stable. The other is to have a large number of users and a sufficiently active ecology.

The basic functions of our mainnet have been developed. Now we are optimizing the storage execution of a single machine. We hope to improve the bottleneck. Our mainnet is expected to be launched in Q1 next year.

In terms of ecological development, we made some preparations. On the one hand, we designed incentive mechanisms to motivate developers. At the same time, our team is working hard to improve the development tools and interfaces of the mainnet and DAPP to make DAPP easier to develop. At the same time, we also use some cross-chain mechanisms to transfer more valuable assets to our network to carry more assets and increase its liquidity.

Large-scale landing of blockchain requires multi-level advancement

Moderator: Blockchain is very likely to change the future. In the commercial place, what direction do you like? How far is the blockchain from large-scale landing applications?

Shuai Chu:

I think the application of blockchain may be promoted in many levels.

At the first level, everyone can think of it , such as doing data storage and tracing to the source. This is a feature that naturally fits the credibility of the blockchain and is also the easiest to implement. This mainly depends on whether the enterprise is willing to open up these data, and it has nothing to do with technology.

The second level is in line with the development of blockchain technology, and may face some regulatory requirements and needs . For example, some offline assets that are verified are real assets. If they can be circulated and circulated on the chain, the blockchain can play a credit function, and technically ensure that the data on the chain cannot be tampered with. These data and assets are actually a symbol. The blockchain has established a set of symbol systems that can maintain credit and can be widely used in various fields. When many valuable assets can be circulated and circulated on the chain, it will inevitably promote The liquidity of the entire social assets feeds back the development of the entire economy.

At the third level, there are currently unseen and unexpected applications . Just as the mobile Internet gave birth to new business models and forms such as Didi and Airbnb, with the development of blockchain technology, new business models will also be born.

For example, like the distributed finance that is generated today, smart contracts play the role of a bank. You mortgage the assets on the chain to such a smart contract, just like you mortgage assets to a bank. This liquidity can also help you participate in other services on the chain. With the upgrade of smart contracts, these data and assets of many of our companies may be taken over in the future, forming some highly automated and completely new service models for businesses. Langyu:

Many times when it comes to blockchain, what do you think is the application besides the hype? I think the birth of a technology, when you think you can use it, its potential has disappeared, or its ceiling is relatively low.

Blockchain is a model that changes production relations. The alliance chain may be more productive, but the real disruptive innovation is still on the public chain. The subversive enlightenment of the blockchain to the world is happening. The emergence of Libra alone is enough to cause big discussions around the world. We must know that Libra is still in the alliance chain stage.

All things that have potential and promise cannot be achieved overnight. We cannot predict that the blockchain can develop to a certain level in the next 3-5 years, or that the whole world can accept the blockchain. But we think this direction must be promising. For example, the blockchain is like the invention of alternating current. At first, alternating current was just lighting. Now we can see that electricity can be used in electric cars, televisions, and the Internet. Maybe at that time, everyone was asking what the use of alternating current is, just like we are asking what is the use of blockchain . I think everyone still needs to continue to work hard and wait for a certain time before they can see the true value of the blockchain. Wu Ming:

There have been many cases of the application of blockchain in the financial field. In the non-financial field, the blockchain also has its place, such as deposit certificate, which is technically very simple. But in fact, we actually hope that the data with credit value can be achieved by C to C.

For example, everyone is using social network applications and exchanges a lot of data on social networks every day, but these data have no credit value. If individuals integrate blockchain technology with existing social network technologies, they can introduce creditworthy data in social networks and allow users to develop a habit of this communication. meaningful. In fact, this also requires some technical improvements. It is too much trouble for us to operate things such as private keys and public keys. This matter may prevent many ordinary users from using this thing, so how to make the software easy to use Sexuality is good, so that everyone can use this kind of creditworthy information without having to be too complicated to feel this thing. I think it is a new scenario for the blockchain to land in the future. Yang Yaodong:

I will say an example that everyone may have the most feeling. What is the biggest component of everyone ’s worth? It is usually real estate.

After the reform of the commercial housing market in the 1990s, the market began to flourish, producing a number of well-known large companies, bringing tremendous wealth growth to individuals, and forming the main form of the value of each person.

Why is this happening? What's the difference? Isn't Chinese land here all the time? Isn't your house here all the time? Why has it changed so much since the 1990s? The core is confirmation.

I believe that as blockchain technology is more and more applied to our lives, more assets will be confirmed like houses, and then a large number of assets will evolve and appreciate like houses . Suppose everyone sits here after 20 years, and I ask such questions again, maybe most of your worth is not necessarily a house, something else.

Data technology (DT) has been proposed for many years. Why do we feel that we don't have much to do with ourselves? The core products of data technology do not flow freely, and you cannot trade your data. If this asset can be realized through the blockchain, or if the individual can completely control it, I believe that it can bring as much return as the house. Therefore, it is expected that a number of technologies represented by blockchain technology will bring new wealth to our society.

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