Interview with Ant Jin Li Lili: Blockchain is underway, and more and more assets can be digitized in the future.

Original: Sharing Finance Neo

Source: Sharing Finance

On November 8, the "2019 World Blockchain Conference·Wuzhen" officially opened.

As the first guest speaker of the conference, Li Jieli, senior director of the ant blockchain and head of the ant blockchain BaaS platform, unveiled the mystery of the Alibaba blockchain.

• Bloomberg: The US Taxation Authority has identified dozens of encrypted tax evasion and cybercriminals
• Wuzhen·Bai Shuo: To compete with Libra, we need to establish a legal digital currency system.
• Image Chain Technology Releases "Blockchain + Artificial Intelligence + IoT" Integrated Solution

Interestingly, after Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu’s blockchain leaders also took the stage to speak. At this point, the BAT Big Three in the eyes of the people in the emerging field of blockchain has finally launched a new round of positive competition.

Although the Big Three have a large number of layouts in the blockchain field, there is no shortage of overlaps. But there is no doubt that, depending on its own advantages, its focus is slightly different. As a person with extensive experience in the "cloud" field, this time, they once again targeted the enterprise users. That is to say, the blockchain Bass platform is introduced, and in the field of blockchain Bass platform, it also proposes the concept of open alliance chain.

Obviously, from the "cloud" to the "chain", ten years later, Alibaba wants to start from the blockchain and set sail again. Then, what is the open alliance chain? Compared with the traditional public chain and alliance chain, what are the advantages of the open alliance chain? As a blockchain practitioner, how does Li Jieli view asset digitalization, blockchain application and supervision? And other crucial factors.

From the following interviews with Li Jieli and their presentations, we may find the answer:

Q: In today's speech, you mentioned the value network and said that these values ​​are a variety of digital assets. Can you explain in detail how you think about digital assets?

Li Jieli: There are several kinds of digital transformations that we have seen in the whole society. More and more assets can be digitized. I mentioned them in the speech just now. Some of them are existing assets that exist in the real world. Digitization, some are the original new digital assets generated in the digital economy. After the assets are available, it is very convenient to use the blockchain to perform the transfer of almost zero friction on the blockchain architecture. As I said, Alibaba's mission is to make the world have no difficult business, and digital asset trading is also a necessary development direction.

Q: What role did the open alliance chain play in the flow of digital assets?

Li Jieli: For the open alliance chain, our plan is to introduce various data rights. In the various data rights, some points need a public medium as a bridge when they are exchanged.

The open alliance chain is such a bridge linking decentralization.

Q: Because you just mentioned the concept of open alliance chain in your speech, and you also mentioned inclusive finance, here I would like to ask, how low can this threshold be lowered, if it can be reduced to zero threshold, it and the current What is the difference between public links?

Li Jieli: First of all, the public chain is still very expensive, and the cost of developing and using the public chain is very high. Then the performance bottleneck is also a very important thing, a big challenge, so the open alliance chain is that we think that between the alliance chain enterprise-level application and the completely liberalized public chain, we have found a new path.

Then our node side must be more than the current alliance chain, and then provide more authoritative endorsement, more general services are on the line, open to more users. Now the cost of the alliance chain is probably between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. It is not counting the development of the chain. The open alliance chain we are expecting is a cost one to two orders of magnitude lower than this, so it is very cost-effective. Then the performance is also very good, such a system.

Q: Do you think that the open alliance chain is mainly a huge advantage in terms of cost?

Li Jieli: cost, development time, and the richness of the tools and ecology above.

Q: What about profitability?

Li Jieli: The profit is still not talked about. We just established the entity of the ant blockchain just this year.

Q: How long does the blockchain have to go from the real landing?

Li Jieli: Actually, it has already happened in various industries. If you say it again, it will be how long it will take from the large-scale landing. So I just said that now, in 2019, just like the Internet in 1999, it started to go online, large-scale Go online, but you see that the Internet changes have brought a lot, but they all require the efforts of many people for a long time.

Like Shangyun 10 years ago, Alibaba Cloud was founded in 2009. At that time, it was said that enterprises should go to the cloud, but not many people know what the cloud is. Now all enterprises are in the cloud. For example, on the cloud in Alibaba, Alibaba's 100% business has to move to the cloud, so I think the next day is not a day or two, it is a long-term promotion of the entire social progress.

Q: At present, what sections and functions does Alipay actually apply to blockchain technology?

Li Jieli: I have just introduced the cross-border remittance. In some channels overseas, I mentioned Hong Kong and the Philippines, and Malaysia to Pakistan. Then we will open several new international remittances. This is a More important is also the direction that our internationalization team will focus on.

In addition, our mutual treasure products in Alipay, mutual treasure is a national-level Internet mutual help product, then how to do offline claims, or some procedural omissions, etc., these things are all the whole process The chain is also supported by blockchain.

Q: So at the regulatory level, Alibaba, as the blockchain leader in Hangzhou, can you disclose what new actions the Hangzhou government has in the blockchain supervision?

Li Jieli: We have maintained close communication with the regulatory authorities, but when we talk about the Hangzhou provincial government and the municipal government, we may not be able to answer them.

Q: What advice do you have for the blockchain enterprises in Hangzhou?

Li Jieli: I think that with the recent concern of many communities on the blockchain industry and the rapid increase in heat, local governments will definitely increase their investment. I believe that Hangzhou, as a city with blockchain enterprises, will definitely continue to play the blockchain. A role like the city plays a leading role nationwide.

Of course, if I say the suggestion, I feel that no matter what, whether it is the industry is cold or hot, is it a bubble, or what I have been asking for our team is that no matter what we do, we have to return to value, Creating value, this is the most important thing. Everything else is about whether you can create new value for society, so I think we need the whole industry to create more value together.

Q: Do you think that China's industry in 2020 may have a direct impact or impact on the blockchain?

Li Jieli: It's hard to talk about a certain industry, but I think it should be in the pan-financial field. It should be more recent from the blockchain. The impact may not necessarily be a bank, but it should be related to finance, because on the one hand it is digitized. The degree is relatively high, and on the other hand, it is more closely integrated with its technical system.

Q: In addition to the layout of blockchains like Tencent and Alibaba, many companies now want to flood into the blockchain field. How do you think about this phenomenon, is it good or bad for this field?

Li Jieli: I feel that the whole degree of attention has improved. It is a very good thing to have a lot of social resources. As a practitioner, we are also very excited. At the same time, it is also the beginning of returning to work. You are because this matter is very hot. Do, or because these things can really create value before they do, I feel that every new person must be asked to ask such questions.

Li Jieli's speech record:

The theme of my speech today is "Openness, Pratt & Whitney, Building a Future Value Interconnection Network". My speech is divided into three parts. The first part, share the thinking, strategic positioning and logic behind the ant Jinfu for the blockchain. In the second part, I will report to you some blockchain applications that the ant blockchain team has landed in the past year. In the third part, I will use this stage to release a brand new blockchain product.

The thing that ant Jinfu does is to use technology to drive inclusive finance. The business unit of Ant Financial is divided into 4 pieces. The most familiar one is the payment section. Alipay is a national-level application. Now there are more than 900 million in China. user. In terms of globalization, we have also invested in and acquired some overseas wallets around the world. If Chinese tourists go overseas, we find that more and more places in Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea and Europe can be paid by Alipay. We have also served a large number of local overseas users in conjunction with local wallets, which add up to more than 1.2 billion worldwide.

In addition to mobile payments and globalization, digital finance is now a very important business segment, based on a wide variety of payments, for consumers and a variety of financial services for small and micro enterprises, including borrowing and spending. , Yu'ebao, insurance, and a series of other financial products for businesses, this is our important business sector.

Intelligent technology, this business segment is also new and mature this year, including blockchain, AI, IoT, security, etc. This series of technologies has combined to form a new intelligent technology business segment. Here, the blockchain is one of the very core pieces, and the ant blockchain team comes from ant intelligence technology.

In the past 20 years, the rapid development of the Internet has greatly changed the entire living state and production relations of human beings around the world, and the productivity has greatly improved. In the past 20 years, the domestic BAT was born, and the United States also gave birth to some great Internet companies. If time goes back 20 years ago, in 1999, when Alibaba was just established, we are talking about surfing the Internet is a relatively new thing. If you look at it 10 years ago, it was 2009, when Aliyun was established, Shangyun is also a relatively new thing. Today, from the Internet to the cloud, the transition to the uplink, we are to build a new value Internet based on the Internet.

Blockchain: Making trust easier

Alibaba's mission, everyone should be more clear, widely circulated is Ma Yun teacher first proposed "to make the world no difficult business." To do business, you have to make a transaction. If you want to make a transaction, you must have trust. This is why Alipay and Ant Financial are born out of Alibaba Group, which is based on providing trust for the transaction.

Alipay was established in 2015 and was established to provide third-party payment, which is based on platform trust and provides such trust between buyers and sellers. If you say that Alipay has only done one thing in the past 15 years, it is trust. Constantly build trust, build a bridge of trust between buyers and sellers, between small businesses and consumers.

From a powerful platform to centralize the development of trust, we later have sesame credit, based on big data, based on payment, consumer data, and serve the society, which is based on big data trust. Going forward, the blockchain is strongly related to transactions and trusts. It is a new, more atomic-level trust based on encryption algorithms.

In addition to big data, we believe that the occurrence of each transaction, through encryption, through the network consensus, such trust will play a key role in the future value of the Internet, the blockchain technology system is not a future digital economy The lack of infrastructure, this is a basic judgment of us, and is also the reason why Alibaba Group, Ant Financial, put the blockchain as a core competitiveness behind a relatively high strategic center.

The ant blockchain makes trust simpler. When it comes from the information network to the value network, what is the “value network”? Our understanding of the "value network" is different from the general information. It reflects the value, that is, a variety of digital assets. Now we have invoices, bills, various contracts, people's identity, corporate identity, etc. in the digital economy to generate business behavior, valuable digital assets, we believe that constitute an important component of the value network section.

With the development of blockchain technology, it is possible to integrate many physical assets in the real world, through the Internet of Things, AI technology, and blockchain, and then turn it into digital assets. It is also an important part of the value of the Internet.

Technology continues to evolve, creating new, new, digital assets in the digital world that will also flow throughout the value network. The thing we are doing today is to go through the dots, one node and one node to connect the industry, connect these assets, and build a future value network. In the end, the mission of Ant Financial is still to serve small and medium-sized consumers. I will give you a few examples.

The practice of landing the ant blockchain

The first case is cross-border remittance. This is what we launched last year. We used the blockchain technology to build cross-border remittances. This can save time and reduce costs and save HK$500 per year. For hundreds of thousands of Filipino maids, they greatly save their cross-border remittance time and money costs. We have opened several new national passages, and there will be a series of more moves in this matter.

The second case is the blockchain electronic bill. This is an application that we have landed in more than a dozen hospitals in Taizhou, Zhejiang. Now, if you go to see a doctor in Taizhou Hospital in Zhejiang Province, the electronic ticket platform built with blockchain technology can save a lot of money. The average patient visit time was reduced from 170 minutes to 75 minutes. If you use the blockchain to do the claims and reimbursement of these processes, it will be greatly simplified. It will be more than one or two orders of magnitude shorter than the previous one and the procedures will be greatly simplified.

The third case is the ant's double-chain communication platform, which is also built on the bottom of the ant blockchain. The so-called double-chain: is the blockchain + supply chain. We use some large core enterprise credit endorsements, and accounts receivable go to the first, second and third level suppliers, and continue to the end. This example is a small electronic goods vendor in Chengdu. He can do not need to fund himself on the platform, and soon get the financing of the platform. Even 200 yuan can apply for loans quickly. No blockchain technology is guaranteed at the bottom, and this financial service is impossible.

This picture is an ecological panorama of the ant blockchain product. The ant blockchain has a powerful BaaS platform. It is built on the underlying cloud platform. Most of the nodes are on the ground floor of the world's leading Alibaba Cloud. Of course, it can also be compatible with other cloud bottom layers. On the BaaS platform, the blockchain core technology with the ant blockchain's own proprietary property rights is encapsulated, and it is also compatible with the enterprise Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, Quorum, and two different open source systems. At the core of these three technologies, we also offer BaaS Plus, a general service outside of some chains. On top of the BaaS and Plus layers, we also offer a range of solutions that focus on the chain of finance, chain retail, and chain life, providing a range of services that can truly be implemented.

So in the past year or so, the ant blockchain team has combined with the ants themselves to do a lot of blockchain application landings. At the same time, many partners have joined us, and we have developed and applied the application on the ant BaaS platform to solve the problems in the industry. At the same time, there are many customers, which can not be listed here, so the ant blockchain ecology also forms a prototype.

In the past year or so of the application of the blockchain in the area, we have made some small progress, and we also feel that there are still many things to do. If we look out from the circle of our own industry, the outside world still has a lot of mystery about the blockchain. This shows that our blockchain application has not touched the reach of hundreds of millions of users like the Internet. Let everyone really enjoy the services behind.

Let's look at the architectures, public and alliance chains that are commonly used in the two existing blockchains. The difficulty of landing the public chain is also a commonplace. If the performance bottleneck of the public chain itself is to be broken, it still needs a long-term development, including in terms of compliance and security. The alliance chain is also the direction that the ant gold service owner pushes, and we land some applications. However, the alliance chain is basically an enterprise-level service. Its cost is relatively high. The enterprises participating in the alliance chain are still relatively few. It solves some key problems in the upstream and downstream of the enterprise. These issues apply to some partners and businesses in this chain, but the threshold for users who actually use the chain is high. To tell the truth, look at the alliance chain and the public chain. In terms of the whole society, the current users are still small circles.

Open alliance chain: to be a blockchain at your fingertips

How to build a blockchain service network that everyone can reach at your fingertips and benefit more participants and everyone. Here we propose a direction of exploration and open the alliance chain. Lower cost, lower barriers to open the Pratt & Whitney blockchain service network, we found that there are many small and medium-sized enterprises, individual developers, they want to do some development applications for the blockchain, but I do not know where to start, The cost is also relatively high. We hope that this part of the crowd will use the open alliance chain and provide a lot of standardization services. Just now I said that the services on the BaaS platform will be provided to the open alliance chain. There are also many third-party applications, as well as some general-purpose ecological services, and some of the benefits will be presented in this open alliance chain.

We will also invite some credible authorities in the industry to endorse the open alliance chain and provide some common capabilities to export to this alliance chain.

At the Yunqi Conference just past this year, we talked about the open alliance chain and proposed to do this. Today, I am very happy to use this occasion to officially announce the opening of the ant blockchain open alliance chain and begin public beta. Starting today, a small range of invitations to open beta. After more than a month, we will open up to more developers and enterprises to conduct truly large-scale public beta. Our goal plan is to officially launch the ant blockchain open alliance chain after 3 months. During this time, we will continue to listen to user feedback, optimize the product, and prepare to bring a brand new service to the market in three months. We will also communicate with our partners, the node side, to design the entire mechanism.

After more than a year of exploration, my feelings are the industry. We walked through a lot of mud and passed through the grasslands. Today we all came to the foot of a very high snow mountain from different paths, and then the sun came out. We can see the beautiful scenery on the top of the mountain, but at this time the road ahead is also very uneven. Our vision is the development of the value Internet in the next 20 years. We will actively work hard, and the Ant Financial and Ant Blockchain teams are constantly exploring here. I also hope to work with partners in the industry to explore the infinite possibilities of the future of the value Internet.

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!