Reflections on the "Wei Union Deletion Event": the advantages of blockchain technology and the disadvantages of blockchain industry

On March 3, Weimeng Group (02013.HK) issued an announcement saying that as of 6 am on March 3, 2020, Weimeng had completed the restoration of SaaS business data. The online payment system will be launched as soon as possible, and the payment plan will be actively implemented.

The cause of the "Weimeng Deletion" was that on February 23, Weimeng employees maliciously damaged the company's online production environment and data, resulting in the unavailability of Weimeng system services, resulting in the loss of 2 million merchant data.

One person's mistake caused all the merchants on the platform to suffer huge economic losses, and also brought disaster to the enterprise itself. It is understood that on the day of the incident, the market value of Weimeng fell 900 million. As for this incident, Guotai Junan did not downgrade the Weimeng Group. It only stated in the research report that Weimeng cannot fully resolve the above difficulties in the short term, and it may bring long-term negative effects to Weimeng in the future. Make very cautious investment strategies.

Therefore, the storage security of Weimeng SaaS cloud computing platform has caused the industry's attention and discussion.

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The future of blockchain distributed storage is here

Cloud computing, like blockchain, is called the new generation of information technology.

The biggest advantage of cloud computing is that using high-speed Internet transmission capabilities, data can be transferred from a personal computer or server to a cloud computing center. The cloud computing center can provide services such as computing and storage to users who need it. For billing.

In short, the advantages of performance, efficiency and security make cloud computing to replace traditional servers on a large scale. But in essence, cloud computing servers still belong to a centralized service system. As far as cloud storage is concerned, cloud storage is a collection and coordination of various storage devices in the Internet. It can be understood as the concentration of resources in the Internet on the cloud computing server. Therefore, if there is a problem with the cloud computing server, the storage All data will be damaged or lost.

Just like the "Weimeng Deletion of the Library", the malicious actions of individuals have caused very serious consequences. In fact, it is not complicated to delete the central server data. For example, the deletion code is only a short line: "rm -rf / *", but improper use may cause irreparable consequences.

On January 31, 2017, a system administrator of GitLab, the world's second largest open source code hosting platform, accidentally ran the delete command during routine database maintenance, which ultimately resulted in the failure to recover nearly 300GB of data.

The accident of "deleting the database" is inevitable in the Internet era, and the centralized structure of the centralized service system must have data security problems.

The blockchain distributed storage system is the solution to ensure data security.

A distributed storage system connects a large number of common servers through a network to provide storage services as a whole. Distributed storage is one of the best methods to achieve large-scale data storage at this stage. However, the distributed storage concept for large-scale commercial applications still has a centralized structure and has certain storage risks.

Blockchain technology uses block-chain data structures to verify and store data, uses distributed node consensus algorithms to generate and update data, and maintains a complete, effective, and secure database. In the blockchain system, the effective storage and update of the data in the chain is completed, and the deletion and modification of the data in the chain requires the consent of more than 51% of the nodes to complete. Therefore, the main function of a data storage system based on blockchain technology is to record changes in state and then synchronize across the entire network.

In addition, the blockchain distributed storage uses cryptography to ensure the security of data transmission and access, the encryption of stored data, and solves the security and reliability problems of traditional centralized storage. Based on blockchain technology The distributed storage can not only store and use personally produced data, but also guarantee users' ownership of their data. On this basis, build multi-party machine trust and increase data value.

The value of blockchain distributed storage has been recognized by the industry, but large-scale landing applications have not yet been achieved at this stage, mainly because the key participants of the system-the "effective nodes" problem cannot be solved, and the degree of node participation and node quality Good or bad will affect data storage and update status.

In addition, the large-scale implementation of blockchain distributed storage is inseparable from cross-chain technology, which provides distributed data storage services for other blockchain systems and distributed data storage services for traditional Internet merchants.

The future has arrived, and blockchain technology is still on the way.

After the ebb, why are you here?

Blockchain technology has natural advantages in data storage, but at this stage, the blockchain industry does not have the ability to stand on its own. How to see it, let's review the process of the "Wei Union Deletion Event":

On February 23, Weimeng's system services were unavailable due to the malicious destruction of online production environments and data by company employees.

On February 25, Weimeng resumed the online production environment of its core business and provided temporary transition solutions for old users to ensure that businesses can operate normally without the temporary restoration of data.

On February 28, Weimeng restored the online production environment for all its businesses, and opened the login of old users, and restored all the data of Weizhan products.

As of 8 pm on March 1st, with the assistance of the Tencent Cloud team, Weimeng fully recovered the data.

From 2 am to 8 am on March 2nd, Weimeng conducted a data recovery and online drill.

As of 6:00 am on March 3, 2020, Weimeng has completed the restoration of SaaS business data.

In addition, Weimeng publicly stated that although the accident was caused by "human accidents", the company's management has an unshirkable responsibility. A compensation plan was designed for the incident, and related management was punished.

Weimeng prepared 150 million yuan for compensation, and also announced specific compensation details: compensation for the marginal profit contribution of merchants during the period when the system was unavailable, and a formula for compensation payment; and Tencent advertising for merchants during the period when the system was unavailable 50,000 exposures will be compensated for traffic, and provide account operation services, while extending the validity of the SaaS service for two months.

The event was fermented for ten days. From multiple dimensions such as data recovery progress, compensation plan, compensation details, data security and other dimensions, Weimeng solved practical problems through practical methods. At least we can clearly define Weimeng's "deleted library" The incident is proactive in handling issues and the way in which the business is responsible.

Similar incidents occur in blockchain companies. The most common solutions are the "problem is unavoidable" and the "irresponsible".

We simply sorted out the ups and downs of the FCoin incident, and at a glance the attitude of most blockchain companies in handling problems encountered.

On February 10, FCoin issued an announcement saying that a total of more than 700 million FTs held by the team were permanently destroyed, and the destruction was completed on the same day.

On the same day, FCoin issued an announcement saying that it will be temporarily shut down for maintenance from 23:50 on the 10th, which is expected to take 4 hours.

On February 11, FCoin announced that it expects the website to return to normal in 1 to 2 days.

Using the phrase "technical failures and system adjustments" to stabilize people's hearts and secretly plan for the next step is a common tactic of many already running platforms.

Sure enough, on February 17th, Zhang Jian wrote a long paper and solemnly declared that there was a problem with the FCoin system and it could not be recovered. The trading platform had entered into an indefinite shutdown, and there were 7,000-13000 BTC users' funds that could not be cashed.

At this point, the users of FCoin broke out in the hustle and bustle of rights protection. Human rights activists surrounded Zhang Jian's relatives, Zhang Jian's family and his family. It was out of control, as if helpless, Zhang Jian made another speech on February 27.

FCoin released the announcement "FCoin and FMex restart officially started", there are three announcements, one of which is: the future follow-up operation of the website will be completely dominated by the community after the transition period, the specific form will be led by the IC and will be further developed with the community consensus.

During the restoration phase of the website, the ICPC is responsible for the restoration work and designates the existing user's asset-to-debt or equity conversion plan; after the website is restored, the ICAC takes the lead in operating and the community-led operation. In other words, no matter before or after the website is restored, Zhang Jian is no longer responsible.

It's a good offense. The former blockchain expert and technical bull of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also played word games very well.

When the tide rises, flowers bloom on the Quartet; after the tide ebbs, why should you be alone? This is the biggest difference between the blockchain industry and traditional industries. There is no benign industry ecology, how the industry is healthy and sustainable development, although the blockchain technology still needs to be improved, the blockchain industry is clearing up.

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