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If there is a bubble in the current blockchain, perhaps it is because everyone is still stuck on the concept of "coins". It can only be said that the centralized system built by coins is deeply rooted in the hearts of modern people.
However, this is only the first generation of blockchain technology, but it is currently unacceptable to most people, because these coins seem to be virtual "digital", so they are also called "digital currency" by most people. There is no doubt that in terms of Bitcoin's growth rate, it is indeed the first blockchain outlet.
The upgrade of blockchain technology and the addition of Turing's complete smart contract will lead the second trend of the blockchain. Its representative is the smart contract public chain system represented by Ethereum.
The first tuyere lets numbers produce value, the second tuyere lets codes produce value, then the third tuyere is to let data produce value, and the development of the three cannot be separated and the order cannot be reversed.
Digital economy value
Bitcoin was born in 2008. The Federal Reserve introduced a quantitative easing policy, which is essentially printing money to stimulate the economy. People's trust in the ability of ZF and banks to manage the economy and money supply is at the lowest point, leading to the financial crisis. break out.
Bitcoin does not require any centralized politicians or organizations to endorse, and uses distributed point-to-point transmission to achieve network credibility. In short, everyone can download a Bitcoin client, conduct transactions through the client, and store transaction data distributedly on everyone's computer or hard drive, etc. This is decentralization. Its value lies in the credibility of the Bitcoin network, that is, the credibility of the Bitcoin balance number (in fact, the professional name should be the unspent transaction output of UTXO). The credibility of the Bitcoin balance number is the goal. To achieve this goal, Through a series of means.
To construct a circulated Bitcoin transaction system, only distributed can only solve the problem of freedom of transaction, and it must be sufficiently decentralized, which is only a prerequisite for transactions. The most basic thing is to consider the issue of transaction security. Among them, distributed is also a kind of resisting external systemic destruction of the network. When it comes to the security of the transaction link, it is necessary to consider the security of sending, transmitting, and confirming the transaction. The sender belongs to him. Through encryption technology, only the person who has the private key can control the balance under the account. This is very simple; the sender is now Bitcoin miners, the miners pack the transaction data and confirm it for the verification distributed nodes to confirm and synchronize the transaction data, so that the counterparty who transfers can receive the Bitcoin. It is worth noting that at present, the mining market alone has reached a market of 100 billion yuan, and there are tens of thousands of nodes that distribute and verify synchronized data.
Because Bitcoin transaction records are distributed storage, not only can it prevent fraud and fraud, but the scheduled issuance of this digital currency also allows Bitcoin's money supply to grow at a predictable rate, free from hyperinflation caused by central bank officials who like to print money. Impact.
This kind of currency is not based on the central credit endorsement to solve the trust problem, realize the credibility of the network, and finally realize the credibility of the transaction output, that is, the balance figure. Some people call Bitcoin "digital gold". This is not unreasonable.
Code economic value
The large Bitcoin distributed system can only realize the simple function of currency transfer transactions. The technology of the Internet does not stop there, so Ethereum was born. The founder of Ethereum originally intended to build a blockchain system with smart contracts on the Bitcoin network, but at that time Bitcoin was not too stable and was rejected by the Bitcoin Foundation.
In addition to the currency system of Ethereum, the most important thing is to introduce the concept of smart contracts, which is the first technical demonstration of the feasibility of smart contracts. In simple terms, a smart contract is to pre-set rules through the code in advance, and automatically execute once the condition is triggered. In theory, the code is also unchangeable. In other words, the code is the law. The most classic is the 1CO initiated by Ethereum.
The application of smart contracts can allow almost all simple types of financial transactions to be transformed into use on the blockchain, including stocks, private equity, crowdfunding, bonds and other types of financial derivatives such as futures, options, etc. At the same time, Ethereum supports Turing's complete development language. Simply put, it is an abstract high-level language, which can write almost any complex logical contract, fully letting the code in the blockchain play its value.
The rise of Ethereum directly set off the second trend of the blockchain. Whether it is a blockchain with or without currency, the entire market is thriving in 2017. In the cryptocurrency market, a large number of hundred-fold and thousand-fold coins have appeared. The market value of the entire market has expanded from around 15 billion U.S. dollars to around 830 billion U.S. dollars, which has expanded by more than 50 times. Coinless blockchain companies have also poured into the market to try to solve traditional enterprises. Pain point technology.
Economic value of data
The first air outlet of the blockchain is Bitcoin and other coin-attributed digital currencies, although it is still strong under the bear market; the second air outlet of the blockchain has created too large a bubble, which is currently being gradually digested; what is worth paying attention to is Next, the third outlet of the blockchain will generate value, and multiple scenarios will be born soon, whether it is currency value or corporate market value.
As of the post, the data shows that the total data volume of the Bitcoin blockchain is 227.71G, which may not be felt at a glance. Let's simply calculate that a 1M block can hold about 4000 transactions, 1024M=1G, and the total number of transactions generated on the Bitcoin chain is about 900 million. The purpose of these data is to ensure the credibility of the transaction output.
However, there is a big difference between the stored data and the actual data. One is that it is open and transparent, and anyone can check every transaction data; second, these data cannot be changed. If these data are mapped to traditional market scenarios, countless commercial applications will be stimulated. Here are a few industries.
IP copyright protection
Blockchain solves the problem of ownership confirmation in the transaction process based on mathematical principles, and the recording, transmission, and storage results of value exchange activities are all credible. Once the information recorded by the blockchain is generated, it will be permanently recorded and cannot be tampered with. Unless you have more than 51% of the total computing power of the entire network, it is possible to modify the newly generated block record. The blockchain can easily solve the current copyright protection. Registration, confirmation, verification and protection issues.
Certificate, identity and other authentication
The certificate is only a digital signature on the blockchain, but there is still a "revocation" status on the chain. Using only encryption technology, you can't check whether the (certificate) "revocation" is valid "not" signed, but the blockchain can. To check whether a certificate has not been revoked, you only need to scan the blockchain to view all revoked contract logs. If the certificate has been signed and no record of "revocation" is found on the chain, it means that the certificate is still valid.
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All industries that focus on data transparency, transaction, confirmation and protection will be reflected in the next trend of blockchain.
In fact, there are already many such blockchain projects in the market, but they are basically the same as centralized organizations in terms of efficiency, and cannot solve the pain points of the industry at all. They only have the same security, stability, and decentralization as the Bitcoin network. Only in order to ensure the security of data, can we use smart contracts to automatically execute the transmission of data value.
In the 21st century, if you ask Internet companies what is most important, there is no doubt that it is a large amount of data. If the data age can be combined with blockchain technology to contribute to society, the impact will be no less than the changes brought about by the Internet.