"Blockchain+" is relative to "Internet+", which means "blockchain + various traditional industries", but this is not simply a combination of the two, but the use of blockchain technology or characteristics to allow The blockchain is deeply integrated with traditional industries.
Blockchain originated from technological innovation, but more importantly, model innovation and thinking innovation brought about by technological innovation. Looking back at the history of Internet+, it was only the Internetization and mobilization of traditional enterprises at the beginning. Now, many traditional enterprises have used "Internet thinking" to create new business models. In general, embracing the blockchain can be divided into three dimensions: blockchain technology, blockchain mode and blockchain thinking.
-Blockchain technology: The previous chapter on blockchain technology has been introduced in detail. In a nutshell, it includes distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanism, and encryption algorithm. The combination of traditional companies and blockchain technology is to put the whole or part of the business on the chain and apply it to the "chain". This "chain" includes public chains, alliance chains, private chains and side chains.
-Blockchain model: The blockchain model can be defined as the transformation of the production relationship combined with the Token ecosystem. The core of the blockchain model is the token ecosystem, and the core of the token ecosystem is the incentive mechanism. Traditional companies combined with the blockchain model are essentially studying the use of tokens to build a perfect incentive mechanism. The “currency reform”, “chain reform”, and “ticket reform” proposed in the industry are all innovations within this scope.
-Blockchain thinking: Blockchain thinking is difficult to define. The superior "Internet thinking" has already included all good business thinking. However, like Internet thinking, blockchain thinking is also extended from the traditional business society. The Internet focuses on information (data), and the blockchain focuses on value (tokens). It is precisely because of the value attribute of the blockchain that it fulfills the needs of the original Internet and commerce that are not sufficiently valued, unwilling or unable to be implemented, and thus formed a set of its business logic, which can be called blockchain thinking.
According to the analysis of blockchain technology and blockchain model, blockchain thinking includes the following three elements:
a) Decentralization
The dispute between centralization and decentralization has existed since the birth of human social life. The human nature likes to live in groups and desire freedom. In the era of slash-and-burn, people are afraid of the power of nature and the pressure of survival, and are more willing to give up freedom and attach themselves to ethnic groups, villages and countries. When basic material needs are met, humans begin to challenge the centralized organizations they once belonged to in pursuit of freedom. Blockchain is driven by technology, in accordance with the idea of decentralization, pursuing the "freedom" that technology can touch.
Strictly speaking, the current social structure cannot be regarded as centralized. There are more game factors in the birth and improvement of many systems. However, free competition does not exist in all fields, especially in the fields of energy, real estate, and finance. Due to the strong dependence, most of free competition has moved toward monopoly or oligopoly. Bitcoin is the decentralization challenge initiated by the financial oligopoly.
Therefore, the realization of decentralization through blockchain technology is not against the existing social structure, but a kind of balance and optimization. Decentralization is not about eliminating the center, but a distributed structure optimized from normal distribution and power-law distribution, and a distributed transformation of rights, responsibilities, and benefits.
b) Code is law
Human society invented contracts when establishing credit relationships. Now that the spirit of contract has become the soul of a civilized society, breaches of contract are still commonplace, even as small as being "put pigeons" on them, or as large as a company’s credit bankruptcy and debt default. The phenomenon of default seems to have become another normal state**. In order to reduce the default rate and strengthen credit risk management, the development of contracts has gone through three stages: oral agreements, written contracts and electronic contracts. The contract on the blockchain is an upgraded version of the electronic contract.
In Bitcoin, transaction accounting is performed in a transparent public ledger on the blockchain to ensure the authenticity and immutability of transactions, thereby establishing a foundation of trust and reducing the cost of trust. However, it can be inferred from decentralized thinking that any human behavior can be recorded in a distributed ledger with reference to transaction accounting to achieve decentralization.
Ethereum believes that human behavior is extremely complicated and cannot be processed simply in the way of transaction accounting, but should be completed by the application of agreement, and the agreement is executed through code on the blockchain. This is the birth of intelligence. Contract: "A set of commitments defined in digital form, including an agreement on which contract participants can execute these commitments."
Therefore, code is law, which can be understood as protocol coding, that is, a contract that cannot be tampered with (or requires a certain consensus to be tampered with) through code writing, and the contract is naturally fulfilled on an open and transparent chain. Coding of agreements is very practical in real economic activities, especially in the financial and supply chain fields. Through codification of agreements, it can increase cooperation transparency, improve cooperation efficiency, reduce credit risk, and increase contract performance.
3) Consensus awareness
Blockchain is a decentralized network, and every participant is equal, free and fair. If there is no consensus, the entire blockchain will no longer exist. But the consensus here does not only refer to the consensus algorithm in the distributed system, but also refers to the awareness of win-win cooperation.
In the blockchain world, the founding team and participants are bound to the same boat through a pass, and only cooperation and win-win will enable oneself to obtain greater benefits. This incentive mechanism allows participants to play their subjective initiative and actively participate in the operation and supervision of blockchain projects. We can see that many blockchain projects have a large number of self-organizing communities and communities, and they will actively help the project to carry out marketing activities. This is a manifestation of consensus.
2. Some paradoxes and misunderstandings about "blockchain+"
Now many fields have begun to try to do blockchain projects, many people feel the convenience brought by this technology, but at the same time, there are many people trying to use the blockchain as a life-saving straw, over the mythical blockchain, thinking The application of blockchain technology can cure all the "illnesses" of the enterprise. Here we need to explain some misunderstandings about enterprise applications of blockchain.
a) Many people think that the blockchain is to distribute money and make money?
2017 was a very popular year for the blockchain. Many people paid attention to the blockchain not because of its core value or its distributed storage, but because they felt that the blockchain could issue coins. Financing! Therefore, many companies on the verge of survival want to rely on issuing currency financing to solve their survival problems. But does it really work?
of course not! Many people say that it is very easy to raise money in the blockchain industry, but that is not the case. The popularity of currency issuance financing is not brought about by the blockchain itself, but brought about by the industry's enthusiasm, and is brought about by the heat of this industry.
But the heat of this industry will not last forever, and financing or project progress will not always be so easy. From a data in October 2017, it can be seen that once the popularity of the blockchain drops, more than half of the blockchain projects that month have not reached the expected amount of financing. Therefore, as with the business models and business models of all other industries, the blockchain is also to serve the real economy, and the nihilistic blockchain will eventually perish.
b) Does "blockchain+" mean an early listing?
To answer this question, you first need to understand two concepts, namely tokens and equity.
- Equity is a product of the economic behavior of a centralized organization, and the size of the shares is differentiated, with differences in the right to speak, control and benefit distribution; and Token is a product of the blockchain economy, Relatively speaking, decentralization has been achieved. In addition, the number of tokens does not mean the right to speak or the right to control the project.
-The main body of equity is companies, limited companies, and profit-making institutions; and the main body of the blockchain certificate may be the above-mentioned institutions, or it may be a community, a community, or even a foundation, not necessarily a joint-stock company.
Since tokens are not equity, why do we need a price? In fact, this is the same price as carrots, vegetables, petroleum and coal. Because the value of the token will be used in a certain field, it needs a fair price. Under the market economy system, the price is determined by the market mechanism. In the field of blockchain, the price is determined by the supply and demand relationship between people. For example, in Ethereum, the establishment of a smart contract requires Gas to be consumed, so a price is needed to measure the consumption.
Therefore, it cannot be considered that "blockchain+" is a shortcut for enterprise development. Being a builder of the long-term value of the enterprise and the industry is the only way out for enterprise development.
c) Does the blockchain necessarily increase after the coin is issued?
From the perspective of microeconomics, the price of anything is determined by the comprehensive balance of its forces in the two directions of supply and demand: When supply exceeds demand, the price of currency falls; when supply exceeds demand At that time, the currency price rose. For example, blockchain project financing often uses Ethereum, so the price of Ethereum will rise when blockchain financing is particularly hot, and it will fall when blockchain financing is particularly deserted. This is a A typical example where prices are determined by the relationship between supply and demand.
The price of currency does not rise out of thin air. In essence, the objective laws of business in the blockchain world are the same as those of the traditional capital market. Only by truly providing value to society can it be recognized by society. Will be accepted by the majority of users, and the token value of this kind of project will become higher. Only projects that contribute positive value will their token price be reflected.
Due to the rapid development of the blockchain industry, before everyone has time to understand it, many people are already doing various things under the banner of the blockchain. Many projects, or some people, have done some bad things in the blockchain field. Whether in the long term or in the short term, it will overdraft the public's trust in the blockchain.
The current development of blockchain technology is still in a very early stage. If society loses trust in this technology, it will undoubtedly slow down a revolutionary technological process, and the process of civilized innovation will also be delayed.
Exploration and Attempt of "Blockchain+"
The main application areas of blockchain technology involve five major directions finance, information security, supply chain, Internet of Things, and public services, which can be implemented in dozens of application scenarios, as shown in the figure below.
Five main application areas of "Blockchain+"
1, financial sector
Blockchain can provide a trust mechanism and has the potential to change the financial infrastructure. Various financial assets such as equity, bonds, bills, warehouse receipts, fund shares, etc. can be integrated into the blockchain technology system and become digital on the chain. Assets are stored, transferred and traded on the blockchain.
The decentralization of blockchain technology can reduce transaction costs and make financial transactions more convenient, intuitive and safe. The combination of blockchain technology and the financial industry will inevitably create more and more business models, service scenarios, business processes and financial products, which will bring more to the development of financial markets, financial institutions, financial services and financial formats. Multi-impact.
With the improvement of blockchain technology and the combination of blockchain technology and other financial technologies, blockchain technology will gradually adapt to the application of large-scale financial scenarios. The following table is an application case in the financial field.
2, public service field
Traditional public services rely on limited data dimensions, and the information obtained may not be comprehensive and has a certain lag. The non-tamperable nature of the blockchain makes the digital certification on the chain extremely credible. It can be used to establish a brand new certification mechanism in the fields of property rights, notarization, and public welfare, and improve the management level of the public service field.
Relevant information in the public welfare process, such as donation projects, fundraising details, fund flow, feedback from recipients, etc., can be stored on the blockchain, subject to the conditions of meeting the requirements of the privacy protection of project participants and other relevant laws and regulations Make public announcements locally to facilitate public and social supervision. The following table is a summary of the application scenarios of typical public service fields.
3. Information security field
Using the traceability and non-tampering characteristics of the blockchain can ensure the authenticity of the data source and at the same time ensure the unforgeability of the data. The blockchain technology will fundamentally change the security issues of the information transmission path. The following table summarizes the application scenarios in the information security field.
4, the field of Internet of Things
Blockchain + Internet of Things allows each device on the Internet of Things to operate independently, and the information generated by the entire network can be guaranteed by smart contracts on the blockchain.
a) Security
Traditional IoT devices are extremely vulnerable to attacks, data are vulnerable to loss, and maintenance costs are high. Typical information security risks of IoT devices include low firmware version, lack of security patches, permission loopholes, too many device network ports, and unencrypted information transmission. The consensus mechanism of the whole network node verification of the blockchain, asymmetric encryption technology and distributed data storage will greatly reduce the risk of hacker attacks.
b) Trustworthiness
The traditional Internet of Things is managed and controlled by a centralized cloud server. Due to the security of the equipment and the opacity of the centralized server, it is difficult to effectively protect the privacy of users' data. The blockchain is a distributed ledger, and each block is connected with each other and has its own independent working ability to ensure that the information on the chain will not be tampered with at will. Therefore distributed ledgers can provide trust, ownership records, transparency and communication support for the Internet of Things.
c) Effectiveness
Limited by cloud service and maintenance costs, the Internet of Things is difficult to achieve large-scale commercial use. The traditional Internet of Things realizes the communication of things through a centralized cloud server. The disadvantage of this model is that with the increase of access devices, the load faced by the server is also more, requiring enterprises to invest a lot of money to maintain the normal operation of the Internet of Things system.
The blockchain technology can directly realize point-to-point transactions, omitting the labor expenditures of other intermediary agencies or personnel in the middle, which can effectively reduce the costs incurred by third-party services and maximize benefits.
5. Supply chain field
The supply chain is composed of many participants, there is a lot of interaction and collaboration, and information is stored discretely in their own systems, lacking transparency. Unsmooth information makes it difficult for participating entities to accurately understand the real-time status of related matters and existing problems, which affects the coordination efficiency of the supply chain. When disputes arise between the various entities, it is time-consuming and laborious to provide evidence and pursue liability.
Blockchain can make data open and transparent among the subjects, thereby forming a complete, smooth, and non-tamperable information flow across the entire supply chain. This can ensure that the main bodies discover the problems arising from the operation of the supply chain system in a timely manner, and find solutions in a targeted manner, thereby improving the overall efficiency of supply chain management. The following table is the scenario application in the supply chain field.
