BitSE was invited to attend the 2016 Shanghai International Think Tank Summit

The 2016 Shanghai International Think Tank Summit was held on December 9 at the Shanghai International Convention Center. The theme of the summit was "Improving the level of investment and trade facilitation in Shanghai". It was hosted by the Development Research Center of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government and co-organized by PwC China, Shanghai Development Research Foundation and Shanghai International Think Tank Exchange Center.

The conference was addressed by Xiao Lin, Director of the Development Research Center of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government. Qiao Yide, Vice President and Secretary-General of the Shanghai Development Research Foundation, and Huang Jia, Chief Partner of PwC China Shanghai, presided over the opening and closing sessions respectively. Lu Yang, co-founder and COO of BitSE, first delivered a speech on "Blockchain: New Technology, New Ideas, New Models". Then McKinsey, IBM, Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, EY, Gaofeng Consulting, Capgemini, American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, EU Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, US-China Business Council, Japan External Trade Organization, Confederation of Indian Industry, Peking University and others also expressed their views, opinions and strategies on promoting Shanghai's development and conducted joint research and discussion.

Since its birth, blockchain technology has been considered the brightest new star among many FinTech technologies, and even considered the next-generation infrastructure in the future financial field. In a recent private survey, blockchain technology has ranked first, and more than 40% of the respondents believe that blockchain is the most disruptive FinTech technology. The innovative significance of blockchain technology to the financial industry is based on its distributed, trustless, collective consensus mechanism, reliable data, public transparency and anonymous privacy. Around the themes of efficiency, cost and security, many industry experts and elites around the world have conducted substantial discussions and explorations.

Lu Yang mentioned in his speech,

“In fact, we believe that the impact of blockchain technology in the future is not limited to the financial industry. We believe that blockchain technology can be on par with Internet technology and can change the world again like the Internet did.”

For example, in the field of supply chain, various infrastructures and services have been relatively complete, and logistics have achieved considerable continuity, which means that the flow of goods from one party to another has been very smooth, and with the continuous development of the Internet and IT technology, the information data of all parties in the supply chain has also begun to be gradually established. However, it is currently quite difficult to achieve the continuity and timeliness of information flow, which is why supply chain traceability has always been a difficult thing to know but not easy to do.

The emergence of blockchain technology makes this possible. Currently, product data is distributed among different parties. Production information, logistics information, sales information, circulation information, raw material information, and regulatory information are basically separated. There is no completely reliable platform for all product information, which makes it impossible for all parties to do many things. And ultimately, consumers cannot obtain all the above information through a simple channel.

VeChain is a commodity management platform based on blockchain technology, which can dispel the system security concerns of all parties and establish a traceability system that connects the entire supply chain. "For example, we have recently reached a cooperation intention with the Wine Exhibition and Trading Center in the core area of ​​Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone to use VeChain to establish a traceability system for imported red wines, starting from foreign red wine wineries, and inputting relevant information about the same product in the main supply chain links, so that consumers can finally obtain credible information provided by all parties by scanning with their mobile phones. Of course, red wine is just the beginning, and I believe that VeChain can serve more commodities in the near future," Lu Yang added.

In addition, VeChain has an interesting application exploration, which is the authenticity review of trade warehouse receipts.

The authenticity review and publicity of trade warehouse receipts is a difficult problem worldwide. The data input for verifying authenticity comes from multiple participants: warehousing data, clearing data, customs data, and transaction data. The data recipients who need to know the authenticity results also include the transaction parties, financial service institutions, customs, regulatory authorities, etc. This is a typical blockchain application scenario. First, in the process of establishing warehouse receipt data, a universal and unique warehouse receipt ID is established for each warehouse receipt and registered on the blockchain system for all parties to identify and perform related operations. Each data provider uploads the specified data to the blockchain system according to the set permissions. In particular, warehouse data can be combined with IoT sensor technology to further improve non-human intervention data input; the data recipients and reviewers of the authenticity of warehouse receipts can also access the blockchain system according to the corresponding permissions for real-time query. In this way, the authenticity of warehouse receipts jointly maintained and verified by multiple parties has higher credibility and timeliness, and can also provide timely support for the supporting warehouse receipt finance in a better and more efficient manner.

As a newborn less than ten years old, blockchain technology still has a lot to be improved. Research and development of the technology itself is certainly important; however, on the other hand, the application and trial of blockchain technology are more important at this stage. Only when this technology is truly out of the laboratory and into specific application scenarios will it in turn put forward more requirements and challenges for the technology, and then further help improve the technology. The continuous exploration, research and application of blockchain, a globally recognized disruptive new technology, will bring about a new social collaborative thinking, which will naturally give birth to new business models and new regulatory service models. At the meeting, major companies had heated discussions on issues such as digital asset circulation, big data, and trade trends.