Bitfury releases white paper: Bitcoin blockchain gets a new definition, the security of public chain is unparalleled (full text download)

Why is blockchain called blockchain?

Blockchain company Bitfury recently reinterpreted this controversial concept in the field of financial technology.

In its latest research report, On Blockchain Auditability , Bitfury, a company that provides enterprise blockchain consulting and services, analyzes the potential innovations in the Bitcoin blockchain to make it a true blockchain. The report also explains the importance of this potential innovation for code release.

The report states that blockchain is a combination of three different technologies (a Byzantine fault-tolerant system, a digital timestamping service, and a cryptocurrency ledger), each of which was developed after in-depth research to create the current Bitcoin blockchain.

Blockchain is a repetitive, autonomous, Byzantine fault-tolerant record based on block consensus. This record is subject to external audit and lightweight nodes, and is irreversible.

It is worth noting that this large Bitcoin mining company does not limit the concept of blockchain to the PoW mechanism, and believes that PoW is only the basic component of blockchain.

Bitfury said that in their view, blockchain must have auditability and accountability , and public chains can help achieve this function.

The report also highlights the difference between blockchain and traditional logging, with the former providing “accountability, retroactive auditability, and user interaction” through the use of blocks of data.

In addition, the report also compares blockchain with several other "derivatives".

For example, private or enterprise blockchains that are “synchronized by consensus of unique nodes” and that use a public ledger to maintain security are called “anchor anchor blockchains .”

Definition of “anchor” in blockchain system

Bitfury’s market positioning is in the public chain field, so it believes that this field is the most noteworthy.

In the report, Bitfury called for more relevant scientific research. The report cited the example of newspapers and believed that most of the characteristics of the traditional media industry are very similar to public chains.

For example, the report compares newspapers to "anchors" containing specific data, which are "time-stamped" and published in batches at regular intervals. This makes it difficult to "attack" or misuse the information in newspapers, because there are too many newspapers with the same content to "deliver different valuable information to different readers."

If an attacker wants to reverse modify the blockchain data, he must reprint all the published newspapers and destroy the old newspapers on the market and in people’s hands. If the target of his attack is a very popular media platform, this method is almost impossible or very costly.

From this perspective, Bitfury proposed the concept of "anchored blockchains". In other words, a blockchain needs a "target blockchain" to ensure its own security, just like the Bitcoin blockchain.

The report also examines other options for providing security, including trusted hardware and blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) providers, but these options may affect the auditability of the blockchain.