[Summit] Joseph Lubin, founder of Consensys: Ethereum and other decentralized technologies will have a long-term impact on us

Reporter: Pencil lead

I would like to thank the organizer Wanxiang Blockchain Lab. Today I will talk to you about Ethereum and other decentralized technologies, and their long-term impact on us. Simply put, blockchain is the next generation of database. We have seen that in the past 60 years, we have been using the same database model. Now we have a database based on blockchain, which will have a very important impact on all our entities and developers. Because we say that different databases have different management requirements. We know that on a peer-to-peer network based on blockchain, each stakeholder will have their own information and a copy of their rules. So this means that if we can guarantee that no one will manipulate this information, then our nodes will feel safe.

Next, let's look at the impact that Ethereum and decentralization have on us. First of all, we see that through this point-to-point network, intermediaries can eventually disappear or be decentralized. Because we know that there are actually some intermediaries in various industries now, and with the emergence of Ethereum, these institutions may be gradually replaced.

We know that Bitcoin is the first decentralized currency application. In fact, the Ethereum white paper was released in November 2013. Because he thinks that based on decentralized technology, we can create programs and applications of different technologies, but as for Bitcoin, it is just a cryptocurrency built on the blockchain. Vitalik hopes that all software developers will eventually build applications of their interest on the blockchain platform. For example, you can build Web applications, and you should have no problem building decentralized applications. And most importantly, we say that such a platform is public and does not require permission, so your programming requirements are not too high. The Ethereum project has actually created the most powerful blockchain platform, which does not require permission. Of course, there are also private chains, which are permissioned. We say that such a public network is what we call the world's first universal world computer.

Next, I would like to talk about the Ethereum world computer. We said that in fact, they have created a global economic society and political system in the future. In fact, it also provides a possibility to create an economic society and political system. In the past few days, we have also seen that the application of blockchain is very extensive. The Ethereum world computer is based on the same technology. This technology is deeply secure, cannot be tampered with, does not require review, and can achieve local interoperability.

What are Dapps? Or what do we call decentralized applications? On Ethereum, our definition of Dapp is this: it refers to a collection of smart contracts. Through such a collection of contracts, you can create code and run some transaction data. For example, if you want to send ether, then your action can be called a transaction on the smart contract, and the entire transaction process is very safe.

Of course, there are still some challenges in our roadmap. The first is scalability. In fact, there is a roadmap for scalability. Next, we know that Ethereum 1.0 will gradually become 2.0. That is, we hope to further expand the Ethereum blockchain. At present, they can achieve scalability through sharding technology. Of course, the expansion of blocks can be achieved through state channels.

Next, we will continue to discuss the issues of scalability and privacy protection. 23 months ago, I actually founded Consensys. One of our primary missions was to create more products and services for the Ethereum ecosystem. Of course, we know that blockchain is divided into public and private chains, and we are still in the Ethereum 1.0 stage. In the past year, we have also provided different services in different industries. As Consensys, we hope to build an ecosystem of decentralized applications. We also hope to build more business, economic, and social ecosystems through such a system.

Regarding identity authentication, you have listened to many speeches by Uport. In fact, Uport has a very new wallet system, and of course, it has also created a reputation system. This was developed in cooperation with Uport. We also have our registration system. We say that the registration system is very important in the software. Through our system, we can register many aspects of content. At present, there are many projects in Brazil in this regard. One project is for the registration of documents, because their customers want their documents not to be tampered with. There is also what we call the token factory. We hope that our tokens can replace our user IDs and eventually replace all aspects of our customers' information. So we ultimately hope that everyone can issue a personal token, just like Vitalik himself did. Of course, we also create some decentralized exchanges. For example, we can realize some exchanges between the US dollar and other currencies. We also have a generalized ledger system. Through this system, we can make some proposals, and then we can also put these submitted suggestions on some intermediate keys. Of course, we can also establish some prediction market systems, which can help our companies communicate with the government. At the same time, it also helps our individuals to interact with other cloud terminals.

What will be the impact on companies? Obviously, we see that public chains are useful for many application scenarios, but some companies may be considered a combination of competition between different internal teams. So in this case, in fact, everyone will feed information back to such a blockchain. In this case, some people may worry that some departmental disputes may arise in this case.

At present, we see some IT infrastructure, which includes soft assets. For me, this may change greatly in the future. Because if these companies establish their own private chains or alliance chains, they can access their employees and service providers, allowing them to understand the company's information through the blockchain. So we see that this actually makes the infrastructure of our corporate communication more effective, and our corporate interaction can also be smoother.

Actually, I have just mentioned this point. We see that different companies may have their own private blockchains. Then some companies publish private transaction processes on private chains. If they have trading counterparties, they can prevent their trading counterparties from knowing some information on their blockchains. Of course, if they have some partners, they can also create some private alliance blockchains with their partners. In this way, we can see that many companies now actually have partners, so creating alliance chains is actually helpful for cooperation. If you think that Ethereum will become the dominant company in the blockchain in the future, you can actually create a public chain, because through the creation of a public chain, different companies or individuals can submit transactions on it, etc.

Another point is that we are talking about the transaction process of enterprises, because we hope to present our transaction process through a state transition chart in the future. So it can be realized through blockchain technology, because we know that such a state transition chain may make us no longer need these paper operations in the future. We only need to put all relevant information on the chain and we can find it at any time. And for other transactions, charts are also very helpful for information tracing. Of course, when we talk about the status of transactions, we can also form the blockchain module we are talking about in the end. Paperless offices will always come.

If you are creating a blockchain business process, we have a tool called BALANC3. If you take out a loan on the EtherLoan platform, you can ask the borrower to register all their purchases and put the things they bought with the money on the ledger. In this way, you can know how your money is spent and what it is used for, which can reduce risks. Once multiple companies start using this tool, you will basically see a third entry in the ledger, so that transactions on two ledgers are actually undeniable. So this enables a real-time, comprehensive audit. Real-time analysis can be achieved, regulators can get a view of the finances of different companies, and regulators can separate real-time and see the situation in specific industries or regions.

As for the impact on people, blockchain is the first global long-term, persistent database, and a shared database. We think this system may last for many years, or even more than ten years, so we can start thinking about the global identity system. Now there are 2.4 billion people who do not have ID cards, so they do not have bank accounts and cannot receive bank services. We have established Uport, which can realize the identity of qualifications. It is connected with our reputation system Reputation. If your identity is obtained through the government or Facebook, you can actually control different parts of your identity, and it is more effective in developing countries. In developing countries, if you can access the Internet, you can set up your own identity. With such a system, no one can steal your identity from the blockchain. You can use the identity system, for example, with the help of friends or family, you can activate your information, such as applying for micro loans or shopping on lending platforms, etc. For the first time, 7.4 billion people in the world can have an identity, as well as a sustainable or lasting, portable credit. In this way, the entire global population will have such a free and independent travel. Thank you!