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On August 23, the official website of ChainCloud, a blockchain cloud platform developed by the Bitcoin Wallet team, was officially launched. This is the first open platform known to help enterprises securely manage blockchain assets. Currently, companies connected to the ChainCloud platform include BTC123, which provides one-stop services for Bitcoin and Ethereum, and Renrenbit, which provides fast Bitcoin trading services. Asset security in the blockchain and digital currency industry always ranks first, but there is always a lack of effective prevention mechanisms, and corporate currency loss incidents occur from time to time. In August this year, nearly 120,000 bitcoins were stolen from Bitfinex, which dealt another heavy blow to the industry. The reason for the theft was that Bitfinex put the bitcoins that should have been stored in the cold wallet into each user's multi-signature address (actually a hot wallet) jointly built with Bitgo. Bitgo Wallet has always been hailed as the security guard of the blockchain industry. The blockchain cloud platform developed this time provides a completely "cold" wallet solution that is completely different from Bitgo. In addition to ensuring asset security, ChainCloud is easier to use: it supports multiple assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc.; enterprises do not need to consider asset categories, they only need to use the same API and follow a set of security mechanisms; enterprises can use exchange services to exchange between different assets. In terms of cost, compared with enterprises purchasing solutions and deploying supporting systems on their own, using ChainCloud is less expensive, especially for blockchain startups. The ChainCloud open platform provides a more cost-effective option for blockchain asset management. Recently, Babbitt interviewed Wen Hao, the founder of BitTorrent Wallet, on how ChainCloud specifically protects blockchain assets, what kind of companies are suitable for the platform, and what companies need to pay attention to when using it. Let’s take a look at his detailed introduction. 8btc: Can you briefly introduce ChainCloud? Wenhao: Simply put, ChainCloud is a blockchain cloud platform. Enterprises or individuals can rely on the API of the ChainCloud platform to quickly build their own blockchain asset business system without having to consider the specific implementation of blockchain technology and how to ensure the security of blockchain assets. A few days ago, in the process of coordinating with ChainCloud's enterprise users, we organized the relevant content of internal communication into a blog post, which can help users quickly understand the principles and concepts of the ChainCloud platform. The blog address is: http://chaincloud.com/tech/2016/08/23/blog.html. ChainCloud's API documentation website is docs.chaincloud.com
8btc: What was the original intention of establishing ChainCloud? Wenhao: You may remember that we designed and developed an enterprise-level wallet solution last year, and some companies chose it and became our paying users. However, in the process of collaborating with corporate users, we found that although the solution was safe, the threshold was still a bit high for start-ups, whether it was the initial software procurement cost or the system deployment cost (personnel investment, time investment, equipment investment, etc.). Therefore, we were evaluating whether we could design a more reasonable system to allow enterprises to build blockchain business systems more easily, more safely and at a lower cost. At the beginning of this year, at the invitation of Zhao Dong, our team began to collaborate with Zhao Dong's team to develop a new generation of systems. ChainCloud was an innovative system model designed and driven by real business needs during the cooperation process. The idea of ChainCloud started when our team provided Bitcoin wallet suggestions to Renrenbit, a quick Bitcoin buying and selling website. Considering security at the time, we suggested that Renrenbit use cold wallets to collect payments when providing quick coin selling services. The two parties quickly reached a consensus and quickly completed the design, development and joint debugging of the cold collection model. The cold collection service has been running stably with Renrenbit to date. In this process, we regularly aggregate and clear cold collection assets for Renrenbit. The whole process is easy, safe and effective. Due to the success of the cold payment model built in cooperation with Renrenbit, we began to think about the problem from a different angle (no longer the original idea of enterprise version software), and innovatively designed a hot payment model while completely ensuring the security of the system logically. Then we integrated other related API services and built the ChainCloud blockchain cloud platform we are going to talk about today.
8btc: What kind of companies and what kind of needs are suitable for using the ChainCloud open platform? Wenhao: The term "enterprises" here actually refers to a broad range of individuals who also have large demands for receiving and sending payments. These individuals can also apply for our ChainCloud platform to obtain low-cost, high-security services. In short, all enterprises and individuals who need to receive or send Bitcoin (and other blockchain assets) are suitable for the ChainCloud platform. The ChainCloud platform can help these enterprises and individuals to quickly provide their users with cold collection and hot payment services for Bitcoin (and other blockchain assets) without having to consider blockchain technology or worry about security. They only need to integrate the ChainCloud platform API. ChainCloud can meet the asset management needs of various blockchain enterprises, such as:
1. Exchange;
2. Coin deposit/financial management platform;
3. E-commerce website/membership system;
4. Payment companies;
5. Gambling station;
6. …
8btc: What other platforms are similar to ChainCloud on the market? In comparison, what are the characteristics or advantages of ChainCloud? Wenhao: First of all, I have to explain that there are many companies that provide "blockchain API" services. Based on the type of API, they can be roughly divided into the following categories:
1. Blockchain browser API: such as blockchain.info, btc.com, 8btc also has its own blockchain browser blockmeta.com;
2. Exchange API: Mainstream exchanges all have their own API interfaces;
3. Wallet API: such as blockchain.info;
The above-mentioned APIs all fall into the category of basic data query, such as querying which transactions are on an address, or querying the details of a specific transaction, etc. These APIs are not designed for the security of blockchain assets, even wallet-type API services. Therefore, generally speaking, enterprises can consider using the above APIs for data query, but should not rely on them to manage the company's blockchain assets.
From this perspective, ChainCloud is completely different from the above-mentioned API services. If we talk about something similar to ChainCloud, it might be BitGo. However, even BitGo, although it looks similar, is still different in essence. For example:
1. BitGo's service actually still requires users to manage a private key themselves, but ChainCloud does not. Enterprises and individuals do not need to understand the details of Bitcoin or blockchain technology, cryptography principles, etc. They only need to call ChainCloud's API;
2. Although BitGo’s main service model is multi-signature and appears to be secure, it is hot in nature, and ChainCloud is essentially a cold wallet model even though it is a hot payment module;
3. BitGo uses the concept of multi-signature to illustrate their security, but the fact is that it was their wrong solution that led to the theft of 120,000 bitcoins from Bitfinex. ChainCloud logically provides a clear and secure architecture without worrying about hacker risks.
4. If BitGo has problems, all assets may be at risk (for example, Bitfinex lost most of its Bitcoin assets). The biggest risk of the ChainCloud platform is actually only the assets in the active hot wallets and the cold collection assets that have not yet been liquidated, so the upper limit of risk is actually several orders of magnitude smaller (although they are all cold wallet models and logically ensure safety, we should still consider the maximum risk).
8btc: Please briefly introduce how ChainCloud will protect the blockchain assets of enterprises? Wenhao: You can refer to the blog post I mentioned earlier: http://chaincloud.com/tech/2016/08/23/blog.html
Among them, the architecture diagram is briefly explained:
Our core design concept is that all servers on the public Internet are susceptible to being hacked (no matter how much you pay for security or how many firewalls and security protections you add, you cannot be 100% secure from being hacked).
Based on this consideration, the model we designed is that all requests sent or obtained through the API must be directly verified with the cold device in another way. Only requests that can pass the password verification are legitimate requests. If they fail to pass the verification, it means that the system may be hacked (hackers are trying to forge data), and ChainCloud will send the alarm information to the administrator as soon as possible. Therefore, the model we designed is logically safe. We have fully considered the situation where the "Your Website" and "ChainCloud API" servers in the architecture diagram are hacked. Even if the server is hacked, it will not cause the loss of blockchain assets.
8btc: Regarding the article “Why do we reject a business?” on the official blog (also published on 8btc), what criteria does ChainCloud consider when connecting with service objects? Wenhao: Regarding the article "Why do we reject a business?", what we want to express is not to reject users, but to not make logically unreasonable promises that we cannot afford. For example, we should not use the hot wallet model (although it uses multi-signature technology) to help users sign transactions of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins like BitGo does; for example, we should not give users the illusion of absolute security when it is obviously impossible to do so; we should give users reasonable explanations on how to be safe, how to ensure safety, and under what circumstances and when encountering what kind of problems, what degree of asset loss will be caused? Etc. When we describe the architecture diagram to users, we will explain clearly to users that if the user's website and V-Device are controlled by hackers, it may lead to the loss of some hot wallet assets. Since we have completely redesigned the system architecture of ChainCloud, an open platform, and logically provided a complete set of blockchain asset security models, we can provide high-quality API services to enterprises or individuals. From this perspective, we do not have any consideration criteria for users. As long as they can implement the blockchain asset management method we recommend and reasonably apply our API services, enterprises can be much safer and easier in managing blockchain assets.
8btc: What should customers pay attention to when using ChainCloud? Wenhao: 1. Keep your V-Device safe;
2. Observe financial discipline and manage blockchain assets like cash assets;
3. ChainCloud will provide manual services for the regular summary and settlement of cold collections, that is, manual review of accounts and sending the corresponding blockchain assets to the person in charge of the enterprise after summary and settlement. Please cooperate with our manual services to conduct account review. Manual review of large assets will make it difficult for hackers to start;
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