Let’s talk about comics: Who is the man behind the blockchain?

Our comic about blockchain has entered the third series. Do you remember the content of the first two series? Let’s review them first.

In the first series, we told the story of the "old village chief". Through the concept of "ledger", we understood the obscure "blockchain" (using the ledger to compare the blockchain);

In the second series, we mainly introduced the application scenarios of blockchain in our lives. In the future, fields such as finance, Internet of Things, sharing economy, real estate, proof of existence, etc. are likely to be combined with blockchain technology.

Some netizens said they wanted to know why the birth of blockchain was inevitable, and some wanted to hear about the mysterious past of Satoshi Nakamoto, the father of Bitcoin, and what is the relationship between blockchain and Bitcoin?

Therefore, this series is mainly to answer the above questions. Be sure to read on patiently, there are cute comics waiting for you ahead.

It all started with a man named Satoshi Nakamoto.

1. The Father of Bitcoin - Satoshi Nakamoto

1. Basic situation: It couldn’t be more mysterious

We know very little about the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin and one of the most mysterious figures in the history of the Internet.

Let me first give you some basic information about him: Everyone knows his Chinese name, which is Satoshi Nakamoto. By the way, he also has a Japanese name, Tetsufumi Nakamoto (given by the Japanese media).

In addition, according to media reports, he likes to collect train models. Don't ask me why, I don't know. [Serious face]

There are many secrets in Satoshi Nakamoto's career. He has performed confidential work for large companies and the military. It is rumored that he has a huge Bitcoin fortune similar to the Nibelung Treasure. (Note: The Nibelung Treasure is a legendary treasure buried underground by the Nibelung people, which is invaluable.)

At 2:10 a.m. on November 1, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published an email titled "Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper", which described in detail how to create a decentralized electronic transaction system and reiterated the five important characteristics of Bitcoin.

Soon, on January 3, 2009, he developed the first client program that implemented the Bitcoin algorithm and carried out the first "mining", obtaining the first batch of 50 bitcoins.

In 2010, he gradually faded away and handed over the project to other members of the Bitcoin community. On December 12 of the same year, he published his last post in the Bitcoin forum and then stopped appearing and email communications gradually ceased.

2. Latest news: Confirmation and denial

The latest news about Satoshi Nakamoto was on May 2, 2016, when Australian entrepreneur Craig Stephen Wright publicly admitted that he was the "Satoshi Nakamoto" who invented Bitcoin. This was the first time someone publicly admitted it.

The BBC published an interview with Craig, claiming that he was the inventor of Bitcoin. However, the authenticity of Craig's statement and evidence was widely questioned, and when asked to demonstrate key evidence in the final stage, Craig suddenly regretted it.

He wrote on his blog that he was retracting his promise to prove his identity because he did not have the "courage" to do so under the intense scrutiny and could not face the allegations that continued to surface about his qualifications and character.

3. Review: The nth “Oolong”

In May 2012, computer scientist Ted Nelson believed that Satoshi Nakamoto was Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki, but some people questioned it, saying that the cryptography required to design Bitcoin was not Mochizuki's research interest. Mochizuki himself also denied it.

In December 2013, blogger Skye Grey concluded through a stylometric analysis of Nakamoto's paper that his true identity was former George Washington University professor Nick Szabo. However, Nick Szabo explicitly denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.

On March 6, 2014, Newsweek reporter Leah McGrath Goodman published an article claiming that she had found Satoshi Nakamoto, a Japanese-American named Dorian Nakamoto, and that "Tetsushi" was his birth name. But in a later interview, Dorian denied all his connections with Bitcoin. Later that day, Satoshi Nakamoto himself also came out to deny it. His account on the P2P Foundation sent the first message after being dormant for five years, saying: "I am not Dorian Nakamoto." (Isn't that embarrassing?)

In December 2015, Wired magazine reported that Australian scholar Craig Stephen Wright was likely the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

Everyone knows the rest of the story, and it connects with the “latest news” above.

Whether it's Newsweek, The New York Times or Wired magazine, there have been so many blunders in the search for Satoshi Nakamoto recently that people have even started counting, "Is this the 12th or 13th time the 'real' Satoshi Nakamoto has been discovered?"

4. Satoshi Nakamoto remains a mystery

Every once in a while, someone claims to have discovered or speculated on the real "Satoshi Nakamoto", but in fact they always come back empty-handed, and the end result is that this character becomes even more mysterious.

Analysts say that Satoshi Nakamoto may have 1 million bitcoins, which are worth about $660 million at current market prices. Some speculate that Satoshi Nakamoto is reluctant to reveal his true identity for security reasons.

5. Do we need a “Satoshi Nakamoto”?

What does the existence of "Satoshi Nakamoto" mean for Bitcoin?

In this regard, Cornell University professor Emin Gün Sirer once said that what is most important is what Satoshi Nakamoto brought. We should put aside the pursuit of "Satoshi Nakamoto" as a person and pay more attention to technology and its impact. This is what we actually need to do.

2. The relationship between blockchain and Bitcoin

To describe the relationship between blockchain and Bitcoin in one sentence: the underlying technology of Bitcoin is blockchain technology, and blockchain was first applied to Bitcoin.

It should be pointed out here that the emergence of blockchain was accompanied by the emergence of Bitcoin, so it is completely wrong to describe the relationship between the two as a father-son relationship.

In Series 1, we have introduced the concepts of "block" and "blockchain" in detail. Blockchain can be figuratively understood as a decentralized distributed ledger, which consists of many blocks.

Every 10 minutes or so (depending on the computing power, the time may vary), a new block is created and added to the end of the blockchain. The new block records all transactions that occurred within these 10 minutes.

After a block is created, the system will reward the creator with a certain amount of bitcoins.

Then someone may ask, how many bitcoins does the system reward for creating a block?

At the beginning, creating a block can get a reward of 50 BTC; after the 210,000th block is generated, the reward is reduced to 25 BTC; after the 420,000th block is generated, the reward is reduced to 25 BTC... and so on. It can be understood that the reward is halved every four years.

At present, the Bitcoin system has been running stably for more than 7 years and has accumulated more than 400,000 blocks.

The above is the basic operating protocol between Bitcoin and blockchain.

3. The logic behind the birth of blockchain

We can think about the situation when Internet technology was first invented. Its original intention was to solve the problem of efficient transmission of information. With the help of the Internet, information can be transmitted point-to-point around the world, and this process is both efficient and low-cost.

While the Internet has brought a lot of convenience to our lives, it has also brought some adverse effects. Often we encounter information asymmetry, which is attributed to the risk of centralization introduced by third-party institutional platforms.

Blockchain was born in such a context. Due to its greatest advantage - decentralization, when specific applications are implemented in the future, it will be able to avoid many risks and significantly reduce the cost of credit.

Blockchain expert Tao Rongqi said that the development of digital currency and blockchain has brought us a sense of "reality". I have been working in the blockchain field for about two or three years, and have witnessed a process similar to the evolution of organisms in the earth's ecology, which has evolved gradually from nothing to something.

Such growth is in line with the principles of economics. The first meaning is to move towards low cost. The second meaning of economics is to meet people's needs.

This is the case when looking at the growth of Bitcoin and blockchain over the past few years.

Industry insiders have said that the name "blockchain" may be accidental, but the birth of a system that implements blockchain is inevitable.

(Thanks to Wu Xing for the cartoon)