2016 Blockchain Summit Day 3: OK Inc. Chief Researcher Duan Xinxing shares blockchain application scenarios and evolution

The Blockchain International Summit was held in Beijing, China from June 22 to 24, 2016. The summit brought together more than 500 senior executives from the stock exchanges, fund industry, payment and transfer, banking, insurance industry, network security, e-commerce, Internet of Things, encrypted digital equity crowdfunding, P2P credit reporting, medical information, Internet of Things and cloud computing industries.

On June 24, at the 2016 Blockchain International Summit, OK Inc. Vice President and Chief Researcher Duan Xinxing delivered a keynote speech entitled "Blockchain Changing the Economy and the World", sharing with industry insiders the blockchain wave that has emerged since last year and the availability of the technology's applications.

Duan Xinxing

Duan Xinxing quoted The Economist to define blockchain as follows:

“Blockchain is a much more powerful technology. It is essentially a shared, trusted, public ledger that everyone can check, but no single user can control it. The participants of the entire blockchain system work together to continuously update the ledger to keep it up to date: it can and can only be revised according to strict rules and public agreements.”

Blockchain, a technology that was born with Bitcoin, has quickly become the darling of the financial field since last year. Not only companies previously engaged in the Bitcoin industry, but also banks, auditors, and emerging Internet companies have invested great enthusiasm in the research of this highly disruptive technology. From Bitcoin to blockchain, there have been doubts and bubbles, but as the technology continues to mature, the audience's expectations and capital injection have gradually become rational.

In his speech, Duan Xinxing explained the characteristics of blockchain:

First, the information cannot be tampered with. Once a piece of information is recorded on the blockchain, it cannot be changed. This is especially applicable to some developing countries with unstable political situations and lax government affairs. With the help of blockchain, the very common land registration scam can be solved.

Second, blockchain has no central point of failure, that is, if information is recorded in a single institution, all records will be destroyed after the institution fails. However, since blockchain is a decentralized storage, there is no single target of attack, and the service cannot be easily shut down.

Third, blockchain has strong security. For example, if a loophole is found in Bitcoin, the first product of blockchain, a large amount of Bitcoin can be obtained, and even others can pay billions of dollars to your wallet. However, there are thousands of hackers trying, and no one has succeeded so far.

Based on these characteristics, many sovereign countries and financial institutions have conducted research and applications on this technology. For example, the Honduran government has tried to cooperate with blockchain startup Factom to jointly study and establish a new real estate contract registration and transaction system. It also includes other equity transactions, identity authentication, inter-bank clearing and other businesses.

In summary, blockchain creates a "trust mechanism" that allows parties who did not know each other before to safely join a network and engage in transactions.

On this basis, Duan Xinxing shared his views on the development of blockchain technology. Duan recalled that the application development of blockchain has entered the second stage from the first stage. In the first stage, blockchain was only a matter of a very small circle, and there was only one product, namely Bitcoin. Product development could only revolve around Bitcoin: wallets, trading platforms, payment applications, etc. Today, the development of blockchain has entered a variety of application scenarios that can be developed. It can be used to improve the efficiency of traditional industries and reduce costs, and it has also spawned some new business models, such as discussions on national digital currencies, smart contracts, the Internet of Things, etc. Duan determined that the blockchain technology entering the third stage will be a blockchain that is accepted and recognized by consumers. That is, all assets have corresponding blockchain records, so all products also have their records to ensure authenticity. For example, each luxury bag will have a corresponding blockchain address when it is produced, and each person's proof (identity proof, academic performance proof) will have a unique blockchain address. By analogy, all assets have their blockchain records and attributes.

OK Inc., the blockchain technology platform company where Duan Xinxing works, has three major product lines: digital asset trading platform OKCoin, global blockchain financial network OKLink, and blockchain self-financial platform Haoyouqian.