This article is based on the sharing of the 19th issue of the WeChat open class " Titanium Frankness " jointly organized by Titanium Media and ITValue. This issue is the first issue of the " Focus on Financial Technology " series of sharing. We invited six big names from the blockchain field to deeply interpret blockchain from the perspectives of technology, products, entrepreneurship, investment, trends, etc. The following is the sharing of Bai Shuo, director of the ChinaLedger Technology Committee: Titanium: Bai Shuo, Director of the Technical Committee of ChinaLedger , Vice Chairman of the Securities Subcommittee of the China Financial Standardization Technical Committee, and Executive Director of the Chinese Information Processing Society of China. He was formerly the Chief Engineer of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, former Chairman of Shanghai Securities Communications Co., Ltd., Director of the Technical Management Department and Laboratory Director of the National Computer Network and Information Security Management Center, Associate Researcher, Researcher, Doctoral Supervisor, Director of the Software Research Laboratory of the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Deputy Chief Engineer of Sugon Information Industry Co., Ltd. Sharing topic: The myth of blockchain platform The following is what Bai Shuo shared on Titanium Media, compiled by Titanium Media and ITValue : Hello everyone, the topic I want to discuss with you tonight is " The Myth of Blockchain Platformization " . There are three key words in it - blockchain, platformization, and myth. The background of blockchain: value conservation and credit become rigid needs in the information age The background of the blockchain is the process of digitalization of human society driven by information technology. Now, it has entered a very critical stage from information services to value and credit services. On the one hand, value and information are essentially different. Information is not conserved and can be copied infinitely at almost zero cost. Think about it, you have an idea , I have an idea , and after we exchange, we each have two ideas . This is unimaginable in the material world. Matter is conserved. I have an apple and you have an apple. After we exchange, we still have one apple each. Energy is also conserved. Einstein told us that matter and energy can be converted into each other, but they are still conserved when combined. However, the value of human society is different. It uses matter to measure matter from the beginning, so value is also conserved in the circulation field, of course not in the production field, because labor can create value. So the conservation of value is simple to say, using valuable materials to measure the value of materials, this is the form of hard currency in ancient times, this is simply natural, but it is not so simple in the digital world, because you have to ensure that a piece of value is either in this person's hands or in that person's hands. In addition to the increase in simulated issuance and the decrease in simulated natural damage, it is still conserved. The total amount remains unchanged after transfer. Everyone should know that whether from the perspective of hard currency or from the perspective of paper money, such transfers are commonplace. If you cannot simulate it in the digital world, it is not successful. So what happens in the digital world? We must use technology that is more secure than credit card swiping to ensure the conservation of value. The greatness of blockchain is that it provides a solution for the conservation of value in the digital world based on cryptography, distributed systems and peer-to-peer network communication. This solution does not place hope on any intermediary, but only relies on trusting mathematics and algorithms. In fact, there is still a problem in the current process of human digitalization, that is, credit. Credit is the expectation of value realization. One aspect of the expectation of value realization is self-certification. As we all know, in the stock market, stocks become the object of commodity trading, but the quality of this commodity is good or bad, and the supply and demand parties often do not meet. Some responsible shareholders will go to other companies and factories to check on the spot, but most shareholders do not have the conditions to do so, and there are fewer and fewer such conditions. Therefore, the regulators of the stock market have come up with some legal means, such as mandatory information disclosure. In the field of loans, the borrower is the commodity, your quality is your collateral, your cash flow, etc. This series of proofs already existed in the financial field before digitalization. When e-commerce entered our lives, it became a norm that supply and demand did not meet on a larger scale. Whether the product quality and a series of characteristics claimed in product promotion, such as origin, materials, various guarantee conditions (such as cold chain), and the passing of various standardized tests, are as true as described, is always a lingering question. Of course, e-commerce platform companies can supervise and consumers can evaluate, but these are all after the fact. What about before the fact? The various participants in the supply chain, especially those in cities, do not actually have enough persuasive self-certification means, which is one aspect of the expected value realization. In addition to bits, the so-called self-certification means also include the Internet of Things, which is a combination of atoms. Another aspect of expected value realization is the combination of online and offline. For example, if you pay online, you will have certain ownership, disposal rights, and use rights offline. These property rights can actually be given to you online, but the actual exercise of property rights is offline. You can drive the car you rent, but you must have the key in your hand. If it is a physical key, it has nothing to do with online. But if you want to seamlessly connect online and offline, your car key must be digitally transformed. Blockchain means that once you pay the money, your driving authority is given to you with this key, and the same is true for parking spaces. Therefore, the offline realization of online value must also have certain digital means, so digitalization must be extended from online to offline, and from the Internet to the Internet of Things. Blockchain technology not only provides strong technical support for the conservation of value, but also for the realization of the two types of credit mentioned above. In summary, the digitalization process makes many common links in our daily life more like finance, and we need to learn from the financial approach. If we draw three circles of currency, value, and credit, currency is in the innermost, value is in the middle, and credit is in the outermost, what is the situation with blockchain? It makes the innermost currency circle the first to make a breakthrough . Everyone knows Bitcoin. Now everyone is racking their brains to make a fuss about the value circle in the middle, but his technical ability is completely capable of achieving the outermost credit circle. Of course, this requires a very deep integration with the Internet of Things and a more general trusted computing environment. Then, it is very clear to look at blockchain technology from the perspective of the digitalization process of human society. The further digitalization of human society will inevitably call for a complete set of credit infrastructure including currency, value, and credit, and blockchain plays such an infrastructure at the right time, at least it is the embryonic state of this infrastructure. At present, the application of blockchain in a single scenario is only a transitional form. In fact, the trend of mutual penetration between scenarios will become more and more obvious in the future, and the single scenario will evolve into the ecology of some complex scenarios. This will be put on the agenda sooner or later. Therefore, the conservation of value, the absence of supply and demand, the self-certification of commodity quality in a broad sense, and the seamless connection of online and offline credit means are all rigid needs in the information age. In the face of these rigid needs, what should be our best solution? Of course, the fewer the assumptions, the better, and the lower the cost of implementation, the better, because the lower the cost, the easier it is to gain social recognition. From this perspective, decentralization is not a cause or effect, not an essence but a phenomenon. It is not done intentionally, but in line with the trend. It is not that someone is full and has to find trouble with centralization, but that the essential technology has provided enough trust foundation. Trusting other things is redundant, uneconomical, and even unsafe. And the foundation of this technical trust already belongs to the public, to every party in the ecosystem, and is no longer monopolized by a certain party. The carrier of credit services must be platform-based If the above conclusion is valid, then it is logical to say that the carrier of credit services must be platform-based. Non-platforms cannot be trusted , so we mentioned the second keyword " platformization " . The so-called platform, as the name implies, should have the same set of things to support it, and should be able to put many different types of things on it, and these things are basically not yours. The software platform is to provide a set of public information services, system call services, etc. at the bottom, and it will carry many applications. We generally call such software platform software, or software platform, and platformization means working towards the direction of the platform. On the one hand, you need to absorb various common underlying needs and precipitate them into the platform, and on the other hand, you also need to build an ecosystem for various applications around the platform. In any case, the platform must become a core competitiveness and must reflect core competitiveness. So how does a platform become and how does it demonstrate its core competitiveness? First of all, the platform software itself must form a sufficiently strong technical barrier. If the platform software is easy to copy, then it is easy for low-level software to flourish everywhere, and the whole thing will be a mess, and no one will be able to make it big; Secondly, the platform interface must have strong customization capabilities to attract enough application development projects . Imagine if a platform is not popular and few people use the public services you provide to develop applications, then your platform will collapse; The third is that the platform must be able to continuously create service value during operation. If the platform is only profitable in the development stage, but no money can be made in the operation stage, such a platform should still be in a relatively extensive stage of not deeply intervening in the business field. Only when it can work hand in hand with business operations or even directly control business operations, the platform will have higher value. Of course, these are easier said than done. The " myth " of blockchain platformization , that is, facing three choices What is a myth? It means that you can’t think clearly, you don’t have a clear direction, but you try hard to think. This should be considered a bad state, but of course it is also an important state. Why is it important? Because not every thing will have such a state at every stage of that thing. The platformization of blockchain is related to the overall situation. At this stage of development, the emergence of such a myth shows that it is indeed important to a critical point where a choice needs to be made. Below I will try to discuss the myth of blockchain platformization from three perspectives, that is, three multiple-choice questions . 1. Open source or closed source? Of course, from the perspective of barriers and autonomous control, closed source is the best. Although there are open source platforms that are doing well, such platforms are generally operated under the foundation model, and rarely by startups. Why do we ask this question? Because the key point of this question is precisely based on the essential characteristics of blockchain technology, that is, it does not build the foundation of trust and credit on trust in people and institutions. People only believe in mathematics and algorithms. Therefore, mathematics and algorithms are the cornerstones of trust. If this part is not made public, then there will be no chance to challenge the most capable people in the whole society and pass the test successfully. If so, the security of blockchain is questionable, or at least discounted. Some current blockchain projects still have a strong testing feature, and there is still a relatively large tolerance for security considerations. The core consensus mechanism of blockchain does not even form a standard use case set, that is, Benchmark , for black box testing, not to mention white box sandbox deduction and testing. However, if blockchain is to be used for real, from individual cases to large-scale promotion, then the open source of platform code is essential . Even for alliance chain and private chain applications, it is far from enough to open the code to only one or several institutions. Currently, there are not many security experts in the institutions that apply blockchain, or even none. Even if there are, they cannot compare with the sum of the top experts in the world. Therefore, I still advocate that the original code of blockchain should be " exposed " to the public, and we should accept the doubts and challenges of the world's top experts. Only the ones that survive in the end are truly powerful platforms. It is impossible for a hundred platforms to bloom. There are only a few truly successful platforms. I believe that the blockchain companies that claim to have independent intellectual property rights but have not yet opened their code may have some considerations of the transitional stage and have not opened their code, but I believe they will definitely go the open source path in the future. However, it must be said that compared with the open source blockchain technology system supported by the foundation, the closed source blockchain technology system of startups lacks advantages, which is worth deep consideration for investment institutions. As for whether the barriers will disappear after open source, I feel that the code should not be the main content of the barrier. The real barrier should be the grasp of the essence of blockchain and the ability to quickly follow up on business areas, business scenarios and business needs. In addition, I think it is too early to talk about patent barriers, standard commanding heights and many other such terms. 2. General or special? There is no doubt that blockchain technology is universal, but the same blockchain technology supports different business ecosystems , and the relationship between them is very complex. They are often relatively independent and isolated, but they share certain information and business elements. Making them completely different instances will break the sharing. If they are done in the same instance, it will involve the protection and prevention of the privacy of each business ecosystem. This is a dilemma. In reality, cloud services provide us with a good solution, which is the sandbox . We can understand it as some operating environments that are isolated from each other and are resources that are uniformly allocated. In fact, the concept of " sandbox " is also extended in the blockchain field . I just saw an article about the regulatory sandbox recently. In fact, the sandbox is a system, an ecosystem with divisions and integrations, which are two-way or one-way invisible to each other, and everyone does not interfere with each other. How to target multiple ecosystems with similar business forms and similar business attributes, let them run on the same blockchain, fully protect privacy, and open up shared elements between them, that is a very key focus for expanding blockchain applications and expanding blockchain platforms. The ecosystem mentioned here refers to the interface between business ecosystems supported by a platform. Next, let's talk about the interface between the platform and the application. There are also issues of how to divide the work and how to encapsulate. This issue is also closely related to whether the underlying layering of the blockchain is scientific and reasonable. If the underlying layer is a mess, many application logics have to be hard-coded with the underlying layer. If the underlying layer can provide a very clear and divided programming interface and a smart contract scripting language with sufficient expressiveness, the application logic can be separated more cleanly. So what kind of underlying platform is used as the basis has a huge impact on the construction of a complete blockchain protocol stack. There is no real consensus on the current blockchain protocol stack layering. There are many different layering systems. There are definitely good ones and not so good ones. Everyone should learn to distinguish them, because the selection will directly affect the interface between the platform and the application. In addition, there is another factor that must be considered. That is, if your platform uses an open source underlying layer, once you build it into a dedicated platform for a specific application, you will not be able to enjoy the follow-up matters such as upgrades, and others will move forward. You will also be likely to drift away from the underlying layer of others. You will have to take care of everything in the future. Such a fork is very dangerous. Therefore, sharpening the knife does not delay the chopping of wood. If the universality of the platform is straightened out, the efficiency of application implementation will be greatly increased. If you do not work hard on the universal platform and overemphasize the specialization, you will suffer a lot when you do the second or third one. Therefore, between universal and specialization, I choose universal. 3. Product or service? I really appreciate the slogan Microsoft recently proposed, called blockchain as a service . What is the meaning behind this sentence from the perspective of technical architecture? We need to use service-oriented programming thinking to understand blockchain, and understand the position and role of the blockchain basic platform in the entire blockchain-based large technology system and large solution. I personally think that blockchain is not a product. In the overall technical solution based on blockchain, blockchain is only one of the services. Then there may be corresponding services 2, 3, etc. For example, service 2 is a point-to-point file service, service 3 is a point-to-point streaming media service, etc. This can also be extended to various offline services, such as parking space services, accommodation services, and car rental services. These can be transformed into services in the sense of Microsoft after the transformation of the Internet of Things. Then as an application, it should be to find services, call services, and connect services into business logic. From the perspective of blockchain, accounting is a service, consensus is a service, and smart contracts are also a service. In this way, the relationship between services and applications is straightened out from the overall structure, so it is also possible to better organize and arrange services and applications. Especially when the business is expanding, a good service-oriented architecture can quickly follow up on business changes, while treating blockchain technology with the idea of product development cannot achieve such openness and adaptability. Understanding " blockchain as a service " from the perspective of business model means that blockchain developers or builders enter the blockchain market as service providers. This positioning seems to be contradictory to the ideal of automatic operation pursued by the blockchain field, or at least a bit twisted. If blockchain is really automatically operated as the industry says, then the role of service provider is invalid. If even Party A does not need to manage this operation, then Party B will have no way to do it. This is how I understand this matter: 1. For a blockchain company to become a blockchain service provider, it must first be a technology supporter. If you want others to use your services that are exposed to the outside world, you must provide good technical support. 2. You are a planner and enabler of business solutions including blockchain. In the blockchain field today, it is not a relationship where I issue a bid and you bid, but a relationship where people who understand blockchain and people who understand business sit together and brainstorm. In this case, what you provide is actually a consulting service. 3. That is, after the overall business solution is formed, the continued operation of blockchain services should create conditions and value for the continued operation of the overall business solution, and it is also worth sharing the corresponding benefits. So I understand that the relationship between the blockchain and the overall business solution is a relationship where the solution is powered by the blockchain. On the contrary, if you simply sell blockchain products, you are basically digging your own grave. The better the product is, the less you will have to do in the future. So between products and services, my choice is service. Although this conclusion is a little contradictory to the ideal of blockchain from the perspective of business model, it is not contradictory. It needs to be explained that it is service, but not in the sense of a public service provider. Reminders from the platform The concept of self-platform is very interesting. Imagine that once the underlying foundation of a blockchain is well established, there will be many possibilities. Not only can formal business operators use it, but third parties on the same blockchain can also play with it. In other words, third parties can develop some self-created new applications that have never appeared before, launch some new businesses, and develop some new business models on the basis of the open public underlying foundation of the blockchain. It is even conceivable that a business operated by some completely unfamiliar formal business operators on the blockchain can form a remote response and business connection. This way of playing is very exciting and challenging. From a technical point of view, I personally respect the successful players on my platform, but I also urge institutions that conduct formal business on public blockchains to pay attention to this matter and not be involved in the risks. (This article was first published on Titanium Media, and is compiled based on the sharing of Bai Shuo, director of the ChinaLedger Technology Committee, on Titanium Confession) Q&A 1. Yidu Cloud Technology: At the beginning of the year, the central bank announced that it would launch digital currency as soon as possible. Do you think it will be based on blockchain technology? If it is based on blockchain, how will the central bank control a series of links of digital currency, such as issuance, circulation, and recycling? Is it decentralized? Bai Shuo: Like everyone else, I am paying close attention to the central bank’s next move regarding digital currency, but its relationship with blockchain remains a mystery. 2. Liguo SaaS Channel Service: I am engaged in enterprise software channel service. You just said that blockchain is a service. I would like to ask how technology rookies like us can participate in this trend? What preparations can we make? Bai Shuo: First, you need to understand how to break through the barriers when competitors are hyping these concepts. Secondly, you need to thoroughly analyze a scenario. Even if you can’t do it, you will know the depth of the water. In this way, you will always gain something and there will always be opportunities. 3. Huawei Cloud Core Network Strategic Planning Department: Blockchain solves the problem of value and credit transmission, but it is also mentioned that it will have a great impact on the Internet of Things. Can you give an example and introduce how blockchain is used in the Internet of Things? Bai Shuo: The traceability of goods is an application that many people think of directly . But I think that it is more fundamental to transform various physical objects into the Internet of Things so that they can carry property rights. There may be various technical means involved, not limited to IT . Huawei Cloud Core Network Strategic Planning Department: Tracing can be solved with RFDI . Will blockchain reduce costs? | 
