Speech by Bai Shuo, former chief engineer of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, at the launch conference of the China Distributed Ledger Infrastructure Protocol Alliance

Dear leaders, guests, experts and colleagues, good evening!

Today is a good day. Entrusted by the co-sponsors, as a Peking University alumnus, I am honored to use this opportunity at my alma mater and the third Internet Finance Global Summit Peking University Forum hosted by 1,000 people to officially announce to everyone: The China Distributed Ledger Infrastructure Protocol Alliance has been officially established this afternoon after being signed by all co-sponsors!

Please allow me to first explain the relationship between the three concepts of "distributed general ledger", "distributed account book" and "blockchain". Blockchain is a distributed data infrastructure that is shared by multiple parties and is tamper-proof and non-repudiation-proof, based on the premise of trust in cryptographic algorithms. The use of blockchain technology to record the creation, registration and transfer of value is a distributed ledger. The use of distributed ledgers in an ecosystem with multilateral business transactions to record the creation, registration and transfer of value is a distributed general ledger. Therefore, the distributed general ledger is the value Internet serving the multilateral ecosystem. The China Distributed General Ledger Basic Protocol Alliance is a non-profit community organization whose purpose is to create a value Internet serving China's multilateral ecosystem.

The establishment of the alliance is the consensus of all co-sponsors. Everyone recognizes that under the new situation where blockchain technology is rapidly penetrating into various fields, especially the financial field, financial institutions, capital markets, and information technology fields in various countries are facing huge challenges and opportunities. Using blockchain technology to build infrastructure for value interconnection has been raised to a strategic level by many countries around the world. The cross-border blockchain alliance composed of global financial institutions has been actively taking action and launching phased results. Specifically for China, on the one hand, we must conduct in-depth research and actively follow up on the new changes and trends brought about by blockchain technology in the field of financial technology, highlight our status and role as a major country, actively strive for China's voice in the international blockchain field, and prevent it from being marginalized in the new round of financial technology revolution; on the other hand, it is also necessary to fully consider the particularity of China's financial supervision and risk management system arrangements when blockchain technology is implemented, and properly deal with the impact of blockchain technology on my country's financial security. We cannot rashly connect with international blockchain organizations without thinking clearly about how blockchain will be implemented in the Chinese financial field, nor can we let each financial institution fight on its own. We need to build a consensus in China, unite, concentrate superior resources, and open up China's blockchain test field.

Blockchain is a complex technology. The underlying technology involves cryptography, distributed systems and peer-to-peer networks. When building financial solutions, it also involves the laws and regulations, institutional arrangements and principled requirements of risk management in China's financial field. This determines that the alliance must be a team that deeply integrates technology and business. We have noticed that in similar alliance organizations abroad, once deeply integrated with business needs, the basic protocol level of blockchain will actually undergo some changes and innovations relative to the "fundamentalism" of blockchain, making it more down-to-earth and more vital. Therefore, docking financial applications, making trade-offs, increases and decreases at the basic protocol level, is an important task for alliance organizations, and China is no exception. At the same time, as a "test field", we cannot plunge into the most core, most critical, and most demanding application scenarios for reliability and performance. Instead, we must proceed step by step and steadily, through the cooperation between alliance members, solidify the basic protocol and its implementation, and carefully select suitable landing scenarios for trial implementation to do concept verification. On this basis, we will seek to expand the results.

Looking around the world, most blockchain technologies are open source. Looking back at history, let’s imagine that if the underlying Internet protocols such as TCP/IP and HTTP/HTML were not used for free, perhaps today’s information society and digital age, which we are proud of, would not be the same as the convenience we enjoy in work and communication with each other. Therefore, openness and sharing are also the values ​​​​upheld by the China Distributed Ledger Basic Protocol Alliance. The work results of the alliance will be open to the whole society at the basic level, and will be shared by the members participating in the work at the application level.

Blockchain technology is a young technology, and it is also a technology developed from the attempt to build private digital currency. At present, there are still a large number of geeks familiar with blockchain technology who are keen on mining and speculating in coins. However, in our financial institutions and the main battlefield of our national economy, human resources that understand blockchain technology are still scarce. This has caused a serious mismatch of human resources. The establishment of our alliance is also an initiative to promote the reallocation of blockchain talents to finance and the main battlefield of the national economy. We hope that more private blockchain experts will join us and work together to promote the landing of China's blockchain technology in the main battlefield of the national economy.

Here, I would also like to thank the Wanxiang Blockchain Lab led by Xiao Feng. They are one of the early active practitioners and promoters in the field of blockchain in China, and will also become the secretariat unit of the alliance. Before the establishment of the alliance, they did a lot of preparatory work for this. I believe that after the establishment of the alliance, they will play an even more important role.

The establishment of the alliance is just the beginning of this great cause. We must concentrate on making use cases and writing code in a down-to-earth manner. I hope that in the near future, everyone will be able to witness the successful implementation of our achievements. We also hope that all sectors of society will support and encourage the work of our alliance in various ways.

Thank you everyone.