The essence of Bitcoin is technology

Author: sanna

Bitcoin is essentially a technology

To the outside world, Bitcoin has always been a topic full of rumors. OKCoin CEO Xu Mingxing first refuted recent false information in the industry and explained the misunderstandings about transaction processes and prices in the Bitcoin circle. Then Xu Mingxing proposed the concept: Bitcoin is a technical means of Internet finance, and its essence is technology. We should look at the topic of Bitcoin from a technical perspective.

Facing the false rumors from the outside world, Xu Mingxing said, "After several years of development, we have encountered many twists and turns. Some people even said that I ran away. Of course, we have been attacked by DDOS and data attacks of one million QPS per second. Of course, there are also some attacks between peers in the media. However, after three years of development, including our peers, our companies have always grasped the original intention. First of all, we are operating a Bitcoin platform and application. We are not gamblers or currency speculators, so we have always held on to this bottom line."

Lightning Network: A Cache for Bitcoin

The Lightning Network, in simple terms, aims to take the vast majority of Bitcoin transactions off the blockchain without sacrificing verifiability and security. The Lightning Network allows the creation of "micropayment channels" where multiple Bitcoin transactions can be conducted securely without interacting with the blockchain, beyond the initial transaction that initiates the channel. There is also no counterparty risk: if either party terminates cooperation or does not respond within the agreed time, the channel can be closed.

These payments in the channel are instantaneous, unlike current Bitcoin payments (which often take an hour to verify). More importantly, payments are routable, spanning multiple hops, just like packets on the Internet. Instead of creating a channel for each new party, you can maintain a few channels, connect a few good security intermediaries, and complete transactions through them.

In theory, this distributed micropayment network (Lightning Network) can expand Bitcoin's daily transaction volume to billions of transactions per day, with minimal use of the blockchain and only a small transaction fee.

One possible thing is for two parties to set up a chain of transactions, where only the last transaction in the chain actually enters the Bitcoin blockchain. This is the idea behind simple payment channels, which already exist; you can keep sending someone replaceable transactions, each with a slightly larger amount than the last, and once a certain condition is met, the channel is terminated and only the last payment is broadcast to the entire network.

It turns out that with only a few, almost non-controversial Bitcoin upgrades, people can create more general payment channels that allow bidirectional payments, and also allow "conditional payments". Conditional payments allow you to build a payment network. In fact, you can say "if Bob pays Carol, I will pay Bob" in a secure and trustless way. After something happens, your wallet automatically broadcasts this conditional payment transaction to the Bitcoin network and waits.

New technology product trials on blockchain

It is revealed that one of Xu Mingxing's products, "Hao You Qian", as an innovative technology product, has also made attempts on the blockchain. He tried to apply blockchain network technology to Internet financial lending relationships and crowdfunding relationships to connect financiers and borrowers. The project has now been officially launched. The development of this technology is a precedent in Internet finance. If successfully matched, it will solve the problems of difficult matching of lending relationships and opaque whereabouts of funds in China's Internet finance.

Finally, Xu Mingxing called on everyone to never elevate a purely technical and academic issue like Bitcoin to a question of character, morality, or conspiracy.