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Ethereum is a platform and a programming language that enables developers to build and publish the next generation of distributed applications. Ethereum can be used to program, decentralize, secure and trade anything: voting, domain names, financial exchanges, crowdfunding, company management, contracts and most agreements, intellectual property, and smart assets thanks to hardware integration. In short, the core concept of Ethereum is: a blockchain with a built-in Turing-complete programming language that allows any kind of application to be created on it. Since its initial $18 million fundraising in 2014, Ethereum has attracted continued attention in the digital currency industry, and the value of blockchain technology has become increasingly optimistic in recent times. But in the past year, Ethereum seems to have not delivered satisfactory results to investors. The first version, frontier, was recently launched, but the official version has not been launched yet, and the funds initially raised have almost been exhausted. In this regard, Vitalik explained: The cost of the Ethereum Foundation was very high in the past because the foundation did almost everything. The plan for Ethereum in the future is to "do less and improve efficiency. Focus on R&D plans (proof of stake (PoS), scalability, combined with zero-knowledge proof, etc.) and maintain the stability of the network." These do not seem to have affected the value of Ethereum in the minds of investors. In October this year, the world's first blockchain conference will be held in Shanghai, hosted by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab, whose co-founders are Xiao Feng, vice chairman and executive director of China Wanxiang Holdings Co., Ltd., Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, and Shen Bo, co-founder of BitShares. It is reported that the blockchain lab will set up a $50 million fund to focus on investing in区块链应用技术项目with commercial prospects. At the same time, Wanxiang Group promised to provide $1 million to Wanxiang Blockchain Lab every year in the next three years. Half of the funds in the first year, or $500,000, have been used to purchase 416,000 Ethereum native tokens ETH. Taking this opportunity, Babbitt Information interviewed Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, to talk about the Wanxiang Blockchain Lab, which is about to be unveiled, and Ethereum's next plans. 8btc Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin = Vitalik 8btc: What are you going to introduce at this conference? Vitalik: I want to explain the concept of智能合约and how smart contract institutions on the blockchain can improve efficiency and security, as well as solve several problems in the digital economy.
In the 21st century, a large part of our economy has been online, and many assets can be called数字资产, such as currency, domain names, and stocks. Some governments have already experimented with uploading their real estate prediction and tracking systems. I am going to explain how blockchain and related technologies can help this trend to create a very low-cost but very secure mechanism. It includes the following parts:
1. What is a smart contract?
2. What are digital assets? There are many things that we didn’t realize were digital assets before, but they are. The key is that we can manage, track and trade them with the same system.
3. Characteristics of blockchain, where blockchain can be used and where it is less useful. For example, blockchain can be a very reliable and secure basic protocol, but it cannot perform a million transactions per second and cannot provide a fast response time.
8btc: You talked about the concept of digital assets. What is your understanding of digital assets? Vitalik: It has a wide range of types. For example, we already have digital currencies, digital stocks, derivatives, etc., which are financial assets. There are also other types, such as domain names. Domain names are completely digital assets because they only have meaning on the Internet.
But their value can be as high as tens of millions of dollars. There was once an interesting experiment: a college student wanted to raise money for his tuition, so he built this website and sold every pixel, one pixel for one dollar. So the conclusion is that the virtual space on this website has value in the real world.
8btc: What is the purpose of your co-founding of Wanxiang Blockchain Lab with Xiao Feng and Shen Bo? Vitalik: The blockchain lab has two goals. The first is支持区块链和智能合约的研究. For example, research on formula algorithms, zero-knowledge proofs, blockchain scalability, protocols on blockchain, identity and credit ratings, etc.;结合区块链和传统协议的方案和应用are also important. The second is开发者的教育和培训to increase the number of developers in China who can understand and develop applications on blockchain.
8btc: At this conference, how do you plan to introduce Ethereum and blockchain to people outside the digital currency circle? Vitalik: I want to focus on the concept of smart contracts. Smart contracts are basically a program that controls digital assets. Digital assets are already a big part of our lives, and smart contracts are just a good way to combine every kind of information and digital assets. There is no need to focus on the concept of decentralization, but去中心化概念的好处, such as globalization, reliability, etc. Of course, blockchain also has many other applications that do not require cryptocurrency or digital assets (such as certificate issuance, industrial chain tracking), but I think the most interesting application is the concept of combining "区块链为数字资产管理系统", "区块链为去中心化数据库" and "区块链为去中心化的计算平台".
Ethereum released its first version two months ago. This is the frontier, and now we are focusing on solving security issues. Ethereum's blockchain is still young and cannot solve every problem yet. Once the frequency of security issues is low enough, we will release the next stage, homestead.
Then there are several key points. First, we will continue改善底层协议. One year later, we plan to release Ethereum 1.1. At that time, we will make several changes to the protocol, such as introducing the formula algorithm for proof of equity; second, we will改良界面和中层的软件, such as mist. Mist is our client, a decentralized browser; and then we will推进应用. Many people have already developed applications on Ethereum, such as Joseph Lubin's consensys, which is now the largest, a New York company with about 50 people.
8btc: What is the current source of Ethereum’s economy? To what extent has the previous crowdfunding funds been consumed? Where will the funds for future projects come from? Vitalik: Right now the Ethereum Foundation doesn’t have a lot of Swiss francs or bitcoins, but we still have our three million ethers.
The Ethereum Foundation used to be very expensive because the Foundation did almost everything: we made four clients (these are Go, C++, Python and Javascript clients), we paid a Seattle company to do a thorough security audit, we made a development environment (Mix), we made our own smart contract programming language (Solidity), etc. Now the Foundation plans to do less and improve efficiency; our focus is on research in order to complete our R&D plans (Proof of Stake (PoS), scalability, combined with zero-knowledge proofs, etc.) and maintain the stability of the network, as well as education and communication. (Attached is an introduction to Ethereum's current financial situation)
In the Ethereum community, there are already many people helping us realize our vision. For example, there are three websites for exploring blockchain: http://etherchain.org, http://etherscan.io and http://ether.camp. The developers of ether.camp also make a development environment and many other tools. We previously planned to add a scheduled call function to our 1.1 version, but a community project, http://ethereum-alarm-clock.com, has already made a decentralized service on the blockchain to implement this function. Often, community software is even better than ours. At the same time, Shen Bo, Xiao Feng and my research institute also have Consensys, a company in New York that makes applications on Ethereum, as well as Augur, Maker and many other teams. So I am very confident that our community can help us achieve our ambitions for Ethereum 1.1 and 2.0.
8btc: What applications built on Ethereum did you introduce before? Can you pick a few and introduce them in detail? Vitalik: I would like to introduce these:
* WeiFund is a decentralized crowdfunding platform. Everyone can create a crowdfunding plan and set a fundraising goal and deadline. If the total amount of donations exceeds the goal before the deadline expires, the funds will be immediately sent to the creator of the crowdfunding plan. If the total amount does not reach the goal when the deadline expires, the smart contract automatically refunds everyone.
* Boardroom is a blockchain-based management platform for organizations (companies, non-profits, etc.). Smart contracts on the blockchain track who the directors of the organization are, and the directors can vote on the blockchain to make transactions, sign documents, make resolutions, add or remove directors, etc. The most interesting thing is that by combining weifund and boardroom: you can make a decentralized crowdfunding plan, and then the crowdfunding contract directly sends funds to a boardroom contract, so the participants of the crowdfunding plan can directly vote and control how the crowdfunding funds are spent.
* Ujo is a platform for selling songs and managing copyright and revenue. A famous British singer, Imogen Heap, has started using Ujo to sell her latest song, "Tiny Human".
* Augur, a prediction market platform. There is also Gnosis, another prediction market platform. Gnosis already has several users and markets on it.
* Maker is a next-generation financial platform; an important part is eDollar, a stable-value digital currency.
8btc: How do you view the current development of the entire digital currency industry? Through your trip to China, what differences did you find between the digital currency development environment and progress in China and other regions? Vitalik: I have known about the digital currency industry for a long time. This industry is large, but it has long been almost covered by exchanges and mining. The concept of "crypto 2.0" is not very developed, but now I think the situation is changing. There is Wanxiang Blockchain Lab in Shanghai, several other projects (such as Maker), and a group in Beijing is studying government applications.
The situation in China is different from other countries; especially the fact that Bitcoin is not widely used. I think政府因素plays a big role. For example, there are no big companies that accept Bitcoin, like Microsoft and Time in the United States.
I don’t know if this situation will change in the future, but I think the government’s policies should not hinder非金融应用(such as trade finance, DNS, and copyright management). In addition, I think the application of私有链also has a future.
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