Explanation of blockchain digital technology

If you want to understand the application of blockchain, you can refer to many books and opinions, such as illustrated blockchain, blockchain: reshaping the economy and the world, blueprint and guide of new economy, and articles of coin'an community, including a detailed understanding of the platform of coin'an community, with great strength

in 2008, in his paper bitcoin: a peer-to-peer e-cash system published by Nakamoto, he first proposed the idea of blockchain and encrypted digital currency. Starting from bitcoin, blockchain has become the underlying technology of various digital currencies

1. The basic concepts include: (1) transaction: one operation will change the account status once, such as adding a record 2) Block: records the transaction and status data within a specified time, which is a consensus and preservation of the current account status 3) Chain: it is composed of a series of blocks in chronological order, which is the log record of the whole state change. If you understand the working concept of blockchain, it is not difficult to understand its working principle. Suppose there is a distributed data logbook, which can only be added, not deleted or changed. Its structure is a linear chain formed by a series of "blocks" (which is also the source of the name of "blockchain"), and new data must be put into a new block to be added, The maintenance node can propose a new block, but it must go through a certain consensus mechanism to reach an agreement on the final selected block

2. Take bitcoin as an example to see the working principle of blockchain

the block of bitcoin is divided into block head and block body

1. The verification, accounting, storage, maintenance and transmission of decentralized blockchain data are all based on distributed system structure. There is no centralized hardware or management organization, and the rights and obligations of any node are equal, The data blocks in the system are jointly maintained by the nodes with maintenance function in the whole system. 2. The open and transparent system is open. In addition to the private information of all parties to the transaction is encrypted, the data of the blockchain is open to all. Anyone can query the blockchain data and develop related applications through the open interface, so the information of the whole system is highly transparent. 3. Security blockchain uses consensus based specifications and Protocols (such as a set of open and transparent algorithms) to enable all nodes in the whole system to exchange data freely and safely in a de trusted environment, so that the trust in "people" is changed into the trust in machines, and any human intervention does not work. 4. Information cannot be tampered with. Once the information is verified and added to the blockchain, it will be stored permanently. Unless more than 51% (almost impossible) nodes in the system can be controlled at the same time, the modification of the database on a single node is invalid. Therefore, the data stability and reliability of the blockchain are extremely high. 5. Anonymity because the exchange between nodes follows a fixed algorithm, and its data interaction does not need trust (the program rules in the blockchain will judge whether the activity is effective or not). Therefore, the counterparties do not need to let the counterparties generate their own trust by disclosing their identities, which is very helpful for credit accumulation

1. Public chain: anyone can participate in the use and maintenance, and can obtain the effective confirmation of the blockchain. Public chain is the earliest blockchain and the most widely used blockchain at present, such as bitcoin blockchain. The information is completely public

if the licensing mechanism is introced, it includes private chain and alliance chain. 2. Private chain: a company or indivial only uses the blockchain technology, enjoys the exclusive write permission of the blockchain, and does not disclose the information. At present, conservative giants (traditional finance) want to experiment with private blockchain, and the application procts of private blockchain are still groping. 3. Alliance chain: it is a blockchain between the public chain and the existing chain, which is jointly controlled by multiple organizations. The use of the chain is managed with authority, which can be controlled by the manager, and also open to others according to the manager's wishes. In addition, according to the different use scenarios and purposes of blockchain, it can be divided into currency chain for the purpose of digital currency, property chain for the purpose of recording property rights, and crowdfunding chain for the purpose of crowdfunding

take Maotai liquor as an example:

distillery address, proction workshop, operation staff, inspector, delivery time, transportation vehicle information and driver information,

liquor year, raw material source, raw material supplier, storage warehouse number, raw material transportation vehicle and driver information,

all information can be accurately traced, permanently recorded and tampered with

the above information can be easily verified

2. Food safety issues as early as last November, Wal Mart has cooperated with IBM to track the source of food by using blockchain technology, so as to ensure the safety of food and increase the circulation of food to rece costs. For Wal Mart and other large supermarkets, it took a few days to investigate the source of problem food, After using this technology, only one item of proct information is needed to achieve accurate traceability, and important information such as food origin, inspector, supplier, logistics and transportation can quickly find problems in a few minutes. Currently, procts tracked by blockchain include packaging procts from the United States and pork from China

3. Information security

blockchain technology is promoting an information security technology revolution. (1) identity protection PKI is a common public key encryption technology in e-mail, message application, website and other communication applications. However, since the implementation of most PKI, the centralized trusted third party certification authority (CA) is used to issue, activate and store user certificates. Hackers can attack PKI to fake user identity or crack encrypted information

certcoin is the first PKI implementation of blockchain, which comes from MIT, removes the centralized authentication center, and uses blockchain as a distributed ledger for domain name and public key

pomcor company: blockchain PKI implementation path: keep the authentication center, and use blockchain to store the hash value of issued and activated certificates. Users can verify the authenticity of certificates through decentralized and transparent sources, and can also improve the network access performance through local authentication of secret key and signature based on blockchain

(2) data integrity protection

guardtime developed a secret key free signature architecture (Ksi) based on blockchain technology to replace the secret key based data authentication technology. Ksi stores the hash table of the original data and files on the blockchain, runs the hash algorithm to verify other copies, and compares the results with the data stored in the blockchain. Any data tampering will be found quickly because the original hash table is stored in millions of nodes

(3) key infrastructure protection

the "Achilles heel" of the Internet, DDoS has entered the TB era, DDoS is still the simplest weapon for hackers to bring down the big target with low cost, DNS service is the primary target for hackers to carry out large-scale destruction, but blockchain technology is expected to fundamentally solve the problem

blockchain makes hacker attacks lose focus. Nebulis is developing a distributed DNS system, which uses Ethereum blockchain and interstellar Internet file system (IPFs, the distributed substitute of HTTP) to register and resolve domain names. The biggest weakness of DNS is caching, which makes DDoS attacks possible. It is also the bane of the centralized government's censorship of social networks and manipulation of DNS registration. A highly transparent and distributed DNS system can effectively prevent any entity, including the government, from arbitrarily manipulating records

from the use of physical transactions, to physical currency and credit currency, and then to the rise of bitcoin network, more and more people are aware of the distributed ledger blockchain technology behind it, and graally apply it in many scenarios other than digital currency

(2) cross border payment and settlement: realize point-to-point transaction, rece intermediate fees

transfer and payment. At present, the most mature application of blockchain technology is payment and transfer. Blockchain technology can avoid complicated systems, save the process of inter-bank reconciliation and review, and accelerate the settlement speed; Virtual currency can rece transaction costs without the intervention of clearing house. Different countries have different clearing proceres. It takes two or three days for a single remittance to arrive, which is inefficient and accounts for a large proportion of funds in transit. No longer through the third party, through the blockchain technology to form point-to-point payment. By eliminating the link of the third-party institutions, we can make full day payment, real-time payment, withdraw cash quickly and rece the hidden cost, which helps to avoid the capital risk. It is timely and convenient

value transfer between point-to-point, control and verify physical bills or central system; Intermediaries will be eliminated and human intervention reced. With the improvement of efficiency, financing channels are more unblocked, risks are lower, and multiple parties benefit

(4) securities issuance and Trading: realize quasi real-time asset transfer, accelerate the speed of transaction clearing

the application of blockchain technology can make the process of securities trading more concise, transparent and fast, rece the plication of IT system, and improve the efficiency of market operation. For stocks, blockchain can eliminate paper and pen or electronic form records, rece human errors in trading, and improve the transparency and traceability of trading platform. Citigroup and Nasdaq cooperate to promote blockchain applications

(5) customer credit investigation and anti fraud: rece the cost of legal compliance, prevent financial crimes

the customer information and transaction records recorded in the blockchain help banks identify abnormal transactions and effectively prevent fraud. The technical characteristics of blockchain can change the existing credit reference system, and store the data of customers with bad records in the blockchain when the bank concts "know your customer" (KYC)

equity crowdfunding:

At the beginning of self-learning blockchain related knowledge, we can adopt the "bottom-up" method, that is, through reading books, reading white papers , we can check the information , and then summarize and connect these knowledge , and integrate them into a relatively complete knowledge system

so I went to the bookstore and bought a of the Analects of Confucius. I read it from the beginning to the end and found that there were too many details and insights in it, which could not be transmitted through any interpretation. Actually, I spent a lot of time and read a lot of interpretation before. I really want to abandon the essence and pursue the end. I have to work hard