Technical adjustment of Ethereum

1.

There is an essential difference between ethereum and bitcoin. What is the difference? Bitcoin defines a set of currency system, while Ethereum focuses on building a main chain (which can be understood as a road) to allow a large number of blockchain applications to run on this road

from this point of view, Ethereum's application scenarios are more extensive, which is why we say that Ethereum marks a simple monetary system in the era of blockchain

1.0, and a transformation to other instries and application scenarios in the era of blockchain 2.0

however, there is no perfect thing in the world. Although Ethereum has expanded the application scope of blockchain in all walks of life and improved the speed of transaction processing, it also has some disputes and doubts

first, the solution to the lack of scalability of Ethereum: slicing technology and lightning network

the bottom design of Ethereum, the biggest problem is that Ethereum has only one chain and no side chain, which means that all programs have to run on this chain equally, consuming resources and causing system congestion. Just like last year's very popular Ethereum game "encryption cat", when this game was very popular, it once caused Ethereum network paralysis

to improve the processing capacity, Ethereum proposes two ways: shard and lightning network. Let's introce these two technologies respectively

(1) fragmentation technology

vitalik buterin, founder of Ethereum, believes that the reason why mainstream blockchain networks such as bitcoin process transactions very slowly is that every miner has to process every transaction in the whole network, which is actually very inefficient. The idea of fragmentation technology is: a transaction does not need to be processed by all nodes in the whole network, as long as some nodes (miners) in the network are allowed to process it. Therefore, Ethereum network is divided into many pieces. At the same time, each piece can handle different transactions. In this way, the network performance will be greatly improved

however, the slicing technology is also controversial. As we all know, the important idea of blockchain technology is decentralization. Only when the whole network witnesses (processes) the same transaction can it have the highest authority. The Ethereum slicing technology is similar to the group witness, not all nodes witness together. In this way, it will lose the absolute "decentralization" attribute, and can only achieve the purpose of high performance by sacrificing certain characteristics of decentralization

(2) lightning network

lightning network uses the way of transaction under the chain. What does that mean? It means: when the participants of lightning network transfer money to each other, they do not need to confirm the transaction through the main chain of Ethereum, but create a payment channel between the participants and complete it under the chain

however, lightning network is not separated from the main chain. Before establishing a payment channel, you need to use the assets on the main chain as collateral to generate a balance proof, which indicates that you can transfer the corresponding balance. In the case that both parties of the transaction hold the balance certificate, both parties can make unlimited number of transfers under the chain through the payment channel

only when the off chain transaction is completed and the assets need to be transferred back to the chain, the balance change information of the main chain account will be registered on the Ethereum main chain, and no matter how many transactions occur ring this period, there will be no record on the main chain

another real benefit of lightning network is that it can save the cost of miners for you. At present, when we trade on the main chain of Ethereum, we need to consume gas and pay for miners. Once we move the transaction to the lower chain, we can save this part of the cost

Of course, lightning network is not perfect. When using the lightning network, the assets on the main chain should be used as collateral; And this part of assets as collateral can not be used before the user completes the transaction under the chain. This also determines that lightning trading is only suitable for small transactions

the above is the problem of insufficient scalability of Ethereum, as well as the two main solutions: fragmentation technology and lightning network

Second, there are loopholes in Ethereum's smart contract and the infamous Dao event

Ethereum's smart contract is very powerful, but there are loopholes in any code. The biggest controversy of Ethereum's smart contract lies in the so-called loopholes, that is, security issues. According to relevant research, 34200 (about 3%) of the nearly 1 million smart contracts based on Ethereum contain security vulnerabilities, which will allow hackers to steal eth, freeze assets or delete contracts, such as the infamous Dao incident

(1) what does Dao mean

before introcing the Dao event, let's first introce what Dao is. Dao is the abbreviation of decentralized

autonomous organization, which can be understood as decentralized autonomous organization. From the perspective of Ethereum, Dao is a kind of contract or a combination of contracts on the blockchain, which is used to replace the government's review and complex intermediate proceres, so as to achieve an efficient and decentralized trust system. Therefore, Dao is not a specific organization, that is to say, there can be many Dao, all kinds of Dao

(2) the infamous Dao event

however, when we talk about Dao now, we basically refer to the Dao event, that is, the infamous hacker attack event we just mentioned. As we know, the English word "the" refers to "the Dao event". The Dao event

refers to "the Dao event", because we just said that Dao is not a specific organization, there can be many Dao, all kinds of Dao

in 2016, slock.it, a German company focusing on "smart locks", launched the Dao project on Ethereum in order to realize decentralized physical exchange (such as apartments and ships). Since April 30, 2016, the financing window has been open for 28 days

unexpectedly, this Dao project is very popular. It raised more than US $100 million in just half a month. By the end of the whole financing period, it raised a total of US $150 million. Therefore, it has become the largest crowdfunding project in history. However, it didn't last long. In June, hackers took advantage of the loopholes in the smart contract to successfully transfer more than 3.6 million Ethernet coins and put them into a Dao sub organization, which has the same structure as the Dao. At that time, the price of Ethernet currency fell directly from more than $20 to less than $13

this event shows that there are loopholes in smart contracts, and once the loopholes are exploited by hackers, the consequences will be very serious. This is why many people criticize Ethereum and say that its smart contract is not smart

to solve this problem, many foreign companies begin to provide code audit services in order to solve the vulnerability problem of smart contract. From a technical point of view, some teams are currently testing smart contracts. Most of these teams are led by professors from Harvard, Stanford and Yale, and some of them have obtained investment from leading institutions

in addition to the problems of insufficient expansibility and loopholes in smart contracts, the controversy over Ethereum lies in the POS consensus mechanism it pursues, that is, the proof of equity mechanism. Under the proof of equity mechanism, if anyone holds more money and holds it for a longer time, he will get more "rights" (interests) and have the opportunity to get bookkeeping power, Bookkeeping can also be rewarded. In this way, it is easy to create the oligarchic advantage of "the stronger the stronger"

Another problem is the chaos of ICO. ICO is a common way to raise funds for blockchain projects, which we can understand as pre-sale. The outbreak of ICO projects on Ethereum has caused illegal activities such as fund allocation and money fraud under the banner of ICO, which has caused security risks to social and financial stability

2.

what is Ethereum:

Ethereum is an innovation based on the application of technologies and concepts in bitcoin to computers. Ethereum itself imitates a lot of bitcoin technology to maintain the computer platform. Blockchain technology is one of them
Ethereum platform can safely run any program users want

advantages of Ethereum over other competitive currencies before Ethereum appeared, some digital currencies imitated bitcoin. However, these projects have their own shortcomings, they can only support one or several specific applications at the same time< However, the reason why Ethereum can surpass the limitations of these projects in the past is because of the core idea of Ethereum

what Ethereum wants to implement is a blockchain protocol with built-in programming language. Since it supports programming language, in theory, any blockchain application can be defined with this language, and then run on Ethereum's blockchain protocol as an application

The design of Ethereum is very flexible and adaptable

Ethereum target sets the advantages of blockchain technology, in order to add the advantages of blockchain, such as decentralization, openness and security, to almost all computing fields

blockchain applications of Ethereum

Ethereum has many blockchain applications, such as digital applications of gold and stocks, financial derivatives applications, DNS and digital authentication, etc

Ethereum has achieved more than 100 blockchain applications by many start-ups

Ethereum has also been closely watched by some financial institutions, banking consortia (such as R3), as well as large companies like Samsung, Deloitte, RWE and IBM. As a result, a number of blockchain applications such as simplified and automated financial transactions, merchant loyalty index tracking, and gift cards designed to achieve decentralization of electronic transactions have emerged

the relationship between Ethereum and blockchain:

Ethereum is a programmable blockchain

Ethereum does not give users a series of preset operations (such as bitcoin transaction), but allows users to create complex operations according to their own wishes

in this way, Ethereum can be used as a platform for various types of decentralized blockchain applications, including but not limited to cryptocurrency

like other blockchains, Ethereum also has a peer-to-peer network protocol. Ethereum blockchain database is maintained and updated by many nodes connected to the network. Each network node runs the Ethereum simulator and executes the same instructions. Therefore, people sometimes call Ethereum "world computer"

3. Ethereum blockchain has exposed three major problems, and its founder vitalik buterin has been unable to interpret them for a long time. The first is the low performance and TPS of Ethereum blockchain as a whole; The second is that resources are not isolated. The event of cryptokitties virtual cat once occupied 20% of the traffic of the whole Ethereum, which directly caused Ethereum network users unable to carry out timely transactions, which is the biggest pain point of resources not isolated; The third problem lies in the embodiment of Ethereum's governance structure. As a decentralized distributed ledger, the founder team of Ethereum has dominated its network development in the past. The over centralized governance mode has led to the bifurcation of eth, etc and ETF in Ethereum, and the Ethereum community is now in a state of fragmented governance. In the view of Ma Haobo, founder and CEO of "aelf", all kinds of disadvantages of Ethereum are unacceptable. Therefore, the positioning of "aelf" is born for the next generation of decentralized underlying computing platform of Ethereum, which focuses on solving the problems of insufficient performance, non isolation of resources and governance structure of Ethereum.

4.

Ethereum is an open source public blockchain platform with smart contract function. It provides decentralized virtual machine (Ethereum virtual machine) to process point-to-point contract through its special cryptocurrency ether (also known as "Ethereum")

The token on the

blockchain is called ether, and the code is eth. It can be traded in many foreign exchange markets of cryptocurrency, and it is also the medium used to pay transaction fees and computing services on Ethereum

the concept of Ethereum was first proposed by vitalik buterin, a programmer, from 2013 to 2014, inspired by bitcoin, with the general meaning of "next generation cryptocurrency and decentralized application platform", and began to develop through ICO crowdfunding in 2014. As of February 2018, Ethernet is the second highest cryptocurrency in market value, second only to bitcoin

extended data:

Ethereum platform has no characteristics and value. Like programming languages, it's up to entrepreneurs and developers to decide what to use. However, it is clear that some application types benefit more from the functions of Ethereum than others. Ethereum is especially suitable for those applications that automatically interact directly between points or promote group coordination activities across networks

for example, coordinate the application of point-to-point market, or the automation of complex financial contracts. Bitcoin enables indivials to exchange money without the help of financial institutions, banks or governments. The impact of Ethereum may be more profound

in theory, any complex financial activities or transactions can be automatically and reliably carried out on Ethereum with coding. In addition to financial applications, any application scenario with high requirements for trust, security and persistence, such as asset registration, voting, management and Internet of things, will be affected by Ethereum platform on a large scale

5. 2020 is the first year of proction rection. Everyone turns to BTC, BCH, BSV and other currencies. However, you forget eth. As the king of the public chain, ETH will usher in the big upgrade of 2.0 super version in 2020, switching from the pow mechanism to the POS mechanism. In addition, it will face proction rection in March next year, and its circulation will be reced by 10 times. Its impact is no less than that of bitcoin proction. Since the beginning of the year, the trading volume of eth has grown explosively, and the institutional capital has poured in to preempt the layout. However, the current price of eth is only 260 US dollars. With many super favorable blessings, the market expects eth to usher in a super bull market< In theory, the circulation of next year will be reced by 10 times. In theory, the current price of eth is 260x4 = US $1040 (upgrade + expected price after proction rection)

ring this period, the return comparison between holding spot and ETF fund is as follows:

1. Holding spot makes 4 times of profit
2. Holding Ethereum ETF fund makes 12 times of profit, Up to 30 times (intelligent position adjustment + fund compound interest calculation)

there is no doubt that the Ethereum ETF launched by bitoffer is the best investment choice!

6. Ethereum is not a kind of currency, but a decentralized intelligent protocol. It can be understood as a huge global account book. The logic of this intelligent protocol does not need a specific server to support its daily operation. Instead, it is the protocol terms given by the executors before entering among the scattered users. This is an application evolved from decentralization
compared with bitcoin, we can find that Ethereum is more difficult to develop a new encryption technology than bitcoin. This breakthrough has greatly reced the development cost and time for developers who apply blockchain technology. The emergence of Ethereum once again reiterated the need to split the center, as well as the feasibility and advantages of decentralized distributed applications, to the existing economic market, the financial sector a new direction of development and throw to the society a new entrepreneurial ideas and opportunities.

7. Note that Ethereum is 2.0 now. As of 13:57 on the 4th, the current deposit contract address of Ethereum 2.0 has received 1000098eth, and 31252 addresses have completed the mortgage of 32eth. With the increasing number of mortgage, the annual yield of mortgage will graally decrease. After the mortgage amount reaches 1 million eth, the current annualized yield is about 15.7%. Zhongyuan, a well-known exchange, has taken the lead in opening the mining channel of eth2.0 verification node, and then launched qeth. Users can invest their own eth in verification node mining and exchange qeth to obtain liquidity, and then participate in mining. Compared with the disadvantages of eth2.0, qeth has too many things: the liquidity is guaranteed, the user does not have to bear the technical cost, the threshold of participation does not need 32 eth as low as 0.1eth, the nodes are maintained by the platform, and the income is distributed according to eth2.0.

8. Ethereum can be said to be a very successful currency in technology. In a short period of time, it has formed a trend of convergence. No matter in the technical level or in the market level, it has received global support, and the applications developed around it are emerging in an endless stream. At present, its price has been hovering at 3000 yuan for nearly half a month. I believe that with the progress of the bifurcation, its price is likely to exceed 4000 yuan by the end of the year. As the second largest market value of blockchain projects and bitcoin projects, its value is obviously likely to rise

Ethereum uses fog computing. The data processing and applications of fog computing are concentrated in the devices at the edge of the network, rather than almost all stored in the cloud, which is an extension concept of cloud computing, which is more in line with the spirit of decentralization of blockchain. If all the storage and operations still stay on the centralized server, then it will not be a real blockchain
recently, the hot "ethereal cat" on Ethereum network has led to the congestion of Ethereum network. The problem is that the TPS concurrency per second of Ethereum is too low. The emergence of ethereumfog with fog computing will break the embarrassing situation of Ethereum network congestion, and add powerful decentralized storage and additional computing power to the chain

the concept of fog computing may be unfamiliar to many chain friends, but it is the most important aspect of ether fog to attract investors. In fact, I have heard about the concept of fog computing for a long time, and I have always thought that fog computing is the future development direction. When it comes to fog computing, we should start with cloud computing. In fact, the cloud computing we see now evolves from the cluster of independent servers, that is, from the original centralized independent servers to large server clusters, but in the final analysis, it is still a form of centralized computing. Compared with cloud computing, which is the evolution of centralized computing, fog computing is to share computing tasks with various computing power devices around us, and realize the evolution of decentralized and distributed computing, which coincides with the philosophy of blockchain itself.

9. I plan to start a series to talk about architecture. My previous experience is mainly in the area of Internet architecture. Recently, I am sorting out and analyzing the architecture of bitcoin, Ethereum and EOS, so I am going to write a series of articles to talk about the understanding of Internet architecture and blockchain architecture. It will be divided into four articles: 1. Internet proct architecture, 2. Bitcoin architecture analysis, 3. Ethereum architecture analysis, 4. EOS architecture analysis
there is no central server in Ethereum. Instead, there are many equal nodes connected by P2P protocol, which store all the data in many nodes. When a user initiates a transaction, the transaction will be broadcast out through P2P protocol. The miner node verifies, packages and further broadcasts the transaction to the whole network. After confirmation in the blockchain, the operation is considered to be unchangeable
in the articles on blockchain on the Internet, the two words distributed and decentralized are mentioned, sometimes slightly different, sometimes mixed. The author thinks that if we want to distinguish accurately, the distributed system emphasizes that multiple components work together by sending messages, and the decentralized system emphasizes that there is no central node to control the operation of the whole system. Therefore, we think that Ethereum is both decentralized and distributed, or running a decentralized program on a distributed platform.

10. < blockquote >

in today's mobile payment era, few people will use coins for payment . A lot of people, they think that mobile payment is more convenient, if you carry RMB, it will be very troublesome, so now less and less people use paper money to pay. In fact, the process of making paper money is also very complicated. The materials used to make coins are different metals. Compared with those rare metals, low-cost metals are more suitable for making coins

< / blockquote >

and those rare metals, such as gold or silver, are suitable for making commemorative coins with collection value . In many countries, some of their currencies are made of alloy, because it is a very ideal material for coinage, and the hardness is improved by mixing with other metals. At the beginning of making coins, we should choose the materials and put the selected metals in the furnace for casting and melting. After many times of rolling in the rolling workshop, the thickness of the coin can meet the requirements of coins, and it can be made into semi-finished procts for further processing{ RRRRR}

with the progress of science and technology, now many mold making machines have become engraving machines for casting to replace the previous manual process . It can improve the accuracy to a certain extent. It used to take a whole day to manufacture, but now it can complete the remanufacturing of the mold within a few hours. After that, it can be pressed on the coin, and the coin will become the currency in circulation