Blockchain technology development status and outlook

Status and Prospects of Blockchain Technology Development

Blockchain technology originated from the seminal paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," which was published in the cryptography email group in 2008 by a scholar who goes by the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamoto" (中本聪). In the past two years, the research and application of blockchain technology has shown explosive growth, and is considered to be the fifth disruptive innovation in the computing paradigm after mainframe, personal computer, Internet, and mobile/social networks, and the fourth milestone in the history of human credit evolution after blood relatives' credit, precious metal credit, and central bank paper money credit. Blockchain technology is the prototype of next-generation cloud computing, which is expected to completely reshape the shape of human social activities like the Internet and realize the transformation from the current information Internet to the value Internet. Technical characteristics of blockchain

Blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization, time-ordered data, collective maintenance, programmable and secure and trustworthy. Decentralization: the processes of verification, bookkeeping, storage, maintenance and transmission of blockchain data are all based on a distributed system structure, which adopts a purely mathematical method rather than a central institution to establish a trust relationship among distributed nodes, thus forming a decentralized and trustworthy distributed system; Time-sequence data: blockchain adopts a chained block structure with a timestamp to store the data, thus adding a temporal dimension to the data, which has an Collective Maintenance: The blockchain system uses specific economic incentives to ensure that all nodes in the distributed system can participate in the process of verifying data blocks (e.g., Bitcoin's "mining" process) and selecting specific nodes to add new blocks to the blockchain through *** knowledge algorithms; Programmability: Blockchain technology can provide a flexible script code system to support users to create advanced smart contracts, currencies or other decentralized applications; Security and Trustworthiness: Blockchain technology adopts the principle of asymmetric cryptography to encrypt the data, and at the same time, with the help of the distributed system of nodes' proof of work and other *** knowledge algorithms formed by the strong arithmetic power to defend against external attacks, to ensure that the data on the blockchain can not be tampered with and can not be forged, and thus has a high degree of security. Therefore, it has a high level of security. Blockchain and Bitcoin Bitcoin is by far the most successful blockchain application scenario, blockchain technology for the bitcoin system to solve the digital cryptocurrency field has long had to face the double payment problem and the Byzantine general problem. Unlike the credit endorsement mechanisms of traditional central institutions such as central banks, the Bitcoin blockchain forms software-defined credit, which marks a fundamental change from centralized state credit to decentralized algorithmic credit. In recent years, Bitcoin, with its first-mover advantage, has now formed a complete ecosystem and industrial chain covering issuance, circulation, and financial derivative markets, which is the main reason why it has occupied the vast majority of digital cryptocurrency market share for a long time. The development of blockchain and its trend

Blockchain technology is a universal underlying technology framework that can bring about profound changes in various fields such as finance, economy, science and technology, and even politics. According to the current development of blockchain technology, blockchain technology will go through the blockchain 1.0 mode, which is mainly characterized by programmable digital cryptocurrency system, blockchain 2.0 mode, which is mainly characterized by programmable financial system, and blockchain 3.0 mode, which is mainly characterized by programmable society. However, the above models have actually developed in parallel rather than in an evolutionary manner, and the digital cryptocurrency system of the blockchain 1.0 model is still far from mature, and is actually farther away and more difficult to realize from its vision of global monetary integration. At present, the blockchain field has shown a clear development trend driven by technological and industrial innovation, and related academic research is seriously lagging behind and needs to be followed up urgently. The basic model and key technologies of blockchain

Generally speaking, the blockchain system consists of a data layer, a network layer, a *** knowledge layer, an incentive layer, a contract layer and an application layer. Among them, the data layer encapsulates the underlying data blocks and related data encryption and timestamping technologies; the network layer includes distributed networking mechanisms, data dissemination mechanisms, and data verification mechanisms; the *** knowledge layer mainly encapsulates various types of *** knowledge algorithms of the network nodes; the incentive layer integrates the economic factors into the blockchain technological system, which mainly includes the issuance mechanism of the economic incentives and the distribution mechanism, etc. The contract layer mainly encapsulates various types of scripts, algorithms, and smart smart cards, and the contract layer mainly encapsulates various types of scripts, algorithms, and smart cards. encapsulates all kinds of scripts, algorithms and smart contracts, which is the basis of the programmable characteristics of the blockchain; the application layer encapsulates various application scenarios and cases of the blockchain. In this model, the timestamp-based chain block structure, distributed node *** knowledge mechanism, economic incentives based on *** knowledge computing power, and flexible and programmable smart contracts are the most representative innovations of blockchain technology. Application Scenarios of Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology can be successfully applied not only in the field of digital cryptocurrencies, but also in the economic, financial and social systems in a wide range of application scenarios. According to the current situation of blockchain technology application, this paper generalizes the current major applications of blockchain into six scenarios: digital currency, data storage, data forensics, financial transactions, asset management, and election voting***: digital currency: represented by Bitcoin, which is essentially a digital currency generated by a distributed network system, and its issuance process does not rely on a specific centralized institution. Data storage: blockchain's high redundancy storage, decentralization, high security and privacy protection make it particularly suitable for storing and protecting important private data, in order to avoid large-scale data loss or leakage caused by attacks on centralized institutions or improper management of permissions. Data Forensics: Blockchain data comes with timestamps, is verified and recorded by ***knowledge nodes*** with the same verification and records, and is not subject to tampering and forgery, and these features make blockchain can be widely used in all kinds of data notarization and auditing scenarios. For example, blockchain can permanently and securely store all kinds of permits, registration forms, licenses, certificates, certifications and records issued by government agencies. Financial transactions: blockchain technology has a very high degree of fit with financial market applications. Blockchain can spontaneously generate credit in a decentralized system, and can establish a financial market without credit endorsement by central institutions, thus realizing "financial disintermediation" to a large extent; at the same time, by using the automated smart contracts and programmable features of blockchain, it can greatly reduce the cost and improve efficiency. Asset management: Blockchain can realize the right, authorization and real-time monitoring of tangible and intangible assets. Intangible asset management has been widely used in intellectual property protection, domain name management, points management and other fields; tangible asset management can be combined with Internet of Things technology to form "digital smart assets" and realize blockchain-based distributed authorization and control. Election voting: Blockchain can be used to realize low-cost and efficient applications such as political election and enterprise shareholder voting, and at the same time, based on voting, it can be widely used in the fields of betting, prediction market and social manufacturing. Existing Problems of Blockchain Technology

Security threats are the most important problems blockchain has faced so far. One of the main issues faced by blockchains based on PoW*** knowledge processes is the 51% attack problem, whereby nodes have the ability to successfully tamper with and forge blockchain data by holding more than 51% of the network-wide arithmetic power. Other issues include the potential threat of emerging computing technologies cracking asymmetric encryption mechanisms and privacy protection issues. Blockchain efficiency is also an important constraint to its adoption. Blockchain requires each node in the system to keep a backup copy of its data, which is extremely difficult with the growing amount of massive data storage. While lightweight nodes can partially solve this problem, industrial-grade solutions for larger scale applications remain to be developed. The Bitcoin blockchain is currently capable of processing only seven transactions per second, and the transaction confirmation time is typically 10 minutes, which greatly limits the application of the blockchain in high-frequency transaction scenarios in most financial systems. The PoW*** recognition process is highly dependent on the arithmetic power contributed by the nodes of the blockchain network, which is mainly used to solve SHA256 hashes and random number searches, and in addition to this, does not generate any practical social value, and thus is generally considered to be "wasted", along with a large amount of wasted power How to effectively pool distributed nodes? How to effectively pool the network arithmetic power of distributed nodes to solve practical problems is an important problem that blockchain technology needs to solve. Blockchain network as a decentralized distributed system, its nodes will inevitably compete and cooperate with each other in the interaction process, such as the block interception attack game in the Bitcoin mining pool. Blockchain *** knowledge process is essentially a crowdsourcing process, how to design incentive-compatible *** knowledge mechanism, so that the self-interested nodes in the decentralized system can spontaneously implement the validation and bookkeeping of block data, and increase the cost of irrational behaviors in the system in order to inhibit the security attacks and threats, is an important scientific problem to be solved by the blockchain. Smart Contracts and Blockchain Technology

A smart contract is a set of scenario-responsive procedural rules and logic, which is decentralized, trusted *** enjoyable procedural code deployed on the blockchain. Typically, a smart contract is signed by all parties and attached to blockchain data (e.g., a Bitcoin transaction) in the form of program code, which is propagated by a P2P network and verified by nodes before being credited to a specific block of the blockchain. A smart contract encapsulates a number of predefined states and transition rules, scenarios that trigger the execution of the contract (e.g., the arrival of a specific time or the occurrence of a specific event, etc.), and the response actions under a specific scenario. The blockchain monitors the status of the smart contract in real time, and activates and executes the contract by verifying external data sources and confirming that specific trigger conditions are met. Smart contracts are of great significance to blockchain technology. On the one hand, smart contract is the activator of blockchain, which gives flexible and programmable mechanisms and algorithms to the static underlying blockchain data, and lays the foundation for the construction of programmable financial and social systems in the blockchain 2.0 and 3.0 eras; on the other hand, the automation and programmable characteristics of smart contract make it possible to encapsulate the complex behaviors of nodes in the distributed blockchain system, and become a software agent robot in the virtual world constituted by blockchain. This helps to promote the application of blockchain technology in all kinds of distributed artificial intelligence systems, which makes it possible to build all kinds of decentralized application (Dapp), decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), decentralized AI system and social system based on blockchain technology. Organization (DAO), Decentralized Autonomous Corporation (DAC) and even Decentralized Autonomous Society (DAS) based on blockchain technology. The main development trend of blockchain and smart contract technology is to evolve from automation to intelligence. Most of the existing smart contracts and their applications are still based on predefined scenarios of "IF-THEN" type of conditional response rules, which can satisfy the current demand for automated transactions and data processing. Future smart contracts should have the function of "WHAT-IF" deduction, computational experimentation and a certain degree of autonomous decision-making according to unknown scenarios, so as to realize the leap from the current "automated" contracts to the real "smart" contracts. This will realize the leap from the current "automated" contract to the real "intelligent" contract. Blockchain-driven parallel society

In recent years, a parallel society based on CPSS (Cyber-Physical-SocialSystems) has emerged, whose core and essential features are virtual-real interaction and parallel evolution. Blockchain is one of the infrastructures for realizing CPSS parallel society, and its main contribution is to provide a set of proven decentralized data structure, interaction mechanism and computation mode for distributed social system and distributed artificial intelligence research, and to lay a solid data foundation and credit foundation for realizing parallel society. As far as the data foundation is concerned, management scientist Edward Deming once said that everyone must speak in terms of data except God. However, in a centralized social system, data is usually in the hands of a "few", such as governments and large enterprises, and speaking for a few, its impartiality, authority and even security may not be guaranteed. Blockchain data, on the other hand, is stored in the hands of "everyone" through highly redundant distributed nodes, enabling true "data democracy". In terms of credit foundation, a centralized social system will inevitably have the characteristics of a "Merton system", i.e. uncertainty, diversity and complexity, due to its high engineering complexity and social complexity, and the central institutions and rule makers in the social system may breach trust due to their individual interests. Software-defined social system, the basic idea of which is to eliminate centralized institutions, deploy and solidify unpredictable behaviors in blockchain data in advance in the form of procedural code of smart contracts, which cannot be forged or tampered with afterwards and can be automatically executed, thus to a certain extent, it is possible to transform the Merton social system into a comprehensively observable, actively controlled, and accurately predictable social system, which can be actively controlled, and accurately predicted. This will, to a certain extent, transform the "Mertonian" social system into a "Newtonian" social system that can be comprehensively observed, actively controlled, and accurately predicted. ACP (Artificial Societies, Computational Experiments and Parallel Execution) is the only systematized and complete research framework in the field of parallel society management so far, and it is the logical extension and innovation of complexity science in the environment of parallel society in the new era. It is the logical extension and innovation of complexity science in the new era of parallel society environment. The ACP method can be naturally combined with blockchain technology to realize blockchain-driven parallel society management. First of all, the blockchain's mechanisms of P2P networking, distributed *** knowledge collaboration, and contribution-based economic incentives are themselves natural modeling of a distributed social system, in which each node will act as an autonomous and self-governing intelligent body (agent) in the distributed system. With the improvement of the blockchain ecosystem, each *** knowledge node of the blockchain and the increasingly complex and autonomous smart contracts will form DACs and DAOs of specific organizational forms by participating in various forms of Dapps, and ultimately form DAS, i.e., artificial societies in ACP. Secondly, the programmable nature of smart contracts allows the blockchain to perform various " WHAT-IF" types of virtual experiment design, scenario projection and result evaluation, through which optimal decisions are obtained and executed automatically or semi-automatically through this computational experimentation process. Finally, the smart assets formed by the combination of blockchain and IoT make it possible to connect the real physical world and virtual cyberspace, and realize the synergistic optimization of social management and decision-making through the virtual-real interaction and parallel tuning of real and artificial social systems. It is not difficult to foresee that in the future, when the real assets in the real physical world are registered as smart assets on the chain, it is the time when the blockchain-driven parallel society arrives.