For 10 years, BlockChain technology has been competing on the same track, from being questioned to becoming the core of national strategy. 10 years is short-lived for an industry, but its impact on the real world is no less than that of any industry, because the creditless society it realizes is our expectation for all kinds of freedom, and future commercial applications based on blockchain technology Will fill us with imagination.
1. Evolution in the era of blockchain
In 2008, a person named "Satoshi Nakamoto" released a white paper on Bitcoin. The white paper was mined in March 2009, marking the arrival of the era of cryptocurrency and leading to a block called block Chain industry.
Bitcoin has been running for 10 years, and its network has become the world's largest distributed network, and the security of the network exceeds that of the banking system. Bitcoin circulates around the world with low and high transaction fees. At the same time, Bitcoin resists censorship, which is the first time that "private property is sacred and inviolable."
It is generally believed that Bitcoin has brought us the era of blockchain 1.0. From Bitcoin, we have seen the state where the world’s centralization ultimately needs to go, that is, the era of monetary freedom, because money exists to increase the speed of goods flow. Currency plays an important role in the economic system. We recognize from a higher level that currency freedom corresponds to economic freedom.
We define Bitcoin as the era of blockchain 1.0, so there is no doubt that Ethereum is the benchmark in the era of blockchain 2.0. In the Ethereum blockchain system, the concept of smart contracts was introduced for the first time and has been widely used, such as 1 CO.
Although the financing of Ether Square 1 CO has gone through a period of barbaric growth, most of the remaining projects are fraudulent projects, but overall, it has had a significant impact on the world. Ethereum allows us to see that individuals and businesses have assets that can be fully authenticated, and then freely pass through the blockchain system. We call Ethereum an era of fairness and freedom.
If the era of economic freedom and fairness and freedom makes us feel far away, then the free interaction of data and information is bound to be closely related to us. We can define the era of information freedom as the real blockchain 3.0 era, and the corresponding market is through IPFS+Filecoin Achieved.
2. Features of the Freedom of Information Era
Whether information can communicate freely can only be optimized from two data ports, one is the storage port and the other is the distribution port. If these two ports are controlled by a centralized server, then there is no free exchange of information. For example, our current network is based on HTTP protocol for storage and distribution, which can easily lead to centralized organization control. Once the website is attacked, data is easily lost. Our common 404 screen is.
Therefore, in order to exchange information freely, first of all, storage and distribution systems need to be distributed, and nodes in the network need to be peer nodes. No node has absolute control and is not threatened by any form of power. In order to realize a peer-to-peer network, each peer node is not restricted by the external environment. More directly, storage nodes and distribution nodes should resist censorship. Only when the node has resistance to censorship, it will not be leaked, and storage and distribution will be executed in strict accordance with the established rules of the system.
In addition, the storage and distribution system also has higher security. We know that the world's largest social platform Facebook leaked the information of about 50 million Facebook users, which even directly affected the 2016 US presidential election. Some hotels, e-commerce platforms and some application disclosures are vulnerable to adverse effects. Therefore, data security is the foundation of storage and distribution systems, which must be considered.
Of course, after the system meets the above characteristics, if it can transmit data faster than traditional Internet transmission systems without affecting the user’s information exchange experience, the system will be more robust, more in line with the needs of the public, and greater Prospects.
3. IPFS/Filecoin becomes the prototype of the era of information freedom
In fact, the IPFS project established in May 2014 basically laid the foundation for the era of freedom of information, and its system almost conforms to all the characteristics of the era of freedom of information.
IPFS (Inter Planetary File System) is a global peer-to-peer distributed file system. Its goal is to supplement (or even replace) the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) currently dominated by the Internet, connecting all computing devices to the same File system, in which all storage/output nodes are equal to ensure the decentralized nature of its network.
In addition, IPFS utilizes idle hard disk resources in the world, which means that anyone on the storage side can contribute to the network anonymously. At the same time, IPFS content-based address replaces domain name-based address, that is, what the user is looking for is not an address, but content stored somewhere. There is no need to verify the identity of the sender, only the hash of the content needs to be verified, and the recipient is distributed. It is still free. These all ensure the resistance of the IPFS system to review.
Of course, IPFS uses a distributed storage model, and the stored files will be cut into many copies. The distributed storage on different nodes can be restored as long as there are file fragments of the node. Therefore, in general, IPFS is safe. Content-based addressing can also make web pages faster, more robust, and more durable.
IPFS (Interplanetary File System) data distributed storage realizes no difference in nodes, decentralization, ensuring network dispersion; node anonymity, ensuring its peer-to-peer network resistance to censorship; based on content addressing, making web pages safer and faster , More robust and more durable. Isn't this the freedom of information we want to achieve?
4. IPFS/Filecoin empowers the era of information freedom
In fact, since 2015, IPFS has been online and decentralized, which means that the system does not have enough incentives because there is no incentive policy given by the central organization. Although the IPFS theory is perfect, it has not brought extensive development. Just like the current BT, electric donkey milk, and free data retrieval, these P2P are public resources of the entire society, but these P2Ps are not always popular , Because of the freedom of data, the uploading party has no enthusiasm, and non-hot resources can easily dry up and die.
Data storage and transmission have obvious costs, and the supply is always limited by hard drives and broadband. Once it approaches a certain threshold, it cannot be provided without matching rights management. Based on this, Juan Bennet, the founder of IPFS, led the development of the Filecoin blockchain project. As the incentive layer of IPFS, the blockchain authorization design is adopted. Therefore, storage and retrieval need to be paid, and the network provider is directly rewarded. If a virtuous circle is formed (many users, high performance, high enthusiasm for providing resources), the overall ecology of IPFS will rise rapidly.
Some people may think that the storage fee is understandable, and the retrieval fee is also problematic. In fact, the public has to pay for any website, but the cost is borne by the construction of the website, which is hidden from us. We know that to build a website, the builder has to bear a lot of costs, such as server costs, website design costs, maintenance costs, etc., all of which need to be borne by the audience, but on the other hand, it is necessary to transfer costs, such as product sales.
This logic of hiding retrieval costs is also applicable to IPFS networks. The end user is meaningless, but the B-end enterprise can peel off the data layer, use the underlying resources of IPFS, and focus on the presentation layer to improve the conversion of users to products. According to relevant data, the use of IPFS/Filecoin network resources can reduce the purchase cost to 1/3. Once the Filecoin incentive layer can promote the full utilization of the IPFS network, data storage parties have no reason to reject such a low-cost, highly experienced IPFS file system.
On December 11, 2019, the blockchain project Filecoin opened. The second phase of the Filecoin test network will be launched on May 15, 2020, and the main network will be launched from July 20 to August 21. As an incentive layer, Filecoin can enable IPF to bring changes in the storage market and realize an era of free and interactive information? let us wait and see!