Privacy computing has increasingly become the key development direction of the blockchain industry. As a well-known project focusing on privacy computing, PlatON is committed to becoming a new generation of privacy computing and distributed economic infrastructure in the world. Its investors include Wanxiang Blockchain, Liang Xinjun, co-founder of Fosun Group, Hashkey Capital, etc.
At the end of October this year, the PlatON project "business sandbox" Alaya was launched. The chain catcher found PlatON CTO Qu Junjie for a detailed dialogue, in-depth discussion of PlatON's development strategy and path, and the intention behind PlatON's many actions.
Author|Loners Liu
01
Privacy computing and its commercial implementation
Chain Catcher: Please briefly introduce what PlatON is doing.
Qu Junjie: Our goal has two directions. One is to build a distributed economy infrastructure based on the blockchain to provide a platform for upper-level economic activities; the other is privacy computing, allowing data to be critical in the real flow of data. Partly hidden. Based on these two, we hope to build a fully digital distributed financial infrastructure.
Chain Catcher: Privacy computing is also the main concept of PlatON. Can you explain what is private computing?
Qu Junjie: The concept of privacy computing was first proposed in 2016. It is a large category, and each team has different paths to achieve. PlatON is based on cryptography technology, combined with trusted hardware and other technologies to achieve privacy computing. From the bottom up, there are basic cryptographic algorithms, blockchain, privacy AI framework, and privacy data platform products.
In fact, cryptography technology and trusted hardware technology have their own advantages and disadvantages. From the algorithm level, cryptography has strong enough security and theoretical support, but the price is insufficient performance; and based on hardware, it needs to have strong trust in a certain entity, and the advantage is good performance. In commercial use, we often have to choose according to needs. PlatON's choice is to focus on cryptography first, and then gradually expand to privacy AI technology.
The reason is simple. We do not do technology purely for the sake of technology. Our ultimate goal is to deliver deployable and operable commercial products. Cryptography is only a technical realization.
In cryptography, we will combine technologies such as secure multi-party computing, zero-knowledge proof and homomorphic encryption to protect data privacy. This is where we are best. On this basis, we will subsequently integrate trusted hardware technology similar to TEE to meet customer requirements.
In a word, we take the final delivery as the ultimate goal, not pure technology.
Chain Catcher: Privacy computing is not popular nowadays, so what do you think is required for the outbreak of privacy computing?
Qu Junjie: Broadly speaking, privacy computing requires the combination of data, algorithms, commercial scenarios, and policies to form its explosive conditions.
At the data level, it is necessary to standardize the data of various industries, such as the blacklist in the financial transaction process, and the format and keywords in it must be consistent, so that the algorithm platform can operate effectively;
At the algorithm level, it needs to have sufficient response speed to have commercial use value;
At the level of commercial scenarios, it is difficult to have a large-scale outbreak of the whole industry, and it may first produce a relatively extensive application in a certain industry;
At the policy level, there are currently strict personal privacy protection regulations from Europe to China, the United States, and Japan. In the future, it may gradually develop that data from various countries and companies cannot be transferred outside a certain range.
Chain Catcher: From this point of view, data seems to be the first level of landing. We have previously learned that PlatON hopes to become a super clearing agency for data in all industries and provide a basis for data valuation and data service pricing. Can you talk about how to achieve this? Two points?
Qu Junjie: From a company perspective, PlatON has been committed to becoming a new generation of distributed financial infrastructure in the world, and the data valuation and data service pricing you mentioned are our landing projects in the financial industry. The premise of achieving these two points It is to ensure the right to use and ownership of data, which involves the company's other two businesses: privacy computing and AI.
The core value of these two technologies is to protect data, and only protected data can have usage rights and ownership. Under this premise, a market for data transactions can be produced, and data can be truly valued. Otherwise, it is market behavior to discuss how much data is worth.
Chain catcher: For blockchain infrastructure, especially for projects like yours that require a large amount of off-chain data to run, it is inevitable that they need to cooperate with centralized platforms, but they obtain huge benefits through user data, how to persuade them to give up this Part of the benefits join your ecology?
Qu Junjie: We are definitely not going to persuade big companies directly, because at present, big companies mainly analyze the data of platform users and then recommend advertisements through algorithms. This method can easily violate user privacy, but this is only for Capital pursuit of profit under the imperfect law.
We are currently developing the function of privacy computing first. When the data privacy protection law is in place in the future, it is very expensive for large companies to continue to directly use user data to make algorithm recommendations, and this risk can be avoided through cooperation with us.
In this way, the use of our privacy calculations can bring added value to these companies, which can protect their business interests without violating data privacy laws and regulations.
Chain catcher: At present, if the blockchain is to be integrated with the physical industry, many obstacles need to be overcome. In your opinion, what is the most important factor in the process of leading to this goal?
Qu Junjie: I think the focus of the combination of the blockchain and the physical industry is to ensure the authenticity of the data on the chain, and in the entire process of data transmission, the authentication of distributed digital identity is required , that is, every data comes from An approved digital device, if the digital device always produces false data, it is removed. Only by protecting the authenticity of data from the source can the blockchain be integrated with the real world.
02
Future plans and thinking
Chain catcher: Some time ago, PlatON’s testnet Alaya announced its official launch. We also learned that the network will continue to run. Can you tell me what your intention is for this design?
Qu Junjie: Using the Chinese economy as a metaphor, China’s economic development first started by building a Shekou Special Economic Zone, and it has always existed since then. Any good policies can be tested on this experimental field, and you can think of Alaya as ours An experimental field.
Chain Catcher: Since it is a test field, what kind of identity will Alaya exist after the PlatON mainnet goes live?
Qu Junjie: Alaya can be understood as a sandbox, a pilot demonstration area, so its development will be faster than PlatON, experimental and pioneering, and various new features such as privacy contracts will be created on the Alaya network first Experiment and put it on the PlatON main network to run.
We also hope to position Alaya as a testing ground and "pioneer demonstration zone" for innovative technologies and distributed finance, and PlatON will be more cautious and constructive in positioning itself as a true "distributed financial infrastructure". Focus more on serving global financial institutions and inclusive finance, and finally build a multi-level distributed economy ecosystem.
However, in essence, the two use the same underlying architecture, which is why Alaya's feedback is particularly good after it goes online. The reason for this design is also because the team hopes to use the effective operation of the Alaya network to make the future main network more solid. Some are also responsible for the users behind.
Chaincatcher: Although it is the same underlying architecture, will the gathering of developers on the Alaya network have a certain impact on PlatON's ecological construction?
Qu Junjie: Both are part of our ecology. There is no such thing as the prosperity of one that will impact the other.
Chain Catcher: I learned that NFT is your main focus. Are there any preparations for infrastructure?
Qu Junjie: The basic functions are fully equipped, which corresponds to the ERC-721 protocol on Ethereum, and there is no problem from the contract to the test. We not only provide support for various tools, but also have a faster processing speed. In a poor hardware environment, the TPS will reach around 3000.
In the future, we also want to use privacy calculations to confirm the right to use the NFT. For example, users can only buy a password artwork for a period of time. Once the time has passed, you will lose ownership and only see a partial or a rough concept map. Conducive to the cooperation of digital art with art museums. This idea currently requires a lot of front-end iterations and new protocols need to be defined.
Chain catcher: In fact, there is still a more critical issue in the NFT field. From the perspective of open source properties, NFT works on chain A can easily be copied to chain B, and their uniqueness will be affected. How to understand?
Qu Junjie: Regarding this issue, what we can do is to ensure that the private key is only valid on this chain, because the wallet address can be the same on different public chains. At the same time, this requires an algorithm library for privacy calculations to be added to the node. , So that the decryption action can only be solved in our node.
Chain Catcher: In your opinion, what is the next trend of the industry?
Qu Junjie: It should be a period of vigorous development next, but three conditions may still be required. First, based on the enhancement of off-chain capabilities, various calculations can be placed off-chain, the final liquidation is done on-chain, and a set of governance models and economic models are built. If all kinds of data are put on the chain, it will be very large, and the requirements for computing nodes will become higher and higher, which is not conducive to the development of the ecology on the chain.
The second is that the regulator should formulate some laws and regulations suitable for the development of the digital economy such as blockchain based on the future.
The third is that large companies, as the original vested interests, may lose their monopoly status once major changes occur, and there will be those who actively embrace change. In turn, SMEs can subvert them from another angle.
Chain Catcher: Finally, what is the question you think about most recently?
Qu Junjie: Alaya has just launched recently. What I think a lot is that at present we have to prove that this network has sufficient basic capabilities to support the various ecology on the current public chain, and it must also meet compliance requirements.
The contradiction is that the public chain is decentralized, and it cannot be said that only with permission can users build applications on it, which will become centralized instead. But if it is completely let go, it is equivalent to putting weapons here, and it is easy to breed inferior items to deceive consumers.
Therefore, how to guide the ecology in a better direction is a thorny issue. I hope that the community can give more feedback to help us think about this problem clearly, and promote the implementation of the public chain ecology and improve productivity.
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