Witness the year of history, the 2020 of blockchain and digital currency
2020 is a difficult year full of opportunities. The same is true for blockchain and digital currency.
At the end of 2019, we set "brewing" and "hope" as keywords for 2019 and 2020. Now, standing at the end of 2020, looking back at all that this emerging industry has experienced in the past year, you will find that although it has encountered too much "unwillingness", the industry is being driven by the general environment, either actively or passively. . The seeds of hope have germinated and grown vigorously.
After sorting out various hot events in 2020, 01 Blockchain·Zero One Think Tank believes that the development of the blockchain and digital currency industry in 2020 can be summarized by the following 10 key words.
From the "312 plunge" to the "new high of $28,000", the price of Bitcoin is like a "roller coaster."
With the raging spread of the global new crown pneumonia epidemic and the impact of the oil price war, on March 12, U.S. stocks triggered the third circuit breaker, the global financial market plummeted, and Bitcoin was not spared, the price fell below 3,800 US dollars; after the plunge, The price of Bitcoin began to rise slowly. On May 12, Bitcoin completed the third halving in history. Blockchain rewards were reduced from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC. The impact of Bitcoin halving on price trends is mainly long-term , Will help the currency price rise.
In the second half of the year, in response to the negative impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, countries have begun to implement loose monetary policies. Bitcoin and other mainstream cryptocurrencies have become investment institutions to hedge against inflation. In addition to grayscale funds, PayPal, Square, MicroStrategy and Morgan Traditional financial institutions such as Chase also entered the market with a high profile, and the price of Bitcoin began to soar. At the end of the year, the price of Bitcoin repeatedly hit new highs. After breaking through $20,000 on December 16th, it exceeded $28,000 on the 27th.
The global central bank digital currency "race" has accelerated, and China's digital renminbi has entered a new stage of pilot testing and scenario selection.
The occurrence of the global new crown pneumonia epidemic has accelerated the decline in the global cash utilization rate, and also promoted the change in the attitudes of central banks to central bank digital currency research and development. According to a report jointly issued by the Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and other seven major banks, in a survey involving 80% of the world’s central banks, half of the central banks have progressed from the concept of central bank digital currency research to trials and pilot operations. .
China's digital renminbi has entered a new stage of pilot testing and scenario selection. In early April, the Central Bank's Digital Currency Research Institute pointed out that the digital renminbi will first conduct internal closed pilot tests in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiongan New Area, Chengdu and future Winter Olympics scenarios. In October and December, digital renminbi implemented pilot tests in Shenzhen and Suzhou successively, with continuous breakthroughs in test scale, test scenarios and participating institutions. At the same time, the digital renminbi research and development work is highly valued by the national government. On November 1, Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, published an important article in the "Seeking Truth" magazine, pointing out the need to actively participate in the formulation of international rules for digital currencies. On November 3, the full text of the "14th Five-Year Plan" was disclosed, which pointed out that the research and development of digital currency should be promoted steadily.
Liquid mining has set off an upsurge, and DeFi has led to explosive growth.
At the beginning of 2019, DeFi has finally ushered in an explosion in 2020. It seems that it is not excessive to call 2020 in the cryptocurrency circle the "DeFi year". At the beginning of 2020, only about 700 million US dollars of assets were locked in various DeFi contracts, and by the beginning of December this figure had exceeded 15 billion US dollars. From the beginning of liquidity mining, which set off the DeFi boom, to the subsequent emergence of DEX (decentralized exchange), insurance and algorithmic stablecoins, the popularity of DeFi has subsided due to external factors such as the skyrocketing Bitcoin, but this market Still growing.
Although in this process, the DeFi ecosystem has continuously undergone various tests such as excessive gas fees, code vulnerabilities, and hacking, DeFi has also become more diverse and stable in crises. It can be expected that as more and more institutions pay attention to technology-driven emerging financial models such as DeFi, their open, credible and fair business philosophy and service awareness to protect user data will also affect and change the traditional financial market. .
Ethereum entered the 2.0 stage, and the ETH2.0 beacon chain was officially launched.
After many delays, Ethereum 2.0 finally launched the genesis block at 20:00 on December 1, 2020, and the ETH 2.0 beacon chain was officially launched.
Ethereum 2.0 is an important stage in the development of Ethereum. Compared with the Ethereum network before the upgrade, ETH2.0 has three key changes. One is to fundamentally change the underlying consensus mechanism of the blockchain, and complete the transition from PoW to The transformation of PoS; the second is the introduction of a fragmentation mechanism to gradually realize the comprehensive migration from the data layer to the application layer and the value layer; the third is that the execution environment will be replaced by eWASM instead of the original EVM.
The related changes of Ethereum 2.0 will better solve the problems of scalability and transaction efficiency that have been criticized by the Ethereum network before. It is beneficial to the development of Ethereum and will also cause a certain squeeze on the living space of other public chains. In addition, the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade will also have different impacts on all participants in its ecology, including ordinary users, miners, exchanges, and regulators. For ordinary users, since the existing Ethereum network will continue to operate in the short term, it may not have a direct impact on it. As for the project party and other Ethereum ecosystem participants, under the premise that Eth2 has not been fully verified, the relevant impact is also uncertain.
Libra changed its name to Diem, and plans to launch a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar in 2021.
On December 1, 2020, the Libra Association, the stablecoin project manager advocated by Facebook, announced that Libra has officially changed its name to Diem and is preparing to launch a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar in 2021.
Since the launch of the first version of the white paper in June 2019, the project has been "cared for" by supervision. According to the vision of Libra 1.0, Libra, as a stable currency anchoring a basket of currencies, has the properties of a super-sovereign currency and will be used on a global scale. The goal is to become a financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people. However, in the past year or so, due to regulatory pressures, the project manager has also made two key changes to the design of Libra (now Diem).
Among them, in the second edition of the Libra white paper released on April 16, 2020, it is proposed to increase single currency stable coins such as LibraUSD, LibraEUR, LibraGBP and LibraSGD, but still retain a basket of currency stable coins Libra Coin; December 1 , Libra officially changed its name to Diem. According to the introduction of Diem Association CEO Stuart Levey, the announcement was made as part of the adjustment of the project to emphasize its simpler structure. The project’s current goal is to launch only anchored The digital currency of the US dollar.
From a super-sovereign currency that anchors multinational fiat currencies to a single token that only anchors the U.S. dollar today, the Diem Association’s step-by-step "recession" also reflects the high vigilance of sovereign countries against the development of illegal digital currencies, which also means that the future will welcome To a more stringent regulatory environment.
The national infrastructure of the block chain is advancing steadily, and the ecology of BSN and Spark Chain Network is gradually improving.
On April 25, 2020, the Blockchain Service Network (BSN) co-sponsored by the National Information Center, China Mobile, China UnionPay, Red Date Technology, etc., started official commercial use and launched the international version of the overseas public test. The network is based on the consortium chain technology. A global public infrastructure network for the deployment and operation of blockchain applications. As of December, there have been 106 public city nodes, covering 87 cities at home and abroad.
On August 30, 2020, the Spark Blockchain Network (Xinghuo·Chain Network), led by China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and jointly initiated by Beihang University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and China Unicom, was officially launched into the construction period. The network was constructed using a licensed public chain. Through the built-in identification management capabilities of the blockchain identification infrastructure, it provides identification basic services to the entire connected blockchain network and provides cross-chain interoperability.
Both BSN and Xinghuo Chain Network are blockchain infrastructures led by state agencies. They are an open platform for the development of blockchain applications. They will be able to effectively promote the interoperability of existing blockchains, expand the scale of applications, and create new ones. Application scenarios.
The main network of Polkadot was launched, and the expandable technology of blockchain developed in depth.
In 2020, blockchain expandability technologies such as "cross-chain", "side chain", and "multi-party secure computing" have received extensive attention from the industry. Whether it is a public chain or a consortium chain, scalability and interoperability have been greatly improved.
In 2020, the Polkadot mainnet will be launched, and its relay chain architecture, nPoS consensus mechanism, automatic upgrade of on-chain governance and other technical features will satisfy the rigid needs of information, asset cross-chain and interoperability among future blockchains . With the support of various blockchain expandable technologies, the era of "Internet of Value" or "Web3.0" may come ahead of schedule.
Blockchain is included in the category of new infrastructure, and the United States has included distributed ledgers in the list of key technologies.
In 2020, the application of blockchain will accelerate its implementation, and it has demonstrated its actual value in many specific areas such as anti-epidemic, government affairs, and people's livelihood, and it has gradually received national attention.
On April 20, the National Development and Reform Commission clarified the scope of the new infrastructure, and "blockchain" was officially included in the information infrastructure of the new infrastructure, marking that the development of the domestic blockchain industry will usher in a new round of changes; October , The National Security Council of the United States issued the "National Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology" report, which listed the "distributed ledger technology" that gave birth to blockchain and cryptocurrency as the key and emerging One of the technologies, measures will be taken to ensure technological superiority. At the same time, the formulation of domestic and international blockchain standards has also made great progress in 2020. ITU, ISO, and IEEE will officially release 22 relevant standards in 2020, and my country has also launched a total of 18 group standards, local standards, and industry standards. Various signs indicate that countries and international organizations attach great importance to the development of blockchain, and national competition on the blockchain track will become more intense.
The Filecoin mainnet was launched, and distributed storage became the focus of the market.
As the incentive layer of distributed storage IPFS, Filecoin aims to solve the problems of IPFS by introducing blockchain and token economic model design. Once launched, it has attracted global attention. In 2017, Filecoin received US$257 million in financing with a 10% token share, setting the largest token financing record at the time. However, the actual progress of Filecoin is not smooth. The testnet and mainnet that were originally planned to be launched in 2018 have been delayed and will not be officially launched until October 2020.
Although it has been delayed for two years, and the complicated mining model and centralized decision-making method have also received a lot of criticism, the launch of Filecoin has attracted widespread attention in the industry and abroad. This is because due to the storage redundancy, the blockchain is not suitable for storing large amounts of data, but if IPFS and Filecoin can provide the blockchain with a long-term storage, low cost, good security, and strong privacy protection storage method, It is expected to become an important infrastructure in the future blockchain world.
The supervision of the cryptocurrency field has been further strengthened, and the freezing card tide is coming.
In 2020, the supervision of Chinese regulators in the field of cryptocurrency will further increase.
Beginning in June 2020, the bank cards of some domestic cryptocurrency investors and OTC merchants have been frozen, which is said to be highly related to the police's increased efforts to combat telecommunications fraud, fund/killing and anti-money laundering. In addition, since October, relevant persons in charge of the currency exchange, such as Xu Mingxing, Li Lin, and Zhao Dong, have been taken away by the police for investigation.
In November, the Judgment Document Network disclosed that the second instance of PlusToken, the largest case in the currency circle, was sentenced. All suspects in the case were arrested, and the seized cryptocurrency worth more than 10 billion yuan was confiscated and turned over to the state treasury.