Today, I saw a blog about a summary of common problems in blockchain, and I thought it was not bad, so I reprinted it.
1. Q: What is blockchain?
A: Blockchain refers to a technical solution that collectively maintains a reliable database in a decentralized and trustless manner.
2. Q: Can you explain what blockchain is in a simple way?
A: In layman's terms, blockchain technology refers to a way for the whole people to participate in bookkeeping. All systems have a database behind it, and you can think of the database as a big ledger. Then who will keep the ledger becomes very important. At present, whose system is responsible for keeping accounts, the account book of WeChat is kept by Tencent, and the account book of Taobao is kept by Ali. But now in the blockchain system, everyone in the system can have the opportunity to participate in bookkeeping. If there is any data change within a certain period of time, everyone in the system can do bookkeeping. The system will judge the fastest and best bookkeeper during this period of time, write the contents of his records to the ledger, and record the records. The contents of the ledger are sent to all others in the system for backup within a period of time. In this way, everyone in the system has a complete ledger. In this way, we call it blockchain technology.
3. Q: What are the benefits of such a blockchain for national bookkeeping?
Answer: It can be found that this is a great security at the expense of a little efficiency. First of all, there is no central ledger, so it cannot be destroyed. Each node is only a part of the system, and each node has equal rights and has the same ledger. Destroying some nodes has no effect on the system at all. Secondly, there is no way to cheat, because unless you can control the computers of most people in the system to make changes, the system will refer to the opinions of the majority to determine what is the real result, and it will find that it is completely meaningless to modify your own ledger (because others deny). Secondly, since there is no centralized intermediary, letting everything run automatically through pre-set procedures can not only greatly reduce costs, but also improve efficiency. And because everyone has the same ledger, it can ensure that the ledger recording process is open and transparent.
4. Q: Does the blockchain solve any problems?
A: The most important thing for blockchain is to solve the problem of intermediary credit. In the past, it was difficult for two people who did not know and trust each other to cooperate and had to rely on a third party. For example, for payment behavior, in the past, any kind of transfer must have an institution such as a bank or Alipay. However, through blockchain technology, Bitcoin is the first time that humans can complete the transfer behavior that can be trusted by both parties without the participation of any intermediaries. This is a major breakthrough for blockchain.
5. Q: Is the blockchain Bitcoin? Or is Bitcoin the blockchain?
A: Blockchain technology is the underlying technology of Bitcoin, and not many people paid attention to the underlying technology of Bitcoin in the early days. But when Bitcoin is operated and managed by any centralized organization, it has been running very stably for many years without any problems. Therefore, many people have noticed that the underlying technology may have a great mechanism, and it may not only be used in Bitcoin, but may be able to apply this technology in many fields. Therefore, the Bitcoin technology is abstracted and called blockchain technology, or distributed ledger technology. So from a certain point of view, Bitcoin can be regarded as the first application of the blockchain, and the blockchain is more similar to the underlying technology such as TCP/IP, and will expand to more and more industries in the future.
6. Q: In which industries can blockchain technology be used?
A: The main advantages of blockchain are that it does not require intermediary participation, the process is efficient and transparent, the cost is very low, and the data is highly secure. So if there is any demand in any of these three areas, there is an opportunity to use blockchain technology.
7. Q: Why use blockchain technology in the financial field? What are the substantial benefits?
A: The main advantages of blockchain technology in the financial sector are to disintermediate and greatly reduce costs.
First of all, due to the prevention of single point of failure and systemic risks, the financial industry currently needs to conduct layer-by-layer audits to control financial risks, but this also causes high internal costs. And due to the ever-increasing regulatory regulations, especially the financial crisis in 2008, the threshold for financial management and control has continued to rise, and the scope of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing caused by the war on terrorism has gradually expanded the scope and depth of supervision, resulting in the entire financial industry. The regulatory costs of the system have increased dramatically. In this case, blockchain technology can greatly reduce the cost of a financial system in a tamper-proof and highly transparent way. According to a report released by Santander, Spain’s largest bank, around 2020, if banks around the world use blockchain technology internally, it will save about $20 billion in annual costs. Such data is enough to illustrate the great changes and breakthroughs that "blockchain" has brought to the traditional financial field.
In addition, due to historical reasons, traditional financial institutions rely on central clearing houses for settlement and settlement, and the resulting problem is low efficiency. Traditional cross-border settlement is because it has to go through institutions like SWIFT, so cross-border wire transfers are often calculated on a daily basis. However, when Bitcoin uses blockchain technology, it has been running perfectly for seven years without a centralized operating agency. Not only can it achieve real-time settlement and settlement, but there has been no accounting error. Therefore, if all financial systems can achieve decentralized real-time settlement and clearing, it will not only greatly improve global financial efficiency, but also change the global financial landscape.
8. Q: What does Bitcoin mean by "mining"?
Answer: The "mining" in Bitcoin is actually the process of bookkeeping. The calculation of Bitcoin adopts a mechanism called "Proof of Work (PoW)". In order to find out who has more With powerful computing power, a math problem will be asked each time, and only the computer that solves the problem the fastest can perform accounting. And the computer that grabs the bookkeeping right will be rewarded with 25 bitcoins. This behavior is usually called "mining", and the bitcoins obtained are regarded as a reward for successful mining.
9. Q: Do all blockchains require mining?
A: Not all blockchain projects will adopt a "proof-of-work" method similar to Bitcoin, which is more seen in early blockchain projects. If other proof mechanisms are adopted, such as "Proof of Stake (PoS)" and "Delegate Proof of Stake (DPoS)", such mining methods are not required.
10. Q: What is the relationship between blockchain and big data? Will Blockchain Replace Big Data?
A: The relationship between blockchain and big data is not very big. Big data is mainly for the management of massive data, and the core of blockchain is to achieve high security and high reliability of data without the inclusion of centralized intermediaries. Therefore, blockchain and big data do not conflict with each other, nor will they replace each other. They are completely different solutions for data in different scenarios.
11. Q: What is the relationship between blockchain and cloud computing cloud storage? Is blockchain cloud computing or cloud storage?
A: Cloud computing is usually defined as the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources over the Internet, but it is often a centralized organization that provides a cloud computing platform. The network composed of blockchain generally does not have a specific organization, so the blockchain is closer to the definition of a distributed computing system and belongs to a type of distributed computing. However, the blockchain can realize cloud storage. Unlike the current centralized cloud storage space, the blockchain has some decentralized cloud storage solutions. Such projects include Storj, Sia, Maidsafe.
12. Q: Is blockchain a software? What program was it written in?
A: Blockchain is not a specific software, just like the meaning of the word "database", it is a design idea of a specific technology. It can be implemented in most languages, and in many ways. Moreover, blockchain technology is still developing rapidly. Relatively speaking, the current blockchain technology design ideas are relatively simple, and may become more complex in the future.
13. Q: What is a public chain? What is a private chain? What is consortium chain?
A: The public chain is that any node is open to anyone, everyone can participate in the calculation in this blockchain, and anyone can download and obtain the complete blockchain data (all ledgers). However, in some blockchain application scenarios, it is not expected that anyone can participate in this system, and anyone can view all data, and only permissioned nodes can participate and view all data. Then this blockchain structure is called a private chain.
The alliance chain means that the permissions of participating in each node are completely equal, and everyone can realize the trusted exchange of data without complete mutual trust. The bank blockchain alliance formed by R3 is to build a typical alliance chain.
However, with the rapid development of blockchain technology, it cannot be ruled out that the boundaries between public chains and private chains will become blurred in the future. Because each node can have more complex read and write permissions, some nodes with some permissions may be developed for everyone, while some nodes with accounting or core permissions can only be opened to permissioned nodes, which will no longer be pure public or private chain.
14. Q: What are the main problems in the current development of blockchain technology?
A: At present, blockchain technology is still in a very early stage. Not only has a unified technical standard not yet been formed, but various technical solutions are still developing rapidly. However, in the past, it was considered that systems based on blockchain technology would be very resource-intensive (similar to Bitcoin), or that blockchain technology-based systems had limitations in processing data and other issues that have made technological breakthroughs. However, the scalability of blockchain technology has not been tested by large-scale practice, and it is still mainly in the prototyping stage.
If we cannot quantitatively analyze the practical benefits that the use of blockchain technology can bring us, including the money saved and the value created, the financial industry will remain relatively cautious in the short term. After all, the current global financial infrastructure investment has exceeded trillions, and the establishment of a new financial architecture and underlying operating system needs to be supported by actual data. It is difficult to determine the total amount of savings without the existing technology being deployed and use cases obtained. So far, there is still a huge question about how much capital is needed to build a blockchain strong enough to handle the trillions of dollars that the capital market ecosystem needs to face every day.
In addition, the blockchain industry is extremely lacking in talents, lacking a large number of talents who understand both blockchain technology and finance. The market is desperately looking for talents who can connect the two worlds. It needs to be able to integrate blockchain technology in the real world. It can be implemented in the capital market and achieve better functions. The need to establish a new system based on blockchain technology must require such cross-border talents.
15. Q: What is a smart contract?
A: A smart contract is a contract that uses computer language instead of legal language to record the terms. Smart contracts can be executed automatically by a computing system. If the blockchain is a database, smart contracts are the application layer that enables the application of blockchain technology to reality. Contracts in the traditional sense are generally not directly related to the computer code that enforces the content of the contract. Paper contracts are archived in most cases, while software enforces contract terms written in computer code. Potential benefits of smart contracts include reduced costs in contracting, execution, and regulation; therefore, for many contracts associated with low-value transactions, this is a significant reduction in labor costs.
16. Q: How to use smart contracts?
A: If the central bank can issue legal currency through the blockchain, it can also use smart contract technology to embed code into the behavior of legal currency issuance, and this part of legal currency can be called "programmable currency". For example, if the central bank designates a certain part of the funds to be distributed to agriculture-related accounts, then the corresponding program can be written into this part of the funds, and the designated part of the funds can only be entered into the agricultural-related accounts, then this part of the funds can be used under any circumstances. It is also unlikely to be diverted to other accounts. If most currencies become "programmable money", then we can imagine that the financial environment they make up becomes "programmable finance".
17. Q: What is the relationship between blockchain and ordinary people?
A: Basically it doesn't matter, unless you are going to start a business in this area. As far as the relationship between the TCP/IP protocol and ordinary people is concerned, ordinary people do not need to know what the TCP/IP protocol at the bottom of the Internet is, as long as they enjoy the services provided by the Internet.
18. Q: Does a blockchain project necessarily need a certain currency to appear?
Answer: No. Bitcoin itself is used as a payment system, so it needs to have a value measurement tool, so there must be bitcoin. In addition, in order to reward more people who are willing to contribute their own computers to provide computing for the system, bitcoin is needed for rewards. In some private chain systems, special assets can be designed for trading, and each node must participate in the calculation. This is their responsibility and their right, so there is no need to encourage them to participate by rewarding them. Such a system may no longer need to design the existence of a certain currency.
19. Q: Is Bitcoin legal now?
A: Bitcoin has always been completely legal in major world powers, including China. Due to the misleading of some bad media, many people think that China has declared Bitcoin illegal. In fact, according to the notice issued by the People's Bank of China and other five ministries and commissions on the prevention of Bitcoin risks on December 5, 2013, it is clearly stipulated that Bitcoin is a specific virtual commodity, and ordinary people have the right to participate at their own risk. free. Various financial institutions and payment institutions are not allowed to carry out bitcoin-related financial services, or use bitcoin as an investment target.
Bitcoin is used as a currency unit in Germany and defined as a commodity in the United States. The Court of Justice of the European Union considers bitcoin as a means of payment that is not subject to VAT.
20. Q: Can XX coins be invested? Is it a blockchain project? Is it propaganda?
A: At present, all digital currencies, including Bitcoin, have high risks. The blockchain technology itself is just in its infancy, and all blockchain projects also have very high risks. It is not recommended for any ordinary person to invest in any digital currency and blockchain related projects. And digital currency and blockchain have certain technical thresholds, and ordinary people cannot distinguish which are real projects and which are MLM projects. So ordinary people advise against investing in any such projects. For any item that you can't tell whether it is a MLM or not, please treat it directly as a MLM item.
21. Q: How to invest in blockchain?
A: Most blockchains are in their infancy, mainly overseas. There are very few good blockchain projects in China, so it is not recommended for any non-professionals to invest in blockchain projects. If you are very interested in blockchain technology and have a background in technology or finance, it is recommended to consider starting a business in this area.
22. Q: Who invented blockchain/Bitcoin? Is Satoshi Nakamoto Japanese? Is it a conspiracy of the US government?
A: Bitcoin was created by a person or team calling himself "Satoshi Nakamoto", and he had completely withdrawn from the Bitcoin project in the early days. It is highly unlikely that "Satoshi Nakamoto" is Japanese, as it can be speculated from his past emails that he should be a native English speaker.
In addition, the creator of Bitcoin has absolutely no influence on the current Bitcoin project, so it is unlikely to be the product of a conspiracy. Whether or not "Satoshi Nakamoto" will appear later, or physically eliminated, can't have much impact on Bitcoin.
23. Q: What is the difference between Bitcoin and Q coin?
A: Q Coin is a centralized electronic currency, including the total amount, and the issuance method is controlled by Tencent. The total amount and issuance method of Bitcoin are preset by programs and encryption algorithms, and run on multiple nodes around the world. No one or organization can modify it, and it is not controlled by any single person or organization. Q coins are generally referred to as electronic currency, or corporate tokens. Bitcoin is called digital currency or encrypted digital currency.
24. Q: Is there a cap on the total amount of Bitcoin? How is it allocated?
A: As mentioned above, miners have the opportunity to get rewards for participating in the competition for the accounting rights. At the beginning, the system will reward the fastest and best person with 50 bitcoins every 10 minutes, and then the 50 will be halved every four years. There will be no new bitcoins around 2140. The cap of 21 million will be reached. After that, miners will be rewarded with transaction fees.