According to the news on January 1, the "Shanghai Municipal Data Regulations" will
come into force today. The "Regulations" point out that it will develop blockchain and other
industries, support Pudong New Area to strengthen the construction of digital trust system related to data transactions
, innovate and integrate
technologies such as big data, blockchain, and zero trust, and
jointly promote blockchain technology with other provinces in the Yangtze River Delta region. The use of data security
circulation technologies such as blockchain and privacy computing.
Trust is the foundation of social order, and without trust, no social relationship can last. Trust enhances the centripetal force of social members, reduces the cost of social operation and improves efficiency, and is also a basic factor for stabilizing social relations. Sociologist Niklas Luhmann divided trust into interpersonal trust and institutional trust.
1. From interpersonal trust to institutional trust
Interpersonal trust, a concept first proposed by Rotter JB in sociological theory, refers to a generalization of the reliability of words, commitments, and written or oral statements established by individuals in the process of interpersonal interaction. expect. Interpersonal trust is the foundation of all trust, and it is subjective and personified trust. The characteristics of interpersonal trust are specific and experiential, lacking in universality, and the sense of trust and the degree of trust vary with objects. At the same time, the scope of interpersonal trust is extremely limited, and it takes a lot of time to cultivate, but the content and flexibility of interpersonal trust are indeed the highest.
Institutional trust is the trust bound by contracts, laws and regulations. Institutional trust is not based on relationships and favors, but is guaranteed by formal rules, systems, and laws. If the parties fail to act in accordance with rules, systems, and legal provisions, they will be punished. Institutional trust is a social choice independent of human will. The stable behavior expectations formed by the legal logic of punishment for violations are the basis for people to generate institutional trust. Institutional trust dominance is the basic criterion for the operation of modern society.
Compared with interpersonal trust, institutional trust is an intermediary, which transforms the trust between people into the trust relationship between people and institutions. Therefore, institutional trust is an objective, universal, abstract, definite, and public trust mechanism, a credit system guaranteed by positive law norms and judicial systems.
Simply put, institutional trust does not rely on the trust of specific individuals. Under the framework of institutional trust, both parties do not need to have "interpersonal trust" in the true sense, but can rely on common institutional trust to ensure that mutual behavior is completed as expected. Historically, the emergence of institutional trust has greatly expanded the scope of trust in human society. Strangers only need to trust a common "system" to complete credit activities. However, institutional trust requires the process of establishing social contracts and legislation, and its scope is within the group constrained and established by the system, and the content of trust includes the content expressly formulated by the system.
2. From institutional trust to machine trust
The trust of the public chain is a new form of human trust and collaboration, and it has the widest range of trust. As Kevin Werbach, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, stated in his monograph on blockchain trust, "Providing the most general trust (credit) service for all users is the core value of the public chain, which makes it possible for humans to reach a global scale for the first time. Internal spontaneity trust.” The foundation of blockchain trust lies in the independent bookkeeping and verification process of all parties in a decentralized network with equal rights. Each participant independently records and verifies each transaction and contract on the public ledger of the public chain with no threshold, free access, multi-party holding, and multi-party maintenance.
Under the action of the consensus mechanism, every network participant may become an accountant (bookkeeper), and under the mechanism of transaction confirmation and verification, every network (full node) is an auditor. Therefore, the public blockchain is a global accounting and global auditing network. The consensus mechanism ensures the randomness, decentralization, and unforgeability of bookkeeping, and the transaction confirmation verification ensures the legitimacy of bookkeeping. The internal economic and game theory principles make bookkeepers not destroy the entire system based on the principle of economic rationality. Therefore, blockchain trust is also a kind of trust intermediary, which transforms the trust between people into the trust between people and machines. Blockchain has been given the title of "trust machine".
For the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto established a set of consensus mechanism. In his (their) view, the intermediary role of the bank is redundant, and its status can be replaced by code, so that the system can pass the consensus algorithm on the transactions that occur. A consensus is reached and recorded on the block. On this basis, blockchain forms such as public chains, private chains, and alliance chains are derived.
For a user of the public blockchain, he does not need to trust any members who specifically participate in the network ecology to complete trust in bookkeeping and contract calculations. The scope of trust in the public chain is global, and people who have never met in any country or region can complete credible transactions without relying on institutional trust. Moreover, as long as the public blockchain system is running healthily, illegal and invalid transactions cannot pass the consensus confirmation process of global bookkeeping and global auditing, so there is no breach of contract or dishonesty. But at present, the use scenarios of blockchain trust are still relatively limited, and can only be used in the fields of pure bookkeeping and closed contracts, with low flexibility.
In general, public chain trust creatively expands the scope of trust, reduces the cost of trust, further promotes the process of objectifying human trust, and opens up new possibilities for global integration and collaboration on a larger scale. In future development, blockchain trust may complement institutional trust to build a more general and efficient global trust system.
However, it must be clarified that the global technology trust network created by the public chain is still built on a complex technology stack. As Bruce Schneier, an information security guru at the Kennedy School of Harvard University, pointed out, "The role of the blockchain is to transfer people's trust in others or institutions to technology, which requires trust in cryptography, a series of protocols, software, computers and networks."
Any failure or error in any of the above technologies will lead to fatal problems in the trust network. At the same time, blockchain trust is not omnipotent. The trust environment it creates cannot be simply extrapolated outside the blockchain. It is assisted by a trusted center mechanism outside the blockchain.
3. View the essence of trust from the perspective of blockchain technology
From a technical point of view, blockchain involves many technical issues such as mathematics, cryptography, Internet and computer programming. From the perspective of application, it is possible to transcend specific technical issues, use the "first principles" thinking method, and use basic principles to think about complex phenomena.
To put it simply, the blockchain is a distributed shared ledger and database, which has the characteristics of decentralization, immutability, traceability throughout the process, traceability, collective maintenance, and openness and transparency. These characteristics ensure the "honesty" and "transparency" of the blockchain, and lay the foundation for the creation of trust in the blockchain. The huge application scenarios of the blockchain are basically based on the fact that the blockchain can solve the problem of information asymmetry and realize collaborative trust and concerted action among multiple subjects. In short, blockchain technology has unique and distinctive features:
Decentralized distributed ledger
A distributed ledger is a database held and updated independently by each participant (or node) in a large network. The distribution is unique: instead of being communicated to individual nodes by a central authority, records are constructed and kept independently by each node. That is, every node on the network processes every transaction, draws its own conclusions, and then votes on those conclusions to ensure that the majority agrees with them. Once consensus is reached, the distributed ledger is updated and all nodes maintain identical copies of their own ledger. This architecture allows for this new flexibility as a system of record beyond a simple database.
Consensus mechanism and immutability
Bitcoin adopts proof of work, and only when more than 51% of the accounting nodes in the entire network are controlled, it is possible to forge a record that does not exist. When there are enough nodes joining the blockchain, this is basically impossible, thus eliminating the possibility of fraud. Once the information is verified and added to the blockchain, it will be stored permanently. Unless more than 51% of the nodes in the system can be controlled at the same time, the modification of the database on a single node is invalid, so the data of the blockchain is stable. High reliability and reliability.
Asymmetric encryption and authorization technology
Asymmetric encryption refers to the encryption technology integrated into the blockchain to meet security requirements and ownership verification requirements. Asymmetric encryption usually uses two asymmetric ciphers in the process of encryption and decryption, which are called public key and private key respectively. An asymmetric key pair has two characteristics: first, after encrypting information with one of the keys (public key or private key), only the other corresponding key can unlock it; second, the public key can be disclosed to others, and the private key The key is kept secret, and other people cannot calculate the corresponding private key through the public key, thus ensuring data security and personal privacy. Since the exchange between nodes follows a fixed algorithm, its data interaction does not require trust, so the counterparty does not need to disclose its identity to make the other party trust itself, which is very helpful for the accumulation of credit.
smart contract
Based on these credible and non-tamperable data, some pre-defined rules and terms can be automatically executed. The blockchain adopts consensus-based norms and protocols to enable all nodes in the entire system to exchange data freely and safely in a trustless environment, so that trust in "people" is changed to trust in machines, and any human intervention will not kick in.
(Blockchain technology features)
4. The impact of machine trust on social life
With the combination of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things and the blockchain, the characteristics of decentralization, trustlessness, and difficulty in tampering with the blockchain will play a greater role, forming some business model.
In the field of payment, the high reliability and transaction traceability of blockchain technology greatly reduce the cost of reconciliation among financial institutions, significantly improve the processing speed, and contribute to the realization of inclusive finance.
In the field of logistics, the use of digital signatures and public-private key encryption and decryption mechanisms can fully guarantee information security and the privacy of senders and recipients. The blockchain cannot be tampered with, the data can be completely traced, and the time stamp function can effectively solve the problem of anti-counterfeiting of item traceability.
In the cultural and entertainment industry, blockchain technology confirms the rights of works through time stamps and hash algorithms, proving the existence, authenticity and uniqueness of a piece of text, video, audio, etc., and solving industries with serious intellectual property infringement in the Internet ecology Pain points.
In the field of intelligent manufacturing, data transparency makes R&D audit, manufacturing and distribution more effective, and at the same time gives enterprises more competitive advantages. In the charity fields such as "Internet + public welfare" and fingertip public welfare, the data stored on the blockchain is highly reliable and cannot be tampered with. It is naturally suitable for use in social public welfare scenarios to enhance the transparency of public welfare.
In the field of education, blockchain technology avoids the problems of opacity and easy tampering of information in a timely manner, and solves problems such as incomplete credit system of students and falsification of papers.
In the future, the blockchain will not only be a digital encryption technology, but also an important driving force for the transfer from the Internet of Information to the Internet of Value. It will become a key technology for trust mechanisms in more and more fields, and an important factor for ensuring credible interactions in the future information society. one of the foundations.