The embryonic stage of blockchain
I believe that when it comes to the financial crisis, you and I will turn pale. The most recent world-class financial crisis occurred in 2008. This crisis made many pioneers gradually disappointed with the modern financial system. In this context of the times, 比特币应运而生.
Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, was keenly aware that the majority of Internet trade settlements are handled by trusted third-party financial institutions, even though most of the time these systems work well enough. But once encountered 极端信任危机, the imbalance of trust relationship will lead to the structural collapse of the modern financial system.
Conventional thinking almost failed, but Satoshi Nakamoto took another approach and proposed a brand new solution, and the story of a liberal saving the world began. There are actually two things that stand out about this plan:
- The first is to restore the original appearance of payment
- The second is the innovative introduction of payment scripts
pay as it is
What is payment supposed to look like? You can understand that the essence of trade payment is actually the supply and demand relationship between buyers and sellers. It is only because of the distrust of buyers and sellers that it is necessary to introduce a third party that both parties trust to guarantee and endorse the buying and selling behavior of both parties.
In Satoshi Nakamoto's view, this kind of operation mode with trust as the medium is problematic. Therefore, Satoshi Nakamoto thought of the possibility of removing the third-party guarantee, and designed a digital currency system based on cryptography that can complete payment without mutual trust between buyers and sellers.
import payment script
In addition to eliminating the bond of trust, Bitcoin also innovatively introduces payment scripts for currency payments.
The essence of the script is that 一段计算机程序代码if you can enter the correct parameters, the successful execution of the script means that you have the right to use the currency. So we can think that Bitcoin implements a 完全严格按照计算机逻辑running program through program scripts 数字货币转移机制.
However, Bitcoin's scripting function 并不完美only supports the sequential execution of instructions. And generally full-featured computer programming languages support sequences, branches, and loops. True, conditional payments in Bitcoin are only possible based on sequentially executed scripts, but only so much.
Someone saw this limitation, and he is the founder of Ethereum, V God.
Birth of blockchain
In the process of studying Bitcoin, V God gradually realized that the idea behind Bitcoin 区块链技术can not only be used in cryptocurrency, but also 更多可能性that the architecture of Bitcoin hinders the development of technology, so he hopes to make 扩展比特币的脚本功能it more intelligent. .
If it is patched directly on Bitcoin, its scalability is also extremely limited. Therefore, V God focused his energy on how to create one 替代比特币的解决方案, and soon published the Ethereum white paper "Ethereum: A Next-Generation Cryptocurrency and Decentralized Application Platform".
Smart contract function
In the white paper, Vitalik explained the vision of the Ethereum architecture: on the basis of cryptocurrency, 增加智能合约功能developers can anchor all valuable objective/subjective things to Ethereum for transactions through smart contract programming, and realize the realization of value. transfer. This is 区块链发展的最终形态是价值网络the origin of this argument.
How exactly do smart contracts work? Let's take the example of house property registration to explain. With the digital certificate of relevant departments, the owner can convert the real estate certificate and other information into tradable digital assets through smart contracts. Of course, this process is long-term, and it needs to be implemented after the blockchain is implemented in the field of social governance.
The core of Ethereum can be regarded as the blessing of smart contracts. It智能合约 is written by software engineers independently based on the Ethereum protocol 程序代码. But we all know that there is almost no software system without BUG in the world, and the Ethereum smart contract is open source, anyone can view the source code of the smart contract deployed on the Ethereum anytime, anywhere, which leaves a lot of room for hackers to exploit loopholes. There is a loophole.
On July 30, 2015, the Ethereum mainnet was officially launched, and Ethereum has since embarked on the stage of history.
Ethereum hard fork
The most famous hacking incident occurred in April 2016. The hacker stole about US$60 million worth of about US$150 million worth of Ethereum locked in The DAO contract, and immediately sold it on the exchange, causing serious damage to the entire cryptocurrency market. an irreparable loss.
After the hacking incident, heated discussions took place in the Ethereum community. Some people advocate rolling back the Ethereum mainnet to before the hacker attack; while others advocate inaction, advocating that external forces should not be relied on to interfere with established facts that have been recognized. It can be said that this is a major test of faith in the blockchain.
However, after community discussion, the Ethereum hard fork was carried out on July 20, 2016, splitting the Ethereum main network into two networks, ETHand ETC. ETH deleted all traces of the hacker attack and returned the stolen ether to the original owner 现在我们所说的以太坊指的就是回滚的这一分支. ETC, on the other hand, retains all transactions including hacker attacks to maintain the basic principles of decentralization and non-tampering on which the blockchain depends.
It is precisely because of this incident that it directly led to the barbaric growth of subsequent blockchains.
savage growth period
All software systems have bugs. Under normal circumstances, we will modify the source code on the basis of the previous software version. Compared with the old version, the new version has only some logic differences, and the basic rules of the program have not changed much. Simple adaptation between the two versions of the program , you can recognize each other, which can be said to be seamlessly compatible. We call this situation 迭代.
At other times, due to structural adjustments and rule changes, the two versions of the program are no longer compatible. At this time, we can no longer call it iteration, but use refactoring to refer to this kind of change. Under normal circumstances, the result of multiple iterations and superpositions 重构can be understood as quantitative changes causing qualitative changes.
Soft fork (iteration)
In the blockchain, the network is composed of multiple nodes connected to each other, and the nodes must be able to communicate with each other. The software iteration of several minor versions does not affect the operation of the blockchain network. Some nodes are upgraded, while others continue to use the original version, which will not cause the division of the blockchain network. 这种情况就是所谓的软分叉，其本质就是可兼容的程序版本更新.
Hard fork (refactoring)
Once the community decides to refactor the blockchain protocol, it must coordinate the upgrade of the entire network nodes. You can imagine that if half of the nodes continue to use the original version, while the other part of the nodes upgrade the new version of the program, in this case, a blockchain network will be split into two. Although their data belong to a common ancestor, at a certain point, they independently derived different data trends. 这就是硬分叉的逻辑，其本质是不可兼容的程序版本更新.
It is not difficult to explain why every upgrade of the blockchain network is a major event, and the community needs to coordinate which block to enable the new version and discard the old version.
Pandora's box
Going back to The DAO event itself, 以太坊通过硬分叉分裂成 ETH 跟 ETCboth networks remain operating independently. Logically speaking, there is no problem, it can be justified, but the bad thing is that the certificate is valuable.
Before the hard fork, I owned 1 ETH, and after the hard fork, I have both 1 ETH and 1 ETC. It is equivalent to adding a valuable certificate out of thin air without any operation, although its value may be relatively lower than the original ETH.
Some people's minds were liberated. If I have reasons to describe the shortcomings of Bitcoin/Ethereum, propose a solution, write a white paper, and explain my point of view and implementation path. Can I also create my own blockchain through a hard fork?
At the same time, if I can pull people on the platform and let them canvass for me, will more people agree with my point of view? Through such an operation, will someone gradually pay for my ideals, and once someone pays for me, I will create a "wealth" bubble out of thin air.
chain building operation
A vigorous chain-building operation has begun, and various collateral networks based on hard forks have sprung up. The happiest and most able to promote this action is not its creator, but the retail investors who held BTC/ETH before the hard fork. They have obtained countless collateral certificates. Of course, they hope that their value will higher. So they constantly encourage people around them to enter the market, and then continue to promote this false prosperity.
indescribable pusher
In addition to the hard fork, there is an indescribable driving force behind the barbarism. Due to some well-known reasons, it is not appropriate to say more.
After having this indescribable pushing hand, everything is so natural like a fish meeting water. The market ushered in a new round of madness.任何人只要有一些跟区块链沾点边的点子，都可以立马写一篇白皮书，找一群人运营社区，宣传自己的理想，换取投资人的赏识，蛊惑他们用真金白银为自己的“理想”买单。
It is undeniable that at the beginning, many teams really relied on this financing method to do things seriously, but the market will not give you a proportional return because of your seriousness. up the market. Only you can't think of it, but they can't do it.
疯狂并没有持续太久，泡沫被无情刺穿. Since then, 市场逐渐冷清. The time has come to a new stage of blockchain development, which is now.