A few days ago, the special forum of the 2023 Global Digital Economy Conference: Web3.0 Development Trend Special Forum and the 2023 Blockchain and Metaverse Blue Book Conference were held in Beijing. The "China Blockchain Development Report (2023)" was grandly released at this forum, which summarized and sorted out the development status of my country's blockchain industry in 2022, and accurately interpreted the focus issues, core technologies and future trends of the development of the blockchain industry, providing a scientific reference for further exerting the important role of blockchain technology in promoting the development of my country's digital economy.
BSN also participated in the compilation of part of the "China Blockchain Development Report (2023)", discussing the construction of a public IT system (multi-party IT system) based on distributed technology represented by blockchain, and then promoting the establishment of a new public layer of the Internet, and finally forming the exploration and practice of the next generation of distributed trusted Internet.
Part of the full text written by BSN is as follows:
Top-level design and application practice of blockchain service network
——Exploration and practice of trusted public IT infrastructure construction
Shan Zhiguang, Tan Min, He Yifan, Ma Xiaojun, Liu Guodong
State Information Center, China Mobile Communications Group Design Institute Co., Ltd., Beijing Jujube Technology Co., Ltd.
Abstract: The rise of blockchain technology is the key to a new round of digital economic transformation. Only by understanding the nature of technology can we better meet real business needs and realize the empowerment of new technologies to the digital economy. This paper discusses the essence of blockchain as a broadcast transmission technology from the perspective of technological evolution, and proposes the necessity of building a public information system based on blockchain. On this basis, combined with the design concept and technical system of Blockchain-based service network (BSN) in practice, the key technical architecture, necessary characteristics and related application exploration and practice involved in building a trusted public information system are expounded.
Keywords: Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), broadcast transmission protocol, public information system
I. Introduction
(1) The essence of blockchain technology
Blockchain is one of the key technologies in the new round of digital economic transformation. However, there are still many different views on the conceptual definition of blockchain. Is it a shared ledger, a combination of multiple technologies? Or a technology where data cannot be tampered with and can be traced? Or does it represent some kind of digital currency? In the author's opinion, these definitions are just the extension of the concept of blockchain technology, and only reflect its technical characteristics and some application scenarios. So what is the essence of blockchain technology? Let us first jump out of the concept definition itself, and quickly review the process of information technology development.
In human history, every information revolution has improved communication efficiency by changing the way information is transmitted, thereby improving productivity and promoting social progress. The invention of the telephone in 1876 brought about a qualitative leap in human information exchange, breaking through the limitations of space and time. However, the early telephones could only realize two-to-two calls, which could not meet the needs of scenarios requiring multiple people to make decisions, and the inefficiency and error-prone problems of this linear information transmission method in the transmission process were also highlighted. With the development and evolution of technology, a conference call system that supports multi-person calls has emerged. From the perspective of information dissemination, teleconferencing changes the original linear transmission of information into broadcast transmission, and fundamental changes have taken place in the way of information exchange and transmission.
The first real computer appeared in 1946, and then the Internet was born in the 1970s, which is our Internet today, which set off a technological and information revolution and created a new era of human civilization. However, the Internet is a network composed of connected computers, and its information transmission method is essentially a linear method of two-two transmission.
We might as well use telephone and teleconferencing as an analogy to the Internet and blockchain technology. The greatness of blockchain technology is that it simulates a broadcast transmission method based on the existing hardware of the Internet, allowing multiple IT systems to conduct "telephone conferences" and form a network where information can be transmitted and exchanged in all directions. Compared with the change of the blockchain to the transmission method, the blockchain consensus that is often said is only an application based on broadcast communication. In other words, the reason why a consensus can be reached is that there is a more efficient broadcast transmission technology as the basis, and this broadcast transmission is actually an upgrade of the Internet and a change in the way information is disseminated, which will bring about changes in the industrial and economic structures.
This broadcast communication must satisfy three principles at the same time: first, data is transmitted to others in a broadcast manner; second, the feedback of any data recipient will be broadcast to everyone in the network; third, everyone in the network knows that other people have received the same data at the same time. It is not difficult to see that the broadcast communication method has the advantages of higher information transmission efficiency, more transparency, more decentralization, and more security and credibility.
To sum up, the essence of blockchain technology is a decentralized, distributed, and open and transparent information system that uses broadcast transmission methods to achieve consensus on data structure, traceability, authority, and verification.
(2) Future public information system
The Internet is based on point-to-point transmission, which leads to the fact that the current Internet technology system can only effectively serve centralized applications, or private information systems controlled by one entity. With the increasing complexity of business logic and data interaction on the Internet, and the need for the development of the digital economy, different business scenarios and data processing requirements for distributed technology and applications are becoming more and more clear.
Based on blockchain and distributed technology, a public information system can be built in a public environment in the future, shared, shared, and co-governed by multiple parties with equal rights. All data and calculations in the public information system are transparent to all parties, and end users can manage their own data through private keys, truly mastering the control and ownership of their own data. All future informatization systems will be composed of private informatization systems and public informatization systems to serve different business scenarios and data processing requirements.
With the promotion and popularization of distributed technology applications and the emergence and rapid development of public information systems, there will be countless open and transparent distributed network environments in the future. Distributed technology capabilities such as distributed identity and authentication, network-wide distributed domain names, and chain environment mutual recognition, as well as new technology systems that will emerge in the future, including new distributed cloud technologies, distributed operating systems, distributed databases, and broadcast communication protocols, will connect all these public distributed network environments, thereby forming a new technical system layer on top of the physical Internet.
Figure 1 Future Internet structure diagram
Therefore, the Internet in the future will also be divided into two layers. One is the current Internet, which can also be called the private layer of the Internet. It serves the private IT systems currently occupying the mainstream in the world and is controlled by an entity or a company. The second layer is the new Internet public layer, which serves the public information system. Application scenarios that require high data transparency, interoperability, ownership, and sustainability will all migrate or evolve to the Internet public layer.
This will also change the design logic of information systems in the future. IT personnel can be more flexible when designing applications, and consider which data needs to be stored and processed in privatized systems according to their own business needs.
The mission and goal of BSN is to promote the concept of the new public layer of the Internet, build the basic distributed cloud environment required by the public information system, and lay the foundation for the creation of all new operating systems, communication protocols, databases, development tools and application scenarios based on distributed technologies in the future.
(3) Significance of public information system
The public information system represents a new idea of building IT systems and applications, and is expected to develop into a mainstream trend in the future, bringing more open, transparent, secure and efficient IT systems and applications to users. On the public information system, users can establish personal databases, use private keys to manage their own data, and decide whether to allow other IT systems to access and call their own data. Combined with technologies such as privacy computing, users can better protect their data privacy and security, and prevent data from being misused and leaked by a single entity or company. Public information systems can also promote user participation and innovation. Users can freely participate in the construction and management of information systems and applications, and can also customize and develop more personalized, flexible, and efficient applications and systems according to their own needs and interests. Compared with privatized information systems, public information systems have the following significant advantages:
First, be more open and transparent. Since data is shared and public, and all users have the same rights, all users can access and use the same data, thereby improving the transparency and visibility of data, which is also conducive to public supervision and evaluation of data quality and authenticity, which is why distributed systems are often referred to as trusted networks or trusted systems.
Second, more efficient information exchange. Since data is shared and exchanged in a public environment, multiple applications and systems can transmit data more easily and efficiently, improving data interoperability and interoperability, thus enabling users to use and manage data more conveniently.
Third, clearer data ownership. In the public information system, multiple users can jointly manage and control IT systems and applications, and there is no monopoly of data by a single entity or company, which protects users' data ownership and use rights.
Fourth, data exists forever. Data can be stored for a longer period of time in the public information system, because it will not be controlled and restricted by a single entity or company, and the data will not be affected by the closure or dissolution of a single entity or company.
It is believed that with the evolution of business and technology, all countries will promote relevant legislation and regulatory measures for public information systems in the future to promote the healthy and orderly development of the industry.
2. Construction mechanism of blockchain service network
(1) Concept and features
The blockchain-based service network (BSN) is a global blockchain public infrastructure jointly initiated and established by the National Information Center for overall planning and top-level design, and jointly initiated by China Mobile, China UnionPay, Beijing Red Date Technology and other units. By providing distributed cloud infrastructure environment software, BSN can help traditional cloud service providers, data centers, and enterprises create a dedicated or accessible system-level public distributed information network, using blockchain as an operating system to manage various distributed applications, operating systems, and cloud resources.
From the beginning of its design, BSN has been carried out according to the concept of distributed cloud infrastructure. By providing distributed cloud management software, BSN can establish a distributed cloud environment (BSN private network) parallel to the traditional cloud environment in any private cloud and public cloud; at the same time, BSN also launched a distributed cloud service network (BSN public network), enterprises and individuals can build their own computing centers to join the network, and freely build and manage their own distributed applications. Similar to the Internet, all BSN virtual data centers, cloud environments and computing power centers are connected to each other through communication protocols to form a global BSN network.
(2) Construction concept
The top-level design ideas and construction concepts of the blockchain service network can be summarized as one core, two directions, six services, and seven principles.
1. A core.
That is to serve the digital development of the digital economy, smart city, and digital government as the core. Give full play to the role of blockchain in promoting data sharing, optimizing business processes, reducing operating costs, improving collaboration efficiency, and building a trusted system. Facing the development needs of digital economy, smart city, digital government, etc., by providing a one-stop blockchain operating environment and node-refined computing, storage and network services, it can effectively reduce the cost of blockchain deployment and maintenance. Through intelligent gateways and prefabricated chain code mechanisms, it can effectively reduce the technical threshold of blockchain application development, and use blockchain technology to promote larger-scale interconnection and intercommunication in data, information, capital, talents, credit reporting, etc., and ensure the orderly and efficient flow of production factors in the region.
2. Two directions.
Adhering to the two basic directions of co-management and co-governance, BSN does not belong to a certain individual or a certain company, but the service network alliance jointly manages and governs the service network, so as to ensure the healthy operation of the service network and the benign construction of the network ecology to the greatest extent.
3. More than six services.
That is to create a service system of "multi-cloud services, multi-portals, multi-underlying frameworks, multi-public networks, multi-regions, and multi-institutions". One is multi-cloud service. Users can freely deploy applications on the resources of any cloud service provider, and even deploy multiple nodes of an application on the city data centers of different cloud service providers. The second is multi-portal, different users can join the same open alliance chain in different portals. The third is the multi-underlying framework. By formulating the adaptation standard of the underlying framework of the blockchain, the underlying technology platform of the blockchain is opened up to realize cross-chain data exchange between different frameworks. The fourth is multiple public networks. The blockchain public infrastructure supports free access by any user using any public network. The fifth is multi-region. The blockchain public infrastructure should be a globally deployed network facility. A blockchain application can be composed of nodes in different regions according to needs. Sixth, multi-institutional, blockchain public infrastructure should support multi-institutional access and business collaboration.
4. Seven principles.
The construction of BSN follows the construction principles of "independence, publicity, scalability, open source, multi-portal, low cost, and security". The first is autonomy. BSN is independently developed by China and controls the right to access the network. It realizes the unified management and adaptation of multiple underlying frameworks and the realization of componentized cross-chain technology, distributed storage technology and integrated development environment, and creates a fully functional block chain. Chain building, chain usage, chain expansion, cross-chain, and chain-management integrated ecology. The second is publicity. It is necessary to conduct research, design, construction and operation with the concept of building public infrastructure, rather than a completely commercial project. BSN connects data center resources through a set of blockchain environment and protocols, and supports national and industry standards in terms of encryption algorithms, national secret support, and information security technology. The third is scalability, allowing all data centers and cloud service resources that meet security and configuration requirements to join BSN upon application. The fourth is open source, following the open source development concept of the blockchain, the software of the urban data center must be open source, and the operating mechanism is transparent to everyone. The fifth is multi-portal. BSN adopts a multi-portal strategy to avoid monopoly and exclusivity. Any cloud service provider that joins the network can build its own service portal to manage its own developers and service products. The sixth is low cost. The most direct purpose of building BSN is to reduce the development, deployment, operation and maintenance, intercommunication and supervision costs of blockchain applications, thereby promoting the popularization and development of blockchain technology. The seventh is security. The construction of BSN strictly follows the relevant requirements for physical and network security above level 3 stipulated in the relevant national information security technology standards, and ensures the redundant deployment of key nodes to ensure the availability of the system.
(3) Development goals
BSN is positioned at the underlying public infrastructure of distributed technology applications, and is committed to continuously reducing the application cost, technical threshold and regulatory difficulty of distributed technologies. Technically, at the current stage, BSN regards blockchain as an operating system in a distributed cloud environment, and continues to promote the construction of a new distributed operating system, continuously breaks through technical bottlenecks, comprehensively innovates the cognition and application mode of distributed technology, and provides a fertile ground for distributed technology innovation, so as to accelerate the popularization and application of distributed technology. .
In the long run, with the change of social needs and the evolution of technology, the traditional Internet is bound to be unable to fully meet the needs of use, and the emergence of public information systems will allow distributed technology to be integrated into the existing economic system, which will also become the direction of exploration in various regions of the world. Therefore, the long-term goal of BSN is to promote the establishment of a new public layer on the Internet to provide services for all walks of life and various types of distributed applications.
3. Application practice of blockchain service network
(1) Technical Architecture
BSN's technical architecture includes two major systems: BSN private network and BSN public network. Among them, BSN private network is the enterprise-level "BSN distributed cloud management platform", which supports deployment in various physical IDC computer rooms, public clouds and private clouds, and establishes a blockchain-based distributed cloud system environment.
The BSN public network includes the "BSN-DDC Basic Network" for the domestic market, a public distributed cloud service network composed of open alliance chains, and the computing power center is free and open source; and the "BSN Spartan Network" for overseas markets, a public distributed cloud service network composed of coinless public chains, providing free, open source and anonymous data centers.
Figure 2 BSN technical architecture
1. BSN private network.
The BSN private network is the enterprise-level "BSN distributed cloud management platform". The distributed cloud management platform is a set of professional cloud environment management software used to manage distributed and blockchain systems and applications. It is aimed at government, enterprise and institutional customers. In their existing public clouds, private clouds or LANs, a proprietary distributed network environment based on the BSN technology system is deployed. It is parallel to the traditional cloud management environment that only supports centralized applications. With the multi-blockchain framework as the operating system, it can perform comprehensive and automated calculations across the cloud resource layer, system layer, node layer, application layer and BaaS layer. Fees, operation and maintenance and operation management.
2. BSN public network.
Including the "BSN-DDC Basic Network" for domestic use, and the "BSN Spartan Network" for overseas use.
(1) Domestic-oriented BSN-DDC basic network
The BSN-DDC basic network is a public distributed cloud service network jointly built by the BSN Development Alliance and a number of blockchain technology service companies. It is oriented to the domestic market and integrates multiple open alliance chains as operating systems to develop and run distributed applications. It also provides infrastructure capability support for the development and application of technologies such as blockchain and NFT in China, and escorts its compliant development.
(2) BSN Spartan network facing overseas
The BSN Spartan network is a public distributed cloud service network based on the BSN technology system. It is oriented to overseas markets, follows international technical standards, and innovatively uses the coinless public chain as an operating system. Overseas enterprises, especially IT departments of traditional enterprises, can build their own distributed applications based on the coinless public chain technology of the BSN Spartan network. The BSN Spartan network is completely open source and can be used anonymously to ensure data and privacy security.
(2) Technical characteristics
BSN has uniformly adapted and managed the underlying technology of the blockchain core. Through technologies such as integration and adaptation of multiple underlying frameworks, arrangement and scheduling of heterogeneous cloud resources, homogeneous/heterogeneous cross-chain communication, and scalable PKI system, it provides users with a huge distributed cloud environment for building and running various distributed applications.
1. Integration and adaptation of multiple underlying frameworks.
As an infrastructure environment, technical compatibility and diversity are the primary considerations. BSN has researched almost all mainstream blockchain underlying frameworks in the world, realized the adaptation and management of dozens of mature and stable open source and commercial blockchain underlying frameworks around the world, and formed a set of best practice standards for the management of blockchain underlying frameworks.
2. Orchestration and scheduling of heterogeneous cloud resources.
The BSN service network can not only realize the full life cycle management of the blockchain operating environment resources based on the mainstream OpenStack and Kubernetes cluster technologies, but also realize the unified management of automatic resource allocation, expansion arrangement, load optimization, monitoring analysis and operation and maintenance based on multiple heterogeneous clouds, which means that BSN can integrate almost all mainstream cloud resources in the market into the virtual environment management system, and realize automatic management and deployment.
3. Homogeneous/heterogeneous cross-chain communication.
With the widespread application of blockchain technology, the need for data sharing between different blockchain applications is becoming more and more urgent. BSN implements a cross-chain communication hub based on the relay chain cross-chain mechanism, supports cross-chain transaction management and transaction processing of various isomorphic/heterogeneous chains in the platform, and supports cross-chain communication and transaction processing with chain networks outside the platform; supports unified chain ID, Relayer management, and automatic deployment and management of cross-chain management contracts, thus meeting the requirements of information effectiveness, security and transactionality in the process of cross-chain communication.
4. Extensible PKI system.
It supports various national secrets and international algorithms, and provides CA certificate issuance, renewal, revocation and verification services for node communication authentication, transaction processing, and application access of various blockchain networks managed within the platform. Through the root key and cross-chain technology issued by the national authority, the trusted interconnection of various blockchain applications has been realized.
(3) Application effectiveness
BSN has been widely recognized by users in the industry, and its technical model and development concept have been written into the "14th Five-Year Plan" and "New Infrastructure" overall planning and other policy implementation plans of Yunnan Province, Hainan Province, Anhui Province, Fujian Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Hubei Province, Gansu Province, Jiangxi Province, Changsha City in Hunan Province, Nanping City in Fujian Province, Zibo City in Shandong Province, Qingdao City in Shandong Province, Hangzhou City in Zhejiang Province, and Wuhan City in Hubei Province. Based on the BSN private network, a number of benchmark projects have been created for the industry, and significant application effects have been achieved. At present, Hainan, Gansu, Heilongjiang, Hebei, Guangdong, Henan, and Hangzhou, Changsha, Zhuhai, Changchun, Jinzhou, Xiong'an, Ningbo, a total of 13 provinces and cities have deployed BSN government and industry private networks, providing reliable blockchain public service capabilities for the development of digital economy in various provinces and cities. In addition, based on BSN technology and facilities, my country's first "Shenzhen-Singapore cross-border trade blockchain private network" based on independent blockchain infrastructure construction was officially completed and will go online in September 2021. The private network is led by the Shenzhen Government Service Data Management Bureau, the Bureau of Commerce and the IMDA of Singapore. Based on the single window business of the Shenzhen Southern Electronic Port and using BSN technology, the underlying infrastructure network for cross-border data encryption, storage, transmission, call and mutual recognition between Shenzhen and Singapore has been constructed. Scenarios, and realize flexible application networking between any number of data centers.
The BSN-DDC public network currently has a number of open alliance chains including Tai'an Chain, China Mobile Chain, Wuhan Chain, Wenchang Chain, Zunyi Chain, Jiuquan Chain, Chengdu Chain, etc. deployed and developed in the network, providing a large number of enterprises and individuals with extremely low-cost blockchain basic services. Since its release on January 25, 2022, business on the DDC network has grown rapidly. Up to now, more than 1,500 platforms and enterprises have registered on the DDC network, created more than 32 million chain accounts, and generated nearly 5 million official DDCs and more than 30 million platform-side NFTs. The daily transaction volume of the entire network has remained stable at around 1 million. In 2022, the total number of transactions on the chain will exceed 150 million times, and the request volume of DDC official gateways will exceed 13.5 billion times. On June 29, 2022, the BSN-DDC public network ushered in a milestone moment. Since its official operation, the number of daily transactions (Transactions) of production environment applications in a single day exceeded Ethereum (Ethereum) for the first time. On that day, the BSN-DDC basic network had 974,517 transactions in 24 hours a day, while Ethereum had 938,166 transactions in 24 hours a day. In addition, the BSN-DDC basic network regional computing power center has also successively deployed 56 regional computing power centers nationwide, serving nearly 2,000 enterprises of various blockchain application platforms, with more than 35 million end users, and a daily active blockchain business volume of over 1 million, leading the world.
In September 2022, the BSN Spartan network for the international market will be officially launched, supporting enterprises in traditional fields to apply blockchain technology without using virtual currency. BSN supports one-way cross-chain from domestic DDC basic network to foreign Spartan network. BSN-based cross-chain technology can promote the works of Chinese artists to go overseas. For example, casting the works of Chinese artists into NFTs and publishing them on OpenSea in a compliant manner to promote Chinese art and culture. In Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil production company, uses the BSN cloud management platform to carry out supply chain management. By uploading the supply chain data of upstream and downstream enterprises, third-party warehousing and logistics enterprises, and banks, it has realized the integration of information flow, capital flow, and logistics, and improved work efficiency. In Hong Kong, HSBC uses BSN to establish a B2B payment processing network to solve the problems of virtual currency risks, transaction data integrity, transparency and other issues encountered when using blockchain technology in payment and settlement, trade financing, supply chain and other fields, and improve the efficiency and security of the payment process. In addition, the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Bahrain and other countries use BSN to promote applications such as digital identity authentication and medical information sharing.
BSN not only empowers the development of China's digital economy based on blockchain technology, but also provides reference experience and ideas for the practice of blockchain applications, and is more committed to the formulation of standards and technical research in the blockchain field. In 2022, BSN participated in the drafting and formulation of 4 key industry standards and specifications, including the group standards of "General Requirements for Blockchain Dedicated Service Network Infrastructure" and "Data Security Compliance Assessment Method", etc., and submitted 7 technical patents and 18 software copyrights, setting a benchmark for the development of blockchain technology and empowering thousands of industries.
4. Summary and Outlook
BSN will continue to maintain a neutral, low-cost, open and transparent, technologically diverse, ecologically diverse, safe, credible, and regulable position, attracting more technology companies and users, and providing a key capability carrier for modern data governance and the construction of a "big market" for data elements.
In the future, with the development of the new Internet public layer and information systems, another disruptive new industry similar to the current Internet will emerge, including future distributed operating systems, databases, and communication protocols. There will be huge development space and opportunities. Through the current development trend and continuous promotion of BSN, it can be predicted that a new Internet public layer will be formed in the future with China leading key technologies and standards, making China the birthplace of the global information revolution. In this way, we hope that more like-minded partners will join BSN to jointly promote Chinese technology to go global and realize the great cause of human information technology progress.
references
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[2] Blockchain Service Network Development Alliance: "Blockchain Service Network Foundation White Paper", 2020.
[3] Li Fang et al.: "Research on the Progress of Blockchain Cross-chain Technology", "Journal of Software", Issue 30, 2019.
[4] Blockchain Service Network Development Alliance: "Blockchain Service Network (BSN) Development Report (2022)", 2022.
[5] Shan Zhiguang et al.: "The Construction Mechanism and Technical Realization of Blockchain Service Network", "Journal of Software", Issue 34, 2023.
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