At present, there have been many articles discussing the two forms of public chain and alliance chain in the blockchain. There are some differences in my understanding. Elwin will try to analyze this from the perspective of Taoist magic tools, covering the value of belief and the background of production. , technical features, maintenance governance, development trends, etc., I hope to share with you my understanding and suggestions on the two.
1. The Road of Blockchain
"There is no sword in the hand, but there is a sword in the heart. All plants, trees, bamboos and stones can be swords. With no sword, there is a sword." Tao" will not change because of the object (device), nor will it change because of the method (surgery). Tao is the origin, noumenon, law or principle of the world.
Techniques are strategies and methods for dealing with things, or, in other words, Dao, we can regard them as beliefs and values; techniques are techniques and methodology. Law is the most fundamental strategy, method, guideline, and way of thinking to realize values, and it is also a normative constraint; tools are tools, and the role of tools is to improve efficiency and simplify complex problems.
Elwin's personal understanding is that for blockchain technology, the development tools and compilation/running environments and tools of the blockchain are "devices"; methods such as algorithms, smart contracts and frameworks are "techniques"; distributed ledger theory , encryption principle and P2P communication principle are "law", alliance governance and supervision, community maintenance governance is also another "law"; the last "dao" is the belief and values ​​of the blockchain, the "dao" of the blockchain "It is to establish a value exchange network of mutual trust; for the public chain, its Tao is decentralization and autonomy; the Tao of the alliance chain is cooperation and win-win.
The public chain blockchain, originated from Bitcoin, was born with the goal of decentralization. His belief is that it is not controlled by any central organization. Transactions need to be publicly confirmed by the entire network. Everyone is equal in front of the algorithm. And every node can participate and supervise. It is its decentralization that makes it fundamentally different from all other virtual currencies. Later, virtual currencies such as altcoins, such as those that are still controlled by the issuer, are ultimately difficult to develop.
The origin of the public chain blockchain and Bitcoin is based on the pursuit of a decentralized Internet. On the one hand, the Internet is extremely developed today, and the Internet has occupied most of the country for giants and unicorns, and many netizens cannot take the initiative. In order to recover the beautiful dream at the beginning of the establishment of the Internet, it is necessary to return the rights to the public through decentralization. On the other hand, at present, many underlying services of the Internet are centralized services. Our network connection is actually very fragile. Countless devices around the world are increasingly connected to the Internet. Especially the further popularization of the Internet of Things will worsen the deterioration of the Internet. Some nefarious event in the future could suddenly disable the Internet for billions of users and bring the entire network to a standstill. The decentralized network is the 3.0 of the Internet Web. In the future, there will no longer be centralized services of a single institution, such as decentralized communication, decentralized currency, decentralized DNS, decentralized publishing, decentralized social networking, etc. There are many useful explorations. The emergence of Bitcoin has made everyone see hope and direction, and thus the blockchain (public chain) has opened up a wave of decentralized applications.
Consortium blockchain is a blockchain that is open to specific organizations and has an access mechanism. In layman's terms, many financial institutions and commercial institutions are currently building their own "circle of friends" based on blockchain technology, and completing transactions and asset clearing through the "consortium chain" model within the circle, usually called "partial decentralization". †or “multi-centralizedâ€. What he pursues is the complementary cooperation and win-win situation under the new game within the alliance.
The origin of the alliance blockchain can be understood from the groups that use the alliance chain. Their main groups are banks, insurance, securities, business associations, group companies and upstream and downstream enterprises. The blockchain was born in the era of mobile Internet. These companies are generally Already IT-based and Internet-based, blockchain is very helpful to further improve the efficiency of notarization, settlement and clearing business and value exchange network in the industrial chain of their circles, but they are trying to use existing blockchain technology (such as the Bitcoin code family) and Ethereum) found that the processing performance, privacy protection, compliance, etc. of the existing blockchain did not meet their business requirements. The design concept will subvert their existing business model and inherent interests, and it will take great risks. So they began to transform the blockchain system suitable for them. The current form of consortium chain is mainly distributed ledger (DSL). The distributed ledger and distributed consensus of blockchain solve the main core problems for them, that is Trust issues in the interaction of multiple parties in a federation. At present, the most active and recognized typical open source blockchain code project applied to the alliance chain is Fabric launched by IBM as one of the main projects of the HyperLedger (super ledger) infrastructure.
The law of blockchain
As far as "law" is concerned, the common "law" of public chain and alliance chain is based on distributed ledger theory, asymmetric encryption principle and P2P communication network principle, but the biggest difference is access and maintenance governance.
1. Access
Public chain, open to everyone, anyone can participate, anyone can send transactions and the transactions can be effectively confirmed, and anyone can participate in the consensus process. The consensus process determines which blocks can be added. into the blockchain and clarify the current state. Once the public chain is released and running, program developers have no right to interfere with users, so the blockchain can protect users who use the blockchain they developed. Anyone with sufficient technical ability can access, that is to say, as long as there is a computer that can be connected to the Internet, it can meet the conditions of access, and there is not much restriction on nodes. Entry without a threshold will greatly disturb the capacity and performance improvement, but the participation of the whole people greatly enhances trust and transparency.
The alliance chain is only for members of a certain group and a limited number of third parties. Multiple pre-selected nodes are internally designated as bookkeepers. The generation of each block is jointly determined by all pre-selected nodes, and other access nodes can participate in transactions. However, without asking about the accounting process, other third parties can make limited queries through the open API of the blockchain. In order to obtain better performance, the consortium chain has certain requirements for the configuration and network environment of consensus or verification nodes. With the access mechanism, it is easier to improve transaction performance and avoid some problems caused by uneven participation and unstable participants.
2. Maintenance governance
The maintenance and governance of the public chain is often initiated by some geeks and technical teams, and is maintained in a community manner. The code is completely open source and community crowdsourcing is adopted. The public chain is basically accompanied by the ICO process. ICO, the full name of Initial Coin Offering, in essence, ICO is also a kind of "public offering", it not only changes the subject matter issued from securities to encrypted digital currency compared with traditional securities IPO, but more importantly, ICO The encrypted digital currency of Token - Token is based on the public chain to create its own economic ecosystem, and it is the pinnacle of public chain governance. The public chain project team obtains funds for technology development and market expansion through ICO, while project enthusiasts support the project through ICO, and can also choose to exit the transaction after the corresponding token enters the trading market. The token of the public chain is not only a new way to raise funds, but more importantly, it is a brand-new decentralized governance model, a company without a central controller, and all participants share ownership and contributions. The community code needs to be maintained, the community and the public chain need to be operated, and the public chain nodes need to be deployed and maintained. These traditional company management and operation models will not work. Through the token-mediated incentive mechanism, the public chain can run healthily. ensure. On the other hand, the decentralized community crowdsourcing model breaks the traditional way of disseminating research results and the evaluation system. Through the word-of-mouth and interactive communication of users on the Internet, the research results can reflect the value and feedback more quickly, and discover in time. It solves and optimizes problems, concentrates the wisdom of everyone, accelerates the speed of scientific research and commercial application, and at the same time promotes technological innovation and establishes its own technological influence and standards.
Another special feature of the public chain is the Gas fee, that is, the cost of using the public chain network is paid through the native Token or the Gas associated with the native Token as a handling fee. On the other hand, it can give back to the consensus node. This design is very good, but it also leads to a new problem, that is, the handling fee will fluctuate with the price fluctuation of the native token of the public chain, and it will become more and more expensive in many cases, especially for high-frequency applications, the use cost may be relatively high .
There are special game problems in the governance of public chains. Take Bitcoin as an example, its core governance principles are: asymmetric encryption guarantees the basic property rights of individuals, distributed ledgers guarantee the basic consensus on property rights, blockchain technology guarantees openness and fairness, and the workload proof mechanism uses simple and direct resources Consumption incentive bookkeeping. The initial stage of the Bitcoin ecosystem relied on the innovative fun of early developers and the idealistic enthusiasm of geeks, which gradually led to the formation of the Bitcoin ecosystem. After many years of development, the Bitcoin ecosystem has matured, and trading users, hoarding users, and miners are now decentralized; while mining pools and exchanges have a tendency to be centralized, but if they violate the interests of miners and users, they will also It will decline quickly; the centralization of the development team is a shortcoming of public chain governance, and developers lead the decision-making direction to restrict ecological evolution. The problem of Bitcoin being restricted, in fact, many functions have already been solved or even developed. Why can't the upgrade be delayed? It is because the upgrade of the public chain is different from the upgrade of traditional software. It is a decentralized upgrade and needs to be upgraded. Only with the support and consent of most nodes can the upgrade be smooth, but the developer team is currently in a decentralized competition. There are core developers with idealism in the early stage, and there are development participation teams that consider economic and political aspects later, making the current Bitcoin The code branch has become the three branch code formations of Bitcoin core, Bitcoin Classic, and Bitcoin Unlimited. Similarly, the famous Ethereum is also currently forked into two branch code formations of ETC and ETH. This special game problem is likely to be faced by all decentralized applications. Although there are solutions (such as voting mechanisms), this will cause relatively large internal friction and constraints. Some public chain teams may not pay much attention to this problem. The focus is on technology and algorithms, and it's worth noting. The direction of the solution is to formulate a more complete governance mechanism at the beginning of the public chain's launch, enhance the communication and mutual trust of various roles in the public chain ecosystem, and ensure that the technical considerations behind the system upgrade must be democratized.
The maintenance and governance of the alliance chain is generally carried out by the members of the alliance. It usually adopts the election system, which is easy to control the authority. The code is generally open source or targeted open source, mainly developed by the member team, or customized products by manufacturers. There are many traditional solutions for the governance scheme of the alliance chain. Compared with the public chain, their governance is more regulated. However, they will also encounter these alliance governance problems, such as joint fraud among alliance members. , the balance of interests of members of competitive alliances, etc. From the governance level, there are asymmetric considerations of node use harvest and input maintenance, and the ownership of data assets in the alliance chain. These issues are also governance issues that need to be considered and improved at the beginning of the consortium chain's establishment.
For tokens and gas fees, most consortium chains will remove unused or just a form, so that consortium members can use the blockchain network without any worries. However, for value exchange type application scenarios, especially the alliance chain that needs to exchange value outside the alliance, the token system may also be used. Elwin understands this as a value alliance chain. The value alliance chain refers to the alliance chain that can transfer asset ownership internally. For example, in Ripple's current digital asset exchange application scenario, the native Token XRP in it is used as a "transaction certificate" (or credit certificate) beyond the exchange gateway, and guarantees One of the cornerstones of Ripple's network security has its unique value and positioning. It is worth mentioning here that the application of Ripple was more open in the past, operating on a public chain and decentralization, and later it turned to a conservative and more consortium chain approach. Therefore, it can be seen from the side that the same set of blockchain projects and code frameworks can be operated as a public chain or a consortium chain, which mainly depends on his "dao".
3. Supervision of the alliance chain
Although no matter the public chain or the alliance chain, there may be corresponding laws and regulations for supervision, such as the legality of cryptocurrencies and ICOs, the legal validity of blockchain certificates, the validity of smart contracts, etc., but relatively speaking , since the alliance chain is more used in financial and commercial institutions, it will have higher compliance requirements. Therefore, here we focus on the "law" of the alliance chain - supervision, which is also the reason that users of the alliance chain cannot fully adopt One of the main reasons for the public chain set (here refers to historical reasons, and now some public chains have partially solved the problem of supervision).
When it comes to the supervision of the alliance chain, two important concepts have to be mentioned, AML (anti-money laundering) and KYC (know your customer). Although the Internet has made us everywhere, financial regulation exists everywhere. Since the financial crisis in 2008, the threshold for financial management and control has been continuously raised, and the scope of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing caused by the war on terror has also increased the breadth and depth of regulation. gradually expand. The consortium chain needs to join these regulatory elements and integrate the ideas of AML and KYC in the blockchain, so as to reduce costs and improve efficiency in the early stage of compliance.
The technology of blockchain
The "technique" of blockchain mainly includes modes and methods such as consensus mechanism, encryption algorithm, smart contract and framework.
The consensus mechanism is the key point of blockchain technology. The core of the consensus mechanism is to use a rule (algorithm) in a distributed network to ensure that the entire network is consistent for the creation of blocks. Consensus mechanisms include PoW workload proof, PoS equity proof, DPoS share authorization proof mechanism, Byzantine family (such as PBFT), PoET elapsed time proof waiting. For many current consensus mechanisms, both the public chain and the alliance chain may be used, but due to the influence of their respective "dao" and "law", there will be some emphasis. Public chains are more inclined to use PoW and PoS consensus mechanisms with more decentralization and incentive mechanisms, while consortium chains prefer to use consensus mechanisms such as traditional Byzantine families (such as PBFT) and DPoS. Technically, it is predictable The consortium chain of the nodes will also run more efficiently in consensus mechanisms such as PBFT. Now many new blockchain systems will support pluggable consensus mechanism modules, and you can choose the consensus mechanism that is most suitable for your application scenario.
Encryption algorithm, mainly hash function and asymmetric encryption algorithm. The same applies to public chains and alliance chains, but there are differences in details. For example, the hash function algorithm, the consortium chain generally does not consider mining issues and pays more attention to performance issues due to commercial applications, and prefers to use the SHA256 algorithm, while the public chain will consider mining and incentive governance strategies, thus Choose another hash function algorithm. Another example is the asymmetric encryption algorithm. The consortium chain needs to consider performance efficiency and security compliance issues as well. For example, domestic financial institutions prefer to use national secret algorithms, while public chains pay more attention to openness and standardization.
In terms of smart contracts, both the public chain and the alliance chain will need it, but usually the public chain will need to pay the gas fee to execute the smart contract, while the alliance chain does not necessarily need it, of course, this is not inevitable. Another point to pay attention to is that the smart contracts of the public chain are striving for the autonomy of Sinochem, so his design concept cannot add too many rules and regulations, while the alliance chain pays more attention to privacy, security and supervision, so it will add more rules and regulations. There are many control elements, such as the Corda system, which records the clear connection between smart contract code and legal language system and manages financial agreements; Fabric, in order to protect the transaction privacy of alliance members, realizes the separation of execution of contracts on different chains. Affiliated entities only know about their own on-chain contract-related transactions and execute transaction verification; Qtum adds a master contract to the smart contract, and the execution logic of the master contract can be executed off-chain, introducing the role of a supervisor.
Finally, regarding the design of the open framework and architecture mode, since the consortium chain has node access, it has greater flexibility, and optimizes design and deployment from software engineering, such as the separation of different consensus channels, transaction verification and consensus. Separation of CPU-intensive (transaction verification) and IO-intensive (consensus service) nodes, so as to use dedicated hardware, disassemble the coupling degree of consensus transactions to the greatest extent, reduce the serial degree of the system and improve the degree of parallelism, While improving system availability, it also improves system performance and meets the design goal of high system scalability. In order to achieve the same effect in the public chain, some places often need to spend more thought on the design of the architecture.
Fourth, the device of the blockchain
Regarding the "device" of the blockchain, that is, the development tools, compilation environment and tools, operating environment and tools involved in the blockchain, there is generally little difference between the public chain and the alliance chain. In fact, many blockchain projects have both It can be used for public chains, as well as for alliance chains or private chains. Technically, IT deployment and operation methods are the main differences between them.
The unique "device" of the public chain is the token and wallet, mining or minting (or forging) tool, the token and the wallet are an important medium for the value exchange network, and the mining or minting (or forging) tool is the support The core operational support of the public chain value exchange network and consensus mechanism. Of course, some operating public chains do not have these tools, such as blockchains that use other consensus mechanisms, but Elwn personally feels that something is missing. For consortium chains, tokens and wallets are not necessary. Many consortium chains do not use tokens, nor do they have mining tools. However, identity management, authority management, and supervision modules are necessary.
Compared with the public chain, the nodes of the alliance chain have relatively consistent requirements (hardware, operating environment). For many blockchain systems dedicated to the alliance chain, the actual production environment will require the running node machine hardware to have a better configuration. At the same time, consider To save labor costs for members to maintain and deploy nodes, Docker (container) is usually used for deployment, while blockchain systems that prefer public chains will want to support more forms of terminal nodes, such as additional support for home desktops machine, Raspberry (Raspberry Pi), mining machine, etc.
5. The potential of blockchain:
In 2016, the development of blockchain technology has made a lot of important progress, and various new technologies and new blockchain system projects are in full bloom. The public chain and the alliance chain of the blockchain learn from and learn from each other, and continue to promote each other's development. From Taoism to art, from art to form a new way or to improve one's own way. Dao and art are intertwined.
The following summarizes the application of mainstream blockchains to public chains and alliance chains.
For the public chain, on the one hand, the encrypted digital currency market continues to flourish. Bitcoin still has an absolute advantage and the currency price has soared. However, in the past two years, several new digital currencies such as Ethereum and Zcash have also attracted extreme market attention. Great attention. At the same time, the positions of various countries on digital currencies are very contradictory. In view of the various disadvantages of the current legal currency system and the advantages of digital currencies, some countries restrict the use and development of digital currencies such as Bitcoin, while some countries vigorously promote them. More Actively research and develop its own digital currency. It is worth mentioning that my country's central bank has made new progress in the issuance of digital currency. The blockchain-based digital bill trading platform promoted by the central bank has been successfully tested. The legal digital currency issued by the central bank has been put into trial operation on the platform. The analysis of the "dao" and "law" of the blockchain should belong to the category of the alliance chain.
On the other hand, innovators are full of enthusiasm for decentralized applications based on public chains. They are applying blockchain technology to various other network services and developing new decentralized applications. The integration of decentralized services to form higher-level decentralized applications, and their new DApp applications are being launched iteratively, such as decentralized file storage systems IPFS and Storj, decentralized stock exchange Bitshare, decentralized online Market OpenBazaar, decentralized prediction augur and GNOSIS, etc., everyone is exploring the dreamland of a decentralized, autonomous Internet like Web3.0.
For the alliance chain, large international financial institutions are optimistic about the development potential of blockchain technology, and have established blockchain laboratories and alliances (such as R3 and various domestic blockchain alliance associations, which are not exactly the same as the alliance chain). concept, but it is also the social basis for the aggregation of offline entities of the alliance chain) and other institutions to actively promote the application and exploration of blockchain technology. In the research on consortium chain, the current exploration of financial institutions mainly focuses on cross-border payment, inter-bank settlement, asset custody, credit contract, bill transaction, collateral management and other fields, while the exploration of commercial institutions mainly focuses on depository and supply chain finance In other fields, they each researched their own application scenarios and main solution ideas, and selected some non-core businesses for landing trials. Technically, the architecture designs of several leading companies in the industry tend to be modularized, distributed transactions, sharding (ledgers, transactions), and sub-chains. Relying on code re-encapsulation can achieve standardized pluggability, and also integrate public chain projects. The new design of the research is absorbed, such as ring signature, homomorphic encryption, and zero-knowledge proof technology to solve the privacy protection problem of blockchain. The technology and software engineering ideas of the alliance chain have inspired the public chain technology, and thus strategy technologies such as fragmentation processing and state channels have been born.
in conclusion:
"The way is positive, the technique is positive, and the result is twice the result with half the effort; the way is positive, and the technique is negative, the result is twice the result with half the effort" ——We need to see clearly and clearly the way of the blockchain that we are going, and firmly follow the Dao and the art, if you choose The blockchain is not the way you follow and is not suitable for your use case. Even if it adopts how gorgeous the technology, it is still difficult to grow in the end, and the greater the development, the greater the constraints will be.
"The Taoism is inexhaustible, this Tao is the other Tao's arts, alternating with each other, and even endless." - At the same time, you should not stick to or even resist the magic tools under other Taos, such as thinking that the alliance chain must be inferior to the public chain. Magic tools used in different ways are worth learning from each other and can complement each other. In addition to the magic tool, you also need to pay attention to the soil where you build the blockchain application, which will greatly affect your current growth rate. For example, in China, the reason why the alliance chain project is more deeply and deeply developed in China. The main reason for the landing is that the soil in many commercial fields will be more suitable for the landing and growth of the alliance chain. For public chain projects, while adhering to the heart of the Tao, it is necessary to calm down in the hustle and bustle of the currency circle, see clearly the soil and environment of the landing, and slowly deepen the cultivation. Maybe the road of development will take longer, but the fruits of the harvest will definitely be more hearty. Finally, whether it is a public chain or an alliance chain, we should adopt a more open and inclusive mentality, adopt and learn the magic tools in other Taos, take the essence, absorb and integrate them into the framework of Tao's own Tao, and finally make our own more perfect. and beautiful.
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