Wang Anping: Blockchain may subvert Taobao's business model

Blockchain has emerged amidst a chorus of praise and has become a god-like existence.

What is Blockchain? Let's start with Bitcoin. First of all, don't think of Bitcoin as a currency, but as a ledger. It is an electronic ledger, and each participant's computer on the network has a copy of the ledger, and all copies are continuously updated, reconciled, and synchronized in real time. Each participant can make an entry in this ledger, which records a certain amount of coins from one participant to another, and each such entry is then broadcast to the network in real time, so that every copy on every computer is updated almost synchronously, and all copies of the ledger are kept in sync. The official name of this public, distributed ledger is "blockchain".

Goldman Sachs executives have expressed their willingness to embrace blockchain technology on different occasions, IBM has established a blockchain laboratory, the UK has issued an electronic currency license, and the People's Bank of China has deployed a special team to study blockchain technology... All these signs show that blockchain is infiltrating more industries. In 2015, the global blockchain industry has received nearly $1 billion in investment, and the spring of the blockchain industry has arrived. Blockchain technology is increasingly entering the public eye and providing more possibilities for the world.

Nowadays, when people use the word "blockchain", sometimes they refer to data structures, sometimes to databases, and sometimes to database technology. So, what kind of business model can blockchain establish, and what kind of revolutionary potential does it have? What earth-shaking changes will blockchain bring? Wang Anping, Secretary General of the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, answered them one by one.

"Life Times": Blockchain technology has the opportunity to reconstruct the infrastructure of banks and third-party payments from the bottom up, subverting the existing financial landscape that everyone is familiar with. So what kind of business model will blockchain build?

Wang Anping: Everyone has an account, everything has an account, and everything has an account. Establishing an account book that is completely consistent with people, things, events, and time, and is interlocking, inseparable, objective, true, and cannot be tampered with is the foundation for building a trustworthy society. Blockchain, as an Internet application layer protocol, is a block record, chain connection, widely deployed, shared, open, and on-demand account chain network application system based on consensus mechanisms, smart contracts, asymmetric encryption, and distributed storage technologies. It aims to solve the trust and value transfer problems caused by users, platforms, and terminals on the Internet not knowing, understanding, and being unfamiliar with each other. It has basic characteristics such as decentralization, non-repudiation, non-tamperability, and security and irreversibility.

The blockchain protocol can transform the existing Internet, which is full of mixed information, difficult to distinguish between true and false, controlled and managed by a few people, and used for information transmission, into a new generation of Internet that is irrefutable, tamper-proof, decentralized, objective and true, and at the same time conveys trust and value. The development of blockchain technology and the popularization of industrial applications are conducive to establishing an objective, authentic, honest, fair, non-discriminatory, and orderly cyberspace, and reshaping the culture, values, and value orientation of the existing network; it is conducive to the better application and development of the Internet in the basic, key, and core areas related to the national economy such as finance and industry; it is conducive to simplifying and reducing the cost of Internet application development and supervision, facilitating mass entrepreneurship and innovation, and allowing the whole society to better share the fruits of cyberspace development. The development of blockchain is the only way for China to transform from a cyber power to a cyber power.

From the perspective of the financial field, the essence of currency is the convenience of transactions, the essence of finance is asset transactions and risk management, and the essence of the market economy is equal, free and credible transactions between various entities. Blockchain originated from the application of Bitcoin in the financial field of the Internet. It has a natural gene for the development of financial applications and is completely consistent with the concept of modern financial development and supervision. Under the current development trend of Internet finance with chaos, hegemony and plunder, the development and popularization of blockchain technology is a timely rain and a good medicine to promote the standardized and healthy development of financial Internet. Blockchain will build a modern network financial system that is safer, faster, lower cost, more efficient, and more people can participate in, and reconstruct the business model and operation mode of various financial fields including banking, securities, insurance, investment and financing. At present, 80% of the global blockchain technology and applications are in the traditional financial field, showing a model of alliance and systematization to accelerate development.

Life Times: Some people say that Taobao’s business model will be disrupted. What do you think of the transformative potential of blockchain?

Wang Anping: The characteristics of blockchain technology enable it to realize some business models that are difficult to realize under the centralized model, and drive the birth of new business models. For example, the application of blockchain technology in the field of online shopping can give birth to a new business model that breaks through the Taobao model. This new model may be sold through social networks or other P2P methods. In the future, more will be directly from the factory end or the source end to the hands of consumers, and it is more likely that production will be customized directly according to consumer demand. In other words, the existing supply chain model may change. The manufacturer of the product can write the number of qualified products it produces on the blockchain, and the demander can also write the number of qualified products it needs and user information on the blockchain. Since the data on the blockchain cannot be tampered with, it can speed up the transaction and meet customer needs. It can also eliminate the existence and proliferation of counterfeit and shoddy products to a certain extent.

"Life Times": What earth-shaking changes will blockchain bring, and how will it change our lives?

Wang Anping: Blockchain technology is regarded as one of the main protocols of the next generation of value Internet. Blockchain technology will be useful in any field of production and life where trust is lacking. From digital currency to securities and financial contracts, mutual insurance, education, registration and transfer of power, gambling, anti-counterfeiting, Internet of Things, smart contracts, and activities like tourism, it can also be widely used in the fields of public welfare and social governance such as identity authentication, judicial arbitration, voting, health management, artificial intelligence and decentralized social organizations, which will greatly change our future lives.

Life Times: Compared with foreign blockchain technology, what is the gap between domestic blockchain technology and foreign blockchain technology? What kind of commercial value will blockchain bring us in the future?

Wang Anping: I think that in today's blockchain technology, China and foreign countries are at the same starting line, and there is no big gap. However, the environment on both sides of the same starting line is different. Silicon Valley VCs and entrepreneurs are willing to invest in the research and development of the underlying technology platform, while the entire market environment in China is more concerned about whether the West has a mature model. There is a big difference in the investment in the underlying technology platform. For example, Europe and the United States have invested a lot in the underlying technology of blockchain. Many large IT companies have established alliances and developed open source code protocols to achieve applications in smart contracts. Dozens of the world's largest financial institutions have formed the R3CEV Alliance and are writing an open source, universal "shared ledger" to greatly reduce the coordination costs between these institutions. For China, more aspects are in the application aspect.

The future of blockchain will bring us:

(1) We will have more options for establishing "credit". Traditional "credit" methods are basically centralized, with currency relying on the "central bank" and settlement relying on the "bank". Now we can choose blockchain to record accounts across the entire network to establish our credit. Once this kind of credit is established, it is global, which means that value can be transferred at high speed and low cost;

(2) Blockchain isomorphic to the entire network, and has the potential to form a basic protocol for global "credit", that is, it can automatically eliminate credit information such as "false information", "fraudulent information", and "double payment", providing basic "credit" resources and low-cost value transfer channels for the global market;

(3) Blockchain is able to eliminate redundant and erroneous information through “intelligent protocols”, allowing the entire network to form a large-scale distributed computing system, which is actually a “global brain”;

(4) The popularization of blockchain technology will undoubtedly accelerate the execution of the basic protocol of natural evolution, “survival of the fittest,” and will make the pace of prosperity and innovation of human civilization even faster!

Life Times: What obstacles will blockchain technology encounter in the process of advancement? What is the original intention of the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance and how will it play a role?

Wang Anping: There are also some obstacles in the process of promoting blockchain technology. For example, it is still difficult to handle high-frequency transactions. It is also challenging to maintain personal privacy in an open network. How to protect the private key in the encryption algorithm also needs to be studied and addressed. There are also some national policies and regulations that need to be clarified, etc. It should be made clear that blockchain technology has gradually attracted the attention of relevant government departments, and the regulatory authorities are currently open to it.

At present, the research on blockchain technology in China has just started, and most of them are small-scale startups, lacking the promotion of formal institutions and organizations. Therefore, it is necessary to form a large and strong alliance through the alliance to promote the rapid development of industries such as cyberspace information technology in the future and radiate the whole country and even the world, improve the research, application and development level of my country in the field of blockchain technology, and promote my country's related industries to go global, seize the commanding heights and discourse power of technical standards and patents in the new round of international competition, and further promote economic growth. In view of this, first-class universities such as Tsinghua University and Peking University, scientific research institutions such as China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and China Internet Network Information Center, and well-known companies such as Microsoft and 21Vianet jointly initiated the establishment of the Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance, aiming to base on the blockchain industry, give full play to the role of bridges and ties between governments, universities, research institutions, experts and enterprises, strengthen domestic and international exchanges, promote the research and application of blockchain technology, and jointly promote the development of the blockchain industry.

The Zhongguancun Blockchain Industry Alliance will conscientiously implement the state's policies on blockchain technology and industry development, and provide solid policy support, technology leadership, intellectual property rights and standardization, industrialization, basic platform construction, application innovation, network information security management, project implementation and organizational construction for blockchain. It will strengthen international cooperation, technical exchanges, event organization and publicity guidance, and actively create a policy environment and public opinion atmosphere that is conducive to the development of the blockchain industry. Based in Zhongguancun and Beijing, it will promote the popularization and rooting of blockchain-related technologies, industries and applications in China, and continuously accelerate their development globally.