Blockchain: Say goodbye to impetuousness and deeply cultivate applications
“Food traceability, electronic invoicing, logistics tracking, cross-border payments...” In 2019, blockchain's hard-core strengths such as decentralization, traceability, and tamper-proof were gradually exploited. It is no longer synonymous with Bitcoin, but is becoming a “powerful tool” that empowers thousands of industries.
Entering 2020, driven by policies, blockchain technology will continue to be optimized and integrated with various technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data as leading technology companies enter the market. At the same time, unified technical standards and perfect governance mechanisms will promote blockchain to create richer applications and achieve healthy and sustainable development.
Policies drive various regions to throw “olive branches”
Currently, countries such as China, the United States, Japan, and South Korea are vigorously promoting blockchain development, introducing blockchain support policies to guide blockchain to serve the real economy and enhance government governance capabilities. With policy support, local governments will also throw out “olive branches” this year to provide financial support for leading enterprises, industrial parks, talents, etc., to push blockchain development to the next level.
In December 2016, blockchain technology was incorporated into the “13th Five-Year Plan” National Informatization Plan and came to prominence. Over the next few years, government departments continued to introduce various policies for blockchain development, providing policy guidelines for blockchain development and promoting blockchain technology to truly empower all walks of life.
On October 24, 2019, while presiding over the 18th collective study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on the development status and trends of blockchain technology, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the need to use blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies, clarify the main direction of attack, increase investment, focus on overcoming a number of key core technologies, and accelerate the development of blockchain technology and industrial innovation.
This conference once again injected a dose of strength into blockchain development. Subsequently, various provinces and cities, led by Beijing, Shanghai, and Sui, introduced relevant policies one after another. According to statistics, the introduction of blockchain policies in November 2019 increased 140% month-on-month, and enthusiasm for industry development was at an all-time high. Currently, 17 provinces, regions, and cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Chongqing, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Guizhou, have introduced blockchain-related policies, which are mainly support-oriented. For example, in November 2019, Guangdong Province issued “Implementation Rules on Certain Measures to Accelerate Blockchain Industry Leading Change in Huangpu District of Guangzhou City and Guangzhou Development Zone”, which set up a blockchain industry fund of 1 billion yuan to focus on cultivating 1 to 3 leading enterprises in the blockchain industry every year. Those that invest 20 million yuan or more in annual R&D expenses were determined to provide an additional 10% subsidy for the portion exceeding 20 million yuan or more.
Obviously, with a good start, all parts of the country will continue to introduce various policies and increase financial support, and blockchain development will stimulate greater vitality throughout the country.
Optimizing performance to accelerate multi-technology integration
“Blockchain is still quite idealistic.” He Baohong, director of the Institute of Cloud Computing and Big Data of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said at the 2020 China Academy of Information and Communications Technology's ICT In-depth Observation Conference that blockchain is now “multi-center”; blockchain's tamper-proof properties require external management methods to correct erroneous accounts; current blockchain is no longer a chain structure, but has developed into a block map or block point structure; blockchain technology scalability is poor, and system throughput and node storage capacity are far from meeting the needs of large-scale applications. Sometimes one chain cannot solve the problem, requiring several more cross-chain, on-chain, and off-chain Integration, etc.; the existence of issues such as smart contracts and code bugs has also brought a great crisis of trust to blockchain. Therefore, the key task of blockchain in 2020 is to continuously improve technical issues.
At the same time, integration with multiple technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things will also become the main theme for the future development of blockchain. Relevant leaders of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said earlier that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will clarify the main focus, promote collaborative research, and focus on breaking through key core technologies such as smart contracts, consensus mechanisms, and cryptographic algorithms. Accelerate the deep integration of blockchain with next-generation information technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, industrial Internet, and vehicle networking, and promote integrated innovation and integrated applications.
Expanding applications to deep-water zones
With companies such as Ali, Tencent, and SF Express entering the blockchain one after another, the blockchain coin trading crisis has gradually subsided, and various industry applications, mainly in the financial sector, have been developed. With policy support, blockchain will also move towards deep-water areas, generating large-scale production-level applications with more than 10 million daily active users.
At present, blockchain has begun to shine in electronic invoicing, livelihood services, and judicial applications. In terms of electronic invoicing, after the company launched the WeChat invoicing service, users can self-apply for invoicing and one-click reimbursement through WeChat after checkout. The invoice information is synchronized to the enterprise and the tax office in real time, and the reimbursement status can be checked in real time. This can ensure that invoices are traceable, tamper-proof, and prevent secondary reimbursement; in terms of serving people's livelihood, the blockchain data sharing model is used to achieve joint maintenance and use of government data across departments and fields, bringing a better government service experience to the masses; in the administration of justice, starting in 2012, the amount of digital evidence in judicial admissibility has exceeded the number of physical and physical evidence Of Quantity. In the past three years, 89% of the approximately 5,000 intellectual property civil judgments involved electronic evidence, and over 73% of civil cases nationwide involved electronic evidence, yet the acceptance rate of this evidence is only about 10%, and blockchain technology can fix electronic evidence, make it traceable and tamper-proof, and solve the problem of judicial digital evidence.
“Blockchain is becoming a network connecting trusted data. There are many scenarios waiting to be explored in the fields of supply chain, administration of justice, bills, digital finance, etc., and the application prospects are broad.” Wei Kai, deputy director of the Institute of Cloud Computing and Big Data of the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology, said.
According to Alibaba's top ten technology trends in 2020, a large number of innovative blockchain application scenarios and multi-dimensional collaboration across industries and ecosystems will emerge in the future, and large-scale production-level blockchain applications with more than 10 million daily active users will enter the public.
Expand applications to deep-water areas, improve management, and establish uniform standards
Blockchain governance is related to the improvement of blockchain technology and the explosion of large-scale applications. Improving blockchain governance and formulating unified blockchain standards has become the consensus of the industry.
So, what are the aspects of blockchain governance? Wei Kai said that blockchain governance includes internal collaboration among participating chain nodes, coordination of rights and responsibilities, and adaptation to social security compliance requirements. In fact, blockchain, as a type of distributed computing, has no central decision-making power. At the same time, various nodes are scattered among themselves, and no uniform standard has yet been formed. At the same time, the development of any new technology needs to be guided by “technology for good”, and blockchain also needs to establish sound technical standards to meet social compliance requirements.
In response, He Baohong proposed that guidance and regulation of blockchain technology should be strengthened, research and analysis of blockchain security risks should be strengthened, development trends should be closely followed, and development rules should be actively explored. With strong policy support, continuous optimization of technology, continuous expansion of applications, and gradual improvement of governance, blockchain will fully enter a new stage.
Source: People's Post and Telegraph
