The blockchain has experienced ups and downs in 2017. From the rapid development at the beginning of the year, it entered the trough in September, and entered a crazy stage after just two or three months. The overall market value exceeded more than 600 billion U.S. dollars when it peaked. It has now been cut in half, with a market size of only 200 billion U.S. dollars (August 16, 2018). Bitcoin has gone from a peak of 20,000 USD to more than 6,500 USD now (August 16, 2018).
Many readers have asked: The current blockchain attention is far less than before. For investors, is the blockchain worthy of long-term follow-up? Is the blockchain valuable? Is the blockchain only speculative value?
So, let us go back to the original point, that is, how to understand the blockchain? Is it to use Ethereum to issue a coin, or to package traditional projects with elements of distributed ledger records, or to apply a token model. Are these blockchains? Is the blockchain a Ponzi scheme?
Blockchain has distributed ledger, consensus mechanism, token incentive system, P2P network, cryptography, community, governance mechanism, smart contract, etc. For these technical details and principles, you can pay attention to the articles before the "Blue Fox Notes" public account. Today, I want to share some of the deeper meanings behind the blockchain.
The blockchain already has 1843 listed digital currencies or tokens (coinmarketcap, data on August 16). In addition to Bitcoin, there are also Ethereum, EOS, ADA, 0X, Augur, Holo, Bancor, etc. Are there any There are many projects in each field, such as public chain, digital currency, lending, decentralized exchange protocol, games, prediction market, etc. Although the overall market performance is sluggish, the number of projects is still increasing.
Summarizing in one sentence may not fully express the meaning of blockchain.
From the perspective of Blue Fox Notes, then, how to understand the blockchain? How to understand blockchain investment?
1. Blockchain is an open and irreversible ledgerBlockchain is an open, transparent, and non-tamperable ledger, which is its most basic meaning. Since the bookkeeper is not a centralized subject, it is through a certain consensus mechanism, such as PoW mining competition, no one can control the ledger and no one can tamper with the ledger. The seemingly simple decentralized ledger hides a huge amount of energy.
The reason is simple. The very important reason why mankind has become the master of the earth is that mankind can cooperate and exchange. All human behaviors can essentially be recorded through the ledger. For example, the social welfare system and the taxation system are all ledgers.
If it is a reliable government, when you own a house, you register on the real estate ledger managed by the government, and you own the property rights of the house because you can trust the government. But if it is an unreliable government, your real estate or land records can be changed to someone else’s name or directly owned by the government. This is not a fantasy. This happened in a certain country in Central America.
Similarly, if you have assets stored in a bank, you must trust the bank. The music or important information you like to listen to is stored on the cloud, and you must trust the network service provider.
We have no choice but to believe. But one day, Internet service providers begin to analyze your data, push ads to you, or shut down.
Just like P2P finance, it can go bankrupt at any time, and many people suffer a lot of losses. Do we have other options? The more we rely, the smaller the choice. But blockchain brings new options. It is a transparent and irreversible ledger that is publicly recorded.
Once it is recognized by enough people, there is no need to worry about the property being tampered with by others, no content is taken down, no need to worry about the risk of financial default.
why? For example, with the decentralized IPFS blockchain, there is no need to worry about storage content being removed or lost, and with mortgage-based smart contract lending, there is no need to worry about running away from centralized financial platforms.
Why can't it be tampered with? The reason is that there is a consensus mechanism, such as Bitcoin’s PoW mechanism. If a person wants to change data, he needs at least 51% of the computing power, and many blocks need to be rewritten. It takes a huge cost to complete so much work in 10 minutes. At the same time, there is no benefit to myself.
Some people say that the data of the blockchain is carved on a stone and cannot be changed. Some people say that it is written in the sky and everyone can see it. That is the truth. Of course, in order to reach a consensus on decentralization, the current efficiency is relatively low, for example, Bitcoin tps is only 7. But for some areas with high inflation, Bitcoin has a certain role in maintaining value.
2. Blockchain is a self-operating systemThe greatest thing about blockchain is not decentralization. Decentralization, like centralization, is just a way for humans to achieve their goals.
The greatest thing about it is that it has achieved a self-operating system through decentralization, consensus mechanisms, and incentive systems. This is unprecedented. The organizational model of human history has always been centralized and requires an authority to organize and operate.
A few pages of Bitcoin's white paper has brought to the world a cryptocurrency with a market value of more than 100 billion U.S. dollars. It has a computer network that is 10,000 times larger than the top 500 supercomputers. It has mining companies, hardware manufacturers, exchanges, and developers. , A huge ecosystem of traders, investors, and users.
It shows the first large-scale collaboration model in human history that is not achieved through a centralized organization. It has the opportunity to connect everyone on earth in the future.
Of course, it is normal for human beings to need a centralized way to achieve their goals, and this kind of efficiency is also the highest. As human beings develop from tribes to larger social groups, the trust between people is constantly being diluted. Collaboration and transactions between people need to be guaranteed by a centralized entity to ensure that both parties to the transaction can complete the transaction as promised, and provide bookkeeping services, guarantees, security and other stable orders.
Centralization is as important as decentralization, each has its own advantages, and both are important ways for humans to achieve their goals.
Why can e-commerce platforms, O2O platforms, and sharing economy platforms become the biggest beneficiaries in the Internet era? This is also because they provide centralized services.
But the centralized approach also has corruption, security issues, and manipulation issues. For example, the recent financial P2P platform with frequent thunderstorms is a notable case. Blockchain provides another option, which is to form a self-operating system based on open ledgers, consensus mechanisms, incentive mechanisms, and smart contracts.
Bitcoin is the best example. In the entire Bitcoin system, there is no real centralized body, it is composed of miners, developers, currency holders, exchanges, etc. who keep accounts. There is a certain community consensus that everyone can keep the system running for their own benefit.
Another example is through the Ethereum smart contract, we can set certain conditions, no one can close it.
3. Blockchain is the new way of organizationSince the blockchain is a self-operating system, it also brings a new way of organization. It will have a community governance ecology, rather than a traditional centralized way of governance. For example, the corporate governance model may be inappropriate in the blockchain era.
The traditional company is a shareholding system thinking, and the blockchain model is a real community ecological thinking. Traditional companies are pursuing profits. By obtaining the maximum profit and returning to shareholders, it is difficult to achieve user first. Sometimes companies say that, but most of them are limited to verbal appeals, which is almost impossible in nature. .
Because the existence of a company organization is based on profit to measure its value, as long as there is a good profit, the company's valuation will rise and the shares will become more valuable.
As long as you have worked in a traditional company, you will have similar feelings, and the company is not much worse. It's hard to regain the original intentions in the early days of entrepreneurship. Some traditional Internet giants have had scandals about the use of user information before, and the core is their business model itself. They must have user data in order to continue to make profits.
The blockchain has changed this relationship for the first time. The value of the project no longer depends on the profit itself, but comes from the use and recognition of community users. As long as the community ecology can be recycled, it will be valuable. The value of this system does not lie in profit, and it does not matter if it is not profitable. As long as there is a circular system for generating, acquiring and consuming tokens, as long as it can run positively, its token value has the opportunity to appreciate. All in the ecosystem Everyone can benefit from this. It should be noted here that this cycle is based on the labor, contribution, and return within the system, that is, it must have real value to make sense.
In this process, unlike listed companies, profit is not important. What is important is the basic value of the token and the recognition of community users. Just look at Bitcoin and Ethereum. At present, Bitcoin is worth more than 100 billion U.S. dollars and Ethereum is worth more than 28 billion U.S. dollars. Where are their profits? Where is the profit? It's not important, it's important to its network effects, how many developers and how many users are using them. On the basis of value, token can also make the system positively circulate.
Traditional corporate organizations have a CEO and a board of directors. Shareholders decide whether to change the CEO, and a third-party audit is needed to see if there are any problems with the company's accounts. In order to motivate employees, employees need to be given options.
However, the blockchain can achieve collaboration through accounting, consensus, tokens, encryption, etc. Everyone has the same interests, so that the system can operate normally and grow stronger.
Here you don’t need to arrange a corporate governance mechanism, no CEO, board of directors, no employee options, no employee salaries, no organization of suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors. These industrial roles will organize themselves and join or exit according to the incentive mechanism. Since there is no middle party, the value distribution is more direct, and all participants can benefit.
For example, based on the blockchain-based sharing economy, there is no need to pay for Airbnb and Uber platforms. For example, direct peer-to-peer transactions between landlords and guests, drivers and passengers do not need to hand in 20% of the profits to the platform party, which will allow both parties to have greater Enthusiasm, create greater value increment.
The blockchain has a trusted ledger record, a consensus mechanism, cryptographic support, a unified community goal and agreement regulations, a token economic model, and a trusted token. These are the foundations that support its existence as an organizational form.
Of course, centralization and decentralization mechanisms each have their own advantages, and the efficiency of centralization is unmatched by current decentralization.
4. Blockchain is a parallel worldWhere the blockchain is related to the real world, such as the establishment of digital virtual tokens for real assets. With the development of time, real estate, cars, human time, knowledge, performance, and art can all be tokenized.
These tokenized assets will run in the virtual world of the blockchain. In this virtual world, it is not a complete mapping of the real world, it has its own development logic. For example, Bitcoin on the blockchain has the same value storage function as gold, but the golden section is very inconvenient and inconvenient to carry. Bitcoin is different. Having a private key can circulate freely across countries.
For example, projects that issue stable currencies will issue their own tokens and bonds based on algorithms to control the total supply, which is different from the monetary policy in the real world.
With the increase of tokenized assets, the virtual world of the blockchain itself, such as virtualized games, also has its own logic, which will produce many virtual items that can be valued. It is different from offline collectibles and will have the value of the blockchain era.
From the perspective of blockchain governance, as on-chain governance matures, it will identify the weight of voting. With the maturity of on-chain governance, a governance model completely different from offline may be born. This is still being explored and has many shortcomings, but there will be a lot of room in the future. This is also a new thing that has never been seen in human history.
5. Blockchain is not hypeAs a concept, blockchain is used to hype and collect money. It is true. In particular, many projects apply the concept of blockchain to continuous harvesting, which makes the meaning of the blockchain industry itself change. This is something that anyone who wants to work in this industry for a long time is unwilling to see it.
In addition, until today, the blockchain has only been used for value storage, financing and issuance, and some games. Most of the blockchain projects have not been implemented, especially in terms of scalability.
But the blockchain itself is innocent. It is not hype. Bitcoin has become a digital currency for storing value, with tens of millions of addresses. For users in certain areas, it is the best value-preserving tool. Unlike gold, it is easy to carry and circulate.
Ethereum has helped many blockchain projects achieve fundraising (it is undeniable that many of them are bad projects), and applications such as games and lending are constantly exploring landing scenarios.
Not only that, but there are also many new projects being explored, such as Basis, a stable currency for decentralized algorithms, IoTex, a decentralized transaction protocol that solves Internet of Things problems, Bancor, a lending service Lendchain, as well as Oasis, Celer, holochain, algorand , Nucyper, theta, etc.
The blockchain will definitely have value in the future. Mathematics is the greatest consensus of mankind. For human beings to collaborate, develop, and reach a consensus, they need a greatest common divisor. This is mathematics. When human cooperation becomes more and more transparent and open, mathematics is the key to this goal.
If mathematics is the greatest consensus of mankind, this hides the simplest reason why the blockchain will definitely be bullish in the future. No matter how tortuous the road ahead. ... .
Taleb said:
History leaps forward. It is always inadvertently, jumping on the fault that we can't imagine. Suddenly I woke up one day and the world was completely different.
The huge controversy, chaos, and suffering of the blockchain are a necessary process before the jump.
If the total market value of the blockchain world in the future exceeds 1 trillion US dollars, 10 trillion US dollars, Blue Fox Note will not be any surprise.
6. Blockchain is not a panaceaBlockchain cannot have both security, decentralization and performance, so until now, it has had problems with scalability, transaction fees, tps, etc. For example, compared with the current centralized institutions, tps has a very big gap. At the same time, decentralization is inefficient and costly in order to reach a consensus.
It is unfair and unnecessary to compare the weaknesses of the blockchain with the strengths of the centralized model. There is also a question to be raised here. Blockchain is not a panacea. Just as the Internet was not a panacea back then, the Internet has been calling for so many years to replace offline entities. As a result, Internet companies continue to deploy offline entities in the end.
It is unreasonable to try to solve all problems with the blockchain, and it is also questionable to try to form the concept of "blockchain+". Blockchain is a blockchain. It has its strengths, especially in the field of digital currency, finance, gaming, sharing economy, etc. It has natural advantages, but its shortcomings are also obvious, that is, if you take care of the decentralization Performance will become a shortcoming.
The best way is for God to belong to God and Caesar to Caesar. The reality is complicated, and some projects require pure decentralization. This performance improvement is not appropriate, such as Bitcoin. Some need to be partly centralized and partly decentralized. For example, the transfer of information to the Internet and the transfer of value to the blockchain. This process may be compounded, or there may be balanced exploration.
High Voltage Inverter For Car,Car Inverter,Power Inverter,High Voltage Inverter
SUZHOU DEVELPOWER ENERGY EQUIPMENT CO.,LTD , https://www.fisoph-power.com