On November 8^th, the World Blockchain Conference hosted by 8BTC was held in Wuzhen. The founders of Bytom, NEO, Qtum, and Conflux gathered to talk about the future of Chinese public blockchain.

Competition or cooperation? As giants are entering the field

Key points:

Chang Jia, founder of Bytom: Consortium blockchain and public blockchain are not opponents, both of them apply blockchain in different ways. At the same time, they are integrating both in consensus mechanism and application.

Shuai Chu, founder of Qtum: Public blockchain gives many ideas to consortium blockchain, but in some traditional fields of IT service, consortium blockchain will be the first to be applied.

Da Hongfei, founder of NEO: Consortium blockchain and public blockchain will co-exist as they are distinct.

Wu Ming, founder of Conflux: Sidechain may be the bridge for the integration of Consortium blockchain and public blockchain.

Zhu Bo, founder of Midu: Public blockchain is the basic infrastructure in the future, and consortium blockchain is more like vertical industry application, so they are not opponents.

Q1: Internet giants like Alibaba, Tencent are speeding up the pace of blockchain. Ant Financial announced the online test of “open consortium blockchain” at yesterday’s opening ceremony. It can be seen from the formulation of giants that in the past two years, public blockchain and consortium blockchain actually have a trend of integration and a more open attitude. In such a new situation, how do domestic public blockchain face the challenge of giants? Is there competition? Or how to cooperate?

Chang Jia: We don’t have too much pressure as we face the challenge of consortium blockchain. The giant’s consortium blockchain solution and the public blockchain are not opponents, but comrades of different racetracks. Both of us use different ways to apply the blockchain technology, but we don’t exclude the integration at a certain stage of development. Ant Finance’s open consortium blockchain is now concerning about openness, but in the past, it only focus on access consensus.

In addition, there are several integration trends. On the one hand, the consortium blockchain should be open, on the other hand, the public blockchain should be both compliant and independent. Although the public blockchain is uncontrollable at first, it should also be adjusted with the regulatory refinement (such as meeting the domestic market demand and regulatory environment).

I would like to share my opinion about the integration of public blockchain and consortium blockchain. For the integration of consensus mechanism, some projects’ algorithms have both POW and POS features. In addition, the baas platform like Bytom supports not only POW mining algorithm, but also Byzantine fault tolerance algorithms such as BFT. Turn it into a pluggable way, and turn it into any consensus algorithms we want, so that the consensus mechanism becomes a choice, which is the integration of consensus mechanisms.

For the integration of application, there is no pure application of public blockchain and consortium blockchain. In the past, we put the application of blockchain on the opposite side of app when we talked about Dapp as Dapp comes from app. But now we find that there may be an intermediate solution, that is, there may be an integrated application between DApp and app, that is, BApp, which can have the characteristics of both Dapp and app, such as users managing their own accounts, addresses, data and even assets through private keys, or using the characteristics of blockchain that can’t be tampered with to provide certificate services. But in some aspects, it has high efficiency and centralized processing of app.

Q2: Have you ever mentioned the concept of BApp?

Shuai Chu: Yes, I mentioned BApp in the World Blockchain Conference last year. In terms of application, t decentralization or centralization can not increase the application scenarios or expand the value of the application as it is more about ideology. The public blockchain is full of idealism which brings many ideas and technologies that can be used for consortium blockchain.

In terms of compliance for public blockchain, I don’t think there is a clear answer at this stage. I think there will be a path which gradually becomes clear over time. To promote the development of blockchain , the first step for the state should be in the field of consortium blockchain to replace many traditional IT services without credibility.

Da Hongfei: Consortium blockchain and public blockchain are totally different. A more accurate description of the public chain should be the unlicensed blockchain. Running any business on it does not require a centralized organization to approve, while the consortium blockchain has threshold and management mechanism.

Wu Ming: There won’t be too fierce competition between giants and entrepreneurial teams in public blockchain. In addition to engineering, public chain has is more theoretical, so that giants can not take advantage of the many engineers in the development of public chain. Because the public chain is about decentralization, giants may not have much intention to do it as the giants itself represents a kind of centralization.

Zhu Bo: I think the public chain and the consortium blockchain are in different dimensions. The public chain will be the basic infrastructure in the future. The consortium blockchain is more like a vertical industry application, so there is no competition between them. Microsoft and other large enterprises in the public chain will work on public chain. The public chain of the future is actually the lowest infrastructure operating system of the future network, which requires a high level of TPS.

How do we work on domestic public chain as cross-chain technology is popular?

Q3: Cross-chain is still a hot technical topic discussed in recent two years. At present, major public chain projects all have a cross chain plan with varied focuses. Please talk about the progress in cross-chain.

Chang Jia: Compared with Bytom’s cross-chain scheme and the current cross-chain schemes such as cosmos, they are different as they essentially cross chain through the complex exchange of smart contracts. I think there are some difficulties in efficiency and governance as cross chain itself involves the issue of assets, which emphasize who is responsible for. Bytom regards the federal node as an ecological partner, building ecology through cross chain and obtaining huge benefits, which makes everyone become a very powerful commercial federal group, a bit like the current federal governance scheme of Libra.

Shuai Chu: Qtum is mainly from the perspective of privacy, such as some valuable assets, which should not be transparent. Some information for business purposes should not be transparent. So we have done a lot of cross chain research from the perspective of privacy. In the future, smart contracts will be commercialized on a large scale, and there may be many data interaction requirements or logical interaction requirements. I think at that stage, it’s possible that cross chain can really play its advantages.

Da Hongfei: Most people talk about is the cross chain of assets, from chain A to chain B. Because the goal we want to achieve is to update the Internet architecture, the cross chain we do is a superset, the data asset transfer is a subset, and the superset is the consistency of data assets.

Q4: For cross chain, are you optimistic about relevant applications?

Xin Kong: I think security problem should be solved first. For many cross chain implementations, the private key must be online in real-time. It is a hot database with security problems.

Zhu Bo: Blockchain must have a DID and decentralized personal identity. The public and private keys owned by this identity should be able to be used in all public chains in the future, so as to solve the problem of information confirmation.

The discussion of public blockchain’s evolution

Key points:

Chang Jia, founder of Bytom: Although the public chains explore in different directions but ultimately the same way back.

Shuai Chu, founder of Qtum: It is difficult for public chain to become the infrastructure of the next Internet, but it can become a new protocol of clearing and settlement for the next Internet applications with high value.

Wu Ming, founder of Conflux: The public chain should have continuous technology output capacity and solve new problems.

Zhu Bo, founder of Midu: The public chain’s TPS must achieve certain performance to support value exchange in the future.

Q5: What the evolution of public Blockchain will be?

Shuai Chu: The ultimate goal of the public chain is to become a clearing and settlement agreement with high value circulation symbols. The public chain does not naturally have strong computing and storage capabilities. It is difficult for public chain to become the infrastructure of the next Internet, but it can become a new protocol of clearing and settlement for the next Internet applications with high value.

Wu Ming: There are many directions for the next generation of public chain, in fact, public chain has many components, including storage, network, execution and consensus, which will become the bottleneck of the system. If we want to make blockchain performance better, we must make continuous breakthroughs in all aspects. For the public chain team, it is important to have continuous technology output capability.