The rise of any new thing, the perfection of a new ecology and the formation of a new trend are never achieved overnight, but are a gradual process of retreating into three and moving forward. Under the background of the accelerated evolution of human economy and society from offline mode to online mode, digital economy has become an important part of new quality productivity. However, although the market has been full of expectations for the development of Meta, Metaverse and Web 3.0 in recent years, the construction of the environmental system of the digital economy still faces many key problems and technical bottlenecks. From the current development path, the breakthrough of blockchain technology in the next stage will have an important impact on the digital economy from quantitative change to qualitative change.
Looking ahead, blockchain technology is expected to enable peer-to-peer transactions in the digital economy, thereby reducing transaction costs, improving transaction efficiency, promoting innovation and creating business opportunities. Blockchain technology will greatly improve the security and privacy protection of each transaction, and help control risks in the development of the digital economy; Blockchain technology can also promote the development of cooperation and sharing economy models in the digital economy, enabling automated contract execution and decentralized resource sharing through smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps).
However, it is worth emphasizing that there are still many technical challenges and ecological constraints in the beautiful vision, and this is also the direction of seeking breakthroughs. Based on recent academic explorations, we summarize the biggest technical bottlenecks facing the current development of blockchain technology, and summarize the attempts of the scientific and industrial communities to address these challenges through core solutions; On this basis, combined with the current market testing of core solutions, we estimate the "singularity moment" when blockchain technology achieves a leapfrog breakthrough.
In short, the future is coming, and I believe that every bit of human economic and social progress will eventually constitute a magnificent journey to the sea of stars.
The key point for blockchain technology to seek a qualitative breakthrough is to solve scalability and privacy protection. At present, the core challenges that blockchain technology needs to solve include scalability, privacy protection, energy efficiency, and legal and regulatory challenges. Among them, scalability issues and privacy protection are the core issues that the current blockchain technology needs to solve.
Privacy issues in blockchain technology refer to the fact that on a public blockchain, transaction and account information is visible to all, which may reveal users' personal privacy and trade secrets. From the perspective of customer experience, because the blockchain transaction records are public, true anonymous transactions cannot be realized, resulting in a lack of security for users in the transaction payment process.
Lack of scalability and privacy concerns lead to two further problems: performance issues and energy consumption. The performance problem is due to the distributed nature of the blockchain, resulting in low scalability, which limits the application performance of the blockchain in different scenarios.
For example, Bitcoin's blockchain can only process a few transactions per second, which directly limits the blockchain to be difficult to achieve widespread application in high-throughput scenarios, and users' experience of using blockchain becomes more complex. In addition, the privacy of blockchains is based on consensus mechanisms, which typically require large amounts of computing power and energy consumption. For example, the mining process of Bitcoin requires a lot of electricity. This not only increases the running cost of the blockchain, but also has a negative impact on the environment.
The layered expansion of the ecosystem and zero-knowledge proof accelerate the solution of key bottlenecks of blockchain, and the general blockchain will be highly integrated with AI models to promote human society to enter the virtual world. The collaborative network formed on blockchain transactions in the future is very likely to be integrated with neural network algorithms, which may substantially promote human beings to truly enter the virtual world. Questions about privacy on the blockchain. The solutions proposed by current AI scientists are largely based on "zero-knowledge proofs" (a cryptographic protocol that allows verification without revealing specific information).
Specifically, to address privacy concerns, the researchers proposed a privacy-enhancing protocol called Privacy Pools. The protocol utilizes zero-knowledge (ZK) technology to allow users to generate a new withdrawal address that is not related to previous transactions, enabling anonymous transactions.
Synchronous, zero-knowledge based technology, users can prove for themselves on a new withdrawal address that their withdrawal was made through a previous deposit by selecting limited dataset information (this proof process is considered aggregated storage proof), so that users can finally prove that the source of their funds is not related to criminal activity.
In addition, Privacy Pools can modify and improve its privacy enhancement protocol according to different compliance environments in different markets, thereby ensuring that privacy enhancement meets local regulatory requirements and providing the possibility for financial privacy and regulatory coexistence.
The breakthrough time of the key technical bottleneck of blockchain is expected to be 5-10 years, and all walks of life may begin to change due to blockchain.
The versatility of blockchain will also revolutionize the real economy. For example, 1) everyone will have a trusted digital identity. Digital identity enables people to verify their real identity efficiently and quickly (in seconds) in different scenarios and applications. 2) Reform of the data property rights system. Personal data has clear attribution and use rules, personal data sovereignty is guaranteed, and any use of personal data information on the network will be traced. 3) The popularity of smart contract applications. Routine processes such as leasing, lending, etc. are automated by software. 4) Financial services are fully on-chain. Financial products and services, from banking to insurance to securities, enable efficient, secure, and compliant online peer-to-peer transactions. 5) Reshaping the valuable logistics system. Property rights and transaction processes for all types of items can be managed automatically and transparently and efficiently. 6) Raw material supply chain upgrade. The traceability and quality of raw materials can be transparently tracked and monitored throughout the process. 7) The healthcare system will share information. For example, there is no need to provide duplicate information between doctors and patients, which greatly improves efficiency; Individual cases can be shared safely between doctors and hospitals, which is conducive to diagnosis and collaborative diagnosis and treatment; The pharmaceutical industry chain adopts blockchain traceability to effectively monitor quality and prevent counterfeit and shoddy products; Medical insurance business can be processed quickly online, making insurance claims more efficient and fair. 8) Education system reform. For example, the digitization of students' personal achievement records, the sharing of teaching material resources, the settlement of tuition fees and other transactions are completed on the blockchain, the digitization of degrees and certificates, and the simplified verification procedures promote mobile employment.
(Cheng Shi is the Chief Economist of ICBC International)
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