Mathematical principles in blockchain
bitcoin is equivalent to digital gold. As a generally recognized equivalent, gold naturally has monetary properties and has been regarded as a kind of currency since ancient times. Bitcoin was born in 2009 and created by a person named Nakamoto. As the earliest digital currency, it was worthless at the beginning of creation. Until 2017, the highest transaction price of bitcoin exceeded 30000 RMB. The reasons why bitcoin became a valuable digital currency are as follows:
first of all, it is like gold, as a natural mineral, The total amount of bitcoin is limited. Bitcoin can not be over issued according to its own algorithm, so there will be no rapid devaluation of currency e to excessive currency issuance. The number of bitcoin is controlled to no more than 21 million e to the algorithm, so it can not be issued in large quantities, so its value is guaranteed
If you want to understand the application of blockchain, you can refer to many books and opinions, such as illustrated blockchain, blockchain: reshaping the economy and the world, blueprint and guide of new economy, and articles of coin'an community, including a detailed understanding of the platform of coin'an community, with great strength
As the name suggests, blockchain is composed of block and chain. It is a new application mode of computer technology such as distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanism, encryption algorithm and so on. It is a kind of chain data structure that combines data blocks in order according to the time sequence, and it is a secure and reliable distributed account book that can not be tampered with and forged by means of cryptographyin 2008, in his paper bitcoin: a peer-to-peer e-cash system published by Nakamoto, he first proposed the idea of blockchain and encrypted digital currency. Starting from bitcoin, blockchain has become the underlying technology of various digital currencies
Second, the working principle of blockchain:1. The basic concepts include: (1) transaction: one operation will change the account status once, such as adding a record 2) Block: records the transaction and status data within a specified time, which is a consensus and preservation of the current account status 3) Chain: it is composed of a series of blocks in chronological order, which is the log record of the whole state change. If you understand the working concept of blockchain, it is not difficult to understand its working principle. Suppose there is a distributed data logbook, which can only be added, not deleted or changed. Its structure is a linear chain formed by a series of "blocks" (which is also the source of the name of "blockchain"), and new data must be put into a new block to be added, The maintenance node can propose a new block, but it must go through a certain consensus mechanism to reach an agreement on the final selected block
2. Take bitcoin as an example to see the working principle of blockchain
the block of bitcoin is divided into block head and block body
Core advantages and characteristics of blockchain1. The verification, accounting, storage, maintenance and transmission of decentralized blockchain data are all based on distributed system structure. There is no centralized hardware or management organization, and the rights and obligations of any node are equal, The data blocks in the system are jointly maintained by the nodes with maintenance function in the whole system. 2. The open and transparent system is open. In addition to the private information of all parties to the transaction is encrypted, the data of the blockchain is open to all. Anyone can query the blockchain data and develop related applications through the open interface, so the information of the whole system is highly transparent. 3. Security blockchain uses consensus based specifications and Protocols (such as a set of open and transparent algorithms) to enable all nodes in the whole system to exchange data freely and safely in a de trusted environment, so that the trust in "people" is changed into the trust in machines, and any human intervention does not work. 4. Information cannot be tampered with. Once the information is verified and added to the blockchain, it will be stored permanently. Unless more than 51% (almost impossible) nodes in the system can be controlled at the same time, the modification of the database on a single node is invalid. Therefore, the data stability and reliability of the blockchain are extremely high. 5. Anonymity because the exchange between nodes follows a fixed algorithm, and its data interaction does not need trust (the program rules in the blockchain will judge whether the activity is effective or not). Therefore, the counterparties do not need to let the counterparties generate their own trust by disclosing their identities, which is very helpful for credit accumulation
At present, the most popular classification of blockchain is to divide blockchain into public blockchain, private blockchain and consortium blockchain according to different participants1. Public chain: anyone can participate in the use and maintenance, and can obtain the effective confirmation of the blockchain. Public chain is the earliest blockchain and the most widely used blockchain at present, such as bitcoin blockchain. The information is completely public
if the licensing mechanism is introced, it includes private chain and alliance chain. 2. Private chain: a company or indivial only uses the blockchain technology, enjoys the exclusive write permission of the blockchain, and does not disclose the information. At present, conservative giants (traditional finance) want to experiment with private blockchain, and the application procts of private blockchain are still groping. 3. Alliance chain: it is a blockchain between the public chain and the existing chain, which is jointly controlled by multiple organizations. The use of the chain is managed with authority, which can be controlled by the manager, and also open to others according to the manager's wishes. In addition, according to the different use scenarios and purposes of blockchain, it can be divided into currency chain for the purpose of digital currency, property chain for the purpose of recording property rights, and crowdfunding chain for the purpose of crowdfunding
On May 28, Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent, proposed the anti-counterfeiting method based on cloud integrated blockchain technology, which is far more efficient than traditional anti-counterfeiting methods. The future anti-counterfeiting verification scenario may only require users to use their mobile phones for simple scanning, and a large number of complete information based on different dimensions can be obtainedtake Maotai liquor as an example:
distillery address, proction workshop, operation staff, inspector, delivery time, transportation vehicle information and driver information,
liquor year, raw material source, raw material supplier, storage warehouse number, raw material transportation vehicle and driver information,
all information can be accurately traced, permanently recorded and tampered with
the above information can be easily verified
2. Food safety issues as early as last November, Wal Mart has cooperated with IBM to track the source of food by using blockchain technology, so as to ensure the safety of food and increase the circulation of food to rece costs. For Wal Mart and other large supermarkets, it took a few days to investigate the source of problem food, After using this technology, only one item of proct information is needed to achieve accurate traceability, and important information such as food origin, inspector, supplier, logistics and transportation can quickly find problems in a few minutes. Currently, procts tracked by blockchain include packaging procts from the United States and pork from China
3. Information security
blockchain technology is promoting an information security technology revolution. (1) identity protection PKI is a common public key encryption technology in e-mail, message application, website and other communication applications. However, since the implementation of most PKI, the centralized trusted third party certification authority (CA) is used to issue, activate and store user certificates. Hackers can attack PKI to fake user identity or crack encrypted information
certcoin is the first PKI implementation of blockchain, which comes from MIT, removes the centralized authentication center, and uses blockchain as a distributed ledger for domain name and public key
pomcor company: blockchain PKI implementation path: keep the authentication center, and use blockchain to store the hash value of issued and activated certificates. Users can verify the authenticity of certificates through decentralized and transparent sources, and can also improve the network access performance through local authentication of secret key and signature based on blockchain
(2) data integrity protection
guardtime developed a secret key free signature architecture (Ksi) based on blockchain technology to replace the secret key based data authentication technology. Ksi stores the hash table of the original data and files on the blockchain, runs the hash algorithm to verify other copies, and compares the results with the data stored in the blockchain. Any data tampering will be found quickly because the original hash table is stored in millions of nodes
(3) key infrastructure protection
the "Achilles heel" of the Internet, DDoS has entered the TB era, DDoS is still the simplest weapon for hackers to bring down the big target with low cost, DNS service is the primary target for hackers to carry out large-scale destruction, but blockchain technology is expected to fundamentally solve the problem
The distributed storage ofblockchain makes hacker attacks lose focus. Nebulis is developing a distributed DNS system, which uses Ethereum blockchain and interstellar Internet file system (IPFs, the distributed substitute of HTTP) to register and resolve domain names. The biggest weakness of DNS is caching, which makes DDoS attacks possible. It is also the bane of the centralized government's censorship of social networks and manipulation of DNS registration. A highly transparent and distributed DNS system can effectively prevent any entity, including the government, from arbitrarily manipulating records
(1) digital currency: improve the convenience of currency issuance and use, such as bitcoin and Ethernet in foreign countries, and guorenbao in Chinafrom the use of physical transactions, to physical currency and credit currency, and then to the rise of bitcoin network, more and more people are aware of the distributed ledger blockchain technology behind it, and graally apply it in many scenarios other than digital currency
(2) cross border payment and settlement: realize point-to-point transaction, rece intermediate fees
transfer and payment. At present, the most mature application of blockchain technology is payment and transfer. Blockchain technology can avoid complicated systems, save the process of inter-bank reconciliation and review, and accelerate the settlement speed; Virtual currency can rece transaction costs without the intervention of clearing house. Different countries have different clearing proceres. It takes two or three days for a single remittance to arrive, which is inefficient and accounts for a large proportion of funds in transit. No longer through the third party, through the blockchain technology to form point-to-point payment. By eliminating the link of the third-party institutions, we can make full day payment, real-time payment, withdraw cash quickly and rece the hidden cost, which helps to avoid the capital risk. It is timely and convenient
(3) bills and supply chain financial business: rece human intervention, rece costs and operational risksvalue transfer between point-to-point, control and verify physical bills or central system; Intermediaries will be eliminated and human intervention reced. With the improvement of efficiency, financing channels are more unblocked, risks are lower, and multiple parties benefit
(4) securities issuance and Trading: realize quasi real-time asset transfer, accelerate the speed of transaction clearing
the application of blockchain technology can make the process of securities trading more concise, transparent and fast, rece the plication of IT system, and improve the efficiency of market operation. For stocks, blockchain can eliminate paper and pen or electronic form records, rece human errors in trading, and improve the transparency and traceability of trading platform. Citigroup and Nasdaq cooperate to promote blockchain applications
(5) customer credit investigation and anti fraud: rece the cost of legal compliance, prevent financial crimes
the customer information and transaction records recorded in the blockchain help banks identify abnormal transactions and effectively prevent fraud. The technical characteristics of blockchain can change the existing credit reference system, and store the data of customers with bad records in the blockchain when the bank concts "know your customer" (KYC)
equity crowdfunding:
Blockchain is an important concept of bitcoin. It is essentially a disintermediated database. At the same time, as the underlying technology of bitcoin, it is a series of data blocks generated by using cryptographic methods. Each data block contains the information of a bitcoin network transaction, which is used to verify the effectiveness of its information (anti-counterfeiting) and generate the next block
blockchain is a new application mode of distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanism, encryption algorithm and other computer technologies
in a narrow sense, blockchain is a kind of chain data structure that combines data blocks in a sequential way according to the time sequence, and it can not be tampered with and forged by cryptography
broadly speaking, blockchain technology uses blockchain data structure to verify and store data, uses distributed node consensus algorithm to generate and update data, and uses cryptography to ensure the security of data transmission and access It is a new distributed infrastructure and computing method to program and operate data by using intelligent contract composed of automated script code
extended data:
the evolution mode of blockchain is as follows:
& 9642; Blockchain 1.0 - digital currency
▪ Blockchain 2.0 - digital assets and smart contracts
▪ Blockchain 3.0 - Implementation of distributed applications in various instries
blockchain features:
1. Disintermediation. Due to the use of Distributed Accounting and storage, there is no centralized hardware or management organization in the system, the rights and obligations of any node are equal, and the data blocks in the system are jointly maintained by the nodes with maintenance function in the whole system
2. Openness. The system is open. In addition to the private information of all parties to the transaction is encrypted, the data of the blockchain is open to all. Anyone can query the blockchain data and develop related applications through the open interface, so the information of the whole system is highly transparent
3. Autonomy. Blockchain adopts consensus based specifications and Protocols (such as a set of open and transparent algorithms) to enable all nodes in the whole system to exchange data freely and safely in a de trusted environment, so that the trust in "people" is changed into the trust in machines, and any human intervention does not work
The information can not be tampered with. Once the information is verified and added to the blockchain, it will be stored permanently. Unless more than 51% of the nodes in the system can be controlled at the same time, the modification of the database on a single node is invalid. Therefore, the data stability and reliability of the blockchain are extremely high5. Anonymity. Because the exchange between nodes follows a fixed algorithm, the data interaction does not need to be trusted (the program rules in the blockchain will judge whether the activity is effective). Therefore, the counterparties do not need to make the other party trust themselves by disclosing their identities, which is very helpful for the accumulation of credit
From the perspective of technology and architecture, I will tell you my understanding of blockchain in common language
what is blockchain? In a word, blockchain is a storage system. To be more specific, blockchain is a distributed storage system without an administrator and each node has all the data
What are the common storage systems like
first, how to ensure high availability
the common storage system usually uses "rendancy" to solve the problem of high availability. As shown in the figure above, if the data can be copied into several copies and rendant to multiple places, high availability can be guaranteed. The data in one place is hung, and there is data in other places. For example, the master-slave cluster of MySQL is the same principle, and the raid of disk is also the same principle
two points need to be emphasized in this place are: data rendancy often leads to consistency problems
1. For example, in the master-slave cluster of MySQL, there is actually a delay in reading and writing, which means there is a inconsistency in reading and writing in a short period of time. This is a side effect of data rendancy
The second point is that data rendancy often reces the efficiency of writing, because data synchronization also consumes resources. If you add two slave libraries, the write efficiency will be affected. The common storage system is to use rendancy to ensure the high availability of dataso the second question, ordinary storage system, can write more
the answer is yes, for example, take this graph as an example:
in fact, MySQL can do a master-slave synchronization of al masters, master-slave synchronization of al masters, two nodes can be written at the same time. If you want to do a multi room multi live data center, in fact, multi room multi live data synchronization. What we should emphasize here is that multi-point writing often leads to the consistency problem of writing conflicts. Take MySQL as an example, suppose that the attribute of a table is self incrementing ID, then the data in the database is 1234 now. If one of the nodes writes and inserts a piece of data, it may become 5, and then these 5 pieces of data are synchronized to another master node, Before synchronization, if another write node inserts a piece of data, a piece of data with self incrementing ID of 5 will be generated. Then, after the generation, synchronize to another node, and the synchronized data will conflict with the two local 5's after it arrives, which will lead to synchronization failure and write consistency conflict. This problem will occur in the case of multi-point writing
how to ensure consistency in multi-point writing
the reform "Swan class" gives you more technical work
The price of a bitcoin soared from more than $20000 to $40000. This can not help but arouse my research interest, or simply understand what bitcoin is, what its mechanism looks like, and uncover its mystery. Therefore, after a simple search of some information and some understanding of the special currency, I sorted out the information on hand< (3) purpose: decentralize, rece risk
(3) only the central server can store and process data in the central network; Large amount of data storage; The central manager has great authority
all servers in the distributed network can store and process data, and each server has equal status, which can store more data and has higher security<
this is the general content of popular science. If you want to know more about it, you can take a look at Nakamoto's paper and the official popular science video below
1. Blockchain is a distributed database (system) placed in a non secure environment
2. The blockchain uses cryptography to ensure that the existing data cannot be tampered with
3, the blockchain uses consensus algorithm to reach consensus on new data
the system with the above three properties is blockchain.
In a narrow sense, blockchain is a kind of chain data structure that combines data blocks in a sequential way according to the time sequence, and it is a distributed account book that can not be tampered with and forged by means of cryptography
broadly speaking, blockchain technology is a new distributed infrastructure and computing method, which uses blockchain data structure to verify and store data, uses distributed node consensus algorithm to generate and update data, uses cryptography to ensure the security of data transmission and access, and uses intelligent contracts composed of automated script code to program and operate data
working principle
blockchain system is composed of data layer, network layer, consensus layer, incentive layer, contract layer and application layer. Among them, the data layer encapsulates the underlying data blocks and related basic data and algorithms such as data encryption and timestamp; The network layer includes distributed networking mechanism, data transmission mechanism and data verification mechanism; The consensus layer mainly encapsulates all kinds of consensus algorithms of network nodes; The incentive layer integrates economic factors into the blockchain technology system, mainly including the issuance mechanism and distribution mechanism of economic incentives; The contract layer mainly encapsulates all kinds of scripts, algorithms and smart contracts, which is the basis of the programmable characteristics of blockchain; The application layer encapsulates various application scenarios and cases of blockchain. In this model, chain block structure based on timestamp, consensus mechanism of distributed nodes, economic incentive based on consensus computing power and flexible and programmable smart contract are the most representative innovations of blockchain technology
Seeing some answers to the debate on the definition of blockchain, I suddenly realize that my answer to this explanation principle has always been directed at bitcoin. There is no specific and unique answer in the instry between the definition of blockchain. Here I first summarize the characteristics of "blockchain" according to the papers I read:
1; Hash chain & quot There are several nodes participating in the system operation (distributed)
3. Reach a consensus on the consistency of basic data (consensus agreement / algorithm) through a certain protocol or algorithm
since bitcoin is currently one of the most typical and influential applications of blockchain, it will be much easier to understand how bitcoin uses blockchain before understanding other forms of blockchain applications