The definition and landing time of Web 3 are full of controversy, and some people even accused it of being just another technical hype. So, how to understand Web 3? Will Web 3 live up to proponents’ expectations? In response to this topic, “InfoQ Geek Date” specially planned a special live broadcast of “Common Talk Web 3”.

In this special live broadcast, two online roundtable forums were organized, and a number of experts with in-depth research on Web 3 were invited to discuss this new technology concept, hoping to help domestic developers and interested friends better understand Web 3 .

The theme of the second roundtable dialogue is “Web 3 Core Infrastructure”. The host of this session is Yifan He, CEO of Beijing Red Date Technology and Executive Director of BSN Development Alliance, and Zeng Yi, the person in charge of the basic components of Tencent Cloud Changan Chain, and the director of terminal security technology of OPPO Huang Mian and two guests.

Moderator He Yifan: The topic we are discussing today is the core infrastructure used by Web 3. Before starting the discussion, we still need to talk about the definition of Web 3 first, and ask two guests to talk about what Web 3 is in descriptive language.

Zeng Yi : When it comes to Web 3, we must start with Web 1 and Web2. The typical characteristics of Web 1 are portal websites, such as Yahoo, America Online, China’s NetEase, Sina, Sohu, Tencent, etc. At that time, the main behavior of Internet users was to read and obtain information through portal websites. Web 2 is represented by Twitter and Weibo. At this time, users can produce content by themselves, and the readable and writable Internet has changed from traditional PGC-dominated to UGC-dominated. At the same time, the Internet-connected devices of Web 2 have also transitioned from PCs to mobile phones.

The biggest feature of Web 3 is that it can be read, written, and owned. The information we generated in the past is finally stored on the platform, and the platform can sell this information to obtain advertising and other income, but the users themselves will only have some traffic growth and will not have much profit.

However, the Web 3 can have two meanings. First, the content produced by me belongs to me and is not directly handed over to the platform for profit; Secondly, my assets are owned by me. As long as I keep my private key, it cannot be stolen by others. In this way, a decentralized situation has been formed, that is to say, there will be no monopoly and oligopoly platforms capable of doing evil, stealing or misappropriating personal assets.
Huang Mian: I look at this problem from the perspective of user pain points. Web 1 solves the pain point of user information acquisition, Web 2 solves the pain point of user information creation, and Web 3 solves the pain point of user information production. Therefore, the trend represented by Web 3 must exist and be in the right direction. Finally, we will solve the pain point faced by users.
Host He Yifan: Let me explain from the perspective of system architecture. The word used here is “public information system”. In today’s Web 2, all websites on the Internet are controlled by a certain company. The data stored by users belongs to these companies in the legal sense.
However, blockchain has brought a new concept, namely, public information system. The data in this system is jointly managed. There is no monopoly controller. Users can control themselves and control the ownership of their assets. This system only uses blockchain as an option.
Host He Yifan: In China, Chang’an Chain has a perfect underlying blockchain technology system. So Zeng Yi, how does the underlying blockchain technology system of Web 3 support users’ ownership of content and data, and how is it realized from a technical perspective?
Zeng Yi: Blockchain technology is a distributed and decentralized ledger. Distributed means that it is not a completely unique monopoly node and is not held by an organization. Therefore, data is not owned by any party, that is, distributed technology prevents data from being monopolized.

Decentralization does not mean that anyone can participate in the entire blockchain network to initiate bookkeeping, and the right to bookkeeping still falls into the hands of several organizational nodes. But now it is jointly accounted by multiple manufacturers. If any party wants to do evil, such as tampering with data or generating wrong data, then other nodes participating in bookkeeping will not agree, which means that this evil behavior will be avoided. up. On the other hand, if a certain manufacturer goes bankrupt, the data on the blockchain can still be retained, and the data will not be lost if the manufacturer goes bankrupt; the service operated by this manufacturer can also be taken over by another manufacturer, and the service itself You can still continue to operate.

Blockchain also has a very important concept called wallet. Nowadays, the user’s personal private key, that is, the information that can only represent the user’s identity, is encrypted and stored in the personal mobile phone or computer. Therefore, the user can technically prove that the data signed with the private key is indeed his own, because when the transaction initiated is uploaded to the chain, there is a digital signature created by the user’s own private key, which cannot be tampered with. became proof of ownership.

In addition, users can also encrypt and store data. Even if the data is placed on the decentralized Internet, it doesn’t matter if everyone can access it, because all the accessed data is encrypted. To use the data, you must hold it. The key for data decryption. If a manufacturer wants to access user data, it must also obtain the consent and authorization of the user. Through the form of the wallet, it can be guaranteed that the user actually owns the data. The above are several key technologies used by the blockchain to achieve the goal of Web 3.

Host He Yifan: The so-called decentralization can be divided into absolute and relative. Absolute decentralization means that all people are absolutely equal, while relative decentralization means that credit is endorsed by several large enterprises or organizations. Then, please ask Huang Mian to answer a question from the perspective of mobile phone manufacturers, that is, in addition to communicating with the manufacturer’s cloud platform in the future, will mobile phones form a distributed infrastructure network?

Huang Mian : In theory, this is possible, but we still need to wait for the technology to mature. We use the OSI model to look at the technical system of Web 3, then the physical layer is the basic communication network such as 4G and 5G, the transport layer is the blockchain, and the presentation layer above is the cross-chain technology. The top application layer is various applications of Web 3, including distributed digital identity system, distributed storage and other infrastructures.

Although our physical layer has reached the 5G era, it is difficult to achieve the delay and coverage indicators required for distributed processing throughout the network. The distribution of the whole network also requires that the mobile phone has its own IP, which also needs to wait for the popularization of IPv6 technology. The second problem is that the distributed networking of the entire network is equivalent to a public chain. The public chain requires each node to have good security, and the conditions are not mature enough at present. Therefore, this vision still needs to wait for the development of various technologies. With the improvement of infrastructure, this goal will be realized sooner or later.

Moderator He Yifan: Huang Mian mentioned an efficiency issue of the blockchain. There is a huge gap between the efficiency of today’s blockchain and the centralized system. For example, Alipay’s TPS to cope with Double Eleven traffic is as high as 500,000, which is far below the current blockchain technology. So please Zeng Yi to talk about how the future blockchain can solve this problem?

Zeng Yi: The famous “impossible triangle” theory in the field of blockchain means that the three requirements of decentralization, security and efficiency cannot be satisfied at the same time. Completely decentralized designs like Bitcoin and Ethereum sacrifice efficiency. Therefore, different implementations are required for different scenarios, and a trade-off is made for the “impossible triangle”. For example, the alliance chain will abandon absolute decentralization and become a concept of multi-centralization to improve performance in this way. For example, when deploying a blockchain in an enterprise, we can directly designate certain parties to be responsible for generating blocks, while other parties are only responsible for synchronization. Because offline we have reached a consensus and mutual trust. Taking banks as an example, the four major banks are responsible for block production, and other banks are responsible for synchronizing data. This improves performance by sacrificing decentralization metrics. Another way is to build many side chains, or implement parallel processing of transactions through DAG directed acyclic graph technology to improve performance.

Host He Yifan: Talking about technology must be inseparable from the topic of security. May I ask Huang Mian, in the Web 3 environment, can the current terminal smart devices reach the level of node security?

Huang Mian : If it is a very simple bookkeeping requirement, our trusted execution environment can handle it now. But the security requirements of Web 3 are actually more and more complex. For example, in many cases, third parties need user authorization to use user data. At this time, the user may be offline, which may involve technologies such as homomorphic encryption; in addition, if the private key identifying the user’s identity is lost, it is It is also a big problem that it cannot be retrieved; in the end, the consensus algorithm itself may also have loopholes, which need to be properly dealt with in the future. Therefore, the security challenges of Web 3 do not only exist on terminals, but also on the entire system.

Moderator He Yifan: This topic just leads to another feature of Changan Chain, which is open source. I think that open source technology is often very safe, so I would like to invite Zeng Yi to talk about the decision to open source Chang’an Chain and the overall security.

Zeng Yi: For blockchain technology, open source is a must. Because blockchain technology is based on the premise of distrust between people. The real open source of the blockchain is the protocol, that is, the data structure, data representation method, and data processing process defined by the blockchain. If other people don’t trust the source code of the blockchain, they can write another implementation by themselves. As long as everyone follows the same protocol, they can be compatible with each other.

On the other hand, Changan Chain considers introducing more open source standards. For example, Changan Chain introduced three different national secret algorithm engines to further improve security. Users feel that a certain component they depend on is not good enough, and they can replace, implement, or choose other components by themselves. Through such an open source path, the security of the Changan chain is guaranteed.

Host He Yifan: Zeng Yi’s explanation is very professional and high-quality. Next, we enter the Q&A session. The first audience question is, is Web 3 technology actively promoted by enterprises? Please answer.

Zeng Yi : Web 3 is not necessarily actively promoted by enterprises, because now all data is in the hands of manufacturers, and merchants can use user data to earn huge profits. Web 3 will bring data back to users, which may kill manufacturers. But at the same time, the government may promote the development of Web 3 from a legal perspective, such as using data protection laws to prevent manufacturers from abusing user data.

Moderator He Yifan: The second question, for programmers, is it necessary to start learning Web 3 development technology now?

Huang Mian : Web 3 is a technical system, which is still in the exploratory stage. Therefore, there is no need for developers to get in touch too early. It is more appropriate to wait until the relevant applications have a certain scale before learning.

Zeng Yi : Changan Chain has two products on Tencent Cloud, one is TBaaS, which is mainly for enterprise-level applications; in addition, we launched Lighthouse for individual developers, which integrates blockchain-related browsers, various management tools, and ecological Tools, is an out-of-the-box platform. This platform is very friendly to developers, and developers can quickly get started with blockchain development.

Moderator He Yifan: Is there any recommended learning path for technicians who want to get started with Web 3?

Zeng Yi : I suggest reading the book “Mastering Bitcoin” first, because it explains the basics of the entire blockchain idea. We must first understand what is going on at the bottom of the blockchain, and then we can develop Web 3-related applications. Specific to the application of Web 3, we can choose different technology stacks, we can use Changan chain, Ethereum test chain and other implementations, and build a chain on it for experimentation. The development of the application depends only on the selected blockchain-related application ecology. For example, if you choose Changan Chain, you can develop specific applications based on the SDKs in various languages ​​on it.

To sum up, first of all, we must have the basic knowledge of the blockchain , and recommend the book “Proficient in Bitcoin”; the second is to have the development ability of smart contracts; the third is to use the selected blockchain supporting tool chain to Carry out application development.

Moderator He Yifan: The next question, what are the security advantages of the blockchain decentralized environment compared with the traditional environment?

Zeng Yi : In the Web 3 era, although our data is all on the cloud, as long as we have our personal private key, we can absolutely guarantee the security of the data. There is a problem here, that is, once the data is authorized to be decrypted by the user and then passed to another party, the third party may leak the data. To address this risk, there is another technology called secure multi-party computing, which can make the data available to third parties without being visible. So in this way, as long as the user keeps the private key well, the data security can be guaranteed, even if all the data is on the cloud.

Huang Mian : From the perspective of risk control, for example, Alipay’s processing of transfers is now a centralized process, behind which there is a powerful and secret risk control system to identify risks. But there are no secrets on the blockchain, so how to deal with risk control in the Web 3 world is also a very interesting topic.

Moderator He Yifan: Next question, what are the main consensus systems in blockchain technology? Can you give a brief introduction?

Zeng Yi : From a professional point of view, there are mainly two types, one is CFT (Crash Fault Tolerance), and the other is BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance). CFT allows nodes on the chain to go down, but does not allow nodes to do evil. For example, an alliance chain has been established between banks, and there is already a consensus and trust between banks offline, so there will be no evil, which is more suitable for CFT. BFT considers that nodes may do evil, and there is a set of complex logic for this possibility, which goes through three stages to prevent the impact of evil behavior. Because CFT already has a preset trust, the performance will be very high; BFT will question whether the master node is evil, so a verification mechanism is required, so the performance will be lower.

What resistance will the practice of decentralization face?

He Yifan : I personally think that the biggest resistance comes from traditional manufacturers, because their business models rely on user data, so they will definitely try to prevent Web 3 from revolutionizing their own lives.

Moderator He Yifan: Next question, which data should be uploaded and which data is not suitable for uploading?

Zeng Yi : If we have a large amount of data, it must be stored externally. How to upload external storage to the chain? The simple way is to directly calculate the hash, as long as the hash is uploaded to the chain, and then only by comparing the hash with the data off the original chain, we can know whether the data on the chain at that time is our current file. In this way, the amount of data is small, the cost is low, and there is no great data pressure.

Moderator He Yifan: Another question, what are the key implementation paths of blockchain projects?

Zeng Yi : In the production environment, there are two options: cloud implementation and native implementation. Cloud implementation is realized through cloud technologies such as Docker and K8s. For example, blockchains such as Changan Chain and Fabric provide such mirror images. Users only need to download the mirror images directly and modify some parameters to start a chain directly. Native implementation needs to understand the main principles of the blockchain to configure the specific details of the P2P network, plan the role settings of various nodes, generate private keys, public keys, certificates, and so on. In the native implementation, these tasks must be done by yourself.

Moderator He Yifan: The last question, how to measure the degree of decentralization in business?

He Yifan: I think decentralization is not an end in itself, the degree to which it is achieved depends on the business. The core purpose of decentralization is to ensure reliability and provide a trust mechanism, but this will sacrifice efficiency. Therefore, it is necessary to consider how high reliability the business needs, and whether it is worth paying so much for efficiency. Always remember to handle business in the most efficient and cost-effective way, and never decentralize for the sake of decentralization.

Zeng Yi : I very much agree. For the alliance chain, decentralization is mainly to prevent a certain party from doing evil, or to prevent a node from going down. Most business scenarios do not require such high reliability, nor do they require absolute decentralization.

Huang Mian : The degree of decentralization in the future must be highly related to the scene. For example, one possibility is to form a decentralized network among multiple devices owned by the same person to handle specific business needs.

Moderator He Yifan: Thank you everyone, this is the end of today’s discussion. Today we have discussed a lot of new content in terms of technical direction and system, which is worth thinking about and reviewing. Thanks also to InfoQ for organizing such a discussion, and thank you for your participation and support.