Countdown to fake invoices? How awesome is the technology behind blockchain electronic invoices?

Recently, Hangzhou Metro and Alipay have launched electronic invoices based on blockchain technology, which has triggered a large number of media reports and heated discussions. This is another domestic government agency applying blockchain technology after the Shenzhen blockchain electronic invoice and the Hangzhou Internet Court judicial blockchain platform.In addition to the various advantages that everyone is talking about, what kind of blockchain technology is behind the blockchain electronic invoice? And what is the difference between blockchain electronic invoices and ordinary electronic invoices?

The Difference Between Consortium Chain Efficiency and Scalability

The blockchain electronic invoices in Hangzhou and Shenzhen use consortium and permissioned chains.The consortium chain of blockchain electronic invoices starts an invoice information chain to share data by multiple subjects such as the application developer, the billing party, the bill receiver, the service party, and the supervisor.At present, the alliance chain is mainly dominated by Corda (distributed ledger technology improved by R3 using blockchain distributed technology), Hyperledger Fabric (super ledger), EEA (Enterprise Ethereum Alliance), in addition to Microsoft's Coco, domestic gold Chain Alliance's FISCO BCOS and so on.What type of alliance chain is used for blockchain invoices?

Since Quorum is developed based on the technical route of Ethereum, there is currently only a single-chain verification mode, which does not meet the requirements for efficiency as the number of nodes increases in practical applications. Coupled with the description of existing application scenarios, it is most likely to adopt The ones are Corda and Hyperledger Fabric types.

The difference between Corda and Hyperledger Fabric

Corda is not a chain structure of blocks, but only maintains a chain structure of transactions.It only needs to reach a consensus between the two parties in the transaction, and there is no need to maintain the global ledger. Therefore, a notary mechanism is designed. The notary will witness the transaction, and the consensus agreement will be activated only when necessary.

It provides a set of Flow mechanisms to facilitate the definition of flow transactions that require the participation of multiple parties. Its contracts are Java or Kotlin codes, but they are all stateless. They are only responsible for verification and do not save the state. At the same time, many financial contract implementations are built in. After the application is packaged, it is a farJar package called CorDapp, which can be directly hosted on Platform, which is equivalent to a platform plug-in.In terms of encryption, Corda uses enclave for data protection, and considers the use of secure hardware.

Hyperledger is positioned as a modular blockchain platform, including consensus mechanisms, etc. are replaceable.In the consortium chain scenario, it simplifies the requirements for proof of calculation, allowing users to develop applications in any language and deploy them to run in Docker. It is called chaincode, which is equivalent to applications hosted on the chain. Developers don't need to know too much blockchain knowledge, they only need to know that it takes over the input of the application, and takes over the output of the application by providing SDK. It can even be understood as a microservice framework, but with the consensus capability of blockchain, it is easy to realize multi-node data synchronization.

Hyperledger Fabric has supported ledger data encryption since version 1.1. After the introduction of private data in version 1.2, it is designed to only provide transaction Hash to Kafka for sorting without providing transaction information to Kafka to prevent data leakage from sorting nodes.

Comparing the findings of the two, Corda has two advantages. One is that the data is only visible between the transaction parties, and a transaction dependency graph is provided between the nodes. The data is sent as needed, and is not broadcast globally. No participant can see the global ledger containing all the data.This model can well solve the need to share information on the chain and maximize the confidentiality of identities and transactions. The second is that Corda supports a limited form of database rollback.

The advantage of Hyperledger Fabric is that it allows multi-language development of applications and switching of consensus mechanisms.In addition, Hyperledger Fabric was launched early, with a complete and mature framework, and Internet giants have joined in, so it has the strongest comprehensive strength in the alliance chain. For developers, these are all priorities.

Comprehensive consideration, the overall technical framework of blockchain electronic invoices should adopt Hyperledger Fabric. At the same time, it is likely to draw on some of Corda's concepts in identity and transaction confidentiality, as well as data rollback.

After understanding the technical organization selection of blockchain electronic invoices, what is the difference between blockchain electronic invoices and ordinary electronic invoices?

The difference between blockchain electronic invoices and ordinary electronic invoices

Ordinary electronic ordinary invoices realize "one system, two coverages" in accordance with the requirements of the State Administration of Taxation. The issued invoice information is transmitted to the unified electronic ledger database of the tax bureau in real time, and the unified electronic ledger database is based on the Recipient information, sorting and forwarding.

The difference between blockchain electronic invoices and ordinary electronic invoices is that the blockchain will stamp "stamps" throughout the delivery, storage and application of electronic invoices, which is equivalent to a credible and transparent electronic witness, allowing the invoices to It is traceable and cannot be tampered with, ensuring the authenticity of the invoice. It can also connect with the enterprise's financial system through third-party software to realize the full link from payment, invoicing, reimbursement to payment, and avoid the historical problems of multiple reimbursements and false invoices.

Reference article:

Reference article:

[1] Physical model of Corda technical understanding

[2] The public alliance chain is likely to be the key to open the door of the distributed business model

[3] Alliance Chain Warring States: Horizontal Comparison of the Five Giants

[4] The difference between blockchain electronic invoices and value-added tax electronic invoices

[5] Blockchain invoices: technical species carrying transformative genes

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