While paying close attention to domestic regulatory policies in the field of cryptocurrencies, a director of the Institute of Financial Law of the Central University of Finance and Economics publicly stated: “I have been tracking the development and regulatory issues of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin since 2008. my country implements the principle of "coin chain" separation, and virtual currency is only one of the blockchain applications, and it is necessary to guide blockchain technology to support the development of the real economy."

Unsurprisingly, this statement drew ridicule from professionals in the blockchain field. Of course, the author agrees with the normal and reasonable management and supervision of the country in the field of cryptocurrency, and also fully agrees with the need to introduce blockchain technology into the real economy to create value. But the speech of the director of the Institute of Financial Law above is really low-level. I think of an article I read about the development and origin of the new term "Blockchain (Blockchain)", and translate it for everyone. It can also be regarded as a small science popularization for the occasion.

If you bring a little bit of help to everyone, I hope you will comment and praise three times.

Spread the right understanding.

Original link:

Original link:https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-and-blockchain-the-tangled-history-of-two-tech-buzzwords

Of course, we can all get the point that the person who said this wants to express is "he pays more attention to the technology behind Bitcoin", and then feels that he is extremely intelligent. Because if this person can (or assumes that this person can) apply this encryption technology to the financial field as it has applied to Bitcoin, it will definitely explode like Bitcoin, and he will become an incomparable prophet.

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Screenshot of the Bitcoin white paper

So, where did the word Blockchain come from? Actually, the origin of the word Blockchain does not have a very dramatic or revolutionary story.

Former Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn said: "In the early days, no one would say the word Blockchain." However, he said that around 2010, when Satoshi Nakamoto mentioned Bitcoin in Bitcointalk, he often described it. It is a "proof-of-work chain".

But at the time, people didn't care how innovative the technology was. Everyone is complaining that it is too time-consuming to download the Bitcoin "Blockchain" (that is, all the transaction history books of Bitcoin) synchronously.

It is of course much faster to download all data of a full node synchronously now. But according to one Bitcoin ashes user: "Blockchain download speeds were pretty slow at first." In other words, the original "Blockchain" (either the word or the Bitcoin chain) didn't get as much attention as it does today.

It is really difficult to say exactly when the word Blockchain really became popular. In the beginning, because of Bitcoin's bad reputation as a means of trading drugs and the gray economy, it was only some professional organizations and individuals who became interested in Bitcoin for a long time.

“I think the word Blockchain started to catch on when there were some people who wanted to go to Washington and try to salvage some of Bitcoin’s reputation by separating it from the underlying algorithm,” Hearn said.

For many people, separating Bitcoin (this kind of currency) from a Blockchain protocol, so a "private blockchain (also called alliance chain)" was developed."new industry. Sure enough, around that time in 2015, Google Trends data showed that the search volume of the word Blockchain was soaring.

Greg Slepak, a long-time cryptocurrency developer, said: "Originally people were talking about 'block and chain', and then, thanks to this great PR campaign, people became familiar with the new term Blockchain, which was all about Bitcoin Talk. thanks to the broad influence of the entire community".

Not only has the new word Blockchain slowly spread, but it has also become a popular practice to call any non-Bitcoin chain Blockchain. So, Bitcoin had to try to keep the term "Blockchain" to prove that it was the first to play this thing.

However, the fact is that the concept of Blockchain has indeed become out of touch with Bitcoin, especially when the price of BTC starts to skyrocket, the word will have a jump like the following. For example, in late 2017, Google searches for the term Blockchain skyrocketed.

Even so, we still haven't figured out where exactly the idea of ​​Blockchain started. In some people's minds, the concept of Blockchain existed even before Bitcoin was born, but it was not applied at that time.

Cryptographer Stuart Haber (Stuart Haber) is quoted in the Bitcoin white paper on timestamps. He claims that he created the first Blockchain, called Surety. According to Haber, this is why Nakamoto cited his paper. Bitcoin's white paper has a total of 9 citations, while his paper accounts for 3 times. Surety for timestamping was launched in 1995 and is still running today. Haber admitted that his version does not have many of the same advantages as bitcoin, which is centralized and managed by a company.

So when you discuss Blockchain with others, it becomes very paradoxical. You see, there is no need to agree on a single definition of a technology.

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary proposes the following definition of blockchain — a digital database containing information, such as records of financial transactions, that can be simultaneously used and shared across a large decentralized, publicly accessible network. And Google defines the blockchain as a system that records all transactions that occur in bitcoin or other virtual currencies and is maintained by many computers connected by a peer-to-peer network. Originated in the early 21st century, it comes from block + chain.

But even that definition is problematic for those who are seasoned veterans. Many alliance chains do not fully disclose their transaction records. As The Verge put it earlier this year, “the term has become so common that it’s losing its meaning”.

Haber points to an Indian parable to help explain the situation. In the fable, a group of blind men come across an elephant and begin touching the animal, trying to figure out what it is that is in front of them. Each person touches a different part of the elephant, and their answers will vary. For example, one blind man touched an elephant's trunk and thought it was in the shape of a snake, while another blind man touched an elephant's leg and said it was a tree trunk.

Haber believes that the same is true for people's definitions of blockchain. "Some definitions are very stupid. People don't know what these definitions are, but they will try to accurately describe this huge working system."

Based on this, he believes that blockchain not only represents one meaning. Even so, many Bitcoin holders still believe that Bitcoin is the only blockchain. Also, these people do not know that the so-called definition, like the meaning of a word, is always evolving and changing.