Editor's Note: This article comes fromInterchain Pulse (ID: HiveEcon), Author: Mutual Chain Pulse·Yuan Shang, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

Editor's Note: This article comes from

Interchain Pulse (ID: HiveEcon)

Interchain Pulse (ID: HiveEcon)

Two months later, important officials of the central bank stated that their attitude towards the technical route of DC/EP has changed.

I remember that on September 24, Yi Gang, Governor of the People's Bank of China, said that digital currency research has made positive progress and is combined with electronic payment; digital currency research and development does not presuppose a technical route, and consider blockchain or electronic payment.

On November 28, Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, attended the "Eighth China Payment and Clearing Forum" and said that the central bank's legal digital currency DC/EP has basically completed top-level design, standard formulation, function research and development, and joint debugging and testing. The first step will be to rationally select pilot verification areas, scenarios and service scopes, and steadily promote the introduction and application of digital fiat currencies.

——Observing Fan Yifei’s remarks from a technical point of view, it can be understood that the central bank’s technical route for the digital currency DC/EP has been determined. According to Interchain Pulse, ICBC has undertaken some core technical support tasks.

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Industrial and Commercial Bank of China IT System

The pace of the central bank's digital currency is gradually approaching. The latest information is that, on December 9, the "Caijing" magazine reported that the People's Bank of China took the lead, the four major state-owned commercial banks of Industry, Agriculture, China, and Construction, and the three major telecom operators China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom participated. The central bank's legal digital currency pilot project is expected to land in Shenzhen, Suzhou and other places. The pilot project is led by the Central Bank's Currency, Gold and Silver Bureau, and implemented by the Digital Currency Research Institute.

According to an insider who disclosed to "Interchain Pulse", ICBC undertakes the main work in the basic technical architecture of the central bank's digital currency.

If you want to ask bank practitioners which bank has the strongest IT system in the universe, the answer may be very consistent - Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

As early as 2010, in the "National Commercial Bank Core Competitiveness Ranking" list released by "The Banker", the top ICBC scored 0.914 in the "Information Technology" single item, and it was the only one in this item. Commercial banks with a score above 0.9. Among China's major banks, ICBC is the earliest to use computer information technology, invests the most, and is the most advanced in research.

According to the data, the software center of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was established in 1997, and its predecessor was the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Software Development Center of Tangjia Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Software Park in Zhuhai City. It used to be that the head office directly sent people to manage it, but now it is fully taken over by the Science and Technology Department of Guangdong ICBC.

The establishment of other banking software centers was much later than ICBC. For example, China Merchants Bank established a similar institution in 2002, China Construction Bank established a related institution in 2003, and the People's Bank of China established a software development base for Beijing Chengnan Pedestrian Bank in early 2004.

Especially in recent years, ICBC's IT system is moving from centralized to distributed, which provides important technical support for the central bank's digital currency.

In November, Yao Qian, general manager of Zhongdeng Company and former director of the Central Bank’s Digital Currency Research Institute, proposed the technical characteristics of the central bank’s digital currency in a signed article: “Our digital currency prototype system explores the application of blockchain, But it does not completely rely on this technology. In terms of design, it uses the characteristics of distributed ledgers that cannot be tampered with and cannot be forged to construct a CBCC confirmation ledger based on blockchain, which provides query services through the Internet, which is equivalent to network verification. Banknote machine'. On the one hand, this design isolates and protects the core issuance registration book from the outside world, and at the same time takes advantage of the advantages of distributed books to improve the security and credibility of the right confirmation query system and data. On the other hand, the transaction The processing is still done by the issuance registration system using the traditional distributed architecture, and the distributed ledger is only used to provide external query access. The transaction processing subsystem and the confirmation query subsystem are separated and adopt different technical routes, which can effectively avoid the existing distributed The performance bottleneck of the ledger in transaction processing."

To put it simply, the central bank's digital currency draws on the distributed ledger technology of the blockchain to confirm rights and queries.

According to the disclosure of ICBC's 2019 first half annual report, the bank is promoting the construction of the Intelligent Banking Information System (ECOS). This project includes: building a safe and controllable big data service cloud system, becoming the first large commercial bank in the world to successfully transform the big data system from a traditional software and hardware all-in-one machine to a distributed architecture.

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ICBC already has reserves for digital currency

So it is not difficult to understand that at the end of October, a screenshot of the ICBC digital currency wallet flowed out.

ICBC already has a lot of technical reserves in terms of digital wallets. Still according to the financial report in the first half of 2019, ICBC disclosed that the bank continued to optimize the functions of ICBC e-wallet products, and promoted the construction of online scenarios such as the Internet industry, government livelihood, membership services, real estate earnest money, salary management, and consumer credit. More than 100 online platforms such as JD.com, Tencent, and Xiaomi carried out in-depth cooperation; put into operation the functions of account opening, top-up, cash withdrawal, inquiry and wealth management of ICBC e-Link II accounts; built ICBC e-Life as the core to connect banks, customers and merchants, A consumer finance ecosystem covering all scenarios of clothing, food, housing, transportation, entertainment, education, and medical care. In terms of bank wallet functions and scenarios, ICBC is also at the forefront.

It is worth noting that Tencent’s Tenpay system and Ali’s Alipay system, which originally had a high voice in the wallet payment field, did not join the central bank’s digital currency pilot.

According to the "Caijing" report on "The Eve of the Birth of China's Digital Currency" on December 9, "The central bank's legal digital currency pilot will go out of the central bank's system and enter into real service scenarios such as transportation, education, and medical care, and reach C-end users. , resulting in frequent applications, pilot banks can choose scenarios based on their own advantages."