With the promotion and popularization of distributed technology applications, as well as the increasing complexity of business scenarios and data interactions, the demand for the formation of multi-party distributed systems between multi-information systems is becoming more and more clear, and there will be countless open and transparent distributed network environments (multi-party networks) on the Internet in the futureBlockchain Service Network (BSN).The core idea is to promote the establishment of a new public layer on the Internet, connect these distributed network environments together, and eventually form the next generation of the Internet.
We have recorded a number of episodes** to explain the concept of BSN and the connotation of the next generation of the Internet, in order to let more people understand what BSN is working for, and accelerate the construction and application of the next generation of the Internet. The following is the latest issue** and text arrangement, the text part has been edited and modified for ease of reading.
BSN has been pushing the concept of the "Next Generation Internet". The topic of this discussion is also about how BSN can facilitate and guide the construction of the next generation of the Internet.
The first thing to note is that the term "next-generation Internet" may sound abstract as the definition of the next-generation Internet is still being discussed. But from a technical point of view, the essence of the Internet is very simple.
The core function of the Internet is to transmit data. WeChat, various applications, artificial intelligence, etc., which we use every day, are all built on the foundation of the Internet, but these are not the Internet itself. Data storage and computing are actually carried out on servers, mobile phones, computers, data centers and other devices, and the Internet is actually connecting these devices and communicating with data, which is similar to the ** network, except that the Internet transmits data packets, not voice.
BSN's definition of the next-generation Internet focuses on the core of data communication. Including the current development trends of decentralization, multi-party computing, broadcast transmission and other technologies, they are essentially building more efficient data communication logic. According to the core concept of BSN, the core of the next generation of Internet is still data communication, but the efficiency and logic of data communication have been greatly improved, based on this better data communication logic, more efficient multi-party data management and multi-party application interaction can be realized.
Looking back, we believe that the development of the Internet can actually be divided into three main lines. The first main line is the web1, web2 and web3 that everyone is talking about now, and this main line actually refers to the content on the Internet and how it is produced.
Web1 is the first to generate data for users to browse, Web2 is user-generated content, and the core of Web3 is the transfer of data value and value in the view of the virtual currency industry, and we believe that standing on the main line of content, Web3 should be generated by AI. In the future, a large amount of data on the Internet will be generated, summarized, and extracted through AI, and then exported to various applications. As AI has become more and more popular in the past year, people's awareness of it has become clearer, and the development of content on the Internet will inevitably evolve in this direction in the future. As far as technological evolution is concerned, it seems that this main line is very clear at present.
The second main line is related to the metaverse. We have always said that the metaverse represents the evolution of the expression and presentation of content on the Internet.
There was originally only simple text content on the Internet, from the original DOS command line interface, to the emergence of the browser in 1992, which brought ** and formatted text, and then all kinds of dynamic content, from gif**, flash**, **stream**, etc., until today, there are all kinds of rich ** content on the Internet.
Evolving along with it is the terminal devices of the Internet, from computer monitors to smartphones, and the next stage is the metaverse. The terminal equipment of the metaverse is 3D, and through headsets, glasses and other devices, the content on the Internet is presented in a way closer to reality in 3D or other forms with the naked eye, and the rendering effect is as realistic as the real image. So the second main line refers to how the content is presented, which has been evolving and changing for decades, and now has a relatively clear direction of evolution.
The third main line is the data communication logic of the Internet. The Internet was strictly regarded as a network in 1969, and before that, although the first computer prototypes appeared as early as 1945, there was no such thing as a network. The birth of ARPANET in 1969 is seen as the real beginning of the Internet, when the research centers of the University of California, Los Angeles and Stanford University were connected to two points, and later connected to more than a dozen universities and some defense systems.
From the 1960s and 1970s, various localities began to establish their own local area networks, and some large enterprises also began to build internal networks, and by the mid-1980s, some network communication protocols were unified into standards, and various local area networks were connected together to constitute the Internet. With the advent of the browser in 1992, it made it easy for end users to access the Internet. Around 2010, smartphones became the mainstream, and the mobile Internet enabled more people to access the Internet at low cost, and the scale of the global Internet and the number of users began to rise exponentially.
It can be seen that since its birth in 1969, after decades of development, the Internet has gradually become what everyone is familiar with today. But in the process, the data communication logic of the Internet has not changed, and it has always been a point-to-point connection between two data centers, one as the data sender and the other as the data receiver.
This state of affairs lasted until the advent of Bitcoin, when there was a significant change. Bitcoin was originally invented as a payment tool, but its greatest significance is to simulate an efficient multi-party system. Different from the peer-to-peer communication of the Internet until today, the underlying logic of Bitcoin is a new type of multi-party communication network, which can bring great improvement in communication efficiency.
This change is like going from a one-to-one meeting system. If there are 10 people who want to reach a consensus on something through one-on-one communication, they need to make a lot of calls, because information can only be transmitted between two people once at a time. But if these 10 people join a meeting, it may only take 20 minutes of discussion to reach a consensus.
Bitcoin has initially implemented a new data communication logic between IT systems, to use a figurative analogy, Bitcoin allows IT systems to conduct "** meetings", still based on the Internet, but the way of data communication between IT systems has changed, from point-to-point transmission to broadcast transmission.
This kind of broadcast transmission can provide a more efficient data communication network in some scenarios, and based on this data communication network, more application logic and application scenarios can be created. For example, the entire virtual currency system is based on efficient multi-party data communication, so that consensus can be reached efficiently.
Therefore, we believe that the third main line of the Internet, that is, the data communication logic, is ushering in a major change, and the original point-to-point data communication has become multi-party data communication. The core concept of BSN is that based on multi-party data communication, a new public layer will be created on the Internet, which will give the next generation of the Internet a new definition and richer connotation.
According to the current mainstream view, this new public layer can be called web3, which is different from the current web2. However, we still tend to call it the Internet of peer-to-peer data communication and the Internet of multi-party data communication, or the Internet of unilateral systems and the Internet of multi-party systems, or the Internet of private layers and the Internet of public layers. Whatever the name is, it will undoubtedly open a new chapter in the development of the Internet.
From the perspective of the overall architecture, we believe that the traditional Internet and the emerging layer of the Internet are parallel, and they complement each other, rather than replacing one layer with another. As shown in the diagram, the two are similar architectures from bottom to top:
The lowest layer is the cloud platform layer, and most IT systems are now built on the cloud, whether it is a public cloud or a private cloud. This layer mainly manages resources, virtual machines, operating systems, etc., and this layer on the traditional Internet is AWS, Alibaba Cloud, etc., and what we do in BSN is also in this layer. In the traditional Internet, there is a more general cloud software called VMware, and BSN software can be compared to VMware software that serves multi-party systems and distributed networks.
The second layer is virtual machines and instances. The third layer is the operating system on the instance, which is Windows NT and Linux on the traditional Internet, which serve unilateral systems; However, in the new layer of the Internet, an application is deployed on multiple instances, and may even be distributed on the cloud in different countries, which cannot be handled by traditional operating systems, so new operating systems are needed. In BSN's view, at the current stage, blockchain is the most primitive distributed operating system.
The fourth layer is to build applications on top of the operating system. For the traditional Internet, it is a unilateral system, an IT system is its own system, it can be a ** and its background system, or an APP and its background system, one of its most distinctive features is that a single party can shut down the entire system.
On the new layer of the Internet, the corresponding multi-party system is a multi-party system, which is jointly built and managed by multiple parties with almost equal rights, and no single party can shut down the entire system, or any party withdraws, which will not affect the survival and normal operation of the system.
The top layer is a variety of applications, on the side of the traditional Internet, it is based on e-mail, search engines, etc.; or app-based, such as various apps on WeChat, etc. On the new layer of the Internet, there are various distributed applications based on multi-party systems, which are currently various blockchain and related applications, such as various applications on Ethereum, including distributed identity, digital currency, etc.
It should be emphasized that if the current traditional Internet is called the first generation of the Internet, and the new layer of the Internet is called the next generation of the Internet, then how many ** are on the first generation of the Internet, and how many of them will be on the next generation of the Internet, which we call the existence of "multi-party networks", and the multi-party network actually corresponds to the current blockchain. Just as there will be many applications on every multi-party network, there will be many applications deployed on every multi-party network.
The difference is that a multi-party network is managed by a single party, while a multi-party network is managed by multiple parties. It can be two-party, it can be more, or it can even be completely open, allowing anyone to join the administration, as long as it is agreed by all current administrators.
So we expect that there will be hundreds of millions of multi-party networks on the next generation of the Internet, just as there were hundreds of millions of them on the first generation of the Internet.
These two generations of the Internet will not replace each other, but complement each other, and the choice of which Internet to use is completely determined by the needs of the business scenario. Unilateral systems will still exist, just like sometimes a hit between two people can solve the problem; And if multiple organizations need to collaborate efficiently, then joining a multi-party network would be a better option, as mentioned in the previous example, 10 people join a ** meeting.
But it's important to note that just as there can't be only two of the largest on the first generation of the Internet, there can't be only one multi-party network on the next generation of the Internet. For the same business requirements, there may be hundreds of multi-party networks, which compete and optimize each other, some multi-party networks will be eliminated, some will survive, and finally there will be various multi-party networks.
The reason why we call them multi-party networks, not blockchains, is because blockchains only correspond to specific applications in specific scenarios. The next generation of the Internet is actually an infinite number of data communication networks, and whether it needs to use virtual machines, smart contracts, consensus mechanisms, etc. like blockchain is also completely determined by business needs.
Because there will be a large number of multi-party networks on the next-generation Internet, and these multi-party networks are composed of network nodes, some multi-party networks may only include two network nodes, and there may be some multi-party networks, even including millions of network nodes, so there will be countless network nodes in the future. These network nodes need to run on a variety of devices, so new operating systems, databases, and cloud management systems are needed to support the operation of these network nodes and the multi-party systems they compose.
What BSN does is define the next generation of Internet infrastructure at the cloud platform layer, while continuously optimizing the operating system layer. It is foreseeable that in the future, a lot of data will be transferred from centralized single-party systems to multi-party systems, because these multi-party systems can provide an open and transparent public network environment, and can ensure users' ownership and control of data.
We are now almost 100% convinced of this development direction, and as we continue to advance and practice our philosophy, more and more enterprises, especially overseas enterprises, including some large cloud service providers, are recognizing our concept, which also proves that we are on the right track.
However, it took 26 years from the birth of the Internet in 1969 to large-scale commercial use in 1995, and then another 15 years after the explosion of the mobile Internet in 2010, which made almost everyone use the Internet. Although we believe that it will not take another 20 years, and adhere to the attitude of not rushing for quick success, continue to invest a lot and focus on the creation of the underlying technology, but for BSN, because many of the basic work done at present may be open source in the future and cannot be transformed into commercial results, it still bears a lot of risk.
Therefore, today we once again clarify our philosophy, and hope that more like-minded companies and scientific research institutions can join our work, promote the development of science and technology with us, and jointly contribute to the progress of human society, thank you.