By Zhangtong Cheng, Junior Project Manager - Art-Science
On 17th September, our 21st edition of Café des Sciences Lecture – Blockchain, unchain the future was successfully held at the event space of swissnex China and live broadcasted via Zoom. We have invited experts Dr. Siyan Xu from Tencent Research Institute, Prof. Claudio Tessone from University of Zurich and Luisa Kinzius from Sinolytics GmbH, who have different research interests to share their insights on this topic. The moderator David Chang from Shanghai Blockchain Association raised in-depth questions for the speakers and the audiences are also actively engaged.
Due to time constraints, we could only present a limited number of questions. If you have further questions for our speakers, please email us at artscience@swissnexchina.org. We will try our best to forward them to the speakers.
We would like to express our appreciation to our moderator David Chang and speakers Dr. Siyan Xu, Prof. Claudio Tessone, and Luisa Kinzius for sharing their research achievements and valuable insights. Meanwhile, we were also grateful for the support from SwissCham and Future of Money series for this event.
The video recording of the webinar is here.
The presentation slides are available to download here.
“The Concept and Opportunities of Industrial Blockchain”
Dr. Siyan is a Ph.D. in STS from Tsinghua University and a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is currently the Deputy Director of the Smart Industry Research Center in the Tencent Research Institute. Her main research area is the innovative economic model of strategic emerging technologies such as blockchain and AI. She is also the author of the “2019 Tencent Blockchain White Paper”, “AI: the Starting Point of National AI Strategic Action”, “Platform Era”, “2017 Internet Technology Innovation White Paper”.
Driven by the development of technology, especially the payment system in China, nowadays, China’s internet giants have already started to transform their business model. A high level of digitalization has ignited their passion to industrialize technologies, which is doubly true for the emerging blockchain technology.
Focused on the development of industrial blockchain, Dr. Siyan Xu defined blockchain as the combination of tool, ecology, and concept. She categorized the participants of the blockchain market into four types: IT leader, traditional finance, consulting company, and startup. With the technical and financial support plus policy solutions, the blockchain reform can be carried out through internal incubation of industrial blockchain projects and alliance forms. Then startups can be driven by the open-source community of blockchain developers.
According to Dr. Siyan Xu, there are three main functions of blockchain in the industry: Blockchain is to solve the disadvantages of the centralized system; the problem of multi trust cooperation; and more importantly it can potentially assist in asset digitization and digital capitalization.
As for the application of the blockchain, on the one hand, it can solve the difficulty of small and micro enterprises’ loans. The key point is that it will be possible trace necessary data on blockchain transparently and therefore master the financial status of target companies.
On the other hand, blockchain can provide electronic evidence for IP confirmation, copyright registration, rights inspection, and one-click litigation. Take the Tencent ZhiXin Chain as an example, through Zhixin’s circulation management of electronic evidence, organization of judicial ecology and multi-party cooperation as well as provision of innovative solutions for the whole process, it has protected over 10 million original works, initiated and removed 8 million infringing works from the shelves, with an average of more than 30,000 times a day.
In the last part of Dr. Siyan Xu’s presentation, she talked about digital technology integration and common development. Blockchain is never an isolated technology in the industry, it could further promote industrial development if it can be integrated with IoT, cloud computing, or AI.
“An Interdisciplinary Approach to Blockchains”
Prof. Claudio Tessone is the assistant professor for Network Science and the Academic Director of the UZH Blockchain Center at the University of Zurich. UZH Blockchain Center is an active initiative coordinating research, education, and acting as the articulation between the academia and industry. With highly skilled workforce and a solid and advanced regulation, Switzerland has become one of the most active countries worldwide in blockchain development.
He has an ongoing interest in the modeling of complex socio-economic and socio-technical systems through network science and complex systems approaches. This includes how the networks of interactions and intrinsic or acquired agent heterogeneity modify processes such as diffusion and assimilation of external influences. This kind of research encompasses a variety of contexts, ranging from advertisement adoption to social influence, and game-theoretic settings.
His primal focus of research is on diffusion and spreading on socio-economic and socio-technical systems. Intra- and inter-organizational knowledge flow, product adoption, etc. are studied through data analysis and parsimonious modeling. When required, it also includes the development of methodological tools.
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are also a pillar of his research. The main focus is on the incentive schemes placed while designing them (many times hidden). It also includes large scale data analysis of cryptocurrency economies and modeling of consensus in blockchain-based systems.
Prof. Claudio Tessone’s presentation emphasized an interdisciplinary approach to blockchain. He made the point that blockchain shall be studied and applied in combination with legal and economic factors. Therefore, the existing blockchain-based systems represent an opportunity to learn. According to his research, blockchain is trusted with immutable data repositories. Blockchain saves information about the economy or our society. However, it goes beyond the database with their data abilities and data intelligence. The economy and society are complex systems, and they cannot be controlled in a simple, rigid way. Thus, an adaptive design guided by interdisciplinary understanding is fundamental to unleash the potential of the technology for societal good.
Panel Discussion and Q & A
In our panel discussion session, we were glad to have David Chang, Vice President of Shanghai Blockchain Association and CEO of Blocknology Digital Ventures as the moderator and Luisa Kinzius, project leader of Sinolytics GmbH as the panelist.
Luisa Kinzius shared her research result from policy perspectives to answer David Chang’s question about the attitude of the Chinese government towards blockchain in a global view. According to Sinolytics’ analysis, China is one of the leading countries in blockchain and the Chinese government is committed to set a global standard for the application of blockchain. The Chinese government has launched the blockchain-based service network which is the operating system for many blockchain applications. The service network provides basic infrastructure not only in China but also globally. However, there is one governance structure for the global network and one domestic system as well. There is still quite a long way to establish a global standard and global application.
Digging further about whether the Chinese government encourages to engage with more actors or not, Luisa Kinzius said in China, from a policy perspective, blockchain was not merely opportunities for big companies. The goal of blockchains is to have multiple parties involved and try to engage as many participants as possible. Therefore, everybody has the chance to participate in blockchains. Meanwhile, from an economic perspective, the Chinese government encourages the participation of blockchain for industrial use.
