Cathay Financial Holdings launched The Blockchain Financial Platform of Internet of Electric Vehicle
【Published by: iThome | Editor: Li Jin-Gyi | Translator: Statecraft 】
Cathay Financial Holdings Digital Data and Technology Development Center released the first blockchain project “The Blockchain Financial Platform of Internet of Electric Vehicle”. Through cooperation with ChargeSmith, an electric vehicle charging station service platform, and the new blockchain BSOS, adopt the super ledger development framework, the electric vehicle driving computer data should be uploaded to the chain, and the planning first is applied to the business scenarios of the group’s banks and property insurance. The blockchain team of the Digital Data and Technology Development Center also revealed for the first time the key to using a super ledger to build a chain on its own.
As early as 2 years ago, Cathay Financial Holdings started to develop blockchain technology. However, when blockchain was the most popular in the world during the past two years, Cathay Financial Holdings has not made a shot. Until recently, it finally revealed the first blockchain. Application, the first to lock is the new state-of-the-art application of electric vehicles.
Cathay Financial Holdings Digital Data and Technology Development Center recently released the first blockchain project “The Blockchain Financial Platform of Internet of Electric Vehicle “, and found the electric vehicle charging station service platform ChargeSmith to cooperate with the blockchain startup BSOS to adopt Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework, the electric vehicle driving computer data should be uploaded to the chain. The Cathay Financial Control Plan was first used in banking and property insurance business scenarios and will plan to provide financial services such as electric vehicle owners’ financing and loan applications, insurance claims, and personalized product recommendations.
Yang Jun-Shu, a senior engineer in the Blockchain Technology Development Section of the Digital Data and Technology Development Center, said that at present, the driving computer information of Tesla electric vehicles is currently locked. There are currently have about 8,000 units Tesla electric vehicles in Taiwan, and 70% to 80% of car owners will use the ChargeSmith charging station to query the app. the Internet of Electric Vehicles platform, will obtain driving data of electric vehicles after the authorization of the owner, including driving time, time period, speed, mileage, braking, rechargeable battery power, whether the door is closed and other driving behaviors, and then store these data encrypted. Proof and upload to the blockchain node deployed in ChargeSmith, and then synchronize data with other blockchain nodes of Cathay Financial Holdings’s subsidiaries.
In terms of practice, Yang Jun-Shu explained that Tesla originally built a Data Hub platform, which regularly collects the driving computer information of each Tesla car, and also released the official open API. Cathay Financial Holdings Digital Data and Technology Development Center’s blockchain team wrote the DApp and smart contract by itself, and BSOS assisted ChargeSmith to establish the node and ensure that the data came from the original data of Tesla’s original factory. After the owner’s authorization, the official API was directly connected and the designated electric The driving computer data of the car is directly put into the DApp, and the DApp then links the data to the ChargeSmith node according to the smart contract. The advantage of this approach is “Tesla electric car owners’ first-hand driving computer data can be directly uploaded to Cathay’s blockchain.” He emphasized.
At present, Cathay Financial Holdings first cooperated with four Tesla owners to carry out a three-month Proof of Concept to prove the feasibility of the entire data flow operation mode and then began to recruit a large number of electric vehicle owners. At the same time, through Proof of Concept to let the group subsidiaries understand the operation mode, so as to facilitate the subsequent development of other applications. Cathay Financial Holdings estimates that official services will be launched at the end of this year.
Relying on the elimination method to find the suitable blockchain application scenario, Cathay Financial Holdings asks 3 questions each time
Cathay Financial Holdings Digital Data and Technology Development Center established the Blockchain Group as early as September 2018, and later it was further converted into a formal establishment, and the Blockchain Technology Development Section was established, which was affiliated with Cathay Financial Holdings Digital Data and The Digital Development Department of the Technology Development Center currently has 9 team members.
In the early days of its establishment, the team spent a long time studying the underlying architecture of different blockchain technologies. After multiple evaluations, the team finally decided to adopt the Hyperledger Fabric technology framework and decided to build its own chain. In the second half of 2019, the blockchain team began to cooperate with subsidiaries of Cathay Financial Holdings to formally develop blockchain product development.
Yang Jun-Shu stated that the purpose of the establishment of this blockchain team is to apply the value of blockchain to subsidiaries and even customers of subsidiaries. In order to find a suitable application scenario, Cathay Financial Holdings later developed a set of exclusion strategies, “When working with subsidiaries, through three questions, first exclude businesses that do not require blockchain.” Yang Jun-Shu Explanation, question one: Can this business come up with which company can share information with? If no partner can be found as a node, this business may not be suitable for blockchain. Question 2: Even if there are partners who share information, is it necessary to assess whether it is necessary for both parties to apply blockchain? For example, if this information sharing is never available without the blockchain, it is necessary.
Question 3: It is not enough to find out the scenarios where the non-use blockchain is indispensable. Yang Jun-Shu emphasized that Cathay Financial Holdings’ blockchain application principle is not on the chain, and will also ask whether the subsidiary agrees to this practice? If the other party agrees, the blockchain team will start building the chain. He explained that Cathay Financial Holdings may need to do international business in the future. If the partner is a European company, it must follow the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Even in Taiwan, it gradually begins to focus on personal capital. Due to doubts about capital leakage, Cathay Financial Holdings decided not to invest in the chain, and only let some public or semi-public information on the chain.
Comparison of mainstream blockchain technology, the key to the self-built chain using Hyperledger Fabric
Yang Junshu also reviewed 1 year ago, Cathay Financial Holdings Digital Data and Technology Development Center blockchain team chose the Hyperledger Fabric development framework in several international mainstream blockchain infrastructures and decided to build the chain on its own. “Because the financial industry is most concerned about data confidentiality.”
He further pointed out that Ethereum is the first choice adopted by the general blockchain team because Ethereum has the most data and it is easy to establish an Ethereum private chain. Our team made a logistics chain Proof of Concept last year, which is to use the Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus algorithm on the private chain. The operation of PoA consensus is that authorized nodes have the authority to generate the next block in the blockchain network.
Yang Jun-Shu revealed that although the PoA consensus mechanism used in the Ethereum private chain is easy to use, it has some troubles in the confidentiality of the data. He explained that all participants are on the same chain. If you want to block data from some participants, you need to develop a function to block data.
However, like Hyperledger Fabric, it adopts a licensed blockchain architecture, which can designate specific nodes to participate in and jointly maintain operations, and provides a Channel function by default to ensure data confidentiality. He mentioned that this function is like the concept of the data channel. For example, the four parties A, B, C, and D are on the same chain, and the universal data is open to everyone to browse.
If A and B one day want to do business separately If they don’t want the other two to know, you can use the Channel function to create a channel. Information about the specific business cooperation between A and B will only take place on this channel. Moreover, when the third company wants to join this private transaction one day, it can still see the historical data of both the parties A and B in the past.
“This flexible approach to adding new business at any time can make the business of multiple participants on the chain more diverse in the future,” said Yang Jun-Shu.
In fact, JPMorgan Chase uses the Quorum blockchain platform developed by Ethereum and has a similar channel concept to ensure data privacy. When two companies conduct private transactions, both parties can access only a private data pool area. There is information that the only one can see. The disadvantage is that although the third company can join the channel in the future, it can’t see the historical data of the two previous ones.
Yang Jun-Shu pointed out that this is also the reason why they chose Hyperledger Fabric because the historical data of the previous cooperation is very important for the financial industry to start another cooperation. This is an indicator that can be evaluated by subsequent cooperation partners.
Yang Jun-Shu further explained that the R3 blockchain platform, which is designed exclusively for finance, adopts a one-to-one channel from beginning to end, in fact, it can also achieve data confidentiality. However, Cathay Financial Holdings considers that digital transformation is not only about doing business within the subsidiary but in the future, it is more likely to do business with external partners to expand the ecosystem. At this time, the R3 one-to-one channel design will cause the number of channels to show an index. Sexual growth will greatly reduce efficiency, or there may be problems that the management platform is more difficult to maintain.
Difficulties encountered in the self-built chain, future plans to build their own consensus algorithm
The Digital Data and Technology Development Center blockchain team, which has been using Hyperledger Fabric for a whole year, actually encountered many difficulties when it first started building the chain. Yang Jun-Shu illustrates that Hyperledger Fabric uses Kafka message queues to perform consensus algorithms to sort all transaction information. However, he admits that Kafka is a new technology, and there are still some bugs. Sometimes too much information needs to be uploaded to the chain, and the transaction sequence may be wrong.
Or, sometimes, when there are four nodes on the chain, and one of the nodes is wrong and is about to be restarted, the other three nodes must be used to restore the data. However, the data version after the reply occurred, which is different from the other three nodes. Yang Jun-Shu mentioned that this is also related to the order of transactions, and later found some solutions, such as providing backup for each node, or dismantling a certain component and the node to operate, once a node failure restarts, You can synchronize the data back through a normal functioning component.
Yang Jun-Shu also revealed that the team will not necessarily insist on using Hyperledger Fabric in the future but hopes to build its own consensus algorithm, such as using open source and practical Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) to modify. The main reason is that Cathay Financial Holdings now has some business scenarios that require different needs such as high-speed transactions or high security. “If you build your own consensus algorithm in the future, as long as you modify the bottom layer and use the consensus algorithm to adjust the parameters, you can meet the group’s Different business needs.”
Cathay Financial Holdings self-built blockchain also has many long-term design considerations in its architecture. For example, when the blockchain team also built the blockchain from the beginning, it followed the enterprise foundation of The Digital Data and Technology Development Center Architecture and technology. According to Yang Jun-Shu, for example, microservices are used directly when building Hyperledger Fabric. In the future, if the blockchain needs to be turned into an infrastructure module, it will be easier to integrate into the entire infrastructure of The Digital Data and Technology Development Center.
In addition, Cathay Financial Holdings’ self-built blockchain is also designed with Cloud-Native. If Cathay Financial Holdings needs to cooperate with external companies in the future, it can directly deploy the nodes needed by the other party in the cloud. However, there are many legal compliance considerations and design requirements for the financial industry, and the cloud team of The Digital Data and Technology Development Center’s digital architecture development department will also support the cloud architecture and maintenance of this blockchain platform.
Li Zhao-Qin, another senior engineer in the Blockchain Technology Development Section, mentioned that they use Docker container technology to package the code and the execution environment into an image file. It only takes 1 to 2 days to quickly be in the subsidiary Or an external company builds a blockchain node. He mentioned that as far as possible, containerization is adopted for deployment, and it is more convenient to deal with the problem later.
Cathay Financial Holdings not only regards blockchain as an emerging technology for the development of digital finance, but also considers turning blockchain into a structure that can be shared by all fields of finance in the future, and then can quickly develop other applications, but it has not yet revealed too many details.
The Blockchain Financial Platform of Internet of Electric Vehicle first focuses on banking and property insurance applications
The latest release of The Blockchain Financial Platform of Internet of Electric Vehicle, the future application will be divided into two stages. Yang Jun-Shu said that the first stage is to cooperate with Cathay Century Insurance and Cathay United Bank; the second stage plans to find more nodes, such as a garage, through the garage’s ERP, or a database of maintenance records to become a Node, and then synchronize the data with the node of Cathay Financial Holdings.
In the application of property and casualty insurance, Cathay Century Insurance can evaluate driving plans or driving behaviors of car owners according to their driving habits or driving behaviors, or recommend appropriate personalized insurance products. At the same time, it is also studying the use of the non-destructive modification characteristics of the blockchain data to optimize the claims review process when the car owner has a traffic accident.
Banks are currently planning to apply for financing loans. Yang Jun-Shu mentioned that the simpler application is that when the car mainly uses the vehicle body resume to apply for financing in the future, Cathay United Bank’s assessors can use the blockchain to obtain the owner’s driving information such as mileage and maintenance records. Evaluate the condition of the car, such as judging whether the car has been hit by the maintenance record, thereby reducing the time between the owner and the bank, and speeding up the nuclear loan. However, the financing loan application has not yet been designed. For example, it is in the financing quota, because it involves the review unit, so it needs to be planned.
Cathay Financial Holdings also revealed that, in addition to The Blockchain Financial Platform of Internet of Electric Vehicle, at present, Cathay Century Insurance and The Digital Data and Technology Development Center are also restructuring the middle and back-office through the technical framework, and will soon launch a new technology finance application.
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