Blockchain+: Integrating Blockchain, Cloud Computing, and the Economy
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- Intro
- Productivity determines how many goods are produced. When production limitations restrict productivity, it becomes necessary to transform industries to adapt to new methods of productivity. Blockchain technology is the weapon to transform productivity.
- As the underlying infrastructure of the next generation of Internet technology, blockchain, edge computing, and other technologies are a type of holy grail for the world’s top innovators.
- In order to match emerging technology concepts to effectively implement service requirements, we need to consider the problem from the bottom. From the perspective of the cloud computing resource trading market, PPIO can fundamentally solve the drawbacks of a centralized cloud system.
2. Blockchain+
As early as 2015, the concept of Internet+, put forward by current Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, “promoted the integration of the mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, and Internet of Things with modern manufacturing industry”. In other words, it was to push the manufacturing industry to integrate groundbreaking Internet technologies.
On October 24 of this year, China’s Central People’s Government put forward the concept of Blockchain+, which relies on the Internet to empower and to horizontally open a trust relationship with the Chinese economy, and to accelerate the development of society.
In today’s Internet era, digitalization has greater influence on society and its value has increased significantly. When the productivity of the digital world increases but conflicts with the production speed of the traditional manufacturing world, the latter must adapt to survive. Blockchain represents a powerful tool to transform the current digital production relationship. At the same time, it is also an important component for the infrastructure of next generation value networks.
The essence of blockchain is to maintain a set of decentralized distributed ledgers that are jointly managed by multiple parties. This ledger cannot be tampered with and can ensure the openness and transparency of digital transactions. Blockchain has the potential to transform the existing Internet from the information highway to an Internet centered on trust. Blockchains provide power for creating a convenient, efficient, fair competition, and a stable and transparent business environment.
What exactly is Blockchain+? What do industries look like once implemented? This is a question that all players in the blockchain industry are thinking about. PPIO’s R&D team, as the next generation of Internet infrastructure builders, is optimistic about the implementation of a Blockchain+ cloud computing platform. Cloud computing can be divided into two types: centralized cloud and decentralized cloud services. In the next section, we will focus on the differences between them.
3. Central Cloud and Decentralized Cloud Services
A centralized cloud generally refers to a cloud computing platform that is under the full control of an enterprise. Whether it is public cloud, private cloud, integrated cloud or an industry cloud platform, the enterprise itself purchases computing, storage, and bandwidth resources, then builds IAAs, PAAS or SaaS services, and finally provides internal or external cloud computing service capabilities.
The advantage of this centralized model is that it can efficiently coordinate and optimize cloud resources and provide fast and convenient services to enterprise users. But the mature environment of the cloud computing industry has resulted in several disadvantages including a single point of failure brought by centralization, data security concerns, and increased cloud computing costs. Because of these issues, the decentralized cloud, as an edge innovation technology, along with the arrival of 5G and the Internet of Things technology, is ready for a successful launch.
A decentralized cloud is a loosely organized way to build stable and reliable cloud computing services. It might sound contradictory, but Bitcoin uses its ingeniously well-designed protocol to organize miners to dig out cheap electricity and use super powerful computing to provide a stable and reliable jointly maintained consensus ledger. In the same way, the decentralized cloud uses the idea of an alliance chain to establish a computing, storage, and bandwidth digital asset market to match the demand and supply of its service, in order to achieve price transparency and free competition. Also, because a centralized pricing mechanism has been removed, the cost is minimal. Just as Bitcoin’s network cannot be broken, the decentralized cloud architecture does not theoretically have a single point of failure. Furthermore, the decentralized design can protect the data privacy of enterprises and users.
There are no absolute advantages and disadvantages for centralized cloud or decentralized cloud platforms. Instead, each can be employed depending on the needs of the user or business. However, we believe that Blockchain+ combined with cloud computing is more than just a decentralized cloud platform. It elevates it. Full integration turns it into what we called a white “cloud”.
4. Blockchain+ and the Blossoming White Cloud
The general trend of the world is that a long period of integration will lead to division, and a long period of separation will lead to integration. We believe that in the future, one type of cloud service won’t replace the other, rather both will be used concurrently based on needs. The centralized cloud has irreplaceable advantages such as performance and service, while the decentralized cloud is more affordable and offers greater data privacy protection.
Blockchain+ enabled cloud computing not only enhances the decentralized cloud but the centralized cloud too. We believe that Blockchain+ will connect different cloud platforms to allow markets to let supply match demand.
As mentioned in the previous section, the essence of Blockchain+ is a trading market that trades the core digital assets of cloud computing: computing, storage, and bandwidth. These core elements, whether it is a centralized cloud or a decentralized cloud, are needed. For example, public cloud services can purchase computing resources in a region because they want to improve the service capabilities of that region. Corporate entities can also purchase corresponding computing resources in a market to create a centralized private cloud or industry cloud. Even individuals or small teams with development capabilities can build open-source cloud services that compete with AWS Cloud services on the demand side. Every and all possibilities are possible.
5. In Summary
Looking back on the trend of the past decade, technology has and will continue to penetrate all corners of human life at increasingly faster speeds. A pessimistic argument is that we humans are no longer “intelligent” as we are becoming increasingly reliant on machines, whereas an optimistic line of thought is that humans are growing by relying on technology to extend their capabilities.
In any case, the network and connection are bound to be more massive and powerful. Around people, there must be a variety of blossoming white “clouds” that coordinate with each other to accomplish specific tasks.
