Technology giants who don’t engage in digital currency have these three directions in the layout of blockchains

Previously, the "White Paper on China's Blockchain Technology and Application Development" showed that Alibaba ranked first with a total of 49 blockchains. If these capabilities are used for "mining" or for "currying", there is no doubt. Alibaba's stock will also benefit greatly, but Alibaba is clearly not here.

At the same time, Amazon, Facebook, Google and other giants have not issued digital currency, crowdfunding ICO, but still keep an eye on the development of the blockchain, apply it and empower others.

In this way, the giants have tried to use the blockchain as a technology rather than a short-term method of accumulating wealth. Like artificial intelligence, giant companies have already adopted blockchain as part of their long-term layout.

The layout direction of the giants can also best indicate the blockchain as the scenario that should be applied by the technology itself. Let us revisit the blockchain as the technology itself. What are the application scenarios? At present, there are two main scenarios. Great practical direction, and an upcoming direction. These are ToB Enterprise Services, ToC User Needs, and the future of the IoT Internet of Things.

ToB Enterprise Services, strategic layout of the blockchain open platform

The blockchain layout ambition of the giants is actually quite obvious. The blockchain can be regarded as part of the development of cloud computing in nature, so it can naturally be used by various industries, and the giants have their own cloud computing layout, so the giants It is also possible to deploy a blockchain open platform like the previous layout cloud computing platform, map open platform, voice open platform, face recognition open platform, and the like.

Here Baidu and Tencent's routes are similar, all through the application of the financial field first, and will be completely open after a certain application.

In May of last year, Baidu Financial United Leasing, Huaneng Trust, etc., released the first blockchain consumer finance ABS, which achieved its landing. In July, Baidu Finance teamed up with the second-hand car to release the first off-exchange asset securitization (ABS) products. By January this year, Baidu launched the BaaS blockchain open platform and announced that it had 50 billion assets on it. Operation.

Tencent’s Weizhong Bank launched the blockchain business earlier. In August 2016, it launched the first commercial blockchain open platform in China. In September, it jointly developed a blockchain application system with Huarui Bank. For the settlement and clearing business of the two banks' microfinance loan, Tencent also officially launched the TrustSQL open platform business in May last year.

In addition to Baidu and Tencent, Alibaba Cloud has a blockchain solution, and Amazon's AWS has a BaaS blockchain platform.

IDC's Global Half-Year Blockchain Expenditure Guide states that the market demand for blockchain services driven by the banking, insurance, and logistics industries will reach $2.1 billion in 2018, an increase of 122% from $945 million in 2017. By 2021, the market will reach $9.2 billion, and China will have a market space of $1 billion.

Therefore, this is also a specific technical service that can be seen and touched. It is inevitable that the giants will build a platform for layout. At the same time, the giants will also face competition from blockchain service providers from third parties.

This is like Alibaba Cloud, although it is already large, it still does not hinder the differential development of other cloud computing service providers.

ToC user demand, integrated layout to the downstream industry chain

What am I going to be in the future of Bitcoin? Why is ICO eventually cooled? In the article, ICO will eventually enter the cooling because there is no trading scene, and the public will return to calm.

However, the giant companies have a huge number of scenes, which can integrate the upstream and downstream industry chains through the blockchain technology around the user's needs, making the original trading scene more transparent, safe and reliable.

This is different from Kodak's issue of digital currency, which covers its own lightweight digital copyright transactions. The giants need to integrate more complex online and offline industry chains, and they do not need to issue digital currency to profit from it.

The difficulty of integrating the upper and lower industrial chains is also obvious. Technology is not a problem at all, and the synergy of all parties is the problem.

As Jiang Guofei, head of the Ant Financial Technology Laboratory, said, “The biggest challenge of blockchain technology is not technology, but the fact that the participants have reached an agreement, which has extremely complicated interests.”

Therefore, the current development of the blockchain is more like the early O2O. The technology is not the focus. It relies on the strong integration of the interest chain. It is not only a hard work, but also a process that needs long-term promotion, and the process of giant promotion must also be Difficulty, from light to heavy, and progressing step by step.

At this point, the route of Ant Financial is relatively clear, and its traceability from public welfare to food is more in line with the development law of the industry from easy to difficult.

1. Development of public welfare blockchains. The integration of public interest interest chains is relatively minimal compared to other industries, because after all, the requirements of openness, transparency and traceability are the foundation of the public welfare industry.

At present, Ant Financial has traced the blockchain funds in Alipay, and Tencent has launched a “Tracing Chain” to help parents retrieve lost children more efficiently. In addition, Guo Rui, Assistant General Manager of Tencent Financial Product Innovation Lab, In the article "The possibility of blockchain in Tencent", Tencent also hopes to carry out the public welfare, and Alipay has already achieved.

2. Development of food traceability blockchain. It is obvious that it is more difficult to make the commodity chain relative to the public welfare, the problem of interest disputes between commodity suppliers is far more complicated than the public welfare, not a one-night event.

In June last year, Jingdong established the “Jingdong Quality Traceability Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance”. Using blockchain technology, Ant Financial Service was officially launched in November last year, and the self-developed blockchain was launched, realizing the 26 brands of New Zealand’s milk powder. The blockchain traces its origins, and Abbott, Aihemei, Wyeth, Bellamy and other brands are all on the chain. On February 27 this year, Tmall International applied blockchain technology to the traceability of overseas goods.

It is also worth noting that food traceability itself is also a business. According to the “2017-2023 China Food Traceability Industry In-depth Research and Investment Strategy Research Report” published by Zhiyan Consulting, the world food traceability market reached US$11.1 billion in 2016. Maintain an average annual growth rate of 10.57%, and will expand in the future.

From this point of view, the giants involved in food traceability, not only can better serve the platform users, in the long run, will also obtain greater economic returns.

Layout IoT's full-blown future

The combination of IoT and blockchain is currently only a speculation.

At present, the next round of scene coverage is likely to come from the large-scale coverage of IoT equipment. IHS predicts that the installed base of global IoT equipment will reach 20.7 billion in 2020, and will reach 75.4 billion in 2025.

Looking back, this year, Ali and Tencent's current new retail war acceleration is not without reason. The two sides seized the offline scene, but after the preemption, they will not stay in place, engage in simple scenarios such as membership binding and promotion. Certainly, there will be more in-depth and fine-grained transformation of the offline, so the future will inevitably have the emergence of massive IoT equipment.

At this point, Amazon's Amazon Go has made the world's best demonstration. Its full-range monitoring and sensing AI technology strength has the potential to open a new round of scene coverage, and the blockchain technology will find the corresponding development position.

In addition, China's Xiaomi has 85 million IoT IoT devices covering up to 10 million active devices per day. The number of IoT devices is currently the highest in the world, and it has recently announced its entry into the blockchain. The high monthly salary of 10,000 to 60,000 is looking for a capable person on the recruitment website, which has great imagination.

So back to the beginning, Alibaba’s blockchain patent technology registration number is the first, but it has not officially launched the BaaS platform. It can be speculated that more energy must be used in other aspects, most likely in Prepare for the blockchain construction of IoT IoT devices.