The blockchain that has been bustling for four months has been almost hit and hot, from the buoyancy of capital to the growth of the media. Today, hardware manufacturers also plan to take a piece.
As of April 12, Lenovo's blockchain mobile phone S5 has been sold for about 20 days. This thousand yuan machine main application of 'blockchain' protection technology to ensure payment security. In addition to Lenovo S5, candy S11, Changhong R8 Kirin also hit the area Blockchain mobile phone tag, and said a blockchain wallet, cell phone mining and other functions.
In the view of many technicians and industry insiders of the blockchain industry, the above-mentioned blockchain concept mobile phone does not clearly specify what specific blockchain technology is used. The so-called encryption function is unknown, and its technology is also common in ordinary mobile phones. There are applications. Because mobile computing is completely difficult to match with the mining machine, 'phone mining' is not realistic.
Zhao Yongliang, deputy dean of Shandong Blockchain Applied Technology Research Institute, analyzed that smart phones have already encountered bottlenecks. 'From this perspective, blockchain mobile phones are suspected of being hot spots.'
Multiple vendors push 'blockchain phones'
On March 20, Lenovo released the 'Lenovo S5', which is called Lenovo's first 'blockchain' phone.
According to related reports, as a "blockchain" mobile phone, Lenovo S5 will provide the system's underlying "blockchain" protection technology, so that each payment link will be fully protected from the price of 999 yuan.
Lenovo's flagship store on the Tmall platform, Lenovo S5 sales data shows: As of April 12 at noon, the monthly sales of its Tmall Lenovo flagship store combined to about 1,000 units.
The combination of blockchain and mobile phone is not new. In January of this year, a little-known domestic mobile phone maker candy phone released a new machine - candy S11, also known as blockchain creation mobile phone, this official sale. The maximum price of 2,499 yuan for the new machine is 'mining'.
As of noon on April 12, Tmall Candy Mobile's flagship store showed its monthly sales of only 121; Jingdong's flagship candy store and JD.com's self-operated store had a total of less than 500 comments.
According to the promotion of candy mobile phones, candy blockchain mobile phone = candy mobile phone + blockchain wallet + blockchain mining machine. It can be used as a mining machine to dig a digital fork currency called 'Ether Fog' and convert it into a currency. Candy points.
According to the promotion of candy mobile phones, this 'world's first blockchain mobile phone' will reshape the mobile phone industry with blockchain technology.
In March, Changhong, a veteran home appliance brand, also announced the launch of a blockchain mobile phone, the Changhong R8 Kirin, which is priced at RMB 2,999. The Changhong R8 Unicorn claims to be the first Unicorn blockchain mobile phone developed by Changhong Communications for Unicorn. It is a new generation of blockchain mobile intelligent terminal, based on POW consensus algorithm, device fingerprinting technology, LBS location service, allowing users to participate in the blockchain with a lower threshold.
The so-called Unicorn is a blockchain project that claims to be able to 'limit the hegemony of the miners.' To put it bluntly, it is a project for mining. The Changhong blockchain mobile phone has also been tagged with 'mines'.
In the evaluation areas of Tmall and JD.com, the comments of Lenovo S5 and Candy S11 mobile phones are all about mobile phone performance and appearance, and few users evaluate their 'blockchain' related functions.
Some netizens commented on the configuration and performance of Changhong R8 Kirin and candy S11, saying that it has no special merit compared to the configuration of thousand yuan machines, but after adding the blockchain elements, one brand will The mobile phone, which is not well known to the public, can price nearly 3,000 yuan.
Technical Experts: There is no chain of open source
Although these mobile phone manufacturers have rushed to label themselves as 'blockchain', it seems to some people in the industry that it is more like a 'hot spot'.
In the promotion of the Lenovo S5, this blockchain mobile phone is mainly used for security. The Lenovo S5 has dual domain isolation, global encryption space, security for user accounts, passwords, and online shopping, and supports blockchain technology from the ground up. More introduction, Lenovo related staff said 'only this information.'
In this regard, a technician of the blockchain technology company matrix element said that, in the absence of detailed information, simply from the literal understanding, the so-called 'dual domain isolation' is an ordinary storage and private key storage isolation, belonging to the hardware security Environment; 'Global Encryption' is the encryption and storage of everything. 'I feel like I've said it, I haven't said anything. It's hard to understand what I want to say.'
Cao Wei, chief strategy officer of the Energy Blockchain Laboratory, said that the blockchain's widely viewed role is privacy data protection, value transmission, traceability, etc. 'But at present most of the hardware components of the application blockchain are not needed at all. these functions. '
In his view, the use of blockchain technology to solve the issue of payment security, it is also difficult to see the doorway through the slogan. 'Neither tells us what algorithm to use, how many nodes, did not tell us where these nodes are generated. What consensus, how to ensure that the future will not happen 'Byzantine attack'.
In addition, he believes that blockchains are heavily involved, ie open source, and that there is no point in not having an open source blockchain.
According to Li Jun, a COO of the Blockchain blockchain of the blockchain technology company, the value of the blockchain lies in solving problems such as security, traceability, and distributed storage. There is no chain, not a blockchain mobile phone. '
'Excavation is a practice of the blockchain consensus mechanism. Even if you really use mobile phone to mine, this method can't be compared with the mining power of the mining machine. The computing power of a single ASIC mining machine may be The sum of billions of mobile computing power. ' Cao Yu said.
■ Viewpoint
There are technical problems with the combination of current blockchain and mobile phones
In the eyes of the industry, the combination of the earlier blockchain and hardware products is a digital currency hardware wallet. This is also a blockchain hardware application that is currently recognized.
A staff member of Matrix Element said that as a blockchain technology company, they currently have only one hardware wallet on the hardware floor, and other hardware-recognized products that are relatively accepted in the industry "have not heard of it."
'The hardware wallet actually solves the security problem of digital assets by combining with blockchain technology.' said Cao Wei, chief strategy officer of the Energy Blockchain Lab.
In his view, there are technical problems with the current combination of blockchain and hardware such as mobile phones. The first is that hardware such as mobile phones is difficult to support the operation of blockchain networks. For example, when the mobile phone network is dropped, it will generate Orphans' (isolated blocks) This is not only a blockchain issue, but also a problem with the communication network. 'Once dropped, there will be transmission breakpoints. The phone will not be connected to the Internet for an hour. The transactions that occur in the blockchain network are easily tampered with.'
According to the advertisement, the current technology can only provide breakpoints through centralization. However, once it is centralized, it cannot be called a point-to-point distributed network, nor can it be called a safe area. Block chain system.
In addition, the current blockchain technology has not yet reached the mature stage. Cao Yu believes that all blockchain hardware is the use of physical equipment to solve the digital world, has not yet reached the stage of using physical equipment to solve physical problems, on the one hand, because The technology of combining blockchain hardware and software is not mature. On the other hand, the technology of blockchain itself is not mature, such as the efficiency of blockchain, and the fault tolerance of blockchain in high concurrency environments, in different hardware environments. The compatibility issues need to be resolved.'
However, it is not infeasible for blockchains to be used in smart hardware such as mobile phones. 'If it is clear how to integrate the blockchain into hardware, how many nodes, what kind of consensus mechanisms and encryption methods are used, this will make the public more Convinced. ' Cao Yu said.
Zhao Yongliang, deputy dean of Shandong Blockchain Applied Technology Research Institute, analyzed that after the development of smart phones in recent years, a bottleneck has been encountered. For some non-head traditional manufacturers, there is no new growth and innovation point. In this regard, blockchain mobile phones are more like fried dumplings.