序四
The Importance of Blockchain Technology in Distributed Systems
Today,widely known for powering cryptocurrencies,such as Bitcoin and Ethereum,blockchain technologies are seen as a disruptive force capable of impacting a wide variety of domains—ranging,among others,from finance,supply chain management and logistics to health-care and government services.Blockchains offer security,reliability,and transparency in a decentralized manner among potentially distrusting nodes.
A blockchain is a distributed ledger for documenting transactions maintained across many nodes without relying on a trusted,central authority using proven cryptographic mechanisms and game theoretic incentives to ensure transaction immutability,authenticity,and consensus.
The emergence of blockchain technology is impacting the design of distributed applications.It is also playing an increasingly important role for secure decentralization in such fields as Internet of Things,cyber physical systems,edge computing,social networking,crowdsourcing,and for many others.
A simple example and speaking from personal experience,today,it is not easily possible to track a simple package shipped from North America or Europe to Asia via the traditional postal mail services and know when it has arrived or know where it sits.Once the physical shipment crosses the border,the internal ledgers of the shipping providers do not interoperate,do not share state,and do not provide the needed transparency;all this despite the heavy reliance on information technology in every aspect of the processes involved.The use of blockchains in this application would open up "Pandora＇s Box" and allow for frictionless transparency and exact knowledge of where a shipment resides,potentially offering customers and providers additional services.
According to the China Daily (May,2018),the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China is developing ＂blockchain standards＂ to ease adoption and use of the emerging distributed ledger technology.With this move and its thoughtful implementation,China is poised to become a fertile ground for blockchain application innovation that will drive industry adoption and lead to innovation,rather than lead to a continued proliferation of ever more incremental improvements of the core ideas that have incepted blockchains,currently stagnating adoption and use of blockchains worldwide.
The present book,entitled "Blockchain 2.0" by Prof.Raymond Tan of Fudan University constitutes a great collection of blockchain application use cases and will be an inspiration for the Chinese industry and blockchain enthusiasts.The book is a must-read for the early blockchain adopters in China.
Sincerely and with my best wishes for your title"Blockchain 2.0."
Dr.Hans-Arno Jacobsen,Professor&Alexander von Humboldt Professor
University of Toronto,Toronto,Canada and TUM,Munich,Germany
Middleware Systems Research Group (msrg.org)-"for everything middleware"
加拿大多伦多大学、德国慕尼黑科技大学 亚历山大·冯·洪堡教授
中间件系统研究组（msrg.org）“一切关于中间件的研究” 雅各布森博士
[1] 区块链技术的出现影响了分布式应用程序的设计和开发，而且它在物联网、边缘计算、社交网络、众筹等领域的安全性去中心化系统中起到越来越重要的作用。