Before the interview at six o'clock that afternoon, Dr. Ming took the time to have breakfast while debugging the lighting and equipment, which was very hard.
Unlike the scientist in Xiao Gui's impression, Dr. Ming is eloquent and can adjust his state in a short time, talking to the camera Kan Kan and Kan Kan.
After a conversation, Dr. Ming gave the impression that he was realistic and romantic, had a clear understanding of the challenges faced by Blockcloud, was prepared for a protracted war, and had enough confidence and expectation for himself and the team.
Turtle: Dr. Ming once mentioned in an interview that there was a very hard time when starting a business, such as sleeping underground with colleagues in bridge opening. Can you tell us more about your pioneering work?
China Bank in Ming Dynasty: It's not difficult to start a business. Entrepreneurship is always hard and romantic. It was mainly because there was no money. Besides sleeping in bridge opening, Regan Noodles eats a bowl of seven yuan a year, which is too much for him. Later, entrepreneurship gradually improved.
Tell me one more interesting thing. At that time, we had an investor who had a habit of going to the invested company to see if the team was reliable. He is in Beijing and we are in Shenzhen. He came here once after he voted for us. I said it's difficult here, or we'll go somewhere else, and I can't bear to let you come to us. Then he said, no, I have to go to your office. I want to check it myself. So come on.
Our first office is a residential building, especially an old residential building, on the eighth floor, with no elevator. Our investor is actually very nice and a little fat, and finally climbed up from the first floor. After climbing into our office, I sat on our sofa and drank two bowls of water. I rested for ten minutes before I started talking to us. After this visit, I said, I know what happened to you, and I will never come again.
Tortoise: Do you really want to sleep in bridge opening?
BOC Ming: I don't sleep all the time, just occasionally. One is because I am too tired, there is no decent place around, and Shenzhen is not cold. The other one really asked for nothing.
Turtle: What did Dr. Ming do before he made Blockcloud?
Ming BOC: We have been doing the Internet of Things and Internet industries, and Blockcloud is an extension of our research results. As you can understand, I also made Blockcloud before I made Blockcloud, but there was no such thing as Blockcloud at that time. The underlying network technology of Blockcloud itself is the subject we have been studying.
Turtle: When did Dr. Ming come into contact with blockchain?
Bank of China in Ming Dynasty: 16, quite late. At that time, I felt that Bitcoin was a liar and didn't buy much, so I still regretted it. Yes, I still regret it, haha.
Turtle: How did you come up with the idea of making an innovative TCP/IP protocol with blockchain?
BOC Ming: Because I study TCP/IP myself, my doctoral research direction is how to improve the TCP/IP protocol. Then, as a new form of network technology, blockchain, as a person who studies the network, naturally we should study it. In the process of research, we think this technology is actually quite good and can be brought over. It's just that some problems in our previous research results are difficult to solve. We can try to use blockchain technology to make up for our shortcomings, mainly to provide trust and motivation.
So when I had this idea, I discussed it with my teachers and classmates. Everyone thought it was good, so we did it. Except that some people who are not very good use it to do not very good things, as a technical system and theoretical system, blockchain still has many innovations and places worth learning.
Turtle: To be honest, Blockcloud is still a bit abstract to me, because I don't study TCP/IP, so please let Dr. Ming introduce it more vividly.
Ming BOC: Blockcloud is a bit like Huawei's or Cisco's. Not directly for C-end users. You must surf the Internet every day. You can understand that the Internet you are browsing is what we want to do.
Tortoise: What's your official explanation?
Bank of China in Ming Dynasty: Blockcloud is a new generation of TCP/IP based on blockchain technology. It mainly combines the technical advantages of blockchain and the next generation Internet to upgrade and improve the Internet at the bottom of the network and provide better support for the mobility, stability, credibility, fairness and trust of the network.
This is basically not human talk. An intuitive understanding of Blockcloud is to make you more comfortable surfing the Internet!
Tortoise: Doctor, please explain why we sometimes can't connect to the Internet when we take the subway or take the train.
Ming BOC: Taking the subway is not the same as taking the train. Taking the subway is really because there is no signal and there is nothing to do. By train, in most cases, it's not a big problem for you to take that green leather car. If you go into the tunnel, it is because there is no signal and there is nothing you can do about it.
But if you take the high-speed train, such as in the plain, the signal may be good and you may be disconnected. This has something to do with us, because the bottom layer of the network can't support the movement of nodes well. The Internet was designed for static networks, without considering what you connected to the Internet. It will move. Later, these things move, and sometimes they don't work well. The intuitive understanding is this.
Turtle: What is the pain point that Blockcloud hopes to solve?
Bank of China in Ming Dynasty: The pain point that Blockcloud hopes to solve is that under the large-scale dynamic network, the network does not support the upper layer well.
For example, if you take the high-speed train, sometimes the network is not good. You can optimize the protocol of the transport layer so that you don't always get disconnected when you take the high-speed train. For example, watching iqiyi sometimes gets stuck. Actually, your local bandwidth is enough. Through better path selection and more optimized dissemination of peer selection, you can see that iQiyi is not stuck. For example, our artificial intelligence or this kind of driving requires very high delay and data transmission rate, which is quite difficult to solve under the existing Internet system.
I don't know if you have seen the number one player, but the scene of the number one player can't be supported by the Internet now. Because there are too many people surfing the Internet, the amount of data transmission is too large, and the whole network is too complex and dynamic. So if you really want to be the first player, you need to improve the network. Blockcloud may work, but the current network must not. ?
Tortoise: It sounds as if we don't have a great demand for it now.
Ming BOC: For a C-terminal individual, it may not be that big at present. For example, WeChat chat and brushing today's headlines don't need Blockcloud. However, many scenarios, such as the current industrial Internet and future intelligent driving, artificial intelligence, virtual reality AR, VR, all need higher network performance.
Turtle: Blockcloud may be a very future-oriented thing.
BOC Ming: Actually, there are not many later.
Think back to five or ten years ago. Ten years ago, you would hardly have thought that everyone's mobile phone could access the Internet. Five years ago, you wouldn't have thought that a mobile phone could be without an ID card, wallet and bank card.
Maybe in five years, everything that can be electrified will be online. Then many scenes in science fiction movies, which you think are science fiction now, may become a part of your life in five or ten years, and this thing will soon.
Turtle: Yes, what's the difference between a service-centric network architecture and a physical address-centric network architecture?
Ming Zhonghang: Your lipstick is very beautiful. For example, if you want to buy a lipstick, you need to know where the lipstick factory is, and then go directly to the factory to buy a lipstick. Service center, I don't care where you come from, I want lipstick, reach for it, ask the supermarket or Taobao.
Tortoise: Why is this better?
Ming Zhonghang: For example, if you want to buy a Chanel lipstick and then let you go to Chanel's factory, is it convenient for you? But is it convenient for you to buy one on Taobao?
Tortoise: It may be fake.
Ming BOC: Yes, that's why the blockchain is used. How to solve this fake thing? Taobao has a clerk and we have a blockchain.
Turtle: Blockcloud's protocol is built of building blocks. Can you introduce the overall architecture of Blockcloud?
Bank of China in Ming Dynasty: one * * four layers, bottom-up transaction chain layer, service chain layer, routing layer and service layer. Take the supermarket as an example, the transaction chain layer is the cashier, the service chain layer is the quality inspector, the routing layer may be the map of the whole shopping mall, and the service layer above is the shopping mall.
Such an architecture, the lower two layers are blockchain, and the upper two layers are network grassroots.
Turtle: I read an article yesterday, saying that blockchain is the king of protocols and the Internet is the king of applications. The blockchain ecology is a fat protocol thin application, and the protocol layer accounts for most of the blockchain architecture. What do you think of this view?
Ming Zhonghang: In a narrow sense, if it is only in the blockchain field, I very much agree with Teacher Yuan Dao. Broadly speaking, the blockchain itself is also an application of the Internet.
They are not in conflict with each other. I think they are all right.
Turtle: Is there any other way to solve the problem of dynamic data transmission besides Blockcloud?
Bank of China in Ming Dynasty: Quite a lot, because the Internet itself is a complex system with numerous application scenarios and numerous conditions of use, so Blockcloud is not a panacea. Blockcloud is not used to solve all problems of the Internet, nor is it used to apply to all scenarios of the Internet.
Different scenarios may have different solutions, but Blockcloud is relatively low-level, so many application scenarios may be used, such as the Internet of Things, such as artificial intelligence, VR, AR, and edge computing.
If the network is very dynamic, large-scale, irregular in shape and requires high performance, such an application scenario is suitable for Blockcloud. Others, such as WeChat, you make a WeChat call, you are constantly moving, and you don't feel bad, do you?
Tortoise: Is there any other solution to the same problem?
China Bank Ming: Yes, but we should be one of the best banks. Because we are in our research field, there are so many people who do this on earth. One wave in China, one wave in the United States and one wave in Europe.
Tortoise: Why are you the best?
Bank of China in the Ming Dynasty: A * * * just recruited three people, and the wave of Europe is no longer working, because the whole of Europe has fallen behind China and the United States in the field of Internet. To tell the truth, those people in America are better than us, but those people are old now. In the part of combining innovation with blockchain, as far as I know, those people in the United States have not come up with ideas to adopt our similar route. Then in China, our whole research group is well-deserved in the field of next generation Internet research. ?
Tortoise: I am confident. Blockcloud belongs to data transmission protocol, and public chain is an application protocol based on this protocol. How do you cooperate with the public chain?
BOC Ming: Much like the relationship between cars and roads. How do you think cars and roads work together? I'll lay the road underground, and then you run on it. There may be an interface in the middle, so we have to plug it in.
For example, for some public chains, it needs better support from the bottom of the network, so put us under it; For example, some public chain applications with better specific scenarios can run on us; For example, some public chains solve specific problems, such as data privacy and identity authentication. These can be used as our supplements to help us provide better saturation characteristics in a certain way.
Turtle: Based on the Blockcloud protocol, it can generate blockchain native applications and connect some Internet applications. What preparations has Blockcloud made for connecting this Internet application?
Ming Zhonghang: Actually, it's almost the same. In essence, we are just a road. It doesn't make much difference for us to drive an electric car, a fuel car or a carriage.
Only for native Internet applications, we may need to increase part of the chain and blockchain economy, so we may need to make some changes and innovations at the level of technology and economic model. But if you don't want to change at all, just take us as the traditional way, and there is no problem.
Turtle: Some people will question you and your team and think that you have done a great thing and can't finish it. What do you think?
Bank of China in the Ming Dynasty: In 1994, everyone saw that Ma Yun was the same. In 2000, everyone had the same idea about Liu. At 2 1, everyone thinks the same thing about Mao Zedong. So I don't think it matters what you think of this. Of course, it's a little hooligan.
In essence, being the bottom of the Internet is something that needs long-term persistence and hard work. Our team has made visible achievements in this respect, whether it is the corresponding research results, background or previous industrialization work. Our position in China can still be found.
This thing is really quite big, but for those of us who do the internet, it won't happen overnight, not that I have to put this thing on for three or six months. Many blockchain projects say that I will be a main network within three months, a main network within six months, and then serve people all over the world. This is absolute nonsense.
For example, I can do this for ten or eight years. Because every generation of internet people basically work hard at this rhythm, like building roads, they are chiseled out with a small hammer, and our team has such genes.
Any adventure is extremely dangerous. I can't guarantee that we can do it, but I can guarantee that if we can't do it, no one else can.
Tortoise: You don't look like a scientist.
Ming Zhonghang: What am I like?
Turtle: Looks like the founder.
Ming Zhonghang: Thank you.
Turtle: Most members of the Blockcloud team are scientists.
Bank of China Ming: We are scientists and technicians. The word scientist is our support and encouragement, but I think we are still far behind scientists.
Turtle: Then how do you balance the attributes of being a company and a research institution?
BOC Ming: The genes of our entire research group, starting from our ancestors, are academic and industrialized. Grasp it with both hands, and both hands should be hard.
Our grandfather is an academician, and now he is the head of the computer department in Tsinghua University, one of the three major network operators in China, the founder and chairman of China Education Network, and then the founder and chairman of the world's largest next-generation Internet. He runs several listed companies himself.
Because the internet is not like studying basic subjects, such as mathematics, physics and astronomy, you can hide in the attic for 20 years and then work out a black hole. The Internet was never developed by scientists, but built by scientists and engineers. So the style of doing things in this field is to take out what you are studying while doing academic research.
If it is to be built, it must be operated in an industrialized way. So from the day we receive education in this field, we are not only learning how to study a network, but also learning and practicing how to build and operate a network in a commercial way. We are quite skilled in this field.