区块链核心技术:技术准备

by Haseeb Qureshi

由Haseeb Qureshi

区块链：我们还没有准备好进行的革命 (Blockchain: the revolution we’re not ready for)

Imagine you didn’t need to trust a stranger to make a deal with them. Imagine you didn’t need to trust your bank to deposit your money there. Imagine you didn’t need to trust your government to know it was being just and fair.

想象一下，您无需信任陌生人即可与他们达成交易。 想象一下，您无需信任银行即可将钱存入那里。 想象一下，您不需要信任您的政府就知道它是公正和公平的。

What would happen?

会发生什么？

It would change the world.

它将改变世界。

This is precisely the promise of blockchains.

这正是区块链的承诺。

Cryptocurrencies, which are built on blockchains, are all over the press these days, mostly because of the high prices, volatility, and sensational narratives surrounding debacles like Mt. Gox and The Silk Road.

如今，基于区块链构建的加密货币在媒体上广为流传，这主要是由于价格高，波动性大以及围绕像山那样的崩溃的耸人听闻的叙述。 x与丝绸之路 。

But there’s something much bigger going on than just digital currencies.

但是，发生的事情远不止数字货币。

While the mainstream media has been busy speculating about prices and black market intrigues, they’ve missed the fact that beneath it all, cryptographers had quietly invented an entirely new set of technological primitives.

尽管主流媒体一直忙于猜测价格和黑市的阴谋，但他们却错过了一个事实，那就是在这一切之下，密码学家悄悄地发明了一套全新的技术原语。

Blockchains (and the consensus protocols that support them) were invented as a result of developers trying to solve a bold problem: how to create digital, untraceable money. By combining cryptography, game theory, economics, and computer science, they managed to create an entirely new set of tools for building decentralized systems.

区块链(以及支持它们的共识协议)是由于开发人员试图解决一个大胆的问题而发明的：如何创造数字化，不可追踪的资金。 通过将密码学，博弈论，经济学和计算机科学相结合，他们设法创建了一套全新的工具来构建去中心化系统。

But what they created will change much more than just how we exchange money. It’s going to change the entire world. And hardly anyone seems to notice.

但是他们创造的东西不仅会改变我们交换货币的方式，而且会改变得多。 这将改变整个世界。 而且几乎没有人会注意到。

Edward Witten, the famous physicist, once said of string theory that it was “a part of 21st century physics that fell by chance into the 20th century.” In other words, the physics community was not ready for string theory.

著名物理学家爱德华·维滕(Edward Witten)曾经谈到弦理论，说“这是21世纪物理学的一部分，偶然地跌入了20世纪 。” 换句话说，物理学界还没有为弦论做好准备。

Blockchain is a 22nd century technology that fell by chance into the early 21st century.

区块链是一门偶然进入21世纪初的22世纪技术。

It’s painfully obvious that we’re not ready for it.

很痛苦的是，我们还没有准备好。

什么是区块链？ (What is a blockchain?)

At its core, a blockchain is a surprisingly simple and elegant data structure. It’s basically just a linked list with one important augmentation — each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block. This creates an effectively unalterable chain of blocks and their fingerprints, stretching back to the original block.

区块链的核心是令人惊讶的简单优雅的数据结构。 基本上，它只是一个链表，具有一个重要的扩展-每个块都包含前一个块的加密哈希 。 这将创建一个有效的，不可更改的块链及其指纹链，并延伸回原始块。

If everyone in your system replicates this linked list (and verifies its legitimacy by repeating the cryptographic hash functions), it will implement a slow and somewhat crude distributed database that’s resistant to tampering.

如果系统中的每个人都复制此链表(并通过重复加密哈希函数来验证其合法性)，它将实现一个缓慢且有点粗糙的分布式数据库，可防止篡改。

And that’s a blockchain. Doesn’t sound that amazing, does it?

那就是区块链。 听起来不那么令人惊奇吗？

Of course, to actually build a functional protocol, you need a lot more than that — you’ll need authentication (public/private key cryptography), a consensus mechanism (Nakamoto consensus via proof-of-work or various kinds of proof-of-stake), space and time optimizations (Merkle trees and Merkle proofs), and a bunch of fancy peer-to-peer networking stuff. But that’s a subject for another, more technical blog post.

当然，要真正构建功能协议，您需要做的还远远不止于此-您将需要身份验证(公/私钥加密)，共识机制(通过工作量证明或各种证明的中本聪共识) -stake)，空间和时间优化(Merkle树和Merkle证明)，以及大量精美的对等网络东西。 但这是另一篇更具技术性的博客文章的主题。

The point is this: blockchains are a genuinely new tool for organizing complex systems. And we are only beginning to understand how to integrate them into the real world.

关键是： 区块链是用于组织复杂系统的全新工具 。 而且我们才刚刚开始了解如何将它们集成到现实世界中。

区块链的承诺 (The promise of blockchains)

If everyone works off the same blockchain, and everyone openly shares what the current state of the blockchain is, and it’s computationally intractable to tamper with it, and everyone agrees on rules of how new data is committed… then suddenly everything changes.

如果每个人都在同一个区块链上工作，并且每个人都公开共享区块链的当前状态，并且篡改它在计算上是棘手的，并且每个人都同意提交新数据的规则……那么，突然之间一切都会改变。

Suddenly you can build completely decentralized systems that require no trust among participants. So long as enough actors in the system follow the rules of the protocol (in the most primitive case, at least 50% of them are good), then you can imbue the system with provable security guarantees. Conspiracies or bad actors can’t censor or vandalize the system.

突然之间，您可以构建完全分散的系统，不需要参与者之间的信任。 只要系统中有足够的参与者遵循协议的规则(在最原始的情况下，至少有50％是好的)，那么您就可以为系统提供可证明的安全保证。 阴谋或不良行为者无法审查或破坏系统。

You can even engineer the right incentives straight into the protocol, and then have every actor in the system enforce them.

您甚至可以直接在协议中设计正确的激励措施，然后让系统中的每个参与者执行这些激励措施。

Using blockchains, a lot of massive coordination problems simply disappear. Conundrums that plague global financial infrastructure, voting, international remittances, insurance policies, custodial records, and even government corruption can simply be designed out of existence.

使用区块链，许多大规模的协调问题就消失了。 困扰全球金融基础设施，投票，国际汇款，保险单，保管记录甚至政府腐败的难题可以简单地设计成不存在。

By creating the right system with the right guarantees, you can fix bad incentives. You can eliminate corrupt middle-men and rent-seekers. You can create whole new societies that can coordinate better, more transparently, and more efficiently than ever before considered possible.

通过创建具有正确保证的正确系统，您可以解决不良激励措施。 您可以消除腐败的中间人和寻租者。 您可以创建一个全新的社会，比以往任何时候都可以更好，更透明，更有效地进行协调。

It’s really hard for most people to grasp the significance of this.

对于大多数人来说，这确实很难理解它的重要性。

I’ll put it this way: if John Locke knew about blockchains, it undoubtedly would’ve compelled him to write a third treatise on government. It would’ve been a revolutionary idea in how to coordinate a society.

我这样说：如果约翰·洛克了解区块链，那无疑会迫使他撰写有关政府的第三篇论文。 在协调社会方面，这将是一个革命性的想法。

未来的未来 (The future of the future)

Most people I know right now in Silicon Valley are focused on deep learning and AI as the most promising technological revolution. And I share their enthusiasm! Deep learning is going to upend industries and give us new capabilities that we only imagined in high science fiction.

我现在在硅谷认识的大多数人都将重点放在深度学习和AI上，这是最有前途的技术革命。 和我分享他们的热情！ 深度学习将颠覆行业，并赋予我们新的能力，而这正是我们在高科幻小说中才能想象的。

But blockchain — blockchain is going to upend entire societies. It’s going to enable new kinds of governance systems that were before only the daydreams of utopians and philosophers.

但是区块链-区块链将颠覆整个社会。 它将实现仅在空想主义者和哲学家白日梦之前的新型治理体系。

And yet, when you look at the cryptocurrency world right now, you’re not necessarily going to recognize that.

但是，当您现在看一下加密货币世界时，您不一定会意识到这一点。

Most of what’s going on right now falls into two categories.

目前发生的大多数事情分为两类。

The first are the crypto-anarchists and hackers who are building low-level protocols. They’re racing to build what will become the decentralized TCP/IP stack for future builders.

首先是正在建立底层协议的密码无政府主义者和黑客。 他们正在为将来的建造者竞相构建将成为去中心化TCP / IP堆栈的东西。

The second category are the profiteers who trying to make a quick buck off the unaware and the optimistic.

第二类是试图从不知道和乐观中Swift赚钱的奸商。

Unfortunately, this second category is getting most of the attention.

不幸的是，第二类引起了大多数关注。

区块链之塔 (The tower of Blockchain)

Imagine stumbling across the world wide web in 1995, browsing through dinky fan sites catering to eccentrics, and thinking: “Hah. Wow. This weird little ecosystem is going to be really important someday.”

试想一下，1995年，在互联网上跌跌撞撞，浏览了满足怪人想法的扇形风扇网站，然后想到： 哇。 这个奇怪的小生态系统将有一天变得非常重要。”

That was blockchain a few years ago. In other words, blockchain has safely crossed the Angelfire chasm.

那是几年前的区块链。 换句话说，区块链已经安全越过了Angelfire的鸿沟。

Now that it has proven its first glimmer of usefulness, the next act is inevitable.

既然已经证明了它的第一效用，那么接下来的行动是不可避免的。

You may have heard about the ICO mania, or the recent rallies of the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The wise and the wily have taken notice and have realized blockchain’s tremendous potential. And they’ve already made and lost fortunes speculating on the potential future of cryptocurrencies.

您可能已经听说过ICO 狂潮 ，或者比特币和以太坊价格最近的上涨 。 明智和狡猾的人已经注意到并意识到了区块链的巨大潜力。 而且他们已经在猜测加密货币的潜在未来时发了大财，而且大失所望。

It’s unfortunate that right now, blockchain-as-speculation is dominating most people’s attention. The signal is getting drowned in the noise.

不幸的是，目前，基于区块链的猜测正在主导着大多数人的视线。 信号被噪音淹没了。

But that’s to be expected. We’ve seen this before.

但这是可以预期的。 我们以前见过。

When people first realized the extraordinary potential of the internet, tons of money was pumped into random dot coms. Anticipating mass adoption and astronomical value creation, speculation fed speculation, until the frenzy finally crashed in 2001.

当人们第一次意识到互联网的巨大潜力时，大量的金钱被注入了随机的.com。 投机活动预料到了投机活动的到来 ， 直到2001年狂潮最终破灭时 ，人们才开始预料到了大规模采用和天文数字价值的创造。

What’s going on right now is comparable. There will eventually be a comedown.

现在发生的事情是可比的。 最终将会崩溃。

But when the dust is cleared, like after the dot com crash, those who were serious — the Microsofts, the Amazons, the Googles — will have to come in and do the graceless work of building the future.

但是，一旦尘埃落定，就像在互联网泡沫崩溃之后一样，那些严肃的人-微软，亚马逊，谷歌-将不得不介入，并为打造未来而进行无情的工作。

There’s much work to do.

有很多工作要做。

I recently left my job at Airbnb. I was working on payments fraud for a little over a year. It was fascinating and impactful work — Airbnb is an awesome company — and I left on good terms. But the more I’ve been learning about crypto and blockchains, the more I’m convinced that this stuff is going to change the world.

我最近离开了我在Airbnb的工作。 我从事付款欺诈工作已有一年多了。 这项工作引人入胜且富有影响力-Airbnb是一家很棒的公司-我的工作条件很好。 但是我对加密货币和区块链的了解越多，我就越相信这些东西将改变世界。

And that’s why I’m going to be working on the blockchain. (And probably keep blogging about it!)

这就是为什么我要致力于区块链。 (并且可能会继续写博客！)

And if you’re a developer wondering how you can get involved and help build this future, check out this link and start getting your hands dirty.

如果您是开发人员，想知道如何参与其中并帮助建立未来，请查看此链接并开始动手。

翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/blockchain-is-our-first-22nd-century-technology-d4ad45fca2ce/

区块链核心技术:技术准备