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After Lin Hong published the principle description of Bitcoin, it did not attract much attention at first, and many people only felt that it was in the clouds, and felt mysterious and mysterious, thinking that the author of this article was a bit exaggerated, and even claimed that it could perfectly solve these problems of traditional virtual currency. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

After all, although this document is only nine pages long, the amount of information contained in it is so great that the average person will not understand what it is about.

It's no wonder that this document is the culmination of Lin Hong's major studies over the years, covering various fields such as computer science, cryptography, finance, and mathematics.

Lin Hong only posted it in this email discussion group, which also took this into account.

His article is really difficult for ordinary people to understand, and it must be done by professionals, which is why he did not post it directly in China, nor did he publish it directly on the forum, but chose this relatively confidential and highly professional discussion group.

This discussion group usually has some technical discussions, and the topics discussed are very professional, and you must have enough professional knowledge to understand, let alone participate in the discussion.

The composition of this discussion group is very complex, and Lin Hong speculates that a large number of people should be researchers in major research institutes and universities, such as financial scholars, cryptographers, mathematicians, university professors, and so on. Only these people can have such profound attainments in some aspects.

Lin Hong, on the other hand, rarely participates in discussions, usually as a spectator. Keep up to date with the latest developments, and of course, if you come across a topic that interests you, you'll occasionally say a few words.

This time, he used his new account, Ghoster, to post this article on this discussion group for the first time, and since he was new, it didn't attract much attention. And even if someone downloads this article, after reading it, they will not be able to understand the huge amount of information contained in this article for a while.

Of course. Just because few people understand it doesn't mean that no one understands.

Just like when Einstein published his theory of relativity, very few people in the world could understand it. But after all, there are still a few people who can understand and see the meaning behind it.

There are still a few people who saw Lin Hong's article and understood it.

One of them is Eric, the founder of the cypherpunk organization, that is, when Lin Hong was in the United States, he attended a cypherpunk party, and the blonde haired speaker on the stage, a former intel cryptographer.

He and a few other friends tried to design virtual currencies several times and did them in practice, but in the end, they all proved to be unworkable. There are various drawbacks, the most difficult of which is that the indiscriminate issuance and the connection with traditional banks are too close, and the original intention of designing virtual currency has been lost, and eventually it has only become a vassal or supplement to traditional currency.

It is precisely because of these deep experiences and experiences. When Eric read this article, he was struck by the bold design and whimsy it contained.

No, it's not just a whimsy, it's a perfect solution!

Eric immediately printed out the document, read it word by word, and then analyzed it. Deduction.

Instead of setting up a central management agency or server, it uses the mechanism of "mining demand" to generate currency, and the problem of excessive currency issuance - perfect solution!

Using a distributed peer-to-peer network, the legitimacy of the currency is checked and verified through the mechanism of hashcash, and the problem of duplicate spending is solved - perfectly solved!

By using the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm ECDSA to form a digital signature blockchain, the entire Bitcoin network is formed, and the symmetric encryption algorithm is used to generate public and private keys to ensure security, currency guarantee and payment trust problems - perfect solution!

By limiting the total amount of bitcoins issued, the amount of coins produced by mining is slowed down year by year, and eventually the amount of bitcoins obtained per block is infinitely close to zero. Inflation due to too much money issued – perfectly solved!

……

Eric voraciously read the nine-page essay over and over again, and was shocked to find that the problems they had encountered in their monetary experiments for years had been solved perfectly and elegantly!

He used a pen and a computer for a while to deduce the theories in this article, and finally found that this article turned out to be a complete electronic money solution.

Although it may seem unreasonable in some places, this solution is the only one he has seen in so many years with practical possibilities.

He did see some possible shortcomings, such as the determination of monetary aggregates, the preservation of all data, etc., but these problems did not exist at all in the early stage, and only after a certain stage of development, they may appear.

Indeed, it is only possible.

For example, the problem of all data saving.

According to this theory, each "point" must store the transaction data of the entire network, and if the number of people using Bitcoin is very large, no matter how this data is compressed, the final volume must be very large, and over time, it will become larger and larger, only increasing, not decreasing.

This may lead to a storage problem, is it possible to have such a large hard drive to store this data?

In addition, according to the theory of this article, in order to avoid inflation, the total amount of bitcoins is determined from the beginning, that is, a total of 21 million bitcoins will eventually be generated, after which no new money will be generated by mining.

In Eric's view, in this way, there is a risk of currency deflation, that is, the currency will continue to appreciate. The result is evident because more and more people will use it, and the total number will be fixed.

Eric thought about it for a long time, and finally felt that these two questions could become a bottleneck that would limit the future development of Bitcoin.

The emergence of Bitcoin allowed him to see the dawn of an ideal being realized, so he attached great importance to this article.

He looked at the name of the author of the article, ghoster, which was very unfamiliar.

In his impression, it seemed that he had never seen the name in the group, he searched for it, and sure enough, it was a new ID.

Who the hell is he?

Computer scientist?

Cryptographer?

Financier?

Or is there an organization standing behind it?

The only thing Eric is certain of is that the other party must also agree with the purpose and concept of "cypherpunk", otherwise he would not have chosen to publish this article here.

Eric was the first to participate in the discussion on this topic.

"I am deeply shocked that your paper has been read, and I have seen your knowledge of computer science, cryptography, finance, and mathematics in this paper, and I am very surprised by your perfect design.

There are two places where I have some questions, and I would like to give me advice.

First, the number of bitcoins a user is determined entirely by the transaction data chain of the entire network, and the total amount of this data will be a huge number over time, is there a solution?

Second, the total number of bitcoins has been determined, is it possible to cause monetary deflation? ”

……

London, the town of Cambridge, is where Alan Turing, the father of computer science, was trained.

It was a single room, and the whole room was very elegantly furnished, simple, except for the bed, there was only a large bookcase, which was filled with all kinds of books, some new, some old, and some with the characteristic label of the Cambridge University Library, which was obviously borrowed.

These books, except for a few basic literary ones, are basically huge tomes related to mathematics and encryption and decryption.

On the side of the bookshelf, a girl with long black and shiny hair is sitting in front of the computer at the moment, looking at the monitor, and the content displayed in the monitor is the Bitcoin document posted by Lin Hong.

The girl read the document three or four times, and then stared at the monitor without moving, her mind flying.

As she pondered, the supple green silk began to dance slightly without wind, and if anyone saw this at this moment, they would be stunned.

The girl thought for a while, then came back to her senses, and her long hair suddenly fell back to normal.

The girl pulls up the mail client and quickly enters her question in the input box:

"It's an interesting idea, but the currency you've designed isn't without its flaws. When someone has more than 50 percent of the computing power in the main network, that is, 51 percent, he can do whatever he wants. For example, it will be easier to mine bitcoins than others, and at the same time, you can also falsify transaction records and then confirm them with your own computing power. ”

The girl moved the mouse over the "send" button, but eventually stopped again.

She thought about it, deleted the group's broadcast email address, leaving only Ghoster's only address, and then pressed the send button.

If you join that broadcast address, the entire group will see the email she sent.

In the end, she chose not to do so.

For no other reason, she is also very interested in Bitcoin and believes that its potential is huge, although it has this shortcoming, but this shortcoming can become insignificant in the later stage.