區塊鏈如何重構人類的信任體系？
幣橙網
一個分散式、社區協作的區塊鏈項目評測社區
【幣橙海外】聚焦於篩選與翻譯海外區塊鏈行業的新聞報道、評論、評測報告等有價值信息，幫助大家以國際化的視野了解區塊鏈項目，成為幣圈「老韭菜」。
說明：本文為幣橙網社區齋主獨立翻譯而成， 只作為傳遞信息之用， 不作為投資依據(翻譯時有刪改)
原文地址：https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/15/disrupting-the-trust-business
前言：《經濟學人》（英語：The Economist）是一份英國的英文新聞周報，它在1843年9月由詹姆斯·威爾遜創辦。是一本涉及全球政治、經濟、文化、科技等多方面事務的綜合性新聞評論刊物，著重於對這些議題提供深入的分析和評論。它面向教育程度較高的人群，讀者中包括諸多具有影響力的高管和決策者。本文選自經濟學人2017年7月15日的文章。
「WE LIKE lists because we don』t want to die.」 What Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, said about human beings applies even more to the institutions they create. Without lists that keep track of people and things, most big organisations would collapse.
「我們都愛列表和清單，因為我們不想消失。」義大利作家Umberto Eco對於人類的評論甚至可以適用於它們創造的機構與組織。如果沒有列表和清單這一制度幫助記錄人與物，許多大型組織都將不復存在
Lists range from simple checklists to complex databases, but they all have one major drawback: we must trust their keepers. Administrators hold the power. They can doctor corporate accounts, delete titles from land registries or add names to party rolls. To stop the keepers from going rogue, and catch them if they do, society has come to rely on all sorts of tools, from audits to supervisory boards. Together, list-keepers and those who watch them form one of the world』s biggest and least noticed industries, the trust business.
列表有很多種類型，從小型的檢查表到複雜的資料庫，但他們之中都有一項局限性：就是我們必須要相信記錄人。記錄人們掌管著列表的權力。他們可以用此修改企業的賬戶餘額，從土地權證中刪去某人的記錄，或者在party名單里把自己的朋友偷偷加進去。而如果想要避免這種情形，讓記錄人們「伸手必被捉」，我們需要使用許多制度與工具，例如定期審計和監事會制度。列表記錄員和監察員們共同形成了全世界最大，但最少被提及的行業：信任行業。
Now imagine a parallel universe in which lists have declared independence: they maintain themselves. This, broadly, is the promise of the 「blockchain」, the system which underlies bitcoin, a digital currency, and similar 「distributed-ledger」 technologies. If blockchains take over, as fans are sure they will, what are the implications of the trust business migrating into the ether?
現在讓我們暢想一下，在另外一個時空當中，所有的列表都自行其道，自我管理。而這就是所謂「區塊鏈」，一個支撐比特幣和分散式記賬技術的系統能夠帶給我們的特性。如果區塊鏈能上位（就像其擁躉者所堅信的），信任業遷移到了鏈上，會有什麼結果呢？
It would not be the first time a novel form of list-making changed the world. More than 500 years ago a new accounting technique, later known as double-entry book-keeping, emerged in northern Italy. It was a big step in the development of the modern company and economy. Werner Sombart, a German sociologist who died in 1941, argued that double-entry book-keeping marked the birth of capitalism. It allowed people other than the owner of a business to keep track of its finances.
在此之前，製表技術的革新也曾為改變世界做出貢獻。五百多年之前，在義大利的北部地區出現了一種新型的會計記賬技術，之後被稱為複式記賬法。對於現代企業和經濟的發展來說，這是一項巨大的進步。德國社會學家Werner Sombart認為，複式記賬法標誌著資本主義的誕生。它可以讓除了企業主之外的人們了解一個企業的財務狀況。
If double-entry book-keeping freed accounting from the merchant』s head, the blockchain frees it from the confines of an organisation. That is probably not what Satoshi Nakamoto, the still-elusive creator of bitcoin, had in mind when he set out on his endeavour. His aim was to create a 「purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash」, as he put it in a 「white paper」 published in 2008. To do so, he created a new type of database, the blockchain. It provides proof of who owns what at any given moment. It contains the payment history of each bitcoin in circulation; heavy-duty encryption makes it theoretically impossible to alter it once a transaction is registered; copies are spread around the computers, or 「nodes」, that form the bitcoin network, so that anybody can check whether something is wrong. A 「consensus mechanism」, a complex cryptographic process which replaces the list-keeper, turns the blockchain into an independent entity.
如果說複式記賬法是把原本局限在業主的頭腦中的會計信息解放出來，那麼區塊鏈就是把原本局限在組織內的會計信息公之於眾。當然這可能不是神隱的比特幣發明者中本聰的原意。正如他在白皮書中所論述的，他的原意只是建立一種「完全點對點的電子現金」。為了達到這個目的，中本聰發明了一種新型的資料庫，或曰區塊鏈。區塊鏈能在任何時候證明某人擁有何物，而且包含了任意一個流通中的比特幣的交易歷史。高強度的加密技術使得在一項交易上鏈後，在理論上就不可能篡改。數據在構成比特幣網路的電腦，或曰「節點」之間流轉，所以任何人都可以進行勘誤工作。一種複雜的密碼學流程，或稱「共識機制」，讓比特幣成為一個完全獨立的實體。
Clever minds quickly saw that such a set-up can be used for things other than money. Different sorts of self-sufficient lists now abound. Prominent among them is Ethereum. Like bitcoin, it boasts its own crypto-currency, called 「ether」, but it also allows users to add 「smart contracts」, code that encapsulates the terms of a business agreement and is executed automatically.
聰明人們馬上就意識到這種機制可以在轉賬之外的領域使用。許多不同的自組織資料庫已經出現，而其中大名鼎鼎的就是以太坊。與比特幣相似，它也以自身的加密貨幣「以太幣」為榮，但另一方面也允許用戶添加「智能合約」，一種能將商業合同條款固化為自動執行的代碼的技術。
When Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar, wrote the first textbook on double-entry book-keeping in the late 15th century, he could not have foretold what the accounting technique would bring about. But today plenty of startups suggest ways that blockchains could change the world. Everledger, for example, keeps track of valuable assets. The firm has registered the ID of more than 1m diamonds, making it easier to check whether gems were stolen or mined in war zones.
當天主教修士Luca Pacioli在15世紀晚期寫下第一本複式記賬法的教科書之時，他可能不會預見到會計技術能帶來何種變革。但時至今日，許多初創企業都在發現「區塊鏈改變世界」的不同角度。例如Everledger能夠記錄和追溯有價資產，而且已經記錄了一百多萬鑽石的ID信息，使得檢查寶石是否被盜或者是否在戰區被盜挖變得容易許多。
Other firms want to help keep track of people. One of the first things done for a baby could be to give the newborn an entry in a blockchain, the crypto-equivalent of a birth certificate. This sounds Orwellian, but it does not have to be. On the contrary, if people』s identity is anchored in one or several blockchains, this would give them more control over it and their personal data. If a potential tenant, for example, wants to prove to a landlord that his income is high enough to pay the rent, he need only disclose that bit of information, instead of allowing access to his entire credit history, as is often the case today.
其它公司幫助記錄和追蹤個人。為一個新生兒誕生後做的第一件事情可能就是將他的信息輸入區塊鏈，並提供鏈上的出生證明。這聽起來好像有些奧威爾筆下「老大哥」的行事作風，但事情並不一定如此。正相反，如果個人的身份信息可以在一個或多個區塊鏈上儲存，他們就可以對自己的信息有更多控制權。例如一位意向租房的租客打算向房東證明他的收入足夠負擔租金，那麼他只需要向房東開放特定部分的信息，而不是像現在一樣，需要提供整個信用歷史。
Once people are able to manage their identity, other possibilities open up, says Kevin Werbach of the University of Pennsylvania』s Wharton business school. People will be able to band together in virtual countries and set their own rules. One such already exists: BITNATION. Anyone can become a citizen by accepting its constitution. To do business in BITNATION, people have to build up reputation, for instance by trading on the platform.
賓夕法尼亞大學沃頓商學院的Kevin Werbach認為，一旦人們有能力掌控自己的個人身份信息，就新開啟了許多可能性。人類可以通過虛擬國家而互相聯繫在一起，並且自己來制定規則。已經有了一個現成的例子：BITNATION。任何人都可以對其宣誓從而成為其國民。而想要與這個國家進行貿易往來的話，人們必須先建立自己的信譽度，例如在其提供的平台上進行交易。
Chain reaction
連鎖反應
This is also an example of the other big function of such ledgers: they can serve as a source of truth. All kinds of information could be attached to an entry in a blockchain. In the case of a car, say, that could be where it came from, the history of repairs and even where it was driven. Taken together, these data would form the 「truth」 about a given vehicle.
區塊鏈的另一項重要功能也有例證：他們可以提供事實。所有種類的數據都可以上鏈。以一輛車為例，車輛的原產地，維修歷史，曾駛往何處都可以上鏈。綜合在一起，這些數據就可以給出關於某輛車的「事實」。
Many people are already working on 「truth services」. Researchers have proposed creating unique cryptographic identifiers, or 「hashes」, of the descriptions of clinical trials and registering them in a blockchain, so they cannot be changed to fit desired results. Georgia, Sweden and Ukraine are testing the technology as a way of digitising parts of their land registries. And Delaware, the American state which has made a big business out of registering companies from all over the world, is gearing up to allow blockchains for corporate record-keeping.
已經有許多人從事這種「提供事實和檢驗事實」的工作。有研究人員提出，可以為每一個臨床試驗的結果描述提供特定的密碼學標識，即「哈希值」，然後將這些數據上鏈，以此來避免出於個人目的而篡改結果的情況。喬治亞，瑞典和烏克蘭正在測試一項將國土資源數據化的科技。另一方面，美國特拉華州，一個為大型企業提供註冊便利的州，準備將區塊鏈用於企業數據的保存。
Transactions on a blockchain could also serve as input for smart contracts. Slock.it, another startup, is developing physical locks which have a digital existence on Ethereum. When it is sent some ether, this smart rental contract opens the lock. This could enable new ways of sharing things. If somebody wanted to rent a car, say, he could simply transfer money to its smart contract and drive away.
鏈上的交易數據也可以成為觸發智能合約的條件。Slock.it，一家初創公司，正在開發一種有著以太坊上對應存在的鎖具。當鏈上的「鎖」收到以太幣之時，智能合約就會把對應的鎖具解開。而這可以成為共享經濟的新型打開方式。假設某人想要租車，他就可以向這個智能合約發送以太幣，然後輕鬆完成租車程序。
Smart contracts promise to change the economy more than any other feature of the blockchain. They could take over most routine business processes. Some companies could be no more than a bundle of smart contracts, forming true virtual firms that live only on a blockchain. Predictably, the first attempt to create such a 「decentralised autonomous organisation」 ended in disaster. Named 「The DAO」, the entity was set up a year ago as a sort of virtual venture-capital fund. It raised more than $160m, but then hackers siphoned off $60m, leading to its demise.
智能合約改造現有經濟的程度，可能比區塊鏈所有其它功能所帶來的都要多。一些公司的實質可能只是許多智能合約的集合，從而形成一種只在鏈上存在的虛擬企業。可以想見，第一個嘗試創造「去中心化自治組織」的努力最後崩潰了。這個組織，名為「The DAO」，在2016年以一家虛擬VC的形式組建。它籌集到了超過1.6億美元，但是被黑客盜走了6千萬，從而導致組織的崩潰。
Yet simpler versions of such structures, called initial coin offerings (ICOs), have since taken off—and created the first bubble of the blockchain economy. In an automated form of crowdfunding, startups set up a smart contract on Ethereum and publish a 「white paper」, or prospectus. Investors can then send ether to the smart contract, which automatically creates 「tokens」 that can be traded like shares. More than $550m has already been invested in ICOs.
但是這種組織結構的簡化版，名為首次代幣發行（「1C0」）的結構，已經迎風起飛——還導致了區塊鏈經濟的第一次泡沫。初創企業以一種自動執行的眾籌為形式，在以太坊上創建智能合約，然後發布招股書（即「白皮書」）。投資人們則將以太幣發送到智能合約上，隨後智能合約自動創造對應的，類似股票一樣可被交易的「通證」。對於1C0的投資已經超過5.5億美元。
Some of these projects are scams. And many honest ones leave outsiders baffled. EcoBit aims to build a market for carbon credits. Aragon wants to use blockchain tools to manage entire organisations, complete with decentralised arbitration courts. SONM is 「a decentralised fog supercomputer」: users can either buy computing power with the project』s tokens or earn them by adding their machines to the pool.
有一些項目是空氣，而一些好項目使行業外的人看不懂。EcoBit打算建立一個交易碳排放配額的市場。Aragon意在通過區塊鏈上去中心化的仲裁製度來治理企業和組織。而SONM是一個「去中心化的霧計算」項目；用戶可以使用通證購買算力，或者把自己的算力出租以獲得通證回報。
Will the centre hold?
中心化概念還有用武之地嗎？
These efforts give a taste of what will be possible, says Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures (USV), a venture-capital firm. He thinks that such decentralised organisations could one day disrupt the tech giants. At their heart, he argues, those tech titans are gigantic centralised databases, keeping track of products and purchase histories (Amazon), users and their friends (Facebook), and web content and past search queries (Google). 「Their value derives from the fact that they control the entire database and get to decide who sees which part of it and when,」 he says.
VC公司Union Square Ventures（USV）的Albert Wenger認為，對於區塊鏈最終帶來的變革而言，現在的項目只是些開胃菜。他認為去中心化的組織有朝一日能夠顛覆現在的科技巨頭企業們。Wenger認為，實質上講，科技巨頭企業就是巨型的中心化資料庫，能夠保存產品和用戶的購買記錄（亞馬遜），用戶和他的朋友（臉書），以及網頁內容和搜索記錄（谷歌）。「他們的價值體現於他們能夠控制整個資料庫，並且能夠決定某個用戶能在何時瀏覽到什麼內容」，他如是說。
USV has invested in decentralised alternatives, such as OpenBazaar, an e-commerce marketplace. Instead of visiting a website, users download a program that directly connects them to other people wanting to buy and sell goods and services. Others have started to build blockchain-based social networks that pay users who contribute content. Steemit is a blogging-site that allows authors to earn tokens. Synereo lets users tip individual content-providers.
USV投資了一些現有企業的去中心化版本，比如OpenBazaar，一家電商平台。相比傳統的在網頁上瀏覽產品，用戶需要下載一個程序，並通過程序與其它買家和賣家直接聯繫。另外一些項目已經開始建立區塊鏈版的社交網路，在此之上能夠向內容生產者付費。Steemit是一個能讓作者得到通證獎勵的博客網站。Synereo則能讓用戶打賞內容產出者。
In a world run by blockchains, decentralisation could be pushed even further, to include objects. Once they have their own identity and can be controlled via a blockchain, it is possible to imagine them becoming, in a way, self-determining. A few years back, Mike Hearn, a former bitcoin developer who now works for R3, a blockchain consortium, suggested the idea of self-driving cars which are also financially autonomous. Guided by smart contracts, they would stash away some of the digital money they make by ferrying people around, so as to pay for repairs or to replace themselves when repairs are no longer worthwhile. They would put themselves in long-term parking if not enough rides are to be had—or emigrate to another city. They could issue tokens to raise funds and to allow owners to get part of their profits.
在一個由區塊鏈運行的世界裡，去中心化可能會達到新高度，能夠把事物包含在內。一旦某種事物也擁有了自己的身份信息並且可以通過區塊鏈來操控，可以想見，它們會在某種程度上變為自我管理。前比特幣開發者，現在就職於R3的Mike Hearn在幾年前提到一個觀點，即無人駕駛汽車可以進行財務上的自我管理。以智能合約為導引，它們可以將載客所獲得的通證儲存起來，之後可以付車輛的維修和維護費用。它們可以在沒有客人的時候把自己開到停車場停起來，或者開去其它城市。它們可以通過發幣來籌集資金，允許持幣人分享載客帶來的利潤。
If even objects control their own destiny, what is left for governments and the nation state to do? Plenty, it turns out. Despite libertarian dreams of complete decentralisation, in many cases somebody still has to make sure that the information baked into a blockchain is actually true. In China, for example, regulators are part of a pilot project run by IBM and Walmart to make the retailer』s supply network more transparent, for instance by tracing the provenance of pork and organic food.
如果連事物都能控制自身，留給ZF的空間還有多少呢？其實實際上還有很多。如果忽略自由主義者對於完全去中心化的憧憬，在許多場合下仍然需要一個實體來保證上鏈的數據本身是正確的。舉例來說，在中國，IBM和沃爾瑪正在運行一個旗艦項目，內容是保證零售商的供應網路更加透明，比如能夠追溯豬肉和有機食品的原產地。而監管者也被邀請成為這個項目的一部分。
In some areas the blockchain may even make life easier for governments. Last year Dubai announced that it wants all government documents secured on a blockchain by 2020, a prerequisite for agencies to become completely paperless. The technology could also be used as a cheap platform to generate what poor countries lack most: more efficient government and trust in contracts. And some hope that the blockchain could make the United Nations work better by helping it keep track of all its programmes, creating transparency and reducing waste.
在一些領域，區塊鏈技術甚至可以使政府的工作簡化許多。去年，迪拜宣布在2020年之前將把所有政府文件上鏈，作為邁向無紙化辦公的第一步。區塊鏈科技同樣可以成為一個廉價易用的平台，為窮國政府提供他們最需要的：更高的行政效率和更強的契約精神。有些人甚至認為，通過追蹤項目的工作內容，區塊鏈可以改善聯合國的工作效果，使之更加透明並減少冗餘。
Another example, counter-intuitively, is money. Although the blockchain was created to replace them, central bankers have been interested in the technology from the beginning. When banks share a ledger, rather than keeping their information in separate databases, it will be simpler for regulators to observe financial flows. Several central banks are toying with the idea of issuing their own crypto-currency; the Bank of Canada and the People』s Bank of China are running tests. If digital coins were to replace cash, this would open up new possibilities for monetary policy. To increase demand in an economic crisis, for instance, the coins could be programmed to lose some of their value if they are not spent within a certain time.
另一方面，說來可能讓人覺得違反常理，區塊鏈可以為貨幣提供幫助。雖然區塊鏈生來就是取代法幣的，各國的中央銀行在開始之初就對其抱有興趣。相對於各自保有數據記錄，如果銀行可以分享它們，監管者就更容易追蹤金錢流向。有幾家中央銀行已經開始考量發行法定數字貨幣這一事務；加拿大央行和人行正在對此進行測試。如果數字法幣替代了紙鈔，就能為貨幣政策提供新方向。例如，在經濟下行期想要增加貨幣供給時，可以通過程序命令數字法幣，假設在某個時間之前沒有被花出去，就會強制貶值。
Warning: blockchains ahead
警報！前方是區塊鏈！
The technology today is nowhere near being able to support many of these applications. Such ledgers may not be as immutable as they seem, and blockchains have yet to show that they can scale up sufficiently (the bitcoin system manages seven transactions per second, compared with thousands in a typical credit-card network). But if the history of digital technology is any guide, these barriers will be overcome.
區塊鏈科技距離支撐上述應用落地尚需時日，而且區塊鏈賬本也並沒有表面上那麼難以改動，區塊鏈的有效擴容問題更是離解決遙遙無期（比特幣的每秒交易量只有7筆，相對於傳統的信用卡系統的每秒幾千筆）。但是如果數字科技的歷史能夠為我們指引方向的話，這些困難都定當會被克服。
A bigger issue is institutional resistance, as many blockchain enthusiasts are discovering the hard way. Corporate departments are not willing to give up control of their lists because it means a loss of power. In many cases it is also not clear how much value blockchains actually add. Some centralised systems seem to be doing just fine. For now, conventional payment services appear more efficient than their decentralised counterparts.
正如許多區塊鏈信徒費盡心力才得知的，來自傳統機構的抵制是一個大問題。公司並不願意放棄對於數據的控制，因為這意味著它們會失去權力。而在許多時候我們並不清楚區塊鏈到底能帶來多少價值。一些中心化的系統現在運行的還可以，目前來講，傳統的支付系統比去中心化的支付系統更有效率。
Politics will also be a hurdle. The reason many champions of the technology display an almost religious excitement about blockchains is because they believe these replace messy decision-making with clean cryptographic code. But bitcoin itself shows that even simple technical questions can turn into interminable fights between potential winners and losers. Even after years of discussion, those involved in bitcoin have yet to agree on how to increase the system』s capacity.
決策程序也會成為問題之一。許多科技先鋒對於區塊鏈有著宗教般的熱情，是因為他們堅信可以用乾淨簡潔的代碼取代繁瑣骯髒的決策程序。但是連比特幣的改動都顯示了小小的技術問題也可以上升到受益方和損失方之間無窮無盡的嘴仗扯皮。就算討論已經持續了幾年，比特幣的開發者們仍然未能就如何為比特幣擴容達成共識。
This points to the biggest question of all. Should blockchains run the world? Warning voices are starting to be heard. If distributed ledgers indeed disrupt the trust business, then a lot of administrative jobs will be lost, perhaps even more than through artificial intelligence. Some have called blockchains a libertarian conspiracy. Others fret about a dismantling of institutions humans have painstakingly built. 「Each time we use a distributed ledger we participate in a shift of power from central authorities to non-hierarchical and peer-to-peer structures,」 researchers at the European Parliament wrote recently. Then there is the concern that hard, cold blockchains and contracts too smart for their own good will ossify society—or make it run amok.
這就點出了終極問題。我們要不要讓區塊鏈來參與世界的管理？在這個問題上，有一些反對與警示者。如果去中心化資料庫確實會顛覆信任行業，那麼許多行政工作就會消失，而隨著人工智慧的進步，相關工作崗位可能會消失的更多。許多人把區塊鏈叫做自由主義者的陰謀，另一些人擔憂人類歷經千辛萬苦建立起來的現有體制將會被取代。「每當我們使用一次去中心化資料庫，就意味著我們向從中心機構到非中心，點對點機構的轉變又邁進了一步。」歐洲議會的研究人員近期寫到。而這又引出了一個擔憂：冰冷，不近人情的區塊鏈和智能合約會為了它們的利益固化整個人類社會，或者讓它陷入混亂。
As decentralised list-keeping grows stronger, the list of worries about it is sure to grow longer.
隨著去中心化資料庫中數據列表的增多成長，毫無疑問，寫著對於這項技術的擔憂顧慮的清單，也會隨之變長。
幣橙網專註於區塊鏈項目投研分析、測評領域。通過分散式、社區協作的方式組成評測分析團隊，更加公正，公平，客觀的角度剖析區塊鏈項目本身。每一期內容的產出都離不開幣橙網社區的同學們，萬分感謝。另外：幣橙網社區不接受項目方投資，不接受收費投研分析。
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