推薦序

See the past, present and be the future yourself

（回溯過(guò)去，看見現(xiàn)在，參與未來(lái)）

Vitalik Buterin

Founder of Ethereum

（以太坊創(chuàng)始人）

When I first discovered blockchain technology through Bitcoin in 2011, it took some time for me to realize the full potential. Like many others at the time, the aspect that stood out to me the most was Bitcoin the currency - a currency which I initially rejected as doomed to failure, as it was not backed by anything and had no underlying value. After hearing about it again a few weeks later, I realized that there was genuine potential, and so I started actively exploring, reading, earning, spending, and writing about Bitcoin. However, it took until visiting the blockchain community in Israel in late 2013 before I saw the fundamental truth that would eventually guide me to creating Ethereum: it was Bitcoin's underlying technology, the blockchain, that was the larger story, and it has applications that stretch far beyond peer-to-peer currency. Crowdfunding, insurance, financial contracts, identity management, supply chains, land registries and many more applications could be affected, and someone, somewhere comes up with a new way that blockchain technology can improve our lives every week.

（當(dāng)我在2011年第一次通過(guò)比特幣發(fā)現(xiàn)了它背后的區(qū)塊鏈技術(shù)時(shí)，我花了一些時(shí)間才意識(shí)到它的潛力。就像那時(shí)候的許多其他人一樣，起初出現(xiàn)在我眼前的是作為“貨幣”的比特幣，一種被我認(rèn)定為必然失敗的貨幣，因?yàn)樗鼪](méi)有任何內(nèi)在價(jià)值。但是，幾周以后，我意識(shí)到它具有的真實(shí)潛力，也因此我開始積極地探索、閱讀、編寫、獲取和消費(fèi)比特幣及它所相關(guān)的一切。然而，直到我2013年在以色列訪問(wèn)了區(qū)塊鏈社區(qū)，我才看到了最終指引我走向創(chuàng)造以太坊的根本性真相：比特幣的底層技術(shù)——區(qū)塊鏈，有著更為廣闊的未來(lái)，并且有著遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出點(diǎn)對(duì)點(diǎn)貨幣的大量應(yīng)用場(chǎng)景。眾籌、保險(xiǎn)、金融合約、身份管理、供應(yīng)鏈、土地登記，以及除此之外更大更多的用武之地，而地球上每周都有人在某些地方創(chuàng)造出了新的區(qū)塊鏈應(yīng)用場(chǎng)景，來(lái)提升我們生活的品質(zhì)。）

Decentralization and cryptography, two fundamental building blocks of Bitcoin and Ethereum-like systems, are not new. Decentralized networks such as BitTorrent have existed since the early 2000s, and cryptographers, mathematicians and software engineers have been working on increasingly advanced protocols in order to get stronger and stronger privacy and authenticity guarantees out of various systems, ranging from electronic cash to voting to file transfer and storage, for the last thirty years. However, the innovation of the blockchain - or, more generally, the innovation of public economic consensus - by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 proved to be the one missing piece of the puzzle that brought together both“strands” of research, and single-handedly gave the industry a giant leap forward.

[去中心化及密碼學(xué)，作為類似于比特幣與以太坊這樣的系統(tǒng)的兩大基礎(chǔ)性模塊，并不是新鮮技術(shù)。類似于BitTorrent（BT下載）的去中心化網(wǎng)絡(luò)早在21世紀(jì)初就已經(jīng)存在了，而密碼學(xué)家、數(shù)學(xué)家及軟件工程師也已經(jīng)努力了近三十年，致力于不斷提升協(xié)議的先進(jìn)性，從而實(shí)現(xiàn)從電子現(xiàn)金到投票再到文件傳輸存儲(chǔ)等各類系統(tǒng)更強(qiáng)的隱私性、可信度保障。然而，區(qū)塊鏈的創(chuàng)新，或者通俗地來(lái)講就是中本聰在2009年所證明的公共經(jīng)濟(jì)共識(shí)的創(chuàng)新，才是那一片原本缺失的拼圖，它將去中心化與密碼學(xué)這兩個(gè)研究方向擰在了一起，然后“抽一鞭子”讓整個(gè)行業(yè)向前躍進(jìn)了一大步。]

The ideological environment seemed to almost snap into place: the great financial crisis in 2008 spurred growing distrust in mainstream finance, including both corporations and the governmental institutions that are normally supposed to regulate them, and was the initial spark that drove many to seek out alternatives, and Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013 were the icing on the cake. Although so far blockchain technologies specifically have not seen mainstream adoption as a result, the underlying spirit of decentralization, and building applications that put the user in charge, to a substantial degree has: applications ranging from Apple's phones to WhatsApp have started building in forms of encryption that are so strong that even the company writing the software and managing the servers cannot break it. On another side, the advent of“sharing economy 1.0” is increasingly showing signs of failure to fulfill what many had originally seen to be its promise: rather than simply cutting entrenched and oligopolistic intermediaries out, giants like Uber are simply replacing the middleman with themselves, and in some cases not particularly doing a better job of it.

（而意識(shí)形態(tài)的大環(huán)境似乎也恰到好處：2008年的金融危機(jī)刺痛了人們對(duì)于主流金融不信任的神經(jīng)，也導(dǎo)致人們對(duì)于金融公司以及理應(yīng)監(jiān)管它們的政府機(jī)構(gòu)失去了信心，而這也擦出了人們?nèi)ふ姨娲返淖畛趸鸹ā?013年愛(ài)德華·斯諾登的啟示則更為原本的不信任雪上加霜。盡管到目前為止，區(qū)塊鏈技術(shù)本身并沒(méi)有出現(xiàn)主流的應(yīng)用，但它所蘊(yùn)含的去中心化精神以及將用戶作為應(yīng)用程序主體的程序開發(fā)思路已經(jīng)深入人心：從蘋果手機(jī)到WhatsApp，都開始通過(guò)用戶加密的方式設(shè)計(jì)程序，從而實(shí)現(xiàn)即使是負(fù)責(zé)程序開發(fā)和管理的公司自己也無(wú)法破解用戶設(shè)置的密碼。從另一個(gè)方面而言，誕生不久的所謂“共享經(jīng)濟(jì)1.0”正在逐漸顯露出失敗的跡象，因?yàn)樗鼈冸y以兌現(xiàn)最初的承諾：不是簡(jiǎn)單地去除根深蒂固的寡頭中介，像Uber這樣的巨頭反而選擇了僅僅將原本的中介換成了它們自己，而在某些情況下也并沒(méi)有做得比它們的前任更好。）

Blockchains, and the umbrella of related technologies that I have collectively come to call“crypto 2.0”, provides an attractive fix: rather than simply hoping that the parties we interact with behave honorably, we build technological systems that inherently build the desired properties into the system, in such a way that it will keep functioning with the guarantees that we expect even if many of the actors involved are corrupted. All transactions would come with auditable trails of cryptographic proofs, decentralized peer-to-peer networks would be used to reduce reliance on any single server, public key cryptography could create a notion of portable user-controlled identities, and entire financial systems could be built in such a way that there is no single central party that needs to hold custody over other people's funds, and that other people need to trust not to go bankrupt, try to cheat them, or run away with their funds.More advanced kinds of math, including ring signatures, homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs, would to guarantee privacy, allowing users to put all of their data in the open in such a way that certain properties of it can be verified, and even computed on, but without actually revealing any private details.

（區(qū)塊鏈及與其相關(guān)的技術(shù)被我總稱為“數(shù)字貨幣2.0”，它們提供了一個(gè)吸引人的解決方案：相比于僅僅寄希望于與我們產(chǎn)生互動(dòng)的對(duì)手方行為良好，我們建立的技術(shù)系統(tǒng)將我們所需的屬性先天性地嵌入系統(tǒng)當(dāng)中，從而實(shí)現(xiàn)即便是系統(tǒng)中的許多參與方的行為不良，系統(tǒng)也仍然能夠保證像我們所希望的那樣正常運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)。所有的交易都會(huì)以密碼學(xué)證明的方式經(jīng)歷一次審計(jì)流程，去中心化的點(diǎn)對(duì)點(diǎn)網(wǎng)絡(luò)將會(huì)被用于減少對(duì)于單一服務(wù)器的依賴，公鑰加密能夠創(chuàng)造一個(gè)便攜的由用戶控制的身份概念，整個(gè)金融系統(tǒng)將會(huì)被建立在一個(gè)新的體系上，在這種體系中，沒(méi)有一個(gè)單獨(dú)的中心化組織需要對(duì)所有其他人的資金進(jìn)行監(jiān)管，也沒(méi)有一個(gè)單獨(dú)的組織需要被相信是不會(huì)破產(chǎn)的，用戶也不用擔(dān)心被欺詐，或是遭遇卷款跑路。更為先進(jìn)的數(shù)學(xué)方法，包括環(huán)狀簽名、同態(tài)加密及零知識(shí)證明體系，將會(huì)被用于保障私密性，保證了用戶將他們所有的數(shù)據(jù)都公開并在針對(duì)數(shù)據(jù)的一些屬性被驗(yàn)證、計(jì)算的前提下不泄露自身隱私的那一部分細(xì)節(jié)。）

What has impressed me the most about the last five years is just how far the technology has come, and how far the industry has evolved. From 2010 to 2013, there was a lot of excitement about the technology and its potential, and there were many startups being formed to try to build something on it. However, the technology was still in its early phase, and discussion about practical applications was rare; many startups would literally include as part of their pitch deck to venture capital firms an assumption that the bitcoin price would increase by a factor of four every year, and in some cases that was the closest thing to a business model that these companies had to speak of. In 2014, that model suddenly, but inevitably, began to falter, as the price went in the exact opposite direction to the three years before, and so entrepreneurs looking to change the world with blockchain technology began to look to a radical new strategy to earn their revenue: finding actual use cases, and working with actual customers and traditional enterprise to try to bring those applications from a concept in their heads, to a proof-of-concept written in code, and finally to a product that would be used by millions of people. And it is not just startups that are getting involved;despite the anti-bank sentiment of many of the technology's earliest advocates, today it is the banks that are among the most prominent developers of blockchain applications. Blockchain technology is growing up, and is finally coming of age.

（于我而言，最讓我印象深刻的是過(guò)去這五年來(lái)這項(xiàng)技術(shù)的發(fā)展速度，以及這個(gè)行業(yè)進(jìn)化的速度。從2010年到2013年，關(guān)于區(qū)塊鏈技術(shù)有許多令人激動(dòng)和充滿潛力的進(jìn)步，許多初創(chuàng)公司正在逐漸形成并且嘗試著在此技術(shù)之上建立一些新的東西。然而，這項(xiàng)技術(shù)仍然停留在它的早期階段，關(guān)于實(shí)踐應(yīng)用的討論仍然比較稀少。許多初創(chuàng)公司僅僅將“區(qū)塊鏈”放入他們對(duì)風(fēng)投公司的融資演講稿中，并且假設(shè)比特幣的幣價(jià)每年都會(huì)上漲4倍，而在某些情況下幣價(jià)與這些公司的商業(yè)模式密切相關(guān)。2014年，這些模式突然間（也不可避免）開始走得顫顫巍巍，因?yàn)楸忍貛诺膬r(jià)格完全向三年前相反的方向發(fā)展。于是那些致力于使用區(qū)塊鏈技術(shù)改變世界的企業(yè)家們，開始尋找一種激進(jìn)的新策略來(lái)賺取他們的收益：尋找真實(shí)的應(yīng)用場(chǎng)景，并且與真實(shí)的客戶以及傳統(tǒng)企業(yè)合作，從而將他們的應(yīng)用從腦袋里的概念轉(zhuǎn)化為證明概念的代碼，最終成為能夠被成千上萬(wàn)人使用的產(chǎn)品。事實(shí)上，參與其中的也并不僅僅是初創(chuàng)公司，連最初區(qū)塊鏈技術(shù)倡導(dǎo)者們認(rèn)為反對(duì)該技術(shù)的銀行，今天反而成了區(qū)塊鏈應(yīng)用開發(fā)的中堅(jiān)力量。區(qū)塊鏈技術(shù)正在成長(zhǎng)，也終于成長(zhǎng)到了一個(gè)新的時(shí)代。）

Personally, at my age of 22, I do not have decades of experience in any industry, except perhaps the twelve years which I have spent writing code, the first six of which largely consisted of writing computer games that I would later spend thousands of hours playing myself; hence, I am not the person who will be working out the finer details of how blockchain-based timestamping can improve transparency in the supply chain, or how smart contracts can simplify the archaic processes that are currently being used in trade finance, or how decentralized clearing networks based on consortium chains can create a more egalitarian and efficient alternative to the central clearing parties that dominate many financial markets today.

（在我22歲時(shí)，除了12年的編寫代碼經(jīng)驗(yàn)外，我并沒(méi)有多少年的行業(yè)經(jīng)驗(yàn)，而這12年中的前6年里的大多數(shù)時(shí)間我都在寫電腦游戲以及花上千小時(shí)玩它們；因此，我也不是一個(gè)能夠出色地解釋基于區(qū)塊鏈的時(shí)間戳能夠如何增加供應(yīng)鏈的透明度的人，也不能完美地描述智能合約如何能夠簡(jiǎn)化當(dāng)前貿(mào)易金融中的陳舊流程，抑或基于聯(lián)盟鏈的去中心化清算網(wǎng)絡(luò)如何能夠創(chuàng)造一個(gè)更為公平、高效的替代品來(lái)替換當(dāng)前主導(dǎo)金融市場(chǎng)的中心化清算方式。）

Rather, the contribution that I aimed to make to society with Ethereum is the opposite: create a highly generalized platform that includes a highly flexible programming language, and so can be employed for any application in any industry with maximum ease. We would deal with the challenge of making the underlying blockchain layer as scalable, efficient, generalized and secure as possible, giving application developers the freedom to focus on building the business logic of their application itself. At the time that I originally came up with the idea for Ethereum, I expected that it would fail; it seemed too good to be true, and so I thought that within a week I would get five smart cryptographers replying back to the email containing my whitepaper, explaining to me some very good mathematical reasons why it could not work. And yet, that never happened; instead, after a year and eight months of development, the project launched, and the blockchain has been running smoothly ever since, with thousands of users, tens of thousands of transactions per day and over a hundred applications either under development or already deployed.

（然而，我所致力的通過(guò)以太坊向社會(huì)所做的貢獻(xiàn)卻恰恰與此相反：以太坊致力于創(chuàng)造一個(gè)高度通用化的平臺(tái)，它包含了高度靈活的編程語(yǔ)言，從而不僅實(shí)現(xiàn)了各種產(chǎn)業(yè)的適用性，也最大限度簡(jiǎn)化了應(yīng)用過(guò)程。我們所需要做的是處理好來(lái)自區(qū)塊鏈層上關(guān)于延展性、效率、通用性以及安全性的挑戰(zhàn)，從而給應(yīng)用開發(fā)者提供足夠的自由空間以專注于完成他們自身商業(yè)邏輯的構(gòu)建。在我最初想到以太坊這個(gè)點(diǎn)子的時(shí)候，我覺(jué)得它是會(huì)失敗的，因?yàn)樗雌饋?lái)太完美了，從而變得不那么真實(shí)，于是我認(rèn)為在一周以內(nèi)就會(huì)有5位聰明的密碼學(xué)家回復(fù)我以太坊白皮書的郵件，并通過(guò)一些很好的數(shù)學(xué)原理向我解釋為什么它不會(huì)成功。然而最終這并沒(méi)有發(fā)生，取而代之的是，經(jīng)過(guò)一年零八個(gè)月的開發(fā)，這個(gè)計(jì)劃上線了，并且它的區(qū)塊鏈從那以后一直很順暢地運(yùn)行著。鏈上聚集了上千名用戶，每日上萬(wàn)筆的交易，以及超過(guò)一百個(gè)正在開發(fā)或已經(jīng)上線的應(yīng)用。）

The concept that Clearmatics CEO Robert Sams so correctly summarizes as“decentralized automation” - not just a decentralized ledger that would store the final result of processes that are otherwise centralized, but a process re-engineering effort where the entire lifecycle of a financial trade, or a land ownership record, or an identity record, could be run on a decentralized platform, stands the chance to reduce greatly what Ronald Coase has called“transaction costs” - the bureaucratic and economic costs of managing an interaction, figuring out the details of the legal contract, making sure that the counterparty is trustworthy, and recording the results, that are the reason why so many people today prefer to instead interact by congregating into large, centralized firms. As a result, we may see an economy in the 21st century that in some ways resembles that of the 18th: one where, instead of a single company selling insurance as a product, we insure each other, instead of a central party clearing financial trades and payment transactions, such operations are conducted directly peer-to-peer, and even functions such as evaluating creditworthiness and reputation, quality control, and tracking property rights are done in a much more decentralized way - but at the same time, where the extreme efficiencies of 21st century information technology mean that we can have the benefits of running our society in this way without many of the costs.

（Clearmatics的CEO Robert Sams將這個(gè)概念很正確地總結(jié)為“去中心自動(dòng)化”——不僅僅是一個(gè)用于存儲(chǔ)過(guò)程結(jié)果的去中心化的賬本，而是一個(gè)經(jīng)過(guò)過(guò)程重構(gòu)了的多用途去中心化平臺(tái)。它通過(guò)去中心化所重構(gòu)的過(guò)程包含了金融交易的全流程、土地所有權(quán)登記的全流程以及身份記錄的全過(guò)程。經(jīng)過(guò)它的過(guò)程重構(gòu)將實(shí)現(xiàn)Ronald Coase所謂的“交易費(fèi)”的大大削減，而這“交易費(fèi)”指的是為了明晰法律合同的細(xì)節(jié)、確保對(duì)手方的可信、記錄各種結(jié)果所進(jìn)行的官僚化的管理互動(dòng)而產(chǎn)生的經(jīng)濟(jì)開支。也因此，比起與聚集化、中心化的大公司互動(dòng)，人們更愿意選擇一個(gè)去中心化的互動(dòng)模式。結(jié)果就是，我們或許能夠看到21世紀(jì)的經(jīng)濟(jì)形態(tài)更像18世紀(jì)的組織形態(tài)：以互相擔(dān)保取代單一公司出售保險(xiǎn)產(chǎn)品；以點(diǎn)對(duì)點(diǎn)的交易形式取代第三方中心化清算金融交易和支付；甚至于以一種更為去中心化的方式來(lái)評(píng)價(jià)信任度和名譽(yù)、完成質(zhì)量控制、實(shí)現(xiàn)產(chǎn)權(quán)跟蹤。而同時(shí)，21世紀(jì)信息技術(shù)的極度高效也意味著我們能夠以很低的消耗來(lái)實(shí)現(xiàn)這樣的社會(huì)形態(tài)。）

Of course, it is decidedly not the case that absolutely every industry will become more decentralized, or even that those industries that will become more decentralized will do so through blockchain technology specifically. Every industry is its own special case, and it is, for example, hard to see how the construction of a billion-dollar rocket going to Mars could be economically managed by a decentralized automaton or smart contract running on Ethereum. However, the possibilities are many, and 2016 is the year where the initial proof of concepts for real-world use cases are starting to be developed and tested. 2017 will be the year where, just as is the case in any industry, over two thirds of them will inevitably fail, but the remaining third will be expanded further into real-world applications reaching millions of users - and that is when the next phase will begin.

（誠(chéng)然，不是所有行業(yè)都會(huì)變得更為去中心化，而那些會(huì)變得更為去中心化的行業(yè)也需要通過(guò)更為個(gè)性化的區(qū)塊鏈結(jié)構(gòu)來(lái)實(shí)現(xiàn)去中心化。因?yàn)槊恳粋€(gè)行業(yè)都是自身的一個(gè)特例，也因此，舉例來(lái)說(shuō)，就是很難去預(yù)測(cè)如何通過(guò)在以太坊上運(yùn)行的去中心自動(dòng)化或者智能合約，來(lái)使得建造一個(gè)幾十億美元的火箭并把它發(fā)射到火星這件事變得經(jīng)濟(jì)實(shí)惠。然而可能性依舊很多，2016年，正是現(xiàn)實(shí)世界應(yīng)用場(chǎng)景的概念性證明開發(fā)和測(cè)試開始的一年；2017年，在某些行業(yè)，將會(huì)有2/3的應(yīng)用場(chǎng)景不可避免地失敗，但剩下的1/3將會(huì)進(jìn)一步擴(kuò)張成為現(xiàn)實(shí)世界的實(shí)用性應(yīng)用，并達(dá)到幾百萬(wàn)的用戶數(shù)量，而那也會(huì)是下一階段的開始。）

I hope that you enjoy reading about the past, present and future of what blockchain technology has to offer, and that this book will inspire you to become part of that future yourself.

（我希望你會(huì)享受閱讀這本關(guān)于區(qū)塊鏈的過(guò)去、現(xiàn)在和未來(lái)的書，并且我相信這本書將會(huì)啟發(fā)你，使你成為未來(lái)的一部分。）

April 24th 2016

（2016年4月24日）