Introduction:As the blockchain industry is gradually on the right track, people pay more and more attention to the technical value and product application scenarios of the blockchain.
As the blockchain industry is gradually on the right track, people pay more and more attention to the technical value and product application scenarios of the blockchain.
How to design blockchain products? Facing this problem, the difficulties faced by practitioners are not the problems of product methodology such as demand analysis method and product logic design, but mainly focus on the following two points:
(1) How to judge whether a demand should be solved by blockchain technology?
(2) How to use blockchain technology to design products and provide the best product scheme?
This article will answer the above questions.
1. Interpretation of blockchain thinking
Before designing blockchain products, practitioners need to understand the value of blockchain technology and how to use blockchain technology to provide solutions in actual business scenarios, that is, understanding blockchain thinking.
1.1 Blockchain essence → blockchain value→Blockchain thinking
The essence of blockchain is a technical system composed of distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, consensus mechanism, encryption algorithm, smart contract and other technologies. These technologies can be combined in a new way to achieve tamper proof data storage, traceable data viewing, and trusted point-to-point transmission, which can solve the long-standing trust building problem.
Blockchain can build a decentralized (or weakly centralized) consensus ecosystem. By means of data tamper proof, traceable storage mode and trusted transmission mechanism, value storage and quantitative circulation are realized. This refers to the definition of value in a broad sense, such as data, copyright, voting rights, etc. The core significance of the blockchain technology system is to realize the trusted circulation of value.
The essence of blockchain is a technical system composed of multiple technologies. The mutual cooperation between technologies realizes the trusted circulation of value, which is the core value of blockchain. Realizing the trusted circulation of value requires the combination of one or more technologies such as "decentralized (weak) centralized management, data storage that is difficult to tamper with, and trusted point-to-point transactions". We call the value realized by these technologies the local value of the blockchain. Some businesses can meet business needs through the local value of the blockchain.
From the perspective of technology application, blockchain thinking can be defined as a way of thinking to analyze and solve problems through blockchain technology. To more systematically understand how to use blockchain thinking to design products, we have formulated the "four dimensions" and "five steps" of blockchain product design.
2. The "four dimensions" and "five steps" of blockchain product design
2.1.1 Four dimensions
When the business needs are clear, whether blockchain technology can provide a suitable solution can be judged from the following four dimensions.
2.1.2 Four business characteristics of blockchain technology
In case of unclear business requirements, we can analyze which business requirements are suitable for blockchain technology from the four business characteristics of blockchain technology.
2.2.1 Five step rule
The "five step rule" is the five thinking steps of using blockchain technology to solve problems. The "five step rule" is the thinking process of the product from 0 to 1, but not every step needs to reflect the design of the corresponding function points in the final product, to avoid pseudo functions of the product.
2.2.2 Use method and principle of "five step rule"
The "five step rule" is the thinking process of blockchain product design and the realization process of blockchain value. The realization of each function point corresponds to the value expression of the blockchain. To create a high-quality blockchain product, practitioners need to do two things: first, in-depth and accurate understanding of business, and second, proper application of blockchain technology. From a single point of view, blockchain technology has application value, but it needs to be used correctly to avoid setting obstacles for future product operation. The use principle and operation mode of the "five step rule" are described as follows.
3. Application Cases of "Four Dimensions" and "Five Step Rule"
3.1 Cross border payment
bankTelegraphic transfer needs to gradually process cross-border payment business information in a "serial" manner, which leads to low efficiency of business processing. The best solution to the current problem is to optimize the banking business system, and change the "serial" business model to "parallel", which can speed up the processing efficiency of cross-border payment business. The business model under the new technology saves telegraph fees and certain labor processing costs, which can reduce the handling fees for cross-border payment. At the same time, the realization of business under the new technology needs to ensure the security of users' personal and transaction information.
The application of blockchain technology in the cross-border payment field is reflected in the optimization of traditional business processes. Through the logic of "alliance chain+distributed storage", each business node can conduct business processing synchronously.
3.2 Network copyright
Except for the Copyright Office, other institutions are unable to provide legally recognized copyright certificates. According to the previous analysis, the current networkcontentThe time and capital cost of copyright application cannot meet the needs of most current content producers. When network content is pirated, producers need to provide strong proof of content ownership;
The purpose of the author's application for network copyright is that the author can decide whether to grant others the right to use the work, and when the content is used, the author can get corresponding value compensation.
In line with the principle of "rationally weakening the central management" mentioned above, there is no need to weaken the central management in view of the current network copyright business needs alone; However, the current network content platform has a bias towards content support. For example, the novel platform will give priority to recommending high reading content, leaving no living space for high-quality niche content, and the content distribution platform is seriously centralized and unfair. To solve this problem, we can achieve decentralization in content distribution and use the consensus mechanism to maintain the platform. In the following product design considerations, in addition to the demand for network copyright, we also include the demand for content distribution.
three point threeOnline gamesgame
After a long period of development, online games, with mature industrial chains and industrial barriers, have encountered problems at different levels, from industrial monopoly to poor user experience. The root causes and commonalities of these problems are serious centralization. From the analysis of online game pain points in the report above, we can see that the demand of the game industry at this stage mainly comes from both enterprises and users.
Problems such as "enterprises have no living space and poor user experience" can be solved by building an underlying public chain with decentralized characteristics through blockchain technology. We take the public chain at the bottom of the blockchain as an example to think about product design. In product design, the value anchoring of online games is mainly based on the expected income of the game. The factors that affect the expected income, such as "the number of users in the future, changes in user consumption", are difficult to control, forming the difficulty of value anchoring.
4. Summary
"Four dimensions": The above described the case of using "four dimensions" to judge whether known demands can be solved with blockchain technologyinnovateIn other words, more is to use the "four business characteristics of blockchain technology" to explore or create new needs. Practitioners need to have a deep understanding of user needs and blockchain thinking.
"Five step rule" describes the thinking process of product design, focusing on the way of thinking in blockchain thinking. For existing products or businesses, we should adhere to the "point to end" principle. Most of these projects have a complete business logic system. Solutions provided by blockchain technology need to solve business problems without affecting the normal business logic. For a product from 0 to 1, we need to maintain the "lean principle". First, we need to realize the business requirements with high priority and conducive to product development. Achieving too many requirements at one time is easy to lose the focus of the product, which makes users' actual understanding of the product and product positioning conflict.