McGinn D, McIlwraith D, Guo Y
Data Science Institute, Imperial College London, London, UK.
R Soc Open Sci. 2018 Aug 8;5(8):180298. doi: 10.1098/rsos.180298. eCollection 2018 Aug.
Bitcoin is the first implementation of a technology that has become known as a 'public permissionless' blockchain. Such systems allow public read/write access to an append-only blockchain database without the need for any mediating central authority. Instead, they guarantee access, security and protocol conformity through an elegant combination of cryptographic assurances and game theoretic economic incentives. Not until the advent of the Bitcoin blockchain has such a trusted, transparent, comprehensive and granular dataset of digital economic behaviours been available for public network analysis. In this article, by translating the cumbersome binary data structure of the Bitcoin blockchain into a high fidelity graph model, we demonstrate through various analyses the often overlooked social and econometric benefits of employing such a novel open data architecture. Specifically, we show: (i) how repeated patterns of transaction behaviours can be revealed to link user activity across the blockchain; (ii) how newly mined bitcoin can be associated to demonstrate individual accumulations of wealth; (iii) through application of the naïve quantity theory of money that Bitcoin's disinflationary properties can be revealed and measured; and (iv) how the user community can develop coordinated defences against repeated denial of service attacks on the network. Such public analyses of this open data are exemplary benefits unavailable to the closed data models of the 'private permissioned' distributed ledger architectures currently dominating enterprise-level blockchain development owing to existing issues of scalability, confidentiality and governance.
比特币是一种被称为“公共无许可”区块链技术的首个实现。这类系统允许对只追加的区块链数据库进行公共读/写访问，而无需任何中介中央机构。相反，它们通过密码学保证和博弈论经济激励的巧妙结合来确保访问、安全和协议一致性。直到比特币区块链出现，才有了这样一个可用于公共网络分析的、可信的、透明的、全面且细致的数字经济行为数据集。在本文中，我们将比特币区块链繁琐的二进制数据结构转换为高保真图模型，通过各种分析展示了采用这种新型开放数据架构所带来的、常常被忽视的社会和计量经济学益处。具体而言，我们展示了：（i）如何揭示交易行为的重复模式以关联区块链上的用户活动；（ii）如何关联新挖出的比特币以展示个人财富积累；（iii）通过应用朴素货币数量理论来揭示和衡量比特币的通缩特性；以及（iv）用户社区如何针对网络上反复出现的拒绝服务攻击制定协同防御措施。对这种开放数据的此类公共分析是目前主导企业级区块链开发的数据模型所无法提供的典型益处，因为“私有许可”分布式账本架构存在可扩展性、保密性和治理等问题。
