With the rise of big data and cloud computing, the Internet is moving from “Information as power” to the age of “computing as power”. The evolution of world economy and power is featured with byte(digital) information. The evolution started from “Byte Tool” era to “Byte Currency” era and now “Byte Assets” era.

Bytom Blockchain Protocol, or Bytom, is an interactive protocol of multiple byte assets. Heterogeneous byte-assets (indigenous digital currency, digital assets) that operate in different forms on the Bytom Blockchain and atomic assets (warrants, securities, dividends, bonds, intelligence information, forecasting information and other information in the physical world) can be registered, exchanged, adjusted and engaged in other more complicated and contract-based interactive operations via Bytom.

Put simply, Bytom aims to build a decentralized and open platform where various byte assets and atomic assets could be registered and exchanged.

Bytom boasts many innovations from UTXO design of Bitcoin to POW algorithm.

Compatible with the UTXO design of Bitcoin

General address format

Compatible with National Encryption Standard

Asset naming using ODIN

POW algorithm that is friendly to AI ASIC-chips

Asset exchange is a basic feature of Bytom, which will be achieved in the first version of Bytom. Besides, Bytom can enable another two scenarios.

Management of income assets

Smart contract code will be embedded when issuing crowdfunding assets through the programmable interface provided by Bytom. By doing so, the funds are spent as it is designed for.

Management of non-listed company equity

Bytom can help reduce their cost on managing equities and options and provide more financial channels. Plus, private equity fund managers can issue contract-type fund through Bytom.

At Bytom, it has a group of blockchain developers, engineers and coders from Tencent, Alipay and Parity.

In the interview, Duan Xinxing, executive president of 8btc, tells the story behind Bytom.

What is Bytom all about?

Bytom is designed to meet the actual needs of the community. 8btc represents the earliest digital currency and blockchain-focused community in China. Many entrepreneurs started their businesses by reading news on 8btc. They have successfully launched some public, private or consortium blockchain projects. However, when you talk with them, they all complain that assets are not able to be exchanges cross different chains. That’s why we are working on the Bytom project. Bytom is a combination of byte and atom, representing the digital world and physical world respectively.

Why do you think assets is a trend of blockchain?

As the underlying technology of bitcoin, blockchain has far reaching positive effects on such blockchain networks as Corda, Hyperledger, Factom and Namecoin. These networks share some common features.

First, information on these chains are not defined as right or wrong, cheap or expensive, short or long; instead, everything on the chains are become “assets” that cannot be altered.

Second, the whole network entails encryption, signature, verification, transaction and other operations. It works based on certain rules.

The network is generally “cheap” for the building of its infrastructure is shared by all participants. But it is also costly considering its consensus mechanism. As such, assets on it much be relatively “rare”, so as to make it profitable.

Therefore, blockchain would be highly undervalued if used as an ordinary system for file transmission.

Why you see big future in ABS? What makes Bytom special in it?

Asset Backed Securities (ABS) refers to the assets that lacks liquidity but have future cash income. These assets are transformed into securities that are tradable in financial market through structural reorganization. There are 3 steps to securitize assets. First, the issuer is to set the asset to a SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle), the second step is to separate the SPV into shares and the last step is trading. The traditional process is complicated and inefficient. A company that wants to issue shares must first sign contract with a broker. The approval process is lengthy and complicated before investors can apply for investment. In addition, even when the shares are traded in the market, there are a few days between the securities trading day and the settlement day. With blockchain technology, ABS can be simplified into three steps: one is the right registration; second is the tokenization of the asset; third is the transactions of smart contract. Management of securitized assets via Bytom can greatly improve the efficiency, safety and traceability of ABS operation. The system can also store transaction data safely, ensure that information cannot be forged and modified, and automatically execute smart contract. All the market participants in the ABS trading could be kept informed of the asset registration and transaction information simultaneously through distributed ledger and consensus mechanism, which effectively solve the settlement issue between agencies.

It’s quite a highlight that you combine AI with Bytom, who brought it up? Can you tell us more about it?

It was Chang Jia’s idea. If we introduce matrix operations and convolution operations in the hashing process of mining, making miners more friendly to AI ASICs than GPU and CPU, then the calculation required for blockchain consensus can also be applied to the AI hardware acceleration service, which will generate greater social benefits. On the one hand, the mining market will stimulate the market for artificial intelligence, expanding needs for the depth learning ASIC chips, just like the boosting effect to GPU market brought by current GPU-friendly PoW blockchain. On the other hand, outdated miners can be applied to AI hardware acceleration services, saving mining costs to realize a win-win situation.

In China, as there is a lack of a regulation in the blockchain space in the law, how are you going to deal with potential regulatory risks?