0) One of the most important topics you don’t understand about blockchain in China is BSN. Let’s talk about it. At a high level, it’s a consortium of influential companies that are building a kind of AWS for blockchain infrastructure. THREAD
1) Background: The Blockchain-based Services Network (BSN) is a “cross-cloud, cross-portal, cross-framework global infrastructure network used to deploy and operate all types of blockchain applications.”
2) From the white paper, the objective of BSN is to “change the existing problem of the high cost of developing and deploying blockchain applications…”
3) Essentially, it’s an attempt at providing infrastructure to lower barriers to entry, increase interconnectivity of distributed networks, and ultimately to engage stakeholders ranging from cities, to companies, to developers, to users, all on one service platform.
4) In Western parlance (although it does not translate perfectly), this could be thought as a kind of public private partnership (PPP) with various Chinese government entities, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and private companies in cooperation.
5) Prominent participants include: The State Information Center, China UnionPay, China Mobile, and Beijing Red Date Technology Company, which was a developer of the blockchain infrastructure.
6) This project is important to China for several reasons. It shows leadership in emerging technologies and could act as infrastructure for integration of technologies related to IoT, 5G, AI, and big data, while establishing a beachhead in the development of tech standards.
7) The whitepaper concludes by stating, “As the BSN takes hold in countries around the world, it will become the only global infrastructure network autonomously innovated by Chinese entities.” China’s ambition to lead and shape the future of emerging tech is quite clear.
8) On April 25, the Blockchain Service Network (BSN) Commercial Launch Conference was held virtually in Beijing. The conference marked the mainland China opening of the Blockchain Service Network (BSN) as well as the open beta of the international version.
9) DETAILS: BSN ***claims*** its design and construction concept are modeled on the Internet; BSN is formed by the connection of data centers using a set of blockchain operating Protocols.*
9.1) Look we fully understand that sounds kind of ridiculous, it’s a paraphrase of BSN’s self-description 
10) BSN’s claim is that by providing a “one-stop shop blockchain operation environment…the cost of chain-building is reduced to just RMB 2000 to 3000 (USD 300 to 400) per year, giving all enterprise and individual developers access to the blockchain industry” vs. 100k+ RMB now.
11) The whitepaper notes three direct participants with various roles. 1. Cloud Service Providers 2. Blockchain framework providers and 3. Portal operators. “The BSN is an open network…on the condition of compliance with BSN protocol standards.”
12) Cloud providers are a diverse group including Baidu Cloud, China Mobile Cloud, AWS, etc. These providers “power” a node. Our good friend Shuyao Kong wrote a fantastic article on this aspect for Decrypt. (decrypt.co/26693/bsns-chi…)
13) BSN’s scale is enormous, with nodes connecting 128 cities across mainland China, increasing to 200 over the next year, and ultimately to all 451 prefecture-level cities in mainland China.
14) The network will also have nodes in seven locations outside China: Paris, Sydney, San Paulo, Singapore, Tokyo, Johannesburg and California (no city noted). (Shuyao, Decrypt)
15) GLOBAL: Of course, it remains to be seen how willing global participants will be to utilize the BSN platform after some countries have already voiced their displeasure with China’s dominance in the 5G rollout.
16) There could also be concerns over cryptography algorithms that are the network standard and could contain a backdoor or root keys. While platform is ostensibly agnostic and open to new nodes, the approval process and standards therein are quite centralized
17) The BSN itself is a permissioned chain forked from Hyperledger Fabric – although it will likely be refined to include state-approved encryption (Shuyao, Decrypt).
18) It will allow interoperability with public chains and other decentralized platforms, and at launch will be interoperable with major blockchain platforms and frameworks e.g. HL Fabric, Ethereum, EOS, WeBank’s FISCO BCOS and Baidu’s Xuperchain.
19) At launch the BSN platform claims to be the largest blockchain ecosystem in the world and, like DCEP (“digital RMB”) for CBDCs, may serve as a “shot in the arm” for institutional and government adoption of blockchain and related technologies.
20) CONCLUSION: This is a major milestone for the blockchain industry and shows the leadership position China has taken. This follows on positive reports of progress in the “digital yuan” (DCEP) and Xi’s positive blockchain commentary.
21) SOURCES: For further reading we highly recommend reviewing the BSN whitepaper (global.bsnbase.com), as well as the Da bing crypto roundup (decrypt.co/collections/da…).
*tweetstorm consists of 21 tweets (0 through 20), sorry it’s a little disorganized. We will repost from the company account @sinoglobalcap and in a more organized fashion.
