Answer: Morality, Benevolence, Righteousness, Propriety

• Dao: Truth is the law of the world and human development. It embodies Mao Zedong's principle of "seeking truth from facts" and Ray Dalio's "Embrace Reality And Deal With It." How can one grasp the truth? By observing more, learning more, asking questions, and solving problems. The truth that is held by a few and can benefit others is called insight, while the ability to predict future outcomes based on truth is called vision. When the truth you discover helps others, they will help you in return, which is the principle of "gaining support through righteousness."

• Virtue: This means "give people what they want," serving the people, and efficiently creating products and services that the public enjoys. In companies and organizations, virtue is about aligning the goals of subordinates, managers, and the company to create synergy.

• Benevolence: Empathy, the ability to see things from others' perspectives and understand what they are thinking. It also involves genuinely wishing for others to succeed.

• Righteousness: Fairness and justice; achieving success requires rewarding good deeds and punishing wrongdoings.

• Propriety: Adhering to rules, which means predictable professionalism, where actions meet the community's expectations and are subject to peer review. For example, as a software engineer, my goal is not only for users to enjoy my product but also for my peers to recognize my achievements, which is the true success in my profession. In East Asian rice civilization, diligence, waking early and sleeping late, and being earnest align with Eastern propriety. In the Western world, mercantilism emphasizes mutual benefit in business dealings, creating a pleasant atmosphere, which aligns with Western propriety. Eastern people should not expect Westerners to admire their diligence, nor should Westerners expect Easterners to praise their flattering words.

With these characteristics, one can achieve harmony among people. Coupled with seizing the right timing, great accomplishments can be achieved. If one is born at the wrong time, they may simply remain unknown in the world. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Original Text​

The First Chapter of the Original Text

The five elements of Dao, Virtue, Benevolence, Righteousness, and Propriety are one body.

Dao is what people follow, allowing all things to be unaware of their origins. Virtue is what people obtain, enabling all things to achieve their desires. Benevolence is what people are close to, possessing compassion and empathy to sustain their existence. Righteousness is what people ought to pursue, rewarding good and punishing evil to establish achievements. Propriety is what people practice, rising early and retiring late to maintain the order of human relationships.

To be the foundation of humanity, one cannot lack any of these.

The wise and virtuous understand the principles of prosperity and decline, comprehend the numbers of success and failure, discern the trends of governance and chaos, and grasp the principles of advancement and retreat. When the time is right, they can reach the heights of ministerial positions; when opportunities arise, they can achieve extraordinary accomplishments. ==If they are not fortunate, they may simply remain unknown==. Therefore, their principles are lofty, and their names are esteemed by future generations.

Source: China Academy of Information and Communications Technology Trusted Blockchain Promotion Plan

What is Blockchain​

Blockchain is a technology maintained collaboratively by multiple parties, using cryptography to ensure secure transmission and access, enabling consistent data storage, tamper resistance, and non-repudiation. It is also referred to as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). A typical blockchain stores data in a block-chain structure. As a new computing paradigm and collaborative model for establishing trust at low cost in an untrusted competitive environment, blockchain is changing the application scenarios and operational rules across various industries with its unique trust-building mechanisms, making it an indispensable technology for the future development of the digital economy and the establishment of a new trust system.

Blockchains can be classified based on whether they have a node admission mechanism:

• Permissioned chains, where only authorized entities can join. They can be further divided based on whether the controlling entities are centralized:
  • Consortium chains
  • Private chains
• Permissionless/public chains

Features:

1. Evolution from double-entry bookkeeping to distributed bookkeeping
2. Transition from "add, delete, modify, query" to only "add, query"
3. Shift from single-party maintenance to multi-party maintenance
4. Development from external contracts to built-in contracts

Applicable Scenarios: New types of databases, multiple business entities, mutual distrust, and strong business interrelations.

Architecture​

1. Infrastructure = Hardware resources
2. Core components = Network discovery + Data transmission and reception + Cryptographic library + Data storage + Message notification
3. Ledger = Blockchain +== (Asset-based data model OR Account-based data model) ==
4. Consensus = Write first, then reach consensus (PoW, PoS, DPoS) OR Reach consensus first, then write (PBFT)
5. Smart contracts = Turing complete OR Non-Turing complete
6. System management = CA certification OR PKI certification OR Third-party identity verification
7. Interface = RPC + SDK
8. Applications = Value transfer types + Evidence storage types + Authorization management types (e.g., data sharing)
9. Operations and maintenance

Development Trends:

1. In terms of architecture, the integration of public chains and consortium chains continues to evolve.
2. In terms of deployment, blockchain as a service accelerates application implementation.
3. In terms of performance, the demand for cross-chain and high-performance solutions is becoming increasingly prominent.
   1. Cross-chain: == Current mainstream cross-chain technologies include: Notary schemes, Sidechains/relays, and Hash-locking ==
   2. High performance
      1. Blockchain to DAG
      2. Changing consensus strategies
      3. Improving overall system throughput by enhancing horizontal scalability, represented by technologies such as sharding, sub-chains, and multi-channels.
4. In terms of consensus, consensus mechanisms are evolving from singular to hybrid approaches.
5. In terms of contracts, pluggability, usability, and security are becoming key development focuses.

Industry Status​

1. Countries are competing to establish a leading position in the blockchain industry.
2. The integration of blockchain with the real economy has become the main theme.
3. Blockchain technology innovation is becoming increasingly active.
4. == The construction of a blockchain standard system is accelerating ==

Opportunities and Challenges​

Opportunities

Challenges:

1. Potential risks in technology maturity.
2. Unclear application scenario models.
3. Relative scarcity of industry professionals.
4. Relevant laws and regulations need improvement.

Development Measures and Recommendations​

1. Guide society to have an objective and rational understanding.
2. Strengthen research on core key technologies.
3. Promote deep integration with the real economy.
4. Improve the policy environment for blockchain development.

Disclaimer: I highly doubt those guys who succeed only by giving advice on how to succeed. ==A bird's flight does not need the guidance of ornithologists.== Anyhow, food for thought that these are what American women think helpful to their promotions.

1. claim your achievements often
2. realize that others will not notice and reward your contributions unless you say it
3. expertise is not the only criteria
4. leverage relationships
5. enlist allies from day one
6. put your career before your job
7. don't be a perfectionist
8. kill the disease to please
9. be relaxed and stretched out
10. be less emotional, speak less, and disclose less
11. move on effectively from failures
12. be undistracted

What are the challenges?​

Before TAO, use cache-aside pattern

Social graph data is stored in MySQL and cached in Memcached

3 problems:

1. list update operation in Memcached is inefficient. cannot append but update the whole list.
2. clients have to manage cache
3. Hard to offer ==read-after-write consistency==

To solve those problems, we have 3 goals:

• online data graph service that is efficiency at scale
• optimize for read (its read-to-write ratio is 500:1)
  • low read latency
  • high read availability (eventual consistency)
• timeliness of writes (read-after-write)

Data Model​

• Objects (e.g. user, location, comment) with unique IDs
• Associations (e.g. tagged, like, author) between two IDs
• Both have key-value data as well as a time field

Solutions: TAO​

1. Efficiency at scale and reduce read latency

   • graph-specific caching
   • a standalone cache layer between the stateless service layer and the DB layer (aka Functional Decomposition)
   • subdivide data centers (aka Horizontal Data Partitioning)

2. Write timeliness

   • write-through cache
   • follower/leader cache to solve thundering herd problem
   • async replication

3. Read availability

   • Read Failover to alternate data sources

TAO's Architecture​

• MySQL databases → durability
• Leader cache → coordinates writes to each object
• Follower caches → serve reads but not writes. forward all writes to leader.

Read failover

What Are the Challenges?​

Before TAO, using the cache-aside pattern

The social graph is stored in MySQL and cached in Memcached.

Three existing problems:

1. The efficiency of updating the edge list of the social graph in Memcached is too low. Instead of adding an edge to the end of the list, the entire list needs to be updated.
2. The logic for managing the cache on the client side is very complex.
3. It is difficult to maintain ==consistency in database reads after writes==.

To solve these problems, we have three goals:

• Efficient graph storage even with large-scale data.
• Optimize read operations (read-write ratio is 500:1).
  • Reduce the duration of read operations.
  • Improve the availability of read operations (eventual consistency).
• Complete write operations in a timely manner (write first, read later).

Data Model​

• Objects with unique IDs (e.g., users, addresses, comments).
• Associations between two IDs (e.g., tagged, liked, posted).
• Both of the above data models have key-value data and time-related data.

Solution: TAO​

1. Accelerate read operations and efficiently handle large-scale reads.

   • Cache specifically for graphs.
   • Add a layer of cache between the stateless server layer and the database layer (see Business Splitting).
   • Split data centers (see Data Partitioning).

2. Complete write operations in a timely manner.

   • Write-through cache.
   • Use follower/leader caching to solve the ==thundering herd problem==.
   • Asynchronous replication.

3. Improve the availability of read operations.

   • If a read fails, read from other available sources.

Architecture of TAO​

• MySQL Database → Durability.
• Leader Cache → Coordinates write operations for each object.
• Follower Cache → Used for reading rather than writing. Shift all write operations to the leader cache.

Fault tolerance for read operations.

Why do startups have to innovate? Why do growth techniques work only once for a given product or service in a given market? Why is there no skill called “business”?

The answer is ==Anna Karenina principle==. Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. ==All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.==

If a startup does not innovate but copy a product or service from the market leader, and the startup is targeting the same market, then people will not buy it because people are probably customers of the market leader already. Why do people buy the same thing for twice if their needs are fulfilled already?

Why do startups need to innovate? Why do growth techniques only work for specific products or services in a particular market? Why is there no such thing as a "business technology"?

The answer lies in the ==Anna Karenina principle==. Tolstoy observed that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," leading to this theory. However, business is the opposite. ==All successful companies are different: each successful company gains a monopoly in a field by solving a specific problem. All failed companies are the same: they did not escape market competition.==

If a startup simply copies the products or services of current industry leaders, lacks innovation, and targets the same market, people will not buy into it, as they may already be customers of the industry leader. If people's needs are already met by existing products, why would they buy the same thing twice?

For high tech, we can define a market as

1. a set of actual or potential customers
2. for a given set of products or services
3. who have a common set of needs or wants, and
4. ==who reference each other when making a buying decision.==

Point 4 is the insight here - referencing each other is key to the marketing success. If two people buy the same product for the same reason but have no way they could reference each other, they are not part of the same market. They are in different ==market segments==.

The definition of a high-tech market is

1. Existing and potential users
2. Who have a demand for a certain type of product or service
3. And
4. These individuals reference each other when deciding on the products to purchase

The understanding of the fourth point is - mutual referencing is the key to market success. If two people buy the same product for the same reason, but they have no way to reference each other, they are not in the same market. They are in different market segments.

Is the innovation disruptive?​

Dsruptive innovation vs. Continuous innovation

• Whether it ==changes our current mode of behavior== or to ==modify other products and services we rely on==.
• Between continuous and discontinuous lies a spectrum of demands for behavioral change.

High-tech industries introduce disruptive innovation routinely, during which people are converted into customers by following a pattern of normal distribution. The product's user growth follows an S-curve.

When will people buy a high-tech product?​

Disruptive innovation's customers are converted at different stages in ==the technology adoption life cycle==. They are...

1. Innovators
2. Early adopters
3. Early majority (pragmatists)
4. Late majority (conservatives)
5. Laggards

Segment	What They Want
Innovators	novel, cool and experimental things
Early Adopters	gaining advantages or getting products before others
Early Majority	proven ROI, instant access, low transition costs, support available
Late Majority	adopting as minimal as possible or only when everyone else has adopted
Laggards	avoidance to adopt new things

What is the high tech marketing model?​

This cycle provides guidance of the ==high tech marketing model: the way to develop a high-tech market is to work the curve left to right, focusing on each group one by one,== because groups on the left promote products for the right ones in a momentum.

Momentum is vital because it can

1. save costs
2. make it fast so you won’t miss the window of opportunity before next disruption or competitor

Where is the CHASM?​

Inspecting into the technology adoption lifecycle, we can see

• two cracks

  1. Beneficial usage crack between innovators and early adopters. E.g., Esperanto, VRML, second life, 3D printing. To cross this, we need a flagship application.
  2. Competent majority crack, between early and late majorities. E.g., home automation.scanning and project management software. To cross this, we need to make it easier to adopt.

• and one CHASM

  1. Early adopter-to-majority chasm. Because their needs are different

     1. Early adopter is buying a change agent - they expect to get a jump on the competition. Having bugs is fine.
     2. The pragmatic early majority is buying a productivity improvement. They want technology to ==enhance, not overthrow, the established ways of doing business==.

  2. The compatibility above leads to two key points

     1. early adopters do not make good references for the early majority
     2. And because of the early majority’s concern not to disrupt their organizations, good references are critical to their buying decisions.

  3. Who did fall into the early adopter-to-majority chasm in 2014? E.g., holograms, pen-based tablets, fuel cells, QR codes (in the US), Massive Open Online Courses, Segways, Motorola iridium.