Dialogue MVP | Dr. Ma Fuchen from Tsinghua University: Hope to be a powerful "assist" for community and ecological development

Since the establishment of the open source community, it has attracted many technology enthusiasts who love to share and communicate. In order to thank everyone for their support and contribution to FISCO BCOS along the way, the community has opened the FISCO BCOS MVP certification to encourage FISCO BCOS opinion pioneers and opinion leaders who contribute high-quality technical content to the open source community.
Since its launch, the community has identified 26 MVPs, covering experts in cultural copyright, intelligent construction, supply chain management, Internet of Things and other fields. The development of the community is inseparable from every developer. We expect partners in more fields to integrate ideas, collide ideas, and exchange technologies to jointly promote the vigorous development of the industrial blockchain. In the first half of 2022, the FISCO BCOS MVP certification channel has been opened, and you are welcome to click the [ link ] to apply. At the same time, in order to let everyone better understand and understand MVP, the community launched the "Dialogue MVP" column, which will show you what MVP has experienced in the blockchain field from the question and answer.

In this issue of "Dialogue MVP", Ma Fuchen, a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Software, Tsinghua University, will share with you his growth and transformation since he participated in the community building for 4 years. During this period, he broke through the confusion and worked with the team to develop SCStudio, a security analysis tool for Solidity contracts, and contributed to the community in the form of open source. This tool helps many developers detect security vulnerabilities and improves the security of blockchain applications. I hope his experience can provide some reference for many college students in the community, let's learn about his story with FISCO BCOS.

The following is the transcript of the interview with Ma Fuchen:

The company of the open source community has strengthened the determination to study the blockchain

1. When the domestic blockchain is just emerging, what is the opportunity for you to devote yourself to the blockchain and open source technology? Why did you finally choose blockchain as your research direction?
I learned about blockchain in 2018. The opportunity was to participate in the Golden Chain Alliance China Blockchain Application Competition. That was my first contact with FISCO BCOS and the alliance chain. At that time, I and my classmates in the group designed a blockchain cross-layer security system to mine and detect vulnerabilities at the level of smart contracts and virtual machines. During the competition, I saw many applications based on FISCO BCOS, such as judicial arbitration, supply chain finance and other fields, all of which have achieved very good results. Since then, I have started to pay attention to the development of the alliance chain and chose the block chain. chain as their own research direction.
What fascinates me about blockchain is that it is, in a way, the future of the internet and the computing industry. The essence of the blockchain is to solve the problem of trust. Trust is very important to all walks of life. Relying on the non-tampering and multi-centralized characteristics of the blockchain, the difficulty of trust among all parties is reduced. As the infrastructure of the future network, I also believe that blockchain technology will continue to mature and create greater value for the society.
In addition, I would also like to thank my instructor Jiang Yu for choosing this direction. At that time, no one in the group studied the blockchain-related direction. Teacher Jiang encouraged and supported us to explore the blockchain field, which also strengthened my commitment. determination.

2. What do you think is the most fulfilling thing during your research on blockchain?

There are a few things that are the most fulfilling. The one that impressed me the most was the 2018 Golden Chain Alliance National Blockchain Application Competition. At that time, our team entered the top ten in the country and got to know a lot of blockchains during the competition. Excellent practitioners in the industry, learned a lot. The second thing is that I was selected as the 2021 MVP of FISCO BCOS. I feel that the encouragement and recognition from the open source community is very motivating to me. Finally, there are some valuable security vulnerabilities found on the platform recently, which have been recognized by community experts.
In general, I have gained a lot from the interaction with the open source community in recent years, and it has strengthened my confidence in choosing blockchain.

3. As mentioned above, you have learned a lot from outstanding blockchain practitioners during the competition. What specific aspects make you feel that you have gained a lot or have a deep understanding?

The research I have been exposed to in the blockchain industry is mainly related to security. Before participating in the competition, my classmates and I were more concerned about the quality of technical implementation, the quality of code, etc., and we did not know much about blockchain applications. In that competition, what impressed me the most was understanding how the blockchain should be used. The top teams in the competition were using blockchain technology to implement various applications. The most impressive thing is that in the judicial field, the application of blockchain technology can make some very cumbersome procedures in cross-provincial and cross-regional judicial arbitration very convenient. Since then, I have paid more and more attention to some domestic and foreign blockchain specific application scenarios and cases of application landing, which have greatly enriched my personal vision.

"You can't take it for granted when you do scientific research. Listen to what industry people have to say."

4. In the process of blockchain research and exploration, what difficulties and challenges have you encountered and how did you solve them?

In general, thanks to the support of the school tutors and the open source community, it is relatively smooth as a whole, but the main difficulty encountered is in the submission of papers. There was a time when papers submitted were often rejected, sometimes seven or eight times a paper, which made me fall into self-doubt at one point, wondering if what I was doing was worthwhile.
For example, the idea of making a smart contract vulnerability scanning tool was discussed in our internal group, but it seemed useless and gave up at the time. Later, through contact with the community, I learned that the smart contract vulnerability scanning tool that supports single contract, in the current cross-contract scenario common in the alliance chain and public chain, there may be the problem of hidden vulnerabilities. With the help of the community, we have obtained some open-source contract cases involving cross-contract scenarios in the industry, and found that the vulnerability scanning products on the market cannot completely detect vulnerabilities.
After we had the exact direction, we started to dig deeper to solve this problem, because our research was not applied in real scenarios before, and the academic field is also very concerned about the practical application value of the research. Later, after hard work, the research based on this case has formed a very good academic output, and I myself have passed through the confusion stage.
This matter touched me deeply. I can’t take it for granted when doing scientific research. Sometimes the rejection and confirmation of a plan requires a lot of communication and discussion. Especially, I need to listen to what people in the industry have to say. This will also affect my future. The attitude and direction of scientific research have a great impact: any research topic in the future will try to hear what industry experts have to say about it.

5. You and your team contributed the Solidity contract security analysis tool SCStudio to the community. Please explain how to do this and what experience you have to share.

SCStudio is a security analysis tool for Solidity contracts, which helps developers detect security vulnerabilities during the development phase. In fact, the SCStudio project was started under the suggestion of community developers. After understanding the needs of the industry, we comprehensively investigated the existing products, and then conducted targeted research and development. This makes our research less detours, and this kind of research closer to the industry has also been recognized by the academic community.
There are two main experiences. The first is to listen to the opinions of all walks of life in the community. I think the open source community is essentially a multi-centralized organization, just like a blockchain system. Everyone expresses their opinions and reaches a majority consensus, so that the community can develop towards a healthy state; another key point is learning and Watch what other people do.
SCStudio code warehouse address:

https://github.com/FISCO-BCOS/SCStudio

6. You have joined the community CTSC-SIG group (Smart Contract Compilation Technology Interest Group). Can you share your original intention of joining the group and your thoughts on participating in the group's co-construction?

The main reason that attracted me to join this interest group was the original intention of the group. The main purpose of the CTSC-SIG group is to help developers experience a more "smooth" experience in the process of using FISCO BCOS for code development. This "smoothness" has many aspects, including some features of the contract itself, the quality of the code itself, and the ease of use of developers who are just getting started.
Usually, our team mainly develops easy-to-use, safe and efficient smart contract programming language and peripheral tools around FISCO BCOS, such as continuous iteration of smart contract programming language Liquid, monitoring and scanning code quality, etc., hoping to help developers get started quickly.
In the process of participating in the construction of the CTSC-SIG group, what I feel most deeply is that the members of the group will often exchange opinions. Everyone will put forward many ideas for the future design of the platform, and conduct discussions and analysis. These suggestions also provide the future development direction of the platform. a good reference.
MVP, "assist" of community and ecological development

7. How do you understand the role of the MVP in the community?

The word MVP comes up a lot in sports and esports. I personally like watching football games. On the green field, there are two kinds of MVPs in a game. The first is that a certain player scores a lot of goals. For example, Mbappe scored a hat-trick and won the MVP of the game. The other is a certain player, although not as many goals as others, but a lot of assists, such as Messi's 5 assists in the America's Cup was elected MVP.
I think the same is true in the open source community. In addition to contributing many landing applications to the open source community, the role of MVP can also provide help and guarantee for these applications. I'm very honored to be chosen by the community as the MVP for 2021, and I feel like I'm the type that excels and loves "assists." Our group has always been committed to ensuring the security of industrial systems. My classmates and I have always hoped to escort the security of the application layer and underlying code of the blockchain, and hope that our work can "assist" more and more blocks Chain application landing, "assist" the platform's

R & D and construction, "assist" the healthy development of the community.

8. In the future, what "assist" things do you expect to continue to do in the community?

The main thing to do now is to monitor the consensus protocol of the alliance chain, monitor whether it is negligent in specific practice, and optimize the small bugs in the code, so as to ensure the security of the consensus in these aspects. At present, some real problems have been found and reported to the community, and the community has responded and affirmed. In the future, we still hope to continue to escort the FISCO BCOS platform from the perspective of security and help developers avoid security problems when the blockchain is applied.
At the same time, I also hope to interact and share more with other members in the community. Technical evangelism is still a very important thing. I hope to do my best to share the new technologies and new information I have acquired with the community, so that more friends can love and understand blockchain technology.

9. What do you think is the use of college students participating in the open source community?

Whether it is for college students who are just getting started, or for relatively senior researchers who have been working on the platform for a long time, the help brought by the community is huge. One of the most intuitive examples is that after a vulnerability is detected on the FISCO BCOS platform, it will generally be replied or repaired within 24 hours, while on other platforms, there may be no reply for a month or even two or three months.
So the community ecology and atmosphere are really important: on the one hand, the community can help test your scientific research results, and on the other hand, you can get timely and fast feedback after finding problems, which is also a very valuable positive incentive. A place that benefits a lot.

10. Talk about your understanding of the development of the blockchain industry and your future hopes?

I personally think that the development of the blockchain industry is still at an early stage and there are still some problems. The first is that most people in China lack sufficient understanding of blockchain. As practitioners, we should assume the responsibility of evangelizing blockchain technology, so that the public can see its true value. In addition, the blockchain needs a killer to C application to really ignite, and the current application is mainly to B. Practitioners need to keep thinking about what is the most direct change that blockchain can bring from the public level.
I've also seen some great blockchain applications at the moment. For example, based on the research and development of FISCO BCOS and the adoption of the Wezhong blockchain open source technology, the Guangdong-Macao Health Code Mutual Recognition System, it can realize the mutual recognition of health codes between Guangdong and Macao, and help people from both places to quickly clear customs. I also hope that more popular blockchain applications will emerge in the future, so that blockchain technology can truly enter the public life.

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