Anchoring national needs, the "Chang'an Chain Scholar" program accelerates China's blockchain industry ecosystem building
Keywords: blockchain, Chang'an Chain Scholar, independent and controllable, industrial ecosystem, national strategy
Introduction
In today's digital economy wave sweeping the world, blockchain has moved from proof-of-concept to large-scale deployment, becoming key infrastructure supporting data trustworthiness and value transfer. Especially against the backdrop of rapid AI development, data trustworthiness, verifiable computation, and traceable behavior have become industry necessities. Blockchain is providing irreplaceable underlying support for AI to become a "trustworthy tool for humanity." Globally, competition around blockchain has extended from single technology breakthroughs to comprehensive ecosystem building. The United States, driven by market demand, has formed a complete industrial ecosystem around core areas such as finance, trade, and payment, which is accelerating spillover. Singapore, with clear policy guidance, has quickly become one of the most mature regions for blockchain industry in Asia.
Facing this trend, how can China maintain independent and controllable blockchain underlying technology while rapidly expanding its industrial ecosystem and forming systematic competitiveness? The ongoing "Chang'an Chain Scholar" program provides an enlightening answer.
Bridging the Gap between Technology Research and Industry Needs
For a long time, there has been a structural contradiction in China's blockchain field: research by scientists in universities and research institutions often stems from personal interests, making it difficult to precisely target the real needs of national strategies and industries. Meanwhile, the urgent technical demands of major engineering projects lack a systematic scientific research supply mechanism. This "two-skin" phenomenon directly constrains the overall effectiveness of China's blockchain industry ecosystem in global competition.
The "Chang'an Chain Scholar" program emerged in this context. According to a report by China Daily on July 29, the program is jointly established by the National Blockchain Technology Innovation Center and the Future Blockchain and Privacy Computing High-Precision Innovation Center. It anchors the real technical needs of national major blockchain projects and innovatively implements a research support mechanism of "assigning tasks on demand, minimal project establishment, and agile deployment." All topics are condensed from the front lines of major projects such as national tax services, cross-border trade, and global payments, ensuring that scientists' research directions are deeply engaged with practical applications from the start.
Xiao Zhen, a researcher at the School of Computer Science, Peking University, deeply participated in major projects through the program and remarked: "I am now conducting R&D in areas such as on-chain behavior tracking and abnormal supervision of entity institutions. These results have very broad application prospects in fields such as financial regulation services and social public governance." Bian Song, an associate professor at the School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University, also benefited. His research direction—homomorphic encryption and privacy computing—was quickly aligned and directly targeted key scenarios of end-cloud collaborative computing in finance and government.
Systematic Support, Creating an "Accelerator" for Research
If precise topic selection solves the "what to do" problem, then systematic resource guarantee answers the "how to do it." In terms of technical support, the "Chang'an Chain Scholar" program fully opens the underlying code of "Chang'an Chain" to scholars, supports secondary development, and is equipped with a high-performance blockchain-specific computing cluster capable of billions of smart contract computations per second and tens of billions of privacy computations, meeting the needs of large-scale, high-complexity experimental verification. In fund management, research funds are allocated quickly, and scholars autonomously use them according to established goals, ensuring funds are applied to critical R&D areas promptly.
More importantly, a batch of major digital projects such as national tax services and cross-border trade are opened to scholars, allowing them to verify technologies and iterate optimizations in a real "battlefield." This "real-combat tempering" model enables rapid transformation of R&D results and forms industrial landing capability. Bian Song deeply expressed: "High-performance computing resources plus frontline training in major projects accelerate the landing of results. We will continue to polish and spread advanced technological achievements to where the industry needs them most."
Industry-Academia-Research Collaboration, Building an Independent Industrial Ecosystem
Academician Zheng Zhiming of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor at Beihang University pointed out that the core value of the "Chang'an Chain Scholar" program is to fill the key shortcoming in China's blockchain from underlying technology research to industrial ecosystem construction. He further explained: "When scientific research results precisely align with major national needs, industrial applications gain a continuous source of technology. This systematic capability is our greatest confidence in participating in global competition in key areas such as trade and finance."
As of now, the program has supported 40 scientists. Their R&D results are being refined and transformed in major projects such as national tax and cross-border payments, continuously strengthening China's independent blockchain industrial ecosystem. This practice shows that by innovating mechanisms to close the loop of "technology R&D - engineering verification - industrial landing," China is fully capable of building a resilient and dynamic independent industrial ecosystem in global blockchain competition.
Conclusion
As a strategic infrastructure in the digital economy era, competition in blockchain is essentially a dual contest of technology and ecosystem. The "Chang'an Chain Scholar" program, with its pragmatic and innovative mechanism, successfully bridges scientists' personal exploration with national strategic needs, providing both a vast stage for researchers and a continuous stream of technological momentum for national major projects. In the future, with more scientists joining and more results landing, China's blockchain industry will surely grow from a "single ship" into a powerful "fleet," contributing greater strength to the digital China construction and global digital economy governance.
