Conversation with Cancer: Ethereum's Naming Man, Crypto OG's Honor and Dream

source深潮·深潮TechFlow·19:29 编辑
Conversation with Cancer: Ethereum's Naming Man, Crypto OG's Honor and Dream

Interview/Writer: Claudia

“Coin Circle OG”, “The Naming Man of Ethereum”, “Big Brother of BTS”, “Co-Founder of Shuidi Capital”... There are many bright labels along the way Cancer has walked.

These tags are like a knight's medal, and you don't even need to get close to them to sense his glory and dreams along the way. From the inception of BitCamp to supporting BTS, to the current Shuidi Capital, it is no exaggeration to say that Cancer has witnessed the entire history of public chain development...

Shenzhao TechFlow talks to Crypto OG, the founder of Shuidi Capital, to try to present some of his accumulation and musings after many rounds of bull-and-bear markets.
Let the carnival of a few people become the future of more

Deep Tide TechFlow: Could you please introduce yourself? As an old person in the cryptocurrency industry, how did you make up your mind to enter the crypto world at the time?

giant crab: Actually, my experience was quite simple. I came to Shanghai after graduating from college in '97. At first, I worked for a space agency, then I changed several units. I stayed at Siemens, then went to Infosys. I was working as an SAP consultant in 2013. I learned about Bitcoin as an amateur, then I thought it was very fun. I couldn't help but pay attention to it, and participated in many community exchanges. Because at the time, I actually worked at SAP for a long time and felt quite boring. I participated in more and more events on the Bitcoin side, and one day I thought it would be better to just quit my job and do it exclusively.

At that time, the entire Chinese community was actually still very sparse. A lot of people gathered at the coffee shop in a garage in Beijing, and some people gathered at the Shanghai side as well. At the time, I organized a bit startup camp with some friends, including Da Hongfei, Lan Ling (Sun Ming), Xu Yiji, Chu Xia Hu (Gu Ying), Dadou (Zhang Yinhai), and Crown (101 spacecraft). We often do activities and invite some guests to share things so that more people know about these things, and we have embarked on this path since then. Since then, I have continued to invest and start a business. I have experienced many things, and have always wanted to attract more people to join.
In May 2014, Vitalik met the Chinese community for the first time at the invitation of the Bit Startup Camp at Chuangzhi Tiandi in Yangpu, Shanghai. This was a group photo between the organizer and Vitalik at the time. From left to right: Wang Guan, Kaku, Big Head, Da Hongfei, Vitalik, Cancer, Xu Yiji, Early Summer Tiger, Blue Collar

Deep Tide TechFlow: Was there a single thing or node that touched you when All In was in?

giant crab: All in should come naturally to me, but when it comes to nodes, I remember it must have been because of BTS in the first place. At that time, the community was basically mainly Bitcoin and Litecoin, and there were a few other small amounts of coins. Basically, these coins were all Bitcoin altcoins. They also mined in the same form as Bitcoin, but they only changed some things, such as the interval between blockchains.

When BTS first came out, overall, it was amazing because it could send assets, and some of the designs were quite cutting-edge from today's DeFi perspective。

I remember when the first edition of the white paper talked about collateral, stablecoins (not called stablecoins at the time), etc., and I understood that it still took some effort to understand. When the white paper first came out, it was very slow to translate. Then I really couldn't wait, so I translated a copy myself, added some of my own interpretations, and published it on Babbitt. Seems like there are quite a few readers, and everyone is starting to know me.

Then ETH came out. Because Teacher Shen Bo is familiar with Vitalik and the BTS team, they often meet together in North America to discuss issues.

At the beginning of the founding of ETH, Shen Bo invited me to translate the white paper. Later, I named ETH in Chinese as Ethereum. Many people in the coin industry know me this way。
From The MERGE TO A NEW Narrative

Deep Tide TechFlow: Recently, due to the merger of Ethereum, people are beginning to look back on the development history of Ethereum with nostalgia. As I mentioned earlier, you are the Chinese namer of Ethereum. I would like to ask you why did you choose the name Ethereum at the time?

giant crab: I had some discussions with Charles Hoskinson about the name Ethereum. Ether is actually very easy to understand. The word “square” has some thought, but it's not that complicated.“Square” has the meaning of workshop. It is compatible with the root word -eum, which means that Ethereum is a factory that manufactures smart contracts。
Deep Tide TechFlow: From translating the white paper back then to now, have your views and opinions on Ethereum changed?

giant crab: After translating the white paper, Chu Xia Hu invited Vitalik to China on behalf of our bit startup camp and walked around Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen. The response was not very enthusiastic, and everyone couldn't understand what he said. After I participated in the ICO, I didn't pay much attention for a long time, because when ETH just came out, the wallet was very difficult to use, and the overall user experience was quite poor. Then I really paid attention to it when EVM came out.

One of the major events that followed was Wan Xiang's participation.Wanxiang's participation in the event itself is equivalent to a miracle for the Chinese community to participate in blockchain。

At that time, the Ethereum team faced great financial difficulties. Mr. Xiao learned about this through Shen Bo, and was also very optimistic about smart contracts, so he invested 500,000 US dollars.
And later,President Xiao, Shen Bo, and Vitalik set up Wanxiang Blockchain Lab. Beginning with annual summits, it slowly became a milestone in the rise of China's blockchain industry。

Vitalik is a very intelligent and idealistic person. He thought deeply about almost every concept related to the industry and spent a lot of time writing and speaking. I have the “Ideal” book he gave away, which contains many important but also quite complex articles. You can see that he often asks experts in different fields for advice, trying to understand every important concept and try to understand every important concept as much as possible for ordinary readers.

In the process of ETH's development, he gradually attracted some key team members, such as Gavin Wood, who has strong software engineering capabilities, proposed the concept of EVM and finally realized it, making smart contracts eventually transformed from concept to reality, eventually setting off a huge wave of innovation and leading the development direction of blockchain. The whole process was an amazing entrepreneurial story.
Deep Tide TechFlow: So currently, do you support PoW or PoS more? Because after The Merge, Ethereum has now moved to POS, what do you think of these two mechanisms?

giant crab: Recently, there have been many debates about PoW and PoS. Among PoW supporters, Jan, the founder of Nervos, and Ah Jian, the former editor-in-chief of Ethereum enthusiast, I agree with them that PoS weakens decentralization and security to a certain extent, butI still support switching from ETH to PoS。

This weakening may be fatal to a startup project. This is also the reason why PoW was chosen when the ETH main network was launched, but after 8 years of development, huge market capitalization, and sufficient token diversification, this weakening is almost negligible. This weakening should not be exaggerated. The resulting increase in efficiency and reduction in energy consumption are real, and should support the evolution in this direction.
Deep Tide TechFlow: Indeed, in fact, you have also witnessed the development history of the entire public chain. What do you think of the latest Layer1 narrative? For example, what do you think of the recent Move-powered public chains Aptos and Sui?

giant crab: Diem died, leaving Move behind. If we look back at the history of the IT industry, we can see that programming languages have always evolved and iterated. From FORTRAN to C to Python to JAVA, the languages used in blockchain/smart contracts will also have such a process of evolution and iteration. The languages initially used may not have had time to become powerful, easy to use, or secure enough, and these needs will be met by later languages.

The same is true of public chains. Since BTC, there have always been stories of new public chains. ETH should be the most successful so far, there are COSMOS, which has promising prospects but is not successful enough at present, and ICP as a whole, it is still a future project. I can only say,Aptos and Sui have a chance to set the trend。

The rise and fall of a project lies both in the idea and in the right timing

Deep Tide TechFlow: A lot of people will call you the “Big Master of BitShares.” Looking back now, BTS's concept is ahead of its time. Whether it's a decentralized exchange, synthetic assets, stablecoins, community autonomy... including the high-performance public chain that later featured EOS, also became the core story of the last bull market, but in the end, both BTS and EOS “fell” relatively “down”. What do you think the reasons and implications are there?

giant crab: BTS has something in common with EOS, because after all, the founders are BM (because his community account number is bytemaster, so BM for short).

The problem with BTS is that its underlying foundation isn't perfect, and its foundation in terms of security and decentralization isn't strong enough.DPoSThe consensus mechanism在There is a real deficiency in terms of security.

BM is a great technical architect, but he isn't that committed to the idea of decentralization and security. He often reduces some requirements in terms of decentralization and security for factors such as user experience and TPS. This is a hidden danger that BTS and EOS planted in the beginning.

At the application level, BTS was very advanced in terms of application. For example, it already had on-chain order book transactions, secured loans, and stablecoins, but after BM left BTS due to additional issues, BTS lost the ability to continue evolving at the bottom, and spent most of the time making minor functional fixes. After EVM and later cross-chain and AMM appeared, BTS slowly declined.

Then I often thought, if I could go back in time, what should BTS do? The advent of EOS can be said to have provided an opportunity to experiment to answer this question. EOS was very bright when it appeared. It was an ICO star, supported smart contracts, was fast, and had an amazing TPS, but in the end, EOS fell.

I think the decline of BTS and EOS can find some common reasons. The two projects have the most in common:

  • First, the project party placed the pursuit of user experience above decentralization and security considerations;
  • Second, it is lacking in taking the community and its own investors seriously.

During the BTS period, BM left after more incidents. What does this mean? It shows that he doesn't take decentralized governance seriously. He probably wants to make a cool project. He thinks it's not important how to handle his relationship with the community. This is very fatal for the public chain project owner.

What did the EOS project party do?After they raised a large amount of money, they switched to BTC, and didn't spend much on the development of the project。

Why do we need a public chain? The public chain provides a system that can operate safely without trusting anyone, and also allows everyone to be treated fairly enough, so that people from all over the world can be gathered. Whether the underlying security is lacking or the development process makes users feel that it is very unfair. It is fatal for the public chain, and it will seriously limit its development.

So I thinkThe crux of BTS and EOS is cultural/values。

Every step you take counts

Deep Tide TechFlow: You have many identity tags. Currently, your most important identity is the co-founder of Shuidi Capital. Please tell us about Shuidi Capital. For example, what projects have you all invested in?
giant crab: Shuidi Capital is an organization founded by a few friends in our currency industry. It's been 78 years since then. In recent years, we have invested a lot in blockchain infrastructure, Boca Ecology, DeFi, NFT & Metaverse. Our link3 page - https://link3.to/waterdrip lists relevant information in more detail, which can be viewed by interested friends.
Deep Tide TechFlow: I feel that VC in this industry is quite homogenized, so what are the characteristics of water drops, and what are your investment methodologies and standards?

giant crab: I think the biggest characteristic isSeveral of our partners are early participants in the blockchain industry and are familiar with the entire development history of the industry. We have participated in a large number of startup projects, experienced several rounds of ups and downs, and can be quite judgmental about the growth path of projects in the industry. We now have our own investment framework. We focus more on early-stage projects, and value the team's level of understanding of blockchain, Web3 and other concepts and the team's ability to execute.

We hope to be able to get in touch with an excellent team as soon as possible, and provide the team with all-round support not only financially but also in terms of resources on the basis of mutual recognition.
Deep Tide TechFlow: Like I just said, how did you feel after so many rounds of bullfighting?

giant crab: This bull and bear cycle is very correlated with the US dollar's interest rate hike cycle. All excellent projects have vitality to cross the bull and bear.

I often hear a saying,The bull market makes money to accumulate capital, and the bear market studies to pick up bargains. However, in practice, it was discovered thatEveryone understands this principle, but it's hard to use it as a powerful guide. Because there will always be various black swan incidents in the market. For example, this time, the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike was quite obvious, but what no one could have imagined was that the LUNA and Three Arrows incident dragged down a string of institutions.

I've recently been reading Taleb's series of works, including “The Black Swan,” “Asymmetric Risk,” and “Anti-Fragility.” His core ideas areThe market is unpredictable. What market participants need to do is not to predict the market, but to manage their portfolios using anti-fragility principles to try to keep bear losses manageable, and the benefits of the bull market will expand enough。

I think this idea is quite realistic and profound, and as an institution, we want to pursue long-term principles.
Deep Tide TechFlow: In the future, the investment direction of Shuidi Capital is mainly focused on, and how can it prepare to move forward?

giant crab: We are currently focusing the most on Web3 infrastructure and applications, and we will also focus on this aspect in the future. First, after two years of market testing, Web3 has been widely recognized as the development direction of the next generation of the Internet.

At the same time, the infrastructure construction for Web3 has reached a certain level. Later, with the further improvement of infrastructure, there should be an explosion in application. We believe this direction is in line with our investment priorities.
Deep Tide TechFlow: In your opinion, what is the investment you are personally most satisfied with, and why did you choose to invest at the time?

giant crab: Personally,I can't think of the most satisfying one, but I was quite impressed by a few, including BTS, ETH, and Road Print。

  • At the time, there were relatively few projects in the entire market. I just thought this project was very interesting, so I invested. It was very easy;
  • ETH is because I translated the white paper and understood it quite well, and later they did ICO again;

  • Wang Dong, the founder of Luyin, was a friend of our community at the time, and later became Luyin. We appreciated his abilities and direction, so we invested in this project.

We cast a road printNot yet at the timeThe concept of Layer 2, they went through various changes and finally chose the direction of Layer 2. This is already several years after we invested in Road Printing.
Deep Tide TechFlow: In a previous interview, I saw you say that a powerful life requires not only inexhaustible amounts of money, but also ideals to be realized, so what are your current ideals?

giant crab: I still don't have enough money to spend. I'm still quite short on money, and I still need to work hard to make money. However, it cannot be said that the ideal now is to concentrate on making money, and I still hope to work hard to do something that is more meaningful and goes beyond the value of money on the premise that my finances are relatively healthy. For example, is it possible to create something new that hasn't existed before, and is it possible to often express valuable opinions to the community? We must work hard to create value beyond money.

Now because the whole industry is growing so fast. Even for someone who has entered the industry quite early, cognition may not be able to fully keep up with the pace of development in this era. So the most important thing is to learn and get to know. Keep iterating on yourself to try to output something valuable.

*Deeptide TechFlow is an in-depth blockchain content platform driven by volunteers and interns, dedicated to providing valuable information and thoughtful thinking.


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说明: All Bitpush articles reflect the author's views only and do not constitute investment advice.

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