For years I told myself I wasn’t the entrepreneur type. Instead, we will strive to become a reliable operator that makes entrepreneurs’ dreams a reality. Perhaps the reason I avoid becoming an entrepreneur is because I grew up in China. My mother often says this. “The gun shoots the first bird that sticks its head out.”
She didn’t want me to be the first bird.
So, until recently, my career was defined by the idea of working hard toward someone’s vision. Then, by chance, I came across cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is self-sovereignty, which starts with managing your own keys. Cryptocurrency communities encourage ownership through participation. That’s right. We all want to see the magical internet currency rise. Financial, social and technological impacts To our society.
Cryptocurrency is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a generation to express their extraordinary talents through cryptocurrency ownership.
I was very fortunate that my first job in the cryptocurrency industry was in business development. ConsenSys. This work gave me a perspective on the entire crypto stack, from the base layer (Linea) to the middleware (Infura) to the user interface (Infura).metamask).
I had fun. People began to know me as “Brother Bing” rather than Shuyao Kong, Global Head of BD at ConsenSys. decryption Columnist and founder of Hot Pot DAO.
But a little voice wondering inside my head started to get louder. Can you do something yourself?
Many people have the itch to start a business, but most never scratch it. I knew I was primarily driven by three missions. (1) We work on cutting-edge encryption technology. (2) We welcome young talents to cryptocurrency. (3) foster tangible cryptocurrency products for emerging markets;
While browsing, my old Consensys network worked its magic. ConsenSys has not only fostered several popular products (including: decryption), and has also inspired cryptocurrency founders, operators, investors, and rebels who are still pushing the boundaries.
When my former colleague Yi Tang messaged me last January, I knew he had something solid planned. Yi and I have been at the forefront of connecting Asia Pacific governments and large enterprises on-chain in 2018. He is currently a prominent cryptocurrency investor at Qiming Venture, one of the world’s largest funds.
“We have a very solid portfolio of companies that are looking for business co-founders.” He messaged me on Telegram and sent me the following message: MegaETH‘s Twitter handle. Looking through the Github repo, I couldn’t help but wonder who was stupid enough to call themselves “MegaETH”. I mean, I like having ETH in the name, but Mega gave me 2017. ICO atmosphere.
I am not over the moon.
But I wanted to learn more about this technology, so I scheduled a call with Yilong, who started MegaETH after earning his PhD in computer science at Stanford. In his usual quiet and steady voice, Yilong explained his motivation, system design philosophy, and vision to me.
Simply put, he wanted to build a scalable base layer that would allow developers to create cryptocurrency-based dapps that are easy to use, fast, and cheap.
The paper is simple and clever. Ten years later, no one has succeeded in scaling it up. blockchain It is as user-friendly as Web2. SolanaWhile it was a step in the right direction, it still faces scaling issues and is still in beta. and Ethereum L2 scales only collectively. mainnet 10x is a pretty meager figure.
Because no blockchain is sufficiently scalable, dapps provide poor performance, resulting in a poor user experience. I often joke that developers are cheating on blockchains because they prefer to keep their data off-chain rather than on-chain due to performance issues.
This is the problem MegaETH will attempt to solve.
As Yilong explained MegaETH’s background, his voice had a charming, quiet confidence. Within an hour, I went from “It’s cool technology, but what can I do” to “This will make Ethereum great again.” After the call, my mind was at 80% mega-alignment.
The next day, I met Lei Yang, who would become our third co-founder and CTO. Lei is already a renowned blockchain researcher at MIT. His ability to explain complex blockchain concepts in the most general-friendly way is the best I’ve ever seen in the cryptocurrency space.
The MegaETH team is practically starting to take shape and I signed on in March to lead all business and marketing activities.
Clearly there was a lot of work to be done. But there was also the fun of starting a startup. Because we lived all over the world, the founding team rarely met in person.—Once at ETH Denver, and later in Boston, when everyone traveled for the defense of Lei’s doctoral thesis. These in-person hangouts were truly awesome moments. For example, we learned that Ray likes rabbits. He actually goes to the park near MIT and feeds the rabbits every week. In his spirit, we are designing the MegaETH logo of the light-fast bunny rabbit.
In the process, we learn about each other’s communication styles, eating habits, and even family members. Now, as I write this in the middle of the night in Dubai, it occurs to me that my entrepreneurial journey may have started as some kind of vague instinct, but it really took off when I met the right people.
Many things keep me up at night. We have not received the funds yet. Our ecosystem desperately needs developer evangelists who can target eccentric developers. And we don’t even have a website yet.
But so far, despite what my mother taught me, I feel really good about sticking my head out. And she hasn’t even been shot yet.