EthSign 4D Interview: Three years later, whoever talks about Web3 will be in trouble

Original author: Jack(0x137), BlockBeats

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"Congratulations to EthSign!!!", this used to be a circle of friends that maxed out the mobile phone screens of many encryption users at the beginning of the year. In March this year, EthSign, an electronic agreement signing platform, completed a $12 million seed round of financing. Sequoia India, Mirana Ventures, Amber Group, Circle Ventures, HashKey Group and other echelon institutions have participated in the investment, which has caused quite a stir in the encryption circle. sensation. Everyone is asking, where did this project come from? What exactly do you want to do?

In fact, the EthSign project started in the second half of 2019. At that time, it was the hottest stage of DeFi Summer, and the founder Yan Xin was still working as an investment manager. Encouraged by the wave of DeFi, he spent all day discussing new ideas in the encryption field with his co-founder Potter. After having the idea of doing Ethereum electronic signatures, Potter immediately found several enthusiastic friends in the Blockchain Association of the University of Southern California to help write the code. However, because everyone is part-time and unfamiliar with Web3 primitives, the progress of development has been very slow.

In June 2020, the EthSign team participated in the hackathon held by ETHGlobal. Made the first working version of EthSign. Soon after, Nicole and Claire, two members specializing in interaction design, joined the team, and the front end of EthSign was greatly improved. In February 2021, the team demonstrated the second version of the product at the Dorahacks hackathon event, and the EthSign user experience has been qualitatively improved at this time.

After the hackathon, the team received a lot of feedback and suggestions from the community, the team again Concentrate on serious development. In March of this year, the team announced the financing news. In June, the EthSign Signatures Beta version was launched. By July, more than 100,000 user signatures had been aggregated. In October, the team announced that it will launch the next product Token Table.

Interestingly, the news of the huge financing has indeed made EthSign a familiar name in the encryption circle name, but most people still only have a vague understanding of EthSign itself and what the team is doing specifically, that is, the electronic signature tool in the Web3 world. Returned to the DID track.

What does EthSign want to do? Why can such high-valued financing be raised? What does the team think about the future of crypto? To this end, we interviewed Yan Xin, the founder of EthSign.

Keywords: electronic signature, electronic agreement, project investment and financing , Product Community, Encryption New Track

“If EthSign only does electronic signatures, it will not be able to integrate to such a high valuation"

Like many projects, the initial idea of EthSign is simple: Make a purely decentralized electronic signature. Yan Xin, who came from an investor background, has always had opinions on centralized electronic signature services in many traditional economic and trade scenarios, especially when it comes to user privacy and reliance on third-party trust. Whether it is in domestic or international trade, electronic signatures have great application scenarios. If blockchain technology can be used to provide more accurate consensus and higher transparency for both parties to the agreement, it will undoubtedly open up a new market in this market. Xintiandi.

The team has a clear idea, and there are no competitors in the same field, so they rolled up their sleeves done it. But when it came to financing, Yan Xin and his team still encountered problems. The "financing star" in everyone's eyes has actually gone through a difficult financing road, and the team even paid out of their own pockets to tide over the difficult period.

Jack: When did Yan Xin have the idea of doing EthSign?

Yan Xin: The idea of doing EthSign is at the end of 2019 Yes, I was still investing at that time, and the Co-Founders were still studying and doing internships with me. At that time, from the end of 19 to the middle of 20, DeFi became popular. At that time, I was very encouraged and wanted to try some new ideas and do it myself. Then we started participating in hackathons, and EthSign was actually the project we did when we first participated in hackathons.

Why do E-Sign (electronic signature) this direction is actually very easy to understand. When the blockchain became popular in the market for the first time in about 15 years, many people mentioned (electronic signature) in its usage scenarios. Because the blockchain distributes one or more private keys to everyone, it is a very natural scenario to sign with your own private key to express your consent. (Electronic signature) must be very basic and will exist for a long time (usage scenarios), but no one has really done it yet. I think a start-up company, especially a team like ours that has just started and is a Founder for the first time, has to do (something) that can "stake" its own efforts on it. As long as you do it long enough, it will not be in vain, because (electronic signature) this track will definitely run out.

. We started working on EthSign full-time at the beginning of February last year. At that time, everyone was doing DeFi or NFT. The big direction has been explored, and small things can be improved directly. Your competitors will combine new things every day. So if you were doing DeFi or NFT at that time, you would be forced by your competitors to do a lot of things. You do (a new Feature) not because you want to do it, but because your opponent has already used this Feature. I think this is the worst thing, so we all insisted on continuing to do E-Sign, which is relatively cold. track.

In addition, we can also see the future of Web3 applications and DAO, the development of Web3 infrastructure, We are also watching. Because there was no decentralized storage in 2019, the demo we made at that time had to be uploaded first after signing the agreement, and then downloaded back after signing, which was a product with a very bad user experience. But in the past two years, protocols such as decentralized storage, ES, DID, and Index have gradually matured. I feel that the time to make a decentralized application has come, so I made a firm choice.

Jack: At that time, EthSign announced the high-valuation financing news, which attracted a lot of attention. Can you share the process of EthSign's financing?

Yan Xin: First of all, we have been financing for a long time. The angel round was raised from June and July of 21 to February of this year, and it took half a year. To be honest, there was not much money in the past six months, and I paid for it myself. Because what I insist on is that I think this project (EthSign) has some Web2 or the ability to go out of the circle, because outsiders can easily understand it, and it can also be easily Onboard, allowing users to operate without Gas And wallet case use the product. So I worked very hard when I was raising money. I wanted to find a good investment institution to support us. If I couldn’t find it, I continued to do it (development). In the end, I was stubborn here for a long time. I was really poor for a while, especially in the bull market. Everyone is making money and you are poor.

I kept thinking about it at the time, because good organizations did not vote You are also because your product is not good enough and you can’t prove it enough. So we started financing in June, launched EthSign Signatures 3.0 in July, and then kept accumulating Attraction, which is one aspect. On the other hand, we have also made some small changes in direction, and started to use smart contracts to implement the terms of the agreement on the basis of the previous period. In fact, I think VC may prefer this (function), because it is normal to only use smart contracts as an application backend, but if you use smart contracts to actually execute the content of an agreement, it will indeed solve the problem A very big potential pain point.

For example, in China, Alipay is very big, it is between Taobao sellers and buyers Time when a third-party hosting. There are also companies that provide such services in international trade, but the charges are high and it is troublesome to use. Can smart contracts be used to provide escrow services between such (large transactions)? For example, the buyer first sends money to Escrow, and then sends the money to the seller after receiving the confirmation. This logic can be easily realized with smart contracts. The prospect of this (use case) is actually very big, because the international judicial arbitration system is like an Optimistic Rollup. When something goes wrong, it will be litigated. Get the money back.

So this (process) is actually very slow, especially in the encryption circle, everyone’s The registration subject is always located in places like Virgin Island and Cayman Island, and the judicial efficiency is relatively low. If the agreement in the terms can be directly executed by using smart contracts, the efficiency that can be provided is actually very intuitive. At that time, our team traveled many places from China, Singapore to the United States, met investors face to face, and also made a demo. Investors were more excited after seeing it.

In fact, there are many organizations supporting us along the way. The first company we decided to invest in was Sequoia India, and the funds that firmly supported us included Mirana Ventures, including Folius Capital, who also supported us. These are friends who have supported us for a long time, and there are many people you have known for a long time. Thank you for your support along the way.

EthSign Team Participating in the hackathon, the picture comes from EthSign

Jack: In Yan Xin’s view, What are the key factors for EthSign to obtain high valuation financing?

Yan Xin: I think If you only do pure electronic signatures, you will not be able to raise such a high valuation. I was raising funds all the time, and a VC who was doing pure electronic signature would ask you: "What is the difference between you and DocuSign?" Let me give you an inappropriate example. When Kuaibo first came out, investors asked, What is the difference between Kuaibo and Storm Cloud? Kuaibo said that our seeds are decentralized. Then investors will ask you to make a scene to prove that decentralized seeds are beneficial. We (EthSign) are the same, you must have a scene to prove the essential difference between you and traditional competing products. This "essential difference" must create a scene by yourself to reflect and release its potential, and you cannot wait for the community to discover your essential difference. So we have always promised to do a specific application scenario to reflect, that is, when you can verify a protocol on the chain, what scenarios are you enabling?

Generally speaking, (EthSign) is still in the stage of finding Product Market Fit. Start doing different Demos and Showcases just to find market fit. Until we started working on Token Table, I felt (its) market fit was particularly strong. Because this sub-project is now talking to any investors and project parties, everyone thinks Make Sense, and then we have invited testing in the past two weeks, and more than 30 projects have been onboarded. After the product is launched, next year we will use financing (in the market) to do more activities. Now that we have money, we must spend money on the product first, and then use the money to push the product to the market after it comes out.

“It is impossible to just make a product and wait for others to use it”

From idea to implementation, to final profit, a product always needs trial and error. It is often completely different from the original conceptual design, and even "one product" is no longer a simple product, but a project composed of multiple products. The development of EthSign is no exception. From the beginning of EthSign 3.0, later EthSign Signatures, to the upcoming Token Table, the EthSign team has never stopped looking for market fit.

Of course, as a product in the field of encryption, the EthSign team faces many The problem. As the "only competitor" in the Web3 electronic protocol track, novel concepts, insufficient cognition, and lack of infrastructure have all become factors that greatly limit the trial and error space of EthSign. Of course, the team has also found its own countermeasures in the process of exploration and development.

Jack: Does the EthSign team have a specific program or main line when developing products?

Yan Xin: In fact, there is a main line, that is, I myself Founder realized that the initial idea of a product (founder) is very simple, that is, to make a practical and easy-to-use product. This is what I thought at the beginning of last year. Let's make an electronic signature, which is practical and easy to use. But (electronic signature) this thing will be finished soon, and it won’t take too much time. From a traditional point of view, you should go out and sell (products) after you finish it, and get a lot of users and good-looking revenue. This is one way, but I did not choose this method. We don't want to just do E-Sign. Smart contracts can be used as the backend of electronic agreements, and can also be used to execute programs. You will feel that there are many possibilities. It is impossible to just make a product and wait for others to use it.

Because I think the products in the Crypto circle have great potential to continue to expand, I realize We should do something that no one has done before. Because the community really likes you, or if you really want to build your own community, it doesn’t mean how good your product is, but whether your Vision (can resonate). For example, in Ethereum, everyone is exploring different perspectives. Some people talk about the public goods of the future world, and some people talk about governance. Is there any part that you can push this frontier and let it go forward? Now I will think about this question and think about where we have contributed to the entire community.

We will go very far in a few small directions, and then we will work with other projects Do some showcases together to push Ethereum and this industry forward. For example, Registry and Dispute mentioned above, we have done a thorough research. Including our thorough research on DID, paving the way for future Social Recovery. Because if you don’t do this, you will go to Web2. I still hope that we can lead a section in Web3, so that members who join your community are discussing how to realize your vision, so what we have done recently are all is relatively new.

Jack: In which fields and directions did the team conduct cutting-edge research?

Yan Xin: Our earliest Spend time exploring how to make a fully decentralized electronic signature, so we already have a good understanding of these modules at the bottom of Web3, such as how to log in, how to sponsor gas, how to store, how to integrate DID, and so on. But research may not necessarily be transformed into a product, it will only tell you what the product should do, such as what should be put on the chain and what should not be on the chain. On this basis, we have made EthSign Signatures and EthSign Smart Agreement, while doing signature and management of the agreement, while doing the automatic execution of the agreement.

Then on top of these two common scenarios, we make another vertical scenario, which is Token Table. Token Table is focused on financing, Token issuance, and managing ownership. Further up, based on Token Table, we will do some financial auditing, Crypto Crunchbase, and some Marketplace (and other application scenarios).

Jack: Is the process of this research and the process of product development sequential or parallel? ?

Yan Xin: Actually It's an exploration by doing. When the financing was completed, I was working on a new version of Signature, and immediately after the completion, I started to make Token Table, and my understanding of the product was indeed deepened in the process of making the product. When I first started working on Token Table, I was thinking about how to help project parties make investment and financing more convenient, but as I was doing it, I found that some sectors should be made heavier, and others should be made lighter. The more complicated it is, the more complicated it feels to be too complicated to finish, and then simplify the unimportant ones.

EthSign team members are sharing development experience, picture from EthSign

Jack: Is there any function that was made and then abandoned ?

Yan Xin: Actually Yes. Originally, we wanted to do more functions on the signature and make it more high-end, such as determining the order of signatures, and other functions. Later, we did user research and found that too few people used it. For a product like DocuSign with hundreds of millions of users, a Feature can serve hundreds of thousands of people, but for our current user Base, it really doesn’t make much sense to make some advanced functions like this. So we did more later Simple, put more Signature products to the protocol layer (development), which is the Consent of Capture. The recognition and signature of the protocol can be directly used by other projects in various scenarios on the chain in the future.

Jack: Why did the team launch the Token Table product?

Yan Xin: We have been working on the Token Table project for 6 months. We have also been working on EthSign for a long time. Today Finally, I found a vertical scene in it. Whether it is signing an agreement or using a smart contract to execute an agreement before, it is actually very common. So we look at all users, what is the place where the most signed agreements are found? It still revolves around investment, financing and employment. Then we focus on investment, financing and employment, that is to say, around doing projects, with the project party as the main body, and made a set of vertical products.

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I think a very interesting thing is that after listening to Token Table, many people will regard it as the Carta of Web3 (BlockBeats note, Carta It is a mainstream Cap Table Management product in the United States), but I will tell them: "We are more than Carta". why? Because in Crypto we found that there are more investors, Party Round is a common practice that everyone likes, and each person’s quota is very small, which also means that each person’s Portfolio is five to ten times more than the original right, and then everyone In a decentralized environment, everyone signs an agreement with someone who is not in their own Jurisdiction, and it must be clear that it is the ownership of the Token, not the ownership of the equity. How do you manage (your own investment portfolio)? How to build trust? These things do require a new framework and infrastructure, which is one aspect.

Secondly, we have added some government functions. In the past, only the government could do it, and the company could do it No, so I think it has more potential than Carta. Moreover, the future market must be based on the Token capital market. This market is more active and will definitely be much larger than Nasdaq because more people will participate.

The Token Table we are doing now, on the one hand, is the Registry of the Web3 project, which is equivalent to the future The Industrial and Commercial Bureau in the Web3 environment is not under any country (jurisdiction), but the Founder himself establishes a set of rules. Including registration and determination of ownership allocation, how to divide between founders and employees; then choose Cap Table transparency, if you register in the Cayman Islands Cap Table, it is completely invisible, but in Singapore it is completely visible, But on our side, we can choose the degree of transparency; as well as formulate governance rules, the Majority Shareholder has the final say, or everyone votes.

The problem now is that the Founder signs an agreement with the Co-Founder, employees and investors, You need to organize an Excel to manage your Token assets. So Registry will make a set of SaaS for everyone to register, and then we will help you issue Tokens and put Tokens into smart contracts. All Stake Holders will go to Claim according to the unlocking cycle of the smart contract.

Token Table Demo interactive interface, picture from EthSign

Then we also made Investor View and Employee View. For example, Animoca Brand is one of our supporters. They have invested in many projects and have several investment managers. Using email to manage their Token unlocking workload is a lot of work. They will receive email notifications every day to Claim Token. I don’t know How to keep this account. Then we also provide a Dashboard, on which you can see all your investments, what percentage has been unlocked, which address has been unlocked, and what is the protocol behind it, which can be managed very clearly.

This is a big tool with many functions, generally speaking Use smart contracts to actually execute the agreement. Because the agreement itself is a mutual promise between me and you. No matter how the real world develops, we must make a promise to each other before doing something. We only need to use better methods to ensure the implementation of the agreement. As long as the real world still exists, the agreement will exist. In terms of implementation, we use smart contracts to help. If the smart contracts are executed well, then no one needs to go through the arbitration process of the agreement off-chain.

Jack: There are many gadgets with similar functions in the market now, will EthSign How about competing with them?

Yan Xin: Maybe still Compete head-on. In fact, there are many competitors, which is a manifestation of the really strong product-market fit, which shows that everyone really uses it a lot. One of my views on smart contracts is that I can use other people's smart contracts or cooperate, but a good product smart contract must have its own moat. If your smart contract is a separate program, no matter which team it is, we can use it directly, but I think the whole system (EthSign) will have a strong moat. For example, you signed the agreement here (EthSign), and the money is also sent from here, and then your name can be seen on the Cap Table, then you can prove to anyone that I am indeed the owner of this project Investors.

This matter is very meaningful in itself. For example, in the future we can do Crypto Crunchbase or Crypto AngelList. As an investor, you will have your own "Stake". And a low-collateral lending agreement like Maple Finance needs to review your personal creditworthiness when borrowing, and you can prove to it (through EthSign) that you have indeed invested in so many projects. Your "Stake" on the chain is the Token that has not been unlocked, and you can sign an agreement: Assuming I haven't returned it, these Tokens belong to you. Including our cooperation with NFT agreements. For example, in Mint NFT, as long as the agreement on our platform is true, you know it is true, because people who can read this agreement appear on the Cap Table.

We are currently making three products. One is the electronic signature, which is called "Capture Consent" in the words of the chain, which captures the user's permission, and records the event the moment you agree to something. This is a smart contract. Then the execution of Consent is a smart contract, and the registration and distribution of future Tokens is also a smart contract. In fact, we are constantly "smart contracting" various functions, making an independent smart contract, and then if you want to do one thing, you can choose a few smart contracts and add some other functional contracts to make this It's done.

Jack: Yan Xin just talked about the Token Table’s Government function, will this bring Regulatory concerns?

Yan Xin: In fact, this is the case, although the registration of the project can On the chain, when you sign an agreement, there must be a subject. We haven’t reached the point (arbitration on the chain). If you want to file a lawsuit, it must still be in the real world (mainly) off the chain. But the problem now is that a project has too many off-chain registration entities, but what everyone cares about is the only Token ownership on the chain, which is not managed by anyone, so the mapping relationship of off-chain equity is very complicated now. It is easy to have problems, so we made Token Table.

Of course facing the future, I think it may still take some time. Just like "The Network State" written by Balaji Srinivasan, assuming that time really comes, that Network State can specify that the items in it are all in Register on the Token Table to formulate your own rules, and then we help him implement them. But in our eyes, whether you are in the United States, Singapore or Network State, we just use smart contracts to help you better execute (agreement) under your own framework.

Jack: Has the team done any research on regulation?

Yan Xin: Yes, Actually a lot. The team has also recently published some articles for Web2 users, such as Tokens are up to 7x better than stock options. Here's why.". We have a Legal Researcher internally who is at Harvard Law School and has been studying Corporation Law, so we have been doing research.

We actually have several research directions. First of all, the Registry we made was actually a government function in the past, and there is no competing product in Web2. But to do on-chain (registration) we need to study, for example, what is the point of registering a company in a sovereign country? We used to be used to it, but when you start doing it, you have to study why. To put it bluntly, there are now three reasons.

First, you register a shell and use this shell as a legal person, it may be limited liability Or other different principles of liability apply. Second, we believe that the government is a public ledger and will not tamper with the ledger, and then we regard the government as a trusted third party to keep the ledger. Third, the government's corporate law represents local laws and governance rules. For example, in the United States, we can choose to register in California or Delaware, which has lower taxes and more flexible governance. To register a company internationally, you can choose to be in the Cayman Islands or Singapore. In the former, you cannot penetrate its shareholder structure at all, that is, you have chosen a certain degree of privacy. We will study these things clearly, and then allow everyone to make detailed choices when registering on us (Token Table).

Jack: So the Token Table combines some real regional rules?

Yan Xin: Yes, It is divided into regions. What options does different regions provide for a Founder? We will provide all these options. For example, if you want to register an organization and adopt Singapore’s governance rules, but have the transparency of Cayman’s Cap Table, this may not be found in the real world, but we can do it here.

Jack: Yan Xin mentioned the community vision earlier, but a product with a strong team and powerful functions Or project, how to combine with the community?

Yan Xin: I think First of all, Founder must be strong , that is to say, do not introduce the community to do decentralized governance in the early stage. I am very clear about this. But I think it must have something to do with the community, because you have to understand who you are making things for and who are you using them for? You are for the community. If your project is only liked by VCs but not by the community, then your Product Market Fit will not work. It is to let the community really like your things, and the community will follow your Vision only if they find your product useful.

There are actually many good people in the community, for example, there is a lawyer in Japan (in the community) for We wrote an article about whether the signature structure we designed for E-Sign is legal under the Japanese company law and electronic signature law. It demonstrated a lot of Japanese legal documents, and finally concluded that it is legal. In fact, this article is a Legal Opinion. This kind of thing is actually very strong. If you start the community, there will be many powerful people in it, and they will also give you some help or optimization suggestions in their own direction. These are very important. important.

But at the same time you have to have someone who makes up your mind, because sometimes the community (voice) Give it a full listen, but you may have some more persistent thoughts. I agree with this, but in general, what you make is for the community. Your user base should basically overlap with the users in your Discord. If they don’t overlap, I think there is a problem.

Jack: What backgrounds do most of the current EthSign community members come from?

Yan Xin: We compare The effort is to be more international and cover more countries, such as Japan, Turkey, Europe, Vietnam, etc., in addition to the three main places of China, the United States and New Zealand. I met more community members in Japan and Turkey. I went there on a business trip and met up with people in Discord, and found that they were doctors, lawyers, tour guides, and engineers.

EthSign Team The offline event held, the picture is from EthSign

First of all, they must think this project is interesting and want to see it See how you can get involved. In fact, most people just think that Crypto is more interesting, and there are a lot of speculators among them. We do user testing when we launch products, and we also cooperate with many marketing projects. These projects basically send out an NFT, and then you can come to claim it after completing the task. It has indeed attracted a lot of people who are wool. But we have to find a way to control its ratio. For example, when doing some AMAs in Discord, those people who are fluffing wool will only ask you when to send the Token, so that you can filter out real community members and interact with them. . Of course, people are not here to cause damage, so I think that as long as they are users, they are all welcome, but we really hope to take care of those members who are not just here to fluff, want to learn, and really want to do things with your Vision .

Jack: Many people are pushing EthSign to DID, so Token Table will be Is there an application scenario?

Yan Xin: The identity on the chain is also an identity, mainly It is divided into two parts. One is when you introduce yourself to others, you will tell what kind of position you are in the social structure, and the other is what you have done in the past. In the on-chain environment, you can use your ENS Subdomain or your NFT badge to see what you have done in the social structure. What you have done in the past is all the on-chain data of your address in the past. But if the (user) historical data on the chain is all speculation data, then I will definitely not be able to create a very three-dimensional (identity on the chain) for you.

, then (user identity) is very three-dimensional. So future DIDs will definitely need our data and smart contracts.

When we are currently making Token Table, we will support ENS subdomains, such as You are a Managing Partner, you can authorize your subordinates (members) to view your Portfolio Management Page. But I think the bigger future is to support the future Social Recovery, because the infrastructure needed for Social Recovery (necessary for development) is that there are more Social applications or non-Transactional Data on the chain. It is not a simple transaction. For example, the two of us signed an agreement. This is a social contract. It proves that we are related outside the chain from another perspective. In this way, if your private key is lost, I will Can give you (provide) proof.

Token Table does not currently do this, but we do add this information to the chain . For example, there will be a Social Recovery project in the future. In this project, someone lost his private key and needs to find some addresses related to him in the past to prove it. At this time, we need to check our smart contract to see who is behind This address is relevant.

Of course there are many other scenes, too many can be done. The purpose of our smart contract is also very clear, that is, as long as (other teams) use our product and want to access our contract, we support it, but we don’t know how to do it ourselves.

Jack: What will be the profit model after EthSign develops into infrastructure change?

Yan Xin: I think It is better to generate income at the upper level of the Ecosystem. I think the Token Table layer should be made into an infrastructure, and more importantly, it should be used by more people. For me, this matter is like using WeChat. It is more important for people to use me than for everyone to spend money to use me. Going up one level, such as financial auditing and Marketplace, the fees are normal. There is a project called Token Unlock, which is an Unlocking Schedule to help investors track projects. For example, when to unlock, need to buy carefully, etc., like this (type of application) can be based on the real data on the Token Table in the future.

I will definitely support (the application of) like this, but the way to support it is not verbal support. I think so, Infrastructure is building roads, as long as there are people running on the road, you can generate income, and infrastructure can pay back. We are in the stage of working hard to build a better infrastructure, and then use this infrastructure to support more ecology (applications) above. As long as the above ecology takes off, your infrastructure will definitely be profitable. The most fearful thing is that if you build an infrastructure and there are no cars on it, you will definitely not be able to make a profit.

"Three years later, whoever talks about Web3 will be ruined"< /h3>

EthSign itself can be regarded as a "solo runner" on the new encryption track. When it comes to the future of the encryption field, this sentence of Yan Xin impressed me even more. Indeed, compared to the Internet revolution, the current Web3 is more like a general talk, and the EthSign team, which faces ownership, corporate law and arbitration processes every day, naturally considers more clear and realistic issues. Yan Xin himself is also very aware that in the future, whether it is "DID" or "Web3", the concept will become more concrete.

Jack: Yan Xin thinks that the electronic signature/agreement track "takes off" probably how much time is required?

Yan Xin: I think That is within three years. I think it will be very soon, but we have to wait until a certain point in time. In fact, sometimes when you take off, the capital needs to choose a track, or everyone finds a track that suddenly releases their imagination. But in general, as long as a track can better help funds come in, this track will take off.

Actually, one of the things I am very excited about isI think that Web3 The next topic is the Network State mentioned earlier. At that time, everyone will talk, who is the infrastructure of Network State?

Jack: Can Yan Xin describe the Network State he understands and the current The biggest difference in Web3?

Yan Xin: Web3 too Generalization, everything is Web3, and I don’t know what Web3 is. As a movement, it does not have a struggle program, and no one comes to lead, and it knows how to make money. But Balaji's Network State is very clear, telling you how to implement it? What should you focus on?

Network State will tell you that we must liberate imagination from sovereign states, and the future chain You can do a lot of good things. For example, if you are currently working in a Crypto company, you use Crypto to pay your salary and buy things. In fact, it doesn’t matter what country you live in. In the future, it will be the same when you register your company on the chain, raise funds and issue tokens on the chain. Network State is actually a subset of Web3, which is more realistic than Web3.

< p>Because this market likes the new and dislikes the old, Web3 can be talked about for three years at most, and after three years, whoever talks about Web3 will lose. Those who are new to the circle must choose a newer framework or value. I think it is very likely to be the Network State set by Balaji Srinivasan. In this set (value narrative), we (EthSign) must have a very strong presence.

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