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Xiao Feng: The "Shanghai Moment" of Ethereum

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The indissoluble bond between V God and Ethereum and Shanghai, China

Original title: "Xiao Feng: The "Shanghai Moment" of Ethereum"

Original author: Xiao Feng

Original source: Titanium Media

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On September 15, 2022, Ethereum will usher in another historical moment after the publication of the first white paper at the end of 2013 and the launch of the mainnet in July 2015: "The Merge" . The consensus mechanism of Ethereum will change from Proof of Work (POW) to Proof of Stake (POS). "The Merge" will reduce the energy consumption of Ethereum by 99%, the issuance of ETH by 90%, and the cost of "gas" will approach zero after merging through sharding and L2 (two-layer protocol) . While network security and health are completely unaffected, "The Merge" will help Ethereum increase to 100,000/s in the next 3 years, 10 million/s high performance and extremely flexible scalability in the next 10 years . This will further establish Ethereum as the general infrastructure of the Metaverse.

"The Merge" is not only an important moment in the development history of Ethereum, but also destined to be an important moment in the history of blockchain technology development! After "The Merge", Ethereum needs to upgrade again after 6 months in order to restore the normal transfer function. This re-upgrade moment was named "Shanghai" by the Ethereum community!

In September 2016, following the previous two global developer conferences held in Berlin and London, the third Ethereum developer conference (DEVCON2) was held in Shanghai Hyatt Hotel on the North Bund. Among the nearly 1,000 participants (now Ethereum DVECON is already a 10,000-person conference), 90% came from overseas to attend the conference. Listening to the speeches of global blockchain opinion leaders has greatly promoted the popularization of blockchain technology in China. A Chinese technology media reporter who participated in the meeting wrote on Weibo: When I stepped into the venue, I saw that 90% of the participants were foreigners, which made me think it was a meeting held in Europe and the United States.

The Ethereum Global Developers Conference held in Shanghai, China 5 years ago, which gave people the feeling of "time and space disorder", was organized by Wanxiang Block. Chain Lab vigorously introduced and sponsored the whole process. According to the Ethereum POW-to-POS process that started a few years ago, each key node is named after the city where DVECON is held. This is how Ethereum’s “Shanghai Moment” came about.

In December 2014, at the "Sanya Finance and Economics International Forum" held by Caijing magazine, I organized a "Digital Currency Sub-Forum" and gave a speech The guests included former experts in the field of financial regulation, bankers, digital currency practitioners, etc. My speech mainly revolves around Ethereum, which has released its white paper for one year, while the keynote speaker focuses on Bitcoin. This should be the first time in China that a high-level forum held by a well-known financial media discussed the topic of digital currency represented by Bitcoin and Ethereum, which was not popular at the time. This of course has attracted the attention of domestic blockchain and digital currency practitioners.

During the lunch after the sub-forum, I received a request to add WeChat friends. He said that he saw the content of my speech from the Internet media, and at the moment he was sitting in a coffee shop at Incheon International Airport in South Korea with Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, waiting for the plane to take off. In this way, I finally got in touch with Vitalik, and the introducer was Shen Bo.

Vitalik came to Shanghai in April 2015 carrying a cloth bag with a cat printed on it. This is not his first visit to China. When we met for the first time, I was very surprised that he was able to send WeChat messages in Chinese, and he was also able to have conversations in not very fluent Chinese, which is very good for a foreigner who has not learned Chinese before. Vitalik's Chinese level is different from that of other foreigners, and his written expression ability is stronger than his oral expression ability. He introduced to me his unique secret to learning Chinese: Find any blockchain and digital currency materials translated into Chinese, including Bitcoin and Ethereum white papers, and then learn from the original English version.

One time, the three of us shared a taxi in New York. When he listened to our Chinese chat, he would take out his mobile phone from time to time to check the Chinese-English dictionary , and then verify whether the words we just mentioned in the conversation are the same as his understanding. In 2016, at Shanghai Wanxiang Blockchain International Week, the PPT of Vitalik’s speech was written in Chinese by himself.

During more than a month of living in Shanghai, Vitalik lived in Shen Bo's house. For life, he does not have any extravagant demands, and almost no demands other than food and clothing. His only hobby may be liking cats. When I was on a business trip to Hong Kong, I found a photobook about cats published by a well-known photographer when I was shopping in a bookstore. I brought it back to Shanghai and gave it to Vitalik. The photobook is very heavy, and he is a home in the world, so he probably can't take this photobook with him when he is happy. In 2015, Vitalik stayed in Shanghai for more than 3 months several times. This photobook may bring some comfort to his life in Shanghai.

We often meet to discuss blockchain and Ethereum topics. Of course, the focus must be on how Wanxiang cooperates with Ethereum to promote regional development R&D and application of block chain technology in China. One morning in April 2015, Vitalik came to Wanxiang Building. His expression was slightly tired. It was obvious that he did not have a good rest last night. Shen Bo pulled me aside and told me that the Ethereum community held a meeting last night, and the focus of the meeting was that someone saw the cash remaining in the account of the Ethereum Foundation and doubted whether there would be enough funds Support to the launch of the Ethereum mainnet.

20-year-old Vitalik is clearly facing pressure from community developers. This basic technological facility with the potential to change the world should receive strong support from all parties. My intuition tells me that this may be an opportunity given to Wanxiang and me by God. If we can actively fund the development of Ethereum at this critical moment, one can become a participant in this milestone project, and the other can borrow From this focus, implement Wanxiang's blockchain strategic planning.

So, I proposed to Vitalik to donate $500,000 to the Ethereum Foundation in the name of "Wanxiang Blockchain Lab". If necessary, we can continue to fund in the coming year to help dispel the doubts of developers, so that developers can go all out to work, and provide the best help we can for the launch of the Ethereum mainnet as scheduled.

Ethereum Foundation is a non-profit legal entity registered in Switzerland, so the lawyers of both parties helped to draft the donation agreement, and the Ethereum Foundation accepted the donation, After the mainnet goes live, an agreed amount of ETH will be donated to donors from the Ethereum (ETH) unlocked by the Foundation. In view of the fact that "Wanxiang Blockchain Lab" is still in the registration process, and in order to comply with foreign exchange management regulations, the funds are paid by overseas companies within the Wanxiang system, but the blockchain cooperation matters are designated to be established soon. The "Wanxiang Blockchain Lab" is responsible for the execution.

After the dust settled, Vitalik wrote a letter to the community, announcing that the Ethereum Foundation received a donation from a Chinese-backed institution, and that the The institution pledges continued support to the Ethereum Foundation. In this way, the developer community's concerns about Ethereum's cash flow in the next few months have subsided. In hindsight, these worries were unnecessary. But in the face of such a global project known as the "World Internet Computer" at that time, especially when such a huge project was led by a technical geek in his 20s, it was normal for someone to ask "how long can it last?" things.

This incident also marks Wanxiang's official launch of its strategic deployment and work process in blockchain. In the second half of 2015, Wanxiang Blockchain Lab was established, the first Wanxiang Blockchain Global Summit was held, and Asia’s first Fenbushi Capital dedicated to investing in blockchain was established (Wanxiang is the sole limited partner) , Wanxiang Blockchain Labs released the "Blockchain Entrepreneurship Project Funding Plan" to the world, Wanxiang Blockchain Labs published a series of books, and Wanxiang Blockchain Labs cooperated with Chinese blockchain technology experts to hold a blockchain training sessions, etc.

In mid-October 2015, the first Wanxiang Blockchain Global Summit, based on blockchain technology and promoting the popularization of blockchain technology in China held in Shanghai. Wanxiang made full use of the resources of the Ethereum community to extensively collect global cutting-edge blockchain topics, invite global blockchain experts, and mobilize domestic blockchain practitioners to participate. Under Vitalik's call and invitation, many of the world's top blockchain practitioners were present, representing the highest level of global blockchain technology at that time.

The first summit was held for two days. The first day was an open forum, and the second day was an invitation-only closed-door discussion. The activities of the summit have received strong support and wide acclaim from the domestic industry. A domestic industry pioneer company came to the summit with 8 colleagues. Due to the limited space of the closed-door discussion venue, these 8 colleagues were not fully invited. They came to me directly and strongly requested to participate in all 6 sessions of closed-door discussions . I was so moved by this enthusiasm.

Until the beginning of January 2016, when the first blockchain hackathon was held in Shanghai, Wanxiang’s first phase of action plan in the blockchain field was considered Perfect ending. The first blockchain hackathon was held by Wanxiang and Deloitte. At the same time, the Ethereum Foundation sent three technical experts as guides and judges, and Vitalik also attended the scene. More than 120 contestants from all over the world formed teams and played on the spot. One member of the first prize winning team is a high school student who came to China from Italy at his own expense.

After 48 hours of intense competition, the high school student asked us if we could accept him to join Wanxiang Blockchain Lab full-time. , and finally got him on the return flight. One year later, we began to regret a little, because he finally participated in launching a blockchain entrepreneurial project in Europe and served as the technical core role of this popular project. Young people's minds should be clouded! Reminiscent of the fact that Vitalik was only in his 20s when he started his business, one can’t help but sigh: In the blockchain industry, young people are especially awesome!

In May 2016, a group of 9 of us departed from Pudong Airport, first stopped in the San Francisco Bay Area, then went to New York to participate in the "Consensus Conference", detoured to London, and then Return to Shanghai. This is a European and American blockchain study tour planned with Vitalik, who meets us in San Francisco. We visited many big names along the way, learned a lot of new ideas along the way, and watched many good projects along the way.

This trip to Europe and the United States also has another purpose to discover some mysterious speakers for the second Wanxiang Blockchain Summit. We had lunch with Nick Szabo, the "father of smart contracts," at a restaurant in Mountain View, Silicon Valley, and invited him to come to Shanghai for that year's blockchain summit. Nick is very cautious, and it took a lot of time to ask him to meet. After two years of invitations, he finally participated in the third Wanxiang Blockchain Global Summit in 2017.

In late September 2016, the second Wanxiang Blockchain Global Summit came as scheduled. However, this summit has been expanded into "Blockchain International Week". The first 3 days of the International Week are the second Ethereum Global Developers Conference (according to the practice of computer system development, the first developer conference is named DVECON0, and this time it is DVECON2, which should be regarded as the third time), the 4th The first day is the blockchain project roadshow (Demo Day), and the 5th to 6th day is the global summit. It was thanks to Wanxiang’s funding commitment to the Ethereum community in 2015 that the Global Blockchain Summit expanded into an international week. At that time, in addition to donating US$500,000, Wanxiang also promised to continue to support the development of Ethereum according to demand in 2016.

After the successful launch of the Ethereum mainnet, the Ethereum Foundation obviously has no urgent need for this. However, Wanxiang cannot let this promise of itself become a "blank check". Therefore, we proposed that if the current Ethereum Global Developers Conference is held in China, Wanxiang Blockchain Lab will sponsor all the expenses, and any ticket income and sponsorship income generated during this period will belong to the Ethereum Foundation. The "Shanghai Blockchain International Week" was thus born.

On September 15, 2022, Ethereum "The Merge" is coming. I seem to see the prospect of a blockchain protocol stack that will be integrated around Ethereum. In the 1980s, the Internet was also full of various protocols that did not communicate with each other. Later, they were unified into the TCP/IP protocol stack by market forces. The lower the basic protocol, the more it was unified into the only standard protocol in the world, such as IP protocol, TCP protocol, HTTP protocol.

When it comes to the application layer, Internet protocols begin to diversify. For example, there may be more than a hundred protocols on the Internet at the application layer. The current multi-chain phenomenon of the blockchain is similar to the era when the Internet protocol was not unified. The market's demand for seamless interconnection will definitely promote the integration of blockchain protocol stacks.

Only Ethereum is building the blockchain protocol stack intentionally or unintentionally. On the one hand, from L0 (distributed communication, distributed storage, distributed computing ) to L1, then to L2, and even L3... On the other hand, after "The Merge", Ethereum can also provide support for large-scale applications in terms of performance and scalability.

According to the Ethereum Foundation, within 10 years, Ethereum will be able to reach 10 million transactions per second (TPS). According to my personal observation, analogous to the development process of the Internet protocol, in the next few years, the blockchain protocol will be gradually pushed by the market forces to integrate into a unified protocol stack; while other public chains other than Ethereum may become Become a subchain, sidechain, or shard or partition of Ethereum, so as to achieve an ideal world of interconnected blockchain world.

Now, standing at this critical moment in the development of Ethereum and even the blockchain, "Point to Everything: Ethereum and Future Digital Finance" published by China Translation Publishing House "The Chinese version can be said to be a great contribution!