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The world's first Chinese EIP Editor Victor: Silicon Valley engineers' crypto multiverse

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Victor Zhou is both the EIP Author and the EIP Editor

原文标题：《对话以太坊 EIP Editor Victor：硅谷工程师的加密多重宇宙》

TechFlow Deep Tide

It was sunny in the South Bay of Silicon Valley.

You may not be familiar with Victor Zhou's name, but ERC1202, ERC5750 and other protocols may be familiar. Victor Zhou is the author of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) and the world's first Chinese EIP editor. He has a rich and diverse identity tag. Across Web2 and Web3.

他是资深的硅谷工程师，2012 年便加入 Google，任职十年，是硅谷高科技华人社区「载歌在谷」创始人，其每年举办的海外春晚，被誉为「湾区华人的年夜饭」。

He is the builder of Ethereum community. He developed EIP protocols such as ERC1202 and ERC5750, and became the first Chinese EIP editor of Ethereum community. He promoted the standardization of Ethereum application layer for more than 5 years.

He is also an investor who started AlephCrypto;

Now he has a new identity: entrepreneur. Victor Zhou started his Web3 startup in 2023 after leaving Google.

With a lot of curiosity and questions, Sunny from Deeptide TechFlow interviewed Victor Zhou offline at a cafe in Silicon Valley to talk about his multi-perspective Taifang community, crypto investment and entrepreneurship. In the communication, Victor often used engineering language and ideas to explain his cognition of the crypto industry. Although abstract engineering language was difficult to understand at the beginning, it reflected the essence of things deeply and objectively in the simple words shared.

About myself and the Ethereum community

Deeptide TechFlow: Victor, please tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you jump down the crypto rabbit hole and get involved in the construction and development of Ethereum while you were at the big time in Web2?

Victor Zhou:In my 10 years at Google, I've worked on advertising, search, YouTube, and blockchain. When I'm not working 9-5, and when I get home every day, I'm involved in building "open contributing communities" like Wikipedia and Ethereum. I became actively involved in the design of the Ethereum protocol in 2017. I've always loved open source, and I guess that's what led me to crypto.

Deep Tide TechFlow: As the first Chinese EIP editor in the Ethereum community, as well as the author of ERC1202, ERC5750 and other protocols, you will be responsible for reviewing all the EIP protocols submitted to the ETH community. As an editor, what "Ethereum improvement Proposal" (EIP) is more likely to be passed into a true representative standard. What are your audit priorities and criteria?

Victor Zhou:As a decentralized community, Taifang's governance is very different from traditional enterprises, mainly relying on a series of governance mechanisms.

EIP stands for Ethereum Improvement Proposal. EIP is a core part of Ethereum governance, and many important community decisions depend on EIP. For example, all hard forks require EIP. Famous execution level EIP include IP-1559 rate update, famous application level EIP include ERC20, ERC721. The EIP Editor, responsible for reviewing and approving the EIP, is the gatekeeper and one of the key roles in Ethereum governance. Many people mistakenly believe that founders like Vitalik can "dictate" or make decisions for the Ethereum community and developers. This is a way of thinking that has been carried over from the centralised enterprise. In Ethereum, the idea is to make a proposal, get the rest of the community to support and implement it, and ultimately drive the decision.

I have two roles, as one of the EIP Authors and one of the EIP Editors. Although there are only 7 EIP Editor roles in community governance, the number of EIP authors is large and there may be dozens of active ones. But my own identity is that I am an "EIP Author" first and an "EIP Editor" second.

The author is a proposer and "driver" of a proposal. Its role is to Draft new protocol standards, revise the draft standards from the feedback of the public, especially developers, and finally push the draft to be finalized.

The role of the Editor is to ensure that the EIP is compliant, clear, readable, normative, and technically feasible (optimality is not required) in terms of rules and formats. At the same time, editors also need to promote the draft Peer Technical Review to do the final review.

The core part of Ethereum governance is relying on this group of authors and editors to put forward and approve proposals, as well as developers and users to "vote with their feet."

Deeptide TechFlow: In the last bull market cycle, Ethereum was questioned for its inefficiency, but after going through the cycle, people found that Ethereum is still the king of the public chain. What do you think is the competitiveness of the Ethereum community? What did he do right?

Victor Zhou:First of all, I make no comment on price or market, which is not my expertise, so this segment is left to expert comment. In terms of technology and application, I think Ethereum (and its compatible chain) has better technical maturity than other public chain types. EVM has achieved significant network effects. A large number of smart contracts for DeFi and other applications are developed according to the ERC protocol standards. The USDT and USDC, represented by the ERC20, have about $110 billion. Nearly $50 billion of all kinds of ERC20 tokens are locked up in the DeFi. In addition, the size of the NFT market is about $10 billion.

In summary, Ethereum's core competitiveness mainly comes from three aspects:

1. Active ecology and advanced technology

The rapid and leading development of ethereum technology is mainly due to the fact that there are a large number of excellent builders and project parties in the community, and a hundred schools of thought contend, stimulating the rapid iteration of Ethereum products. For example, Ethereum has a community philosophy called client diversity, just like most public chains do when they write a version of node code.

From the very beginning of Ethereum, the Foundation promoted the development teams of nodes in three different language versions, Python, Go and Cpp, ensuring that Ethereum's protocol is "standards-based" rather than "implementation-based". Each node development code does not monopolize the right to interpret the protocol. There have been javascript-based versions, Rust-based versions, and so on. This diversity of technologies makes Ethereum extremely rich and secure, as well as expanding the diversity of developer talent in Ethereum. Similarly, from the start Ethereum pushed several different wallet implementations, such as MyEthereumWallet (MEW) and Mist, so that other wallets could join in, similar to the logic of Tencent's "horse racing mechanism".

Ethereum also takes great care to avoid "official" status, and the foundation itself is small and largely ecological by supporting projects through a Grant. In public, we also want to de-official as much as possible, in order to maintain an open and modest neutral attitude. This decentralized community interaction model produces many organic results, which is an important difference from many other public chains that operate in a corporate way.

2. Strong standard development and interoperability

Ethereum has many excellent open standards, from Execution to Smart Contracts, which allow Interoperability between smart contracts and DApps at an enormous scale. For example, a project can develop an ERC20, Another developer developed a DeFi project where UniSwap could directly access all tokens that satisfy ERC20, and a third developer developed a UI that could interact with protocols like UniSwap, At the same time, you can instantly interoperate with UniSwap and UniSwap on its Fork and other public chains.

3. Network effects have become a moat

Since the development of the Ethereum public chain, many applications have been produced on the chain, and the interoperability obtained by the open Ethereum standards has accumulated exponentially the network effects on the chain. Firstly, we can estimate the network effects that Web3 can achieve from the network effects that Web2 can achieve.

The network effects of Web2 are:

Benefit=N(user)N(merchant) (roughly N(2))

In the traditional Internet, merchants and merchants are separated and independent islands, and users of each merchant can only interact with one merchant at a time, thus generating corresponding value.

The network effects of Web3 are:

Benefit=N(user)N(merchant)N(merchant1)N(user1)… N(merchantn)N(usern) (can be N(4), N(5),... N(n))

In Web3, merchants are connected to each other through blockchain, so they are no longer separated and independent islands, but interdependent and interconnected islands. Each user can interact with more than one merchant at a time, which is not only a reversal of the subject, but also an upgrade of the network effects dimension, thus giving depth to the Internet. The Ethereum protocol's development standards and interoperability have further enhanced the manufacturing dimension of the technology, which equates to adding another 10(6) to tetra's base. Such network effects are beyond imagination.

About investment

Shenchao TechFlow: In addition to being an engineer, we also know that you used to work in an investment institution and later founded your own crypto investment fund AlephCrypto. As an investor in the crypto field, what is your investment methodology in the crypto field?

Victor Zhou:I'm a Builder myself, a standard developer. We bet on Builder, believing that this stage of blockchain development is "technology-intensive", similar to the early days of the Internet, and that our preferred founding team should have a technical background or strong understanding of blockchain products. We believe we are entering a next generation industrial revolution no less than IT (Information Technology) : TT: Trust Technology.

The way blockchain changes human life in a comprehensive way is to digitize trust, digitize assets, digitize rights. Just as the "digital information" produced by computer networks comprehensively surpasses the knowledge of books and paper, we believe that human non-digital contracts will soon be replaced by "digital contracts" credibly executed by machines.

About entrepreneurship and Silicon Valley

Deeptide TechFlow: Through your linkedin profile, we found that you had already quit Google in April 2023 and started your own company (stealth mode). What drove you to start your own company at this time?

Victor Zhou:I am glad to have the opportunity to share my recent career decision here. I know many of my friends may be wondering why I left a secure job at Google to start a new company in the midst of a global economic downturn. This decision may seem risky, but I believe it is moments like these that are most likely to produce truly great innovation.

If we look back at history, we will find that many great companies were born and launched during a cold economic winter. For example, during the financial crisis in 2009, we saw the emergence of a series of quality companies. AirBnB was founded in 2008, Uber, Slack, Square and Pinterest were born in 2009, and Google emerged from the dotcom bubble in 2001. Armies often launch offensives in the winter, when each succeeding day is warmer.

One of the biggest challenges in this period is getting financial support. I am honored to have gained the trust and support of my investors before I leave. In turn, the current talent market is oversupplied and many good people are forced to look for new opportunities, which provides us with the opportunity to recruit good people. For the technical barrier type venture project, in the cold winter, there is less external bubble and noise, and it is easier to obtain the investment of investors with long-term vision and technical understanding and the participation of team members.

The field I've chosen to work in is smart contract-as-a-service. I believe the infrastructure in this area is coming of age, and it has tremendous potential to change our lives. I expect our company to make a really meaningful contribution in this area.

Shenchao TechFlow: Can you tell us about your startup project? Why did you choose this direction?

Victor Zhou:The "trust technology revolution" brought by blockchain is the biggest technological revolution since the information revolution. Its revolution is reflected in the fact that it can greatly improve the efficiency of the generation, transfer and storage of trust in human cooperation. Smart contract is the main carrier of trust generation, transfer and storage, and is the next generation software industry. With this in mind, I founded D3Serve, whose name comes from the sense of "Decentralized Serve" and Web3. We aspire to be a leader in Smart Contract as a Service, building the infrastructure for the next generation of trust technologies to dramatically improve the efficiency of trust transmission in enterprise and individual collaboration by providing reliable, highly scalable smart contract services.

As one of the founders, I am an expert in smart contract standardization, with deep industry knowledge and rich experience. I am actively involved in the development of smart contract standards and have made significant achievements in this area. With this expertise and experience, I am confident that our team can develop innovative products that meet the needs of our users.

Our enterprise is currently developing our first product in secret mode focusing on the domain name and Account Abstraction area. While I can't share specific product details, I'm confident in this direction and look forward to showing you some of our early releases.

We firmly believe that through our smart contract services, businesses and individuals will be able to more easily build trust, establish cooperation agreements, and collaborate efficiently and securely. We are committed to providing advanced technology infrastructure to provide users with a simple, reliable smart contract development and deployment environment. We will continue to innovate and improve to meet the evolving market demand.

Finally, I am passionate about the standardization and promotion of smart contracts. I hope to promote the wide application of smart contracts in various industries through the efforts of D3Serve and make contributions to the development of trust technology revolution.

Shenchao TechFlow: Whether in China or the United States, there are many employees of big Internet companies to start businesses in Web3. In terms of business model, thinking, user experience and other aspects, what do you think is the biggest difference between Web2 and Web3?

Victor Zhou:The issue is so broad and involves so many layers that I could write a separate article on it if I had the chance. In short, the biggest differences between Web2 and Web3 startups can be seen in three ways.

First, the account and payment functions in Web3 are built in, which means that in terms of commercialization, Web2 is more likely to adopt a combination of free and paid business models, while Web3 users are more likely to be naturally accustomed to paying.

Second, in Web2, the boundary between creators and fans is clear, while in Web3, the boundary between audience and creators may become blurred. Many enthusiastic fans will actively participate in the creation, and the creators will also become fans of each other.

Third, the community boundaries of Web2 and Web3 will also be blurred, with the emergence of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) or other new forms of organization that cross the boundaries of a single platform.

Web3 still faces a number of user experience challenges, such as high costs, long latency, and low throughput, much like the early days of the Internet. However, we are confident in the development of Web3 and believe that with the advancement of technology and the efforts of the community, these challenges will gradually be solved. The development of Web3 will bring users a more open and inclusive Internet experience, stimulate innovation and collaboration, and further promote the evolution of technology and the development of society.

Deep Tide TechFlow: Recently, the SEC's policy moves on cryptocurrencies have been unfriendly, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong even suggesting that Coinbase may move out of the U.S. if there is no clarity on the regulation of the crypto industry. In your opinion, will Silicon Valley or the U.S. remain a hot place for Web3 startups? In the future, would you consider moving to Singapore or Hong Kong to start your own business?

Victor Zhou:For entrepreneurs, a clear and legal regulatory environment is essential. A stable, transparent and fair regulatory framework will help entrepreneurs and the industry prosper. Recently, blockchain industry companies, such as Coinbase, have fiercely criticized the regulatory policies of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and even said that they may have to move their business out of the US. Notably, this view is also supported by many members of the US Congress.

As an influential and innovative sector, the trust technology industry has indeed brought new challenges for regulators in various countries and regions. At the same time, it provides an opportunity for many countries and regions interested in surpassing the United States in global competition. Judicial and regulatory jurisdictions in Europe, Asia and Latin America see this development as a new opportunity and are actively developing policies to diversify and prosper the sector.

The Law Commission in the UK, for example, invited me and other members of the open source community to advise on the regulation of DAO governance in order to gain a faster and deeper understanding of cryptocurrency developments. We are positive and optimistic about the regulatory innovation between jurisdictions and believe that the future will be even better.

The jury is still out on whether Silicon Valley and the US will remain a hot place for Web3 startups. The current situation may pose certain challenges to the United States, but it also provides development opportunities for other countries and regions. Around the world, efforts are being made to create an environment conducive to innovation and growth to attract entrepreneurs and investors. As for relocating to Singapore or Hong Kong to start a business, it will depend on the specific business needs and development strategy. We will closely monitor changes in the global regulatory environment to ensure that we move forward in the best environment for our growth.