Blockchain first legendary story: zhang nan-geng's virtual war and choice

Original title: "the first blockchain legend: zhang nan-geng's virtual war and choice"

Source: tencent latent hope

Now, AI is the new direction of jia nan. In the face of the unknown, he often inspires his team with a quote from Kennedy: "we decided to go to the moon and do something about it this decade, not because they were easy, but because they were hard." & have spent & have spent

Like the development trajectory of many emerging industries, blockchain has never been short of the myth of making wealth. In every successful startup story, ordinariness and destruction, temptation and madness are always the main conflicts.

Seven years ago, zhang nan geng left school, choose to fight the United States butterfly laboratory, founded jiannan technology. He developed the world's first ASIC bitcoin mining machine, built a high wall for the bitcoin network, led the Chinese army to occupy the upstream of the industry chain, and at the same time allowed himself to stand on the nasdaq bell ringing table as the founder of "the first block chain" seven years later.

But he attributed his success to an accidental association with the situation. In the listing site, he sighed with regret that New York is the birth of countless magical places, hope that jia nan listing can become New York witness and happen one of the magical events.

Bitcoin was the most amazing thing he had ever witnessed. Thus the ringing of the bell, which is generally regarded as an important moment towards the apex of life, "is not so exciting". However, one of the shareholders who invested in jiannan technology in the early period wept with joy. The host of the listing ceremony of nasdaq had to use a microphone to remind him, "wipe your tears quickly, we need to take photos."

At the end of 2019, zhang nangeng, a 36-year-old with black and white hair, recalled her entire six-year entrepreneurial journey to tencent news's qianwang. "In fact, almost every six months, the company will face a life-or-death moment, because any casting failure, the next day the company may be dead."

Unwilling to be arranged

Zhang's first big choice in life was to graduate from college.

When he graduated from beihang university in 2005, the employment environment was not good and zhang nan geng, who wanted to devote himself to the IT industry, sent out countless resumes. Eventually, he went to a research institute under the aerospace group, the university's counterpart, but was told that he needed to work as a technician for three months in a factory under the group, as required by the rules.

The choice appears less proactive.

"The notice says three months, but the result is almost three years." < / p > < p > zhang nan geng recalled that although the workshop workers get along well with each other, the work is easier, but the future life seems like a straight line, plain, full of certainty, even after what kind of daughter-in-law will marry, how to live this life, can be predicted.

"Every few years there will be an example in your side, you are 25 years old, 28, 31 years old, and three years for a period, it is you that you have a state, until you retire, the last may also hire, all details are. Then you can see some of the contradictions between them, the way to promotion... this is really terrible."

The fear of plain life was like a black hole, consuming him.

After working for three years, zhang nan - geng chose to return to beihang graduate school, and workers career. That was the year the bitcoin white paper "bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system" was published under the name satoshi nakamoto, and in the decade that followed, a wave of underlying technology, represented by blockchain, churned up astonishing secular wealth.

The spear that changed the world

Ms. Zhang, who had begun studying for a doctorate, first encountered bitcoin in 2011 and was fascinated by the idea described in the white paper. Apart from scientific research, his biggest interest is to exchange the technology and value of bitcoin on the foreign forum bitcointalk.

Bitcoin, two years old, is a niche currency, and its earliest interest groups were mostly tech-savvy geeks and programmers who took the decentralized approach built by satoshi nakamoto to heart and used it in niche scenarios such as forum rewards.

Bitcoin gave zhang nan geng the spear that could change the world. "The digital currency itself gives people more choice. It gives people a new choice."

In Florida, a programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz came up with the idea of exchanging 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas on a forum. He closed the deal and posted the pizza a few days later. It is also the first time bitcoin has been linked to real purchasing power, even though 10,000 bitcoins are worth hundreds of millions of renminbi today.

With the gradual increase of transaction application scenarios, bitcoin began to form a fair price for legal tender. How to get more bitcoin became a focus of discussion, and mining became one of the earliest industries in the system.

"Mining" means that according to the model built by "satoshi nakamoto", the computing power of the chip is utilized to continuously conduct "hash collisions" in the blocks generated by the bitcoin system, so as to win the bookkeeping right and win the system reward. This process is so dull and repetitive that it is figuratively called "mining".

In the first few years of bitcoin's existence, cpus in ordinary laptops could play the role of "mining", but the efficiency appeared to be low as more and more people entered the market. With a background in computer architecture, zhang nun-geng experimented with programmable FPGA mining machines, which he dubbed "Icarus" after his love of Japanese anime, sold them on forums to interested geeks abroad, earned a small amount of pocket money and became well known on forums.

As the net name registered in the forum is "ngzhang", ng is the initial letter of nan geng, but the first related word typed in Chinese is "pumpkin". In Chinese network, zhang nan geng began to be known as "pumpkin zhang", which is still used today. Zhang nan geng told tencent news "potential hope" that he did not like the name "pumpkin zhang", but helpless to call too many people, unable to go to correct one by one.

Challenge the dragon

In the nascent bitcoin world, there are always people who are not reconciled to world peace.

Three years after bitcoin's birth, an organization called butterfly lab posted on the forum that it was working on a professional integrated circuit (ASIC) mining machine. ASIC is a kind of integrated circuit designed for special purpose. Compared with the popular CPU, GPU and even fpga-type mining machine at that time, the power of mining machine designed with ASIC is equivalent to the level of nuclear bomb. If successful, butterfly lab would probably control more than 51% of the computing power in the bitcoin world, meaning it could tamper with bitcoin blocks and gain near total control.

"The world of bitcoin is going to be destroyed!" Technology geeks fryers, woke up in beihang integrated circuit design major PhD study zhang nan geng. He decided to take on the dragon on his own, announcing at the forum that, before butterfly lab's success, he would be the first to develop an ASIC mining machine and deliver it to bitcoin enthusiasts scattered around the world to ensure that power was not monopolized by a single force.

Zhang nan-geng named the Project "Avalon Project," which in the anime world is a paradise guarded by nine fairy queens and able to resist invasion.

After launching avalon's crowdfunding, the community was more enthusiastic than he expected, Mr. Zhang recalls, and the first 300 units, priced at $1,299 each, were quickly sold out. To focus more on research and development, zhang found guo yifu, a Chinese student in the United States, and put him in charge of building and maintaining sales web pages, as well as revenue collection and customer service.

Funds in place, ready to make a big effort of zhang nan geng proposed to his mentor to suspend school for a year, but was rejected. "My father is a doctoral director of the Chinese academy of sciences, and both my grandparents are associate professors or above, so there is no shortage of a doctor for me." After receiving support from her family, she decided to drop out of school and give up her doctorate.

Drop out of school after zhang nan geng, and no intersection with the mentor. To his surprise, a few years after his success, someone in the circle posed as his mentor. The department building where I studied for my PhD has been demolished and turned into zhizhen building. It was like yesterday. It was like passing by another life.

Force nuclear weapon

In January 2013, Jeff Gazik, one of the core developers of bitcoin, received zhang's first avalon mining machine and excitedly streamed the whole process online. It was also the world's first recorded ASIC miner.

From chip development to machine assembly, Mr. Avalon bought all the power plug-ins on jd.com, Mr. Zhang recalls, and drove a fit around all of Beijing's wholesale electronics markets to assemble the rest of the first 300 machines. "Fortunately, the volume was small, because my experience at the time was a low-volume electronics production experience, and that was pretty much what I was capable of."

Bitcoin made its debut in 2013, rising more than a hundred times this year to as high as 8,000 yuan, and early adopters were surprised to find that professional-grade mining machines, like chickens that lay golden eggs, can bring in huge amounts of money. Avalon is still in short supply, having been ramped up to six figures on the market.

After zhang nan-geng, the boy genius roast cat became the second person in the world to build an ASIC mining machine. In July 2012, jiang xin of University of Science and Technology of China launched a crowdfunding campaign with the nickname friedcat (" toasted cat "), which was transferred directly into shares of toasted cat mining machine and anchored with bitcoin. The process is still seen by many as the first attempt at an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) in China, even though the Offering is shares rather than tokens.

At the beginning of 2013, following the avalon machine shipment, the toasted cat machine was also developed and started shipping, while the butterfly lab, which originally started the nuclear war, was far away.

"At the beginning, to be honest, it was really ideal, someone later said to me, if the production of 100 more mining machines, or do not sell in the hands, there is no need to create a company to seek listing this series of bitter things. < / p > < p > zhang nan geng sighed with regret, but also firmly believe that their original mining machine sales to the world is very correct move, to achieve the decentralized calculation of the force.

But the gainers who got the mining machine and tasted the benefits would never go back. The original balance that satoshi nakamoto had designed for everyone to use a laptop to get a bitcoin reward for mining was completely upset. ASIC, a chinese-designed and made-in-china professional mining machine, has staged one arms race after another in the bitcoin world, raising the bar for mining by a factor of 10, 000, 000. The common computer is a thing of the past, and the "nuclear" ASIC miner is on the scene.

As more and more mining machine manufacturers join in, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get bitcoin for each machine in a mad arms race, with orders pouring in for anyone who can develop a more powerful machine. Under Moore's law, the ability to upgrade chips directly determines the success of the race.

In Zhang Nangeng point of view, although professional ASIC mill was greatly improved mining threshold, will be shut out of the ordinary people, but the existence of "nuclear weapons", just is to protect the fragile currency network, as the real nuclear weapons in the real world, nuclear power between mutual deterrence, avoid the weapons were concentrated in a single monopoly power.

"Before the ASIC mining machine, bitcoin was a particularly vulnerable system and a botnet might be able to handle it. Bitcoin has an obvious weakness that controlling more than 51% of its computing power allows hackers to tamper with the network. Zhang nangeng made a calculation at the beginning. If BAT in China added mining module after one of its products, the computing power it controlled would surpass the whole network computing power of bitcoin at the beginning of the moment, which was equivalent to completely controlling the bitcoin network.

So with the advent of the "nuclear" ASIC, the monopoly danger began to disappear. "The decentralized ASIC protects bitcoin from being monopolized by a single power at a time when the power of the bitcoin network is still very weak." < / p > < p > zhang nan geng thought that even if they did not stand up, behind the cat will also be a mining machine, will also solve the problem. "It's just that it was only me and the roast cat who were able to use the power of their hands to do evil to monopolize. The good thing is that we both resisted the temptation to sell the mining machine. We didn't keep it in our own hands.

Looking back on history, zhang says, "this is something that satoshi nakamoto didn't think of when he first designed it, and it's also the power of bitcoin."

Business risk

The first 300 completed his idealistic mission and proved the sustainability of the mining industry. In 2013, zhang nan geng established jiannan company and started her business formally.

Zhang nan geng describes the scene at the beginning of the business: a bed is next to the table, work tired directly lie on the bed to sleep, get up to work. White hair more and more, often will fall into a trance, but also easy to drive fast, so that to drive the outside of the stock, often accidents. "The most frequent one month there were three, the most serious one was a five-car rear-end and I took full responsibility." So I replaced the civic I had been driving since I was a student with the fit to haul goods.

And when zhang nangu-geng drove the fit to pull goods around, launched the online search for "pumpkin zhang" activities, soon his license plate number appeared in the forum. So zhang nan - geng made use of the initial business to make money, the fit into a camry, "because the camry drive no passion, so since then no accident."

But more than the traffic accident let zhang nan geng unforgettable, is the initial stage of a series of cheated experience. In the early bitcoin world, the two pillar industries of mining and trading have just emerged, but the most developed industry is fraud. With the continuous rise of the currency price in 2013, the price of 8,000 yuan, let people become crazy.

The flood of people is a far cry from the environment before bitcoin was linked to real-world wealth. In 2013, Ms. Zhang recalls, people started to mix up, which led to the early bad business environment.

Humanity and goodwill are fragile, and the newly stable bitcoin parallel universe is at risk.

The methods used by scammers are varied. Has promised to make cost-effective mill, only accept COINS accept reservation, but delays in shipping after received money when investors are not announced to research and development failure, according to the currency price to order settlement: if the currency price is up, then back to the original booking with fiat currency equivalent, if the currency price falls, then returned to the same number of COINS. Still have to wait for mine machine to come out after production, delay delivery, plug in first oneself dig for a period of time mine, wait until whole net calculate force rises again deliver to the customer hand in.

In 2013, when currency prices were soaring, there were numerous such cases. Zhang recalled that she had failed to deliver goods several times because she was cheated. "For example, I asked a partner to produce the chip, but they found that the chip was very popular, so they sold it at a markup, and then came back to tell me that they lost it"; "I also put the round crystal used in the packaging of the machine in the warehouse, but when I used it, I suddenly found that it was gone, which was very strange, and some people still sold it secretly".

"Even if you originally good relationship, in front of the interests of the problem", in several cheated, zhang nan geng concluded, in the mining machine at every turn can sell more than ten times the price at that time, "this interest is too big".

Another talented young man who invented the ASIC mining machine toasted a cat, but was even more involved in a scam that led to his disappearance.

In 2014, multiple reasons, including the collapse of the MT GOX exchange of bitcoin after the madness, plunged from a peak of 8,000 yuan to several hundred yuan. Depressed currency prices directly affect the sales of mining machines, in order to open the situation, the circle began to popular "joint mining" gameplay. Specifically speaking, that is, investors provide the site, electricity and other supporting facilities, and then the cooperation with the mining machine manufacturers, until the coin after the two will be divided. More advanced will also add the financial futures model to this kind of play, that is, using the calculation force of the mining machine as collateral, with the number of COINS that can be mined in a period of time in the future, borrow bitcoin first on some trading platforms, and then return it to the trading platform after the production of the mining machine. In this link, only a certain amount of annual interest will be paid.

According to zhang, a team that invented the game in 2014 invited him to work with them, offering a venue in anhui province. But after the investigation, zhang nan geng vaguely felt that some uncontrollable links, such as mining machine shipping in the past out of their control, whether there is really lost or damaged, are not transparent, but also difficult to stop them to cheat the platform to borrow bitcoin, so declined them.

But the roast cat believed it and consigned a lot of ore machines. After discovering that he had been cheated, the cat mysteriously disappeared. The only record available for inquiry was the purchase of a plane ticket to Thailand, but it is still missing.

It's been five years, but zhang is still in a cold sweat at the mention of the tragedy, "because I was almost cheated." To his regret, the men who had tricked the toasted cat were still at large in the mines.

Burn the midnight oil to get into AI

Escape the zhang nan geng of dangerous scindle, greeted the recovery of mining machine market gradually, holding the market position of the head enterprise. In the six months to June 30, 2019, according to Frost&Sullivan, kanan ranked second among global bitcoin mining designers and manufacturers in terms of computing power sold. Over the same period, according to Frost&Sullivan, kanan sold 21.9% of all bitcoin mining machines sold globally.

In 2016, with the leading edge in ASIC field, zhang nangeng found a new exciting point: with the accumulation of computing power technology of bitcoin mining machine, experience can be copied to the world's most cutting-edge technology -- artificial intelligence field.

Zhang remembers when she decided to get close to AI. < / p > < p > jia nan has just developed a successful 16 nanometer technology mining chip, the party back to the company on the way, a car of people in addition to mining, what can be done next. "There are all kinds of things, and some people suggest not to make a cell phone." Zhang nan geng suddenly thought of using ASIC technology to optimize the calculation of AI.

"People who come from a software background don't know or don't realize that ASIC computing can break Moore's law by many multiples, especially on the side." With this idea of zhang nan geng, began in the current phase of the investment in a part of the AI chip.

A person of jia nan science and technology introduces, in the element that realizes artificial intelligence, algorithm is the one that is paid attention to most commonly, calculate force is ignored all the time however. In algorithms, chip makers AMD and nvidia are at the forefront of deep learning with their graphics chips (gpus). However, after years of accumulation and development, the algorithm has been very mature, force elements become the biggest constraint on artificial intelligence. "Why can't some ai robots walk upright? The root cause is force."

He is betting that at the chip level, bitcoin mining chips have gone from CPU to GPU to ASIC, and ai chips will do the same.
But this time, what jia nan science and technology faces is the opponent with quite formidable lineup. Google, AMD, nvidia and other top players, whether in research and development funding, as well as the accumulation of technology and data, are not to be underestimated.

According to zhang, the AI chip designed by jia nan is mainly suitable for machine vision and machine hearing. Currently, the second generation of the chip is being developed and is expected to reach the production standard in early 2020.

Reflected in the revenue level, zhang nan geng said, now see a lot of market demand, such as access control in such a small scene, can get a year of tens of millions of yuan of revenue, then in the expansion of more application scenarios, "hundreds of millions of revenue without any problem."

At the same time, in terms of improving the computing power at the end and reducing the cost, zhang nan-geng believes that it is more suitable for companies emerging from the block chain mining industry to do it, because the production of mining machines and the scale effect brought by the supply chain can significantly reduce the development cost at the end.

That is the new story kanan wants to tell the capital markets. In its prospectus, kanan labels itself a "semiconductor company" that develops and produces AI chips and a "leading provider of supercomputing solutions".

< / p > < p > zhang nan geng attributed the previous success in the field of mining machinery to accidental and general trend together, "all the success, let's call it a phase success, is because you and the general trend coincide... must find the right direction, this is the first thing."

And now, AI is the new direction of jia nan. In the face of the unknown, he often inspires his team with a quote from Kennedy: "we decided to go to the moon and do something about it this decade, not because they were easy, but because they were hard."

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