After "graduating" from Ant, they flocked to Web3

Two technological revolutions that are highly anticipated in the tech industry are AI and Web3. AI is expected to reshape productivity, while Web3 is anticipated to redefine production relationships.

In the tech world of 2023, there are major news almost every day; it is the year of generative AI and also the year of deep bear market for Web3.

The total financing amount for Web3 in 2023 was only $3.6 billion, a decrease of 78% compared to nearly $16 billion in 2022. In contrast, the funding for the AI sector reached $25 billion in the first half of the year. One of the largest crypto venture capitals, Paradigm, is undergoing a paradigm shift and stated that it will no longer focus solely on the cryptocurrency and Web3 fields, but will begin to expand its focus to AI.

People who once thought "Web3 is the new sexy" now feel that "Web3 is no longer sexy" and have turned to AI.

But it must also be acknowledged that this Web3 deep bear market seems more lively than before. In the bear market, there are still discussions about compliance, ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proof), and Bitcoin ETF. Some people choose to enter the market at this moment.

"When I communicate with colleagues at Ant, I often compare AI and Web3, as their development trajectories are very similar." Jerry Li compares that over the past sixty years, there have been three waves of artificial intelligence, with nearly every wave receiving billions to tens of billions in funding, alternating between peaks and valleys, until OpenAI emerged. "This new large-scale technological revolution requires going through rounds of cycles to truly bring about leapfrog development."

Jerry Li has had several prominent labels: former chief architect of AntChain, former director of R&D at Apple China, and top scorer in the college entrance examination in Shanxi Province. Now he has added another one - a newcomer to Web3.

Of course, strictly speaking, Jerry is not a newcomer to Web3. After graduating from Tsinghua University, Jerry worked in Silicon Valley for over 10 years, and then returned to Shanghai in 2015 to establish Apple's Asia-Pacific R&D center. In 2017, Jerry joined "Ant Blockchain," which had not yet upgraded to "Ant Chain," at the P10 level.

"The industry is still too early, and compared to AI, it has not reached the level of its previous development cycle. Currently, the total market value of the entire cryptocurrency market is still less than half of Apple's market value." Jerry feels that the Web3 cake seems still too small compared to his previous employer.

Of course, compared to AI that is over fifty years old, Web3 seems to still be in its adolescence.

The concept of Web3 was first proposed in 2014, with its predecessors "cryptocurrency" and "blockchain" concepts first released in 2008 through Satoshi Nakamoto's "Bitcoin Whitepaper", which is only 15 years ago.

Rebellious and unstable, the growing pains of Web3 have left "parents" shaking their heads. After the collapse of FTX, which had a market value of $32 billion last November, regulators around the world began to impose strict restrictions on this "troublesome child."

At this juncture, at the end of 2022, Jerry left Ant Chain and officially went all in on Web3, launching the public chain project Artela. He stated that he would not consider doing anything else in the short term. When discussing the reason, Jerry quoted a famous saying from Ant: "Because we believe, we see."

The Artela team has chosen the public blockchain track, which is part of the infrastructure of Web3 and is also known as the "highway" of Web3; without roads, nothing can be transported.

In the public chain track, there are long-established Web3 Genesis projects like Ethereum, which have already built their own moats through the "network effect" of their ecosystem, and there are also several all-star lineup projects that were born with golden keys.

"Although the public chain market has a lot of competition, it is still far from perfect and has a long way to go." Recently, Jerry has been attending meetings worldwide, which is his first step in adapting to his new identity. After running around, he has gained a lot. "After communicating with many projects, our confidence has actually increased."

The biggest difference between Artela and other chains is not the current "involution" of Scalability (performance scalability), but rather Extensibility (functional scalability), and it is compatible with EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), allowing developers to transfer applications with one click.

This is to prepare for the future of Mass Adoption.

Mass Adoption is a term that Web3 enthusiasts often mention. In other contexts, it can be described as the "iPhone moment for the industry" and the "last mile". However, the core issue is quite clear: how can we enable ordinary people to use Web3?

The "Ant Gang" during the internet era is the creator of Mass Adoption. In their context, Mass Adoption is more about building another "Alipay" in Web3.

Of course, it is filled with experience. Artela's CTO Qiu Honglin (nickname: CP) previously provided underlying architecture support for Ant Group's digital collectibles platform Whale Exploration. He stated that Whale Exploration had already achieved over 100 million daily active users through its New Year activity of collecting blessings. "At that time, we had already achieved stable on-chain transactions at the billion level, while Ethereum was only at several million. In a way, it can be said that Ant Chain has truly reached Mass Adoption."

CP was once a team OG of AntChain, having joined the initial form of AntChain in 2015 when it was still a hobby incubation group.

"They say that if someone in Ant Group wants to talk about blockchain, by the time they ask the second person, my name will definitely come up." CP has slightly curly hair and speaks with a hint of a Cantonese accent, always giving off a vibe that feels casual, but upon closer listening, the content of his speech is very professional and detailed. The number of patents for Ant Chain is the highest in the world, and CP holds hundreds of blockchain patents by himself.

Regarding Extensibility, CP gives an example: "In games, besides the front-end player input, there are also back-end tasks, such as map refreshes, time and weather changes, or when a big boss dies, the small monsters next door will also be eliminated together. In blockchain, there are no back-end tasks because all executions must be interacted with by users."

In the future, running Fully On-Chain Games on Artela may become "the Earth still turns without you," where players design the rules and the system runs automatically.

For blockchain, which has some difficulties in playing board games now, achieving smooth interaction requires higher demands on the computing layer. "We want to achieve a hundred times that of EVM." Thanks to the experience accumulated on AntChain, CP added, "In fact, current test data shows that we are already able to approach two orders of magnitude on the computational level."

But they do not want to replace Ethereum; projects on the Ethereum chain can be transferred to Artela with one click. CP "abstract" summarizes the features of Artela: "Simply put, if we liken the EVM to the CPU of the blockchain, we are adding a GPU to the blockchain." In simpler terms, large games can be played on the blockchain in the future.

"In the era of internet finance, Jiebei and Huabei are innovations that have gone from 0 to 1. We, as a group, have experienced the process of transforming a vague concept into a concrete commercial product, and we understand the complexity behind it." CP believes that walking the same path again in the era of public chains presents many challenges, but fortunately, there are experienced references.

Most of the team members at Artela come from Ant Group. "A team of a dozen people works with similar progress as a team of twenty. " Established just a few months ago, Artela has secured $6 million in seed round funding, led by Shima Capital, with participation from A&T Capital, Big Brain Holdings, SevenX Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Amino Capital, and others.

Artela's testnet went live in September, adopting a targeted invitation system for its current ecosystem partners. Defi and Fully On-chain Games may both represent future focus areas. CP stated that Artela does not intend to engage in the typical airdrops and regular combinations associated with public chains, but rather aims to explore innovations with ecosystem applications. They will be diligently developing over the next few months, with a formal public test expected around December.

It can stably achieve hundreds of millions of daily active users. Undoubtedly, AntChain has already reached the ceiling in certain areas of Web3. However, their activity is somewhat vaguely isolated from Web3.

Just as the decentralized nature of Web3 brings about "open source" rather than "patents". Compared to the mainstream public chain technology direction abroad, the non-token blockchain, also known as the consortium chain, which is more suitable for the domestic context, seems to have some "incompatibility". Ant Chain aims to pave a different path for Web3 in China, focusing on open consortium chains and industrial Web3.

As early as 2017, Ant already believed in the future of blockchain. At that time, the industry was not yet mature, but Ant had regarded blockchain as a core strategic focus. "Back then, Ant said it would invest heavily, but in reality, not many people understood it; we were a very small team. After reading a lot of foreign literature and reports, I felt that this technology had a lot of potential, especially in the context of globalization, where it could have financial applications. I think that is particularly valuable."

Jerry, who serves as the Chief Architect, has been studying the white papers of Bitcoin and Ethereum. As his research deepens, he increasingly believes that blockchain is the next stage of "using technology to serve finance."

In the same year, "Big Brother" Jiang Guofei of Ant Chain joined Ant Financial as Vice President and President of the Financial Technology Business Line, overseeing Ant Blockchain. The strategic level of Ant Chain within the group has been continuously elevated. Ant Chain is gaining momentum, with cross-border remittances, supply chain finance, electronic invoices, judicial evidence...... at this moment, applications based on the industrial end are fully blossoming.

In 2018, Alipay Hong Kong launched a blockchain-based cross-border remittance feature, allowing over 180,000 Filipino domestic workers to send their salaries home without having to wait for several days or pay relatively high cross-border fees. Inclusive finance, Ant Group had already achieved successful case solutions early on.

CP also became the internet celebrity engineer of the company for a time. Jack Ma mentioned CP during the Second World Intelligence Congress, along with his widely circulated matchmaking anecdote.

"We have an engineer at Ant Financial who wrote 'Engineer' on his dating profile, as a coder, but no one clicked on his profile and the girls were not interested in him. Later, he changed his profile to 'Blockchain Engineer' and received over two hundred love letters."

In 2020, Ant Blockchain announced a brand upgrade to Ant Chain, with company executives stating that this decision "is no less than the decision to establish Alipay."

However, three years have passed, and Ant Chain, which is deeply engaged in the Web3 industry, has not welcomed a truly "Alipay" level of application.

Taking cross-border remittances as an example, a relevant person in charge from Ant Group told the WSJ. that there are no technical barriers to cross-border remittances, but the support for this technology varies by country based on policies and regulations, making such projects more customized. "At that time, we cooperated with Standard Chartered Bank, which was already our long-term partner."

Even during the Spring Festival, the popular app Whale Explorer, with over 100 million daily active users, faces the problem of unsold collectibles and difficulty in breaking into new markets. Previously, the digital collectibles launched by Whale Explorer were mostly cultural and artistic items, which are hard for young people to find trendy. "But my dad really likes it; this is the only product I've made that he has consistently used." The work content of CP is of great interest to family members, and Whale Explorer may be the most understandable product among them.

"Although Ant Group is very advanced in financial technology, the domestic regulatory framework mainly revolves around consortium chains. This actually removes the essence of blockchain, which is to use digital assets as a representation of value. I believe that in the future, we still need to pursue the path of public chains, but currently, there is no soil for public chains in the domestic market." Jerry is more optimistic about the future of public chains.

The consortium chain that has stripped away the concept of digital assets makes it impossible to talk about rights confirmation incentives. "The consortium chain only assumes data-level responsibilities; to truly reconstruct production relations, I feel we are still far from that stage."

"To truly run a commercialized scenario, there is still a chain"