The Wolf Of All Streets - Bridging Blockchains with Kevin Wang, Nervos Co-Founder

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Just like Scott Melker, Kevin Wang attended the University of Pennsylvania and loved to play video games as a kid. With a desire to explore what was below the digital surface, Kevin learned to code and develop, becoming extremely proficient along the way. Upon discovering blockchain and Bitcoin Kevin Wang co-founded Nervos to solve blockchain interoperability and improve upon the existing proof of stake and proof of work protocols. The way Kevin sees it, blockchain is on a journey of world domination just like the internet once was decades ago. Scott Melker and Kevin Wang further discuss managing a team around the world, the advantages of proof of work, a multi-asset store of value, tokenizing everything, the Nervos vision, the centralization of mining, living in virtual reality, China’s digital Yuan, teaching kids to code, web 3.0, where Bitcoin is headed, Bitcoin’s rising price and network security, Ready Player 1, China’s volatile regulation, blockchain in 5 years and more. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 9.5% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account. --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

This episode is sponsored by Voyager and MyBookie. Stay tuned to hear more about them later in the episode. What is up, everybody? I am Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast. Today's guest is the co-founder of Nervos Network, a company that has taken the best aspects of both Bitcoin and Ethereum's protocols to develop a crypto ecosystem built on a layered blockchain. In other words, Nervos is helping fix all the isolation and disconnectedness in the crypto space. More interesting though is our guest Kevin, who's going to share what it's like to build a crypto community headquartered in China. I'm looking forward to learning more about government regulation in China and how that's

affecting the crypto community. Kevin Wang, thank you so much for coming on the show and taking the time. Hey, how are you, Scott? Good to be here. I'm great, man. Thanks again. So before we get into the questions, once again, you're listening to the Wolf of Wall Street's podcast, where twice a week I talk to your favorite personalities in the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. This show is powered by Blockworks Group, a media company with over 20 podcasts in their network. You can check them out at blockworksgroup.io. And if you like the podcast and you follow me on Twitter, you need to check out my website, join my newsletter, check out my YouTube. You can find all that on the wolf of all streets.io. So now to get into what's more important. I saw that you live in Michigan,

but the company works out of China. Is that accurate? Yeah. Most of our teams are located in China. I mean, most of the folks, the engineering, the R&D team is located in Hangzhou, China. So what is it like to work from the United States when your company is in China? Do you ever sleep? It just means you have meetings from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and sleep in the morning. Wow. I mean, it seems nearly impossible. So what other challenges come from, you know, being geographically separated? I think there are, there are many, our team, even, you know, the, the majority of the R&D team is in China, but we also have members in Europe, Japan, Australia, obviously the, you know, U S West coast and East coast.

So it's really worldwide team and it's really, really difficult to schedule meetings. That's for one. So, you know, we try to do a lot of things, you know, synchronously, not in meetings. A lot of things should be written down um yeah and obviously um there is the you missed the uh you know go to lunch together and yeah you know the water cooler talks and everybody's missing that now though yeah 2020 is the year that the water cooler died i think for most companies. So let's talk about exactly what you guys are doing because it's so interesting and so important. I mean,

everybody obviously knows there's Bitcoin, there's Ethereum, there's all these other changing coins, but it's complex to get them to actually talk to one another or work together or to find interoperability. So I know that's what you guys are focusing on. So can you give us sort of the just umbrella of exactly what you're doing and why it's so important? Yeah. So happy to give an introduction on Nervous Network first. So I think you said it very well, right?

So we take the best from Bitcoin and Ethereum in the way that, you know, we're POW-based, public blockchain, which is, you know, same as Bitcoin. And we are also, you know, ledger structure-wise, it's very much inspired by Bitcoin, which means we use something called the UTXO model, you know, transaction, unspent transaction outputs, and which is very different from Ethereum's account model. So if you take Bitcoin and... So when Ethereum came out, it added two things to Bitcoin, basically. One is scriptability. You can now run any programs, not just tracking

money and accounts and who has how many coins. The other thing that Ethereum does is it moves away from the UTXO model of Bitcoin and make it an account model.

Data structure is different. What we do is we also support scriptability, but we want to keep the Nakamoto consensus and also the UTX model, which is, again, very inspired by Bitcoin. If you think

about from Bitcoin and you want to support multiple type applications, one attempt is to generalize the Bitcoin protocol itself, right? And which is if you from the old days, which is what color coins try to do, which is what master coin try to do in the early days. But none of them really took off. So we took another attempt to generalize the Bitcoin protocol while keep the most part of Bitcoin, right?

Instead of, you know, Ethereum smart contract model. So Ethereum, it's like coming from Bitcoin, Ethereum, you know, you turn right. And then for Nervos, you turn left. Both ways are, you know, you can implement this rich this rich functionality and sort of Turing complete scripting. So, I mean, why do we do this? So it has many benefits. One benefit is, what we really want to preserve is this economic model of Bitcoin, and then

which enabled Bitcoin to be a store of value. So if you think about this, the reason that Bitcoin is secure, one reason it can be store of value is that the network can provision more defense or security as the price of the asset rises. So if Bitcoin goes up, and Bitcoin hasn't been going up recently, obviously, but if Bitcoin price doubles, then the miners' income, because miners get fixed amount of Bitcoin per block, right? So miners' income automatically doubles, which means more miners will come and then try to make a profit and contribute to the network security. And this is automatic provision up and down proportionally with the price.

And for Ethereum, that's not the case because Ethereum, you can have many assets, right? So if miners' income increases only when ETH value increases, but ETH has very little relationship with, not direct relationship with the assets that Ethereum network carries. So minor income does not automatically provision up and down with the assets,

with a total aggregate assets on the network. So yeah, so we try to do economic model that can represent that relationship just like Bitcoin does. And we also are committed to POW. So we want to be, you know, think about Bitcoin store value. So we want to be store of non-monetary value, right? Not just monetary value like Bitcoin is, but store of, you know, all type of assets.

So we envision in the future that Nervos Common Knowledge Base, that's the name of our public blockchain, can be used for people to sort of park and store the most valuable assets. And obviously we create scriptability so you can do DeFi, you can do Dapp development, just like you can do on Ethereum, but also be able to interop with all other blockchains. It's very interesting that you're so committed to the Bitcoin model, which I respect and appreciate, and that you're with proof of work, because it seems like almost everything these days is kind of hot to build on proof of stake and to build on ethereum and everything is defy but you just touched on something really important which is that it's possible to do defy with proof of work and with the bitcoin model correct yeah it is uh and you know you can argue that uh proof of work actually has some big challenges when it comes to DeFi, for example, right? Because for proof of work, proof of work itself,

you can think of like a giant DeFi application because you deposit your, let's say you eat and you want to get some yield, right? And then that's sort of, it's like a money market. You park your money there and try to get some yield. But this yield is for the most part, and you can delegate to other operators, it's mostly risk-free. And then this will create an interesting dynamic where DeFi applications running on these, you know,

networks will have to be able to compete with this risk-free yield return. And then for the, for the stakers of proof of stake, for the native token, then if there are more yield opportunities on the network, then people will unstake and then try to participate in DeFi, which will reduce the network security. So there's that interesting dynamic there. And there's a lot of, you know, papers and research

that's been done in this area. But again, we just haven't seen a proof-of-stake network that has significant traction, that's been running for a significant amount of time to know that, you know, all the issues, potential issues and all the challenges with it. Yeah, so, you know, we the issues, potential issues and all the challenges with it. Yeah. So, you know, we chose Proof of Work because it's proven and it's proven with Bitcoin for more than 10 years. That makes a ton of sense. It's really interesting. So you're,

you find in this community that there's the Bitcoin maximalists and the Ethereum maximalists, and often they can't find a way to come together. In fact, not only can they not talk, they're just like enemies, right? I mean, they go at each other's throats and it's crazy, but you're finding a way to basically build something for both communities. Well, what is it like to be sort of in the middle of that toxic relationship? Yeah, I think it's good. I mean, we're, you mean, you talk to different people, right? You talk to different audiences. Because when we talk about proof of work, when we talk about Bitcoin-like consensus and security,

then a lot of Bitcoin folks will be nodding. And then when we talk to developers about the ability to build apps, then it's more closer to Ethereum to draw the parallelism. So yeah, so it really depends on different audiences and then they would appreciate different features about NEROs. What about all the other protocols? I mean, is there a world where every single blockchain talks to one another and everything is interoperable and, you know, they can all work together. Or is it really that at some point,

you know, one network or a few networks are going to shine and everything else is going to somewhat disappear into the, into the ether. Yeah, I think, I definitely think there will be multiple blockchains interoperable into the future. And there are several, there are several reasons for this, right? So the first one is that the blockchains are all, you know, prioritized for different features.

And then, you know, because they use different VMs, different virtual machines, they use different programming models and so on and so forth. So naturally you will see that a special use case would want to build the blockchain that's sort of tailored to them. And I've already seen this, for example, NFT as a major use case,

there are blockchains that's built just for that. And then you have sort of these more one chain applications or one application chains, which is really the developers want to tailor the blockchain in a way that's specifically fit for their applications, not even just use case for their application. So I think they will be there and they will be here to stay. And plus, you also have these sort of more permission blockchains for regulatory reasons, and even private blockchains, you know, for, let's say, Starbucks will launch a blockchain, right, to cater for your use cases. So you have these permit, both permissions for regulatory

reasons, and also private blockchains that also be there. So to be able to talk to all these different blockchains, I think the paradigm is more like the internet. So the internet means the internet network. So there are many, many networks. The internet is just this infrastructure to link everything together. I think that's probably what will happen in the future as well. So there are going to be multiple public blockchains and then, you know, each enabling special use cases.

And there are also sort of local blockchains as well and private blockchains. And then they're all going to be interoperable to enable the user experience. That makes sense. So something you touched on earlier that I want to go back because it was so interesting. You said that you want to, as a store of value, more than just monetary value. And I think you touched on the term, a multi-asset store of value. So what other stores of value are there beyond monetary store of value? Because I think everybody, we get very caught up in the

digital gold narrative and, you know, this is where we're going to park our money. So what other value is there that you can store with proof of work? Yeah, I mean, if you think about, again, if you think about the real world analogy, right? So your gold is basically, it's alternative currency, right?

So it's a monetary asset. The reason you want to park there is because you want to hedge against maybe currency inflation and things like that. Now, there are other types of assets, right? So for example, your stock certificate, your deed for your land and your house, real estate. And then there are, you know, any other financial instruments, maybe you have a debt, right? And then you can, you'll be able to earn some yield. You lend them out and so on and so forth. So for all of these, I mean, we can call them just financial assets. So for all of these, they're also, they also could be very valuable, right?

And you want to be able to have a place to store them. And again, this is sort of the real world analogy, but for blockchains, everything's tokenized. So you're right for real estate or a piece of debt and so on, they can all be represented by tokens. So when we talk about non-monetary value or multiple set of assets, we really talk about store of the value of the tokens. So we tokenize everything basically down the road. I mean, that's the idea here is that the blockchain

is a better, is a better mousetrap for almost everything that we do. So inevitably we tokenize it all and Nervos can handle that. Yeah. Yeah. I think tokenization is going to be huge. And it just, it has many advantages that, you know, the traditional market that won't, won't provide. That makes so much sense. I've had a lot of people on who are obviously big in the NFT space, which you touched on. And I certainly think that, and not even talking about the art, which is obviously what sort of we have this huge excitement

and potentially bubble, I guess, in the space on that side. But when you talk about your house deed, you know, the things you just mentioned, it just makes a whole lot more sense to be able to transfer that directly with a single tokenized deed, as opposed to going through all these centralized authorities to, you know, confirm who owns something and who doesn't and make sure that you don't have sort of a double spend with two people claiming ownership. It's very clear if you tokenize it, correct? Yeah. I think that's definitely sort of the real financial assets in the real world. But there's also, I want to mention that there's something else that's emerging as well. Blockchain tech in general, it's very good for all the digital assets, right? So, you know, in the future, as we go into, like as our next generation spend more time in virtual reality, and then we're going to have more like virtual assets in there,

then, I mean, you can argue that. I mean, who knows, right? In the future, it could be more valuable than a lot of the real world assets because whenever you spend time, that's whatever you see value is. Yeah, I mean, it could be tremendously valuable. world assets because whenever you spend time, that's whenever you see value is, um, yeah, I mean, you could tremendously value, but I miss just, I don't know if you have seen, um, uh, the, the movie red, uh, ready player one. I was going to just ask you. So we live in ready player one, right? We're going to be living in ready player one. I mean, it's, I mean, I don't think it's far stretch, right. To, to imagine that a war like this, I mean, we're just going that into that direction a hundred miles per hour.

So, yeah. So then just, you know, imagine you spent like 15 years and just, you know, getting all the, all the, all the stuff in, in the game. I mean, they could be a tremendous amount of value. Yeah. I, I, for the first first time i really dug into one of those recently uh it's called terra virtua terra virtua i don't know if you're uh for now but like and i was like you know in the digital art galleries and building to building it's i mean it's crazy so like it's we're obviously at the very beginning of it but when you think about what that could look like

in the future that it could look exactly like our existing reality i mean look at video at video games now, like some of them look so real, you can't even tell that it's a video game. So if you could walk around in that existence and ignore your normal life, there's a lot of people who are going to choose that, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, I mean, the video game industry has a bigger market than the movie industry. I think most people don't realize how big it is because again, it's mostly, you know, dominated by younger folks and, you know, spending the time and they tend to stay in their own community and so on,

but it's a huge market and it's growing really, really fast. I mean, there are gamers on YouTube who make more money than the biggest Hollywood stars by just playing video games with people watching them. Right. So that is a more profitable form of entertainment than the biggest Hollywood blockbusters for the biggest actors in Hollywood. Absolutely. Yeah. You got it.

It's so crazy when you think about it that way and you just see those tip jars just ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. I mean, people absolutely love it. So I think that, yeah so i think that yeah i think that that's a very what what maybe used to seem like a far-fetched future has become almost a foregone conclusion like that is just where we're happening yeah so and so what you're building is equipped to basically store all of that value yeah i, that's right. Because the fundamental, I mean, people are free to check our economic model, but the fundamentally what you need is a native token of the blockchain that can capture all the value of the crypto assets on the blockchain. And then that's it

right there. Right. So for most, just for any other blockchains, the native token is, you know, is viewed as money, as viewed as, you know, the way to pay transactions and so on and so forth. But it has no relationship with the value of the assets running on the blockchain. And we're the only one that built economic model to have the native value, can capture the value of the tokens on the blockchain. So the more in demand, the more expensive, you know, higher value of these assets are, then they automatically drive up the price for the native token. And we think that's very, very important. Again, going to the Bitcoin example, right? So the more expensive all these assets are, you need more defense. You need more like military to defense these assets. You know, sometimes we use the analogy of like, think

about like you have a small city, right? So how do you build a city? So people are willing to put their valuables in the city, right? So you can say this city, the store value city, how do you do that? Well, you have to make sure that if the market value for the stuff that's storing the city increases, the city can automatically increase the military spend. That relationship has to be there. So how do you do that? Right? So basically if you look at just about any other blockchain, they use sales tax. Again, we're going to make analogies here, right? They use sales tax to pay for military spending to pay for budget. Yes.

There you go. Yeah. Transactions, right? Transaction. That's basically a sales tax. When you transact, you pay a little bit of fees, right? But with Nervos, the equivalent is we use property tax to pay for military spend. And then the land price, it's sensitive enough that either it's more demand to store things here, then the land price will go up.

And the land is exactly the native token. So you can think about our native token as a representation for the space. For a blockchain, you have limited space you can store stuff in. And then a unit of space is our native token. So the more demand people want to store things here, then they will drive up the land price.

And then we use land tax or property tax to pay for military spending therefore you know the more demand it is then the land will be worth more and then the miners will be able to increase security because they're paid by like unit of land so to speak so interesting that's a great analogy i think you really just uh simplified it well um you know the higher sort of uh top concepts that maybe would be hard for someone to understand that that's very easy to understand for anyone. Property value goes up, property taxes go up, you know, you get more services. That's it.

Right. I mean, that's how that's how a city ideally is supposed to work. They never do because they waste all of your money on stupid things. But that is theoretically how it's supposed to work. And that makes more sense now why you're so focused on proof of work and sort of replicating the Bitcoin model, because you can make any argument you want about any other chain. But the one thing it always comes back to for Bitcoin is security. Right. Absolutely. There's no there's no comparison there's no parallel um there's security

there's also this um you know bitcoin is uh i think what people don't a lot of people don't value enough is open participation or censorship resistance right so they go they go hand in hand uh as a bitcoin or pow blockchain you can show up with a mining machine and you can participate in the consensus process. Nobody can censor you. Nobody can prevent you from joining the network to be a validator. But you can't say that about proof of stake blockchains. Again, people can argue, yeah, you can just buy tokens on the exchange.

So the first thing is that if the existing token holders don't sell, then you can't, you will not be able to acquire enough amount of tokens. So that's one, but I think the more subtle, even the more sort of, sort of thing about this is you're joining the network to be a validator in the POS network, it's a transaction, right? So in other words, if you want to join the existing, you know, consensus process, you want to join the console, right? That controls the network. The existing console has to agree because you're joining the console itself. It's a transaction, which means it can be censored, right? So the existing, you know, power, you know, power structure can say, you know, it's just going to be us. Nobody else can be part of the process. And then they just censor every transaction that want to

join to become new validators. And that's, that's, that's not just a possibility. I mean, that's in their best interest. Absolutely. Yeah. So when you talk about military spending as the corollary, when miners make more money, what are they actually doing to add security to the network and to better protect assets? Yeah. I mean, the POW network is easy, right? It's a hash rate. So, you know, when token price goes up, they make more money and then, you know, the profit market increases and, you know, they will want to get more. Their cost structure and their electricity costs stay the same.

So more people will come in competition and try to get, in the example of Bitcoin, to get Bitcoin. Which inherently increases security. Yeah, which means more mining machines are going to be running protected networks. Ah, makes sense. So what do you say,

what do you say to people who say that Bitcoin mining is centralized? Well, uh, Bitcoin mining is, uh, again, it's, it's, it's a game of capital, right? It's game of resources. So it's centralized. Okay. I'll, I'll, I'll talk to you about, you know, this, this is a traditional point. The central, the different points are first of all, mining pools, right? So in Bitcoin, there are somewhere around, maybe I haven't checked. My imagination would be somewhere like a 10 larger mining pools. Yeah. I think I've heard that like six or seven really control the majority of

the hash rate by this amount. So that's, that's, that's one point of centralization. And then the other point is the sort of the mining machine manufacturing, right. Um, the, the,

the, the miners, right. Uh, equipments. And then you have, uh, you know,

people with access to just cheap electricity, electricity resources. So you can say those are, um, you know, potential centralization points. But my argument around this is it's very difficult to say, the kind of argument from centralization is equality, right? But I think that's not a game that crypto is trying to solve. Open participation is.

So even you see the centralization point, my argument is that with the proof of work, with the shift of technology, these power structures will change over time. Whoever, like for example, mining pools, mining pools, core competitiveness of mining pool is access to fast bandwidth broadband. For mining machine manufacturing, obviously that's the hardware and the chip manufacturing capabilities, but all of these will change over time

and electricity as well. So with the technology changes, we're gonna have waves of different players in the game. But with the proof of stake, it's always the amount of tokens. It could be that once a small group of

people monopolizing the network, it's very difficult to break out of it. It's almost impossible to break out of it. It's almost impossible to break out of it. Because they don't need continuous investment to maintain their monopoly. Whereas proof of work, you always need continuous investment. Right, you have to always be evolving and always be improving. And right, proof of stake, they just say, this is our network, sorry.

Yeah, yeah. Right, go ahead. So basically the argument is that even if it's centralized to a few huge pools, there's still always competition. They're always forced to evolve and improve because anyone can come in and challenge it. And inherently, you know, the technology is accessible to everyone if they get paid for it. And as electricity gets cheaper and solar becomes a thing. And, you know,

we've seen electronic grids selling their extra energy back to make up for some of it and things like that. So all of this is evolving towards more competition and not less, which is the opposite of a proof of stake. It's always evolving, right? Whatever is evolving, then dynamics will change and the power structure will change. And that's good. That's always evolving, right? Whatever is evolving, then dynamics will change. The power structure will change. And that's good. That's good for the network. That's cool. So I want to dig more deeply into your operations in China. I've only been in crypto since late 2016,

but in that time, the four years, I've probably heard that China has banned crypto, embraced crypto, owns their own crypto, you know, every single narrative you could possibly imagine from a government. So what is it really like building in China in a space that from the outside looks like you're at risk all the time of some crazy regulation or ban. Yeah. I mean, so a nervous network, I mean, we have an engineering team in China, but nervous network itself is a sort of offshore entity. Right. Yeah. So, you know, the government right now is very pro-blockchain technology uh but not not sort of

cryptocurrency and uh obviously there's you know capital flight and other issues that um uh you know the financial current financial structure um so it's very cautious that way uh which is i mean if you look at you know the stand that's taken by other sort of first world countries, and it's, it's mostly the same, right? So it's mostly the smaller countries that are very much pro cryptocurrencies. So they're very cautious. But, you know, the way we look at it is it's, it's a journey, right? So just like how internet evolved in the past, it started with local networks. It started with networks that's within university

that would increase productivity like internet. But inevitably, those will connect. And then the power of a public network will then emerge into the future. So right now, you know, the government is very much supporting blockchain tech in general, and it's a lot of permission networks that's coming up. And then our team also has very deep roots in this area. So we have a lot of partnership that's sort of in the permissioned area.

We also, before Nervos, we built a leading solution in the permissioned blockchain space in China. So yeah, but you know, as you, but as these solutions are built up and there is more and more need to interrupt and there is more and more need to interrupt without trustlessly basically. Right. So when you have, you know, when you have many of these, these local blockchain networks, the way, I mean, if you want to connect them like peer to peer, then it's going to be almost impossible. It's going to explode, right?

It's in square basically. And then, you know, gradually people are gonna find like a common trustless party uh that they can all trust and rely on uh so that's for interoperability and then you know that's where we want to we want to build so yes we want to support the buildup of these blockchains as well and then but we want to build the technology that we can seamlessly interrupt with them so as the needs you, it's more and more this increase. And then we're going to be this facilitator of all these blockchains. Sick of paying ridiculous fees to trade crypto?

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Yes, you heard that correctly, 9.5% interest. And there are no limits or lockups, so your funds always stay liquid. Find out why so many people are making the switch to Voyager. Visit investvoyager.com or search for Voyager in the iTunes or Google Play store and get $25 in free Bitcoin when you use the promo code SCOTT25. That's S-C-O-T-T-2-5. That makes perfect sense. So it's interesting. I mean, in China, obviously, we're seeing the digital yuan. They're ahead of the game. They're clearly ahead in understanding the power of blockchain. But like you said, a lot of those, I mean, if it's a closed blockchain

network, they almost serve the opposite purpose for an individual or for a citizen or for a person than Bitcoin does, right? Because it's more control, easier access to your information, less privacy, right? I mean, so it's kind of like blockchain can be used for good or blockchain can be used for bad. And for a government or a central bank digital currency, it's actually a very powerful tool for a central bank or government to make sure that they know exactly what their citizens are doing yeah yeah i mean it's always the case right so whenever a new technology comes and then there's always two forces like you said so one force is the current power structure is trying to utilize the technology to for their own goals and then mostly to maintain the current power structure right so this is more like for productivity.

So you see like in blockchain, you have, you always have like these banks and then, you know, big companies try to utilize the blockchain to say, oh, this is great. This is a great technology. Let's just use the technology to increase the productivity to make, to keep doing what we're doing, but make it cheaper, make it better, make it a bigger market. JP Morgan coin, right? Yeah. Yeah. You have it. So you always have that side and then you have the other side, which is like the more typically more grassroots and technologist driven and

community driven and so on. And that's organic growth. And then it tends to grow something that entirely shifts the paradigm of technology, right? Okay, internet is the best example that we can have. So I think for blockchain, it's the same as well. So in a company, yeah, so in a country like China, then it's very likely, or United States as well, that they would embrace the technology

because it's so important, but they could still be very anti-Bitcoin in theory. I don't think that they are, but, but, you know. Yeah. Anything, I mean, look, anything that changes the current power structure, the, the, the, the people that benefit from it will not like it. And it's, it's, it's always going to be like that. So they're going to put a lot of investment in the industry for the technology, which is good for us, which is good because what that will do is to increase

the visibility of the tech, of the industry, and train just tremendous amount of developers that are familiar with the tech and be able to build more interesting things. So it'll increase how many people are building on it and are knowledgeable. And then, I mean, you could also make the argument that it will expose it to your average person

who would then want to become a programmer or be a part of it. Or even that we have these basic barriers to entry for an average person to use Bitcoin. They're scared of opening a wallet there. They don't want to custody it. They don't understand it. They see these like, you know, seed phrases and these long addresses and they just don't want to touch it.

But yeah, if blockchain becomes inevitable and becomes a part of everything, people are going to be forced to become comfortable with those things. Right. Yeah, absolutely. So what do you make of central bank digital currencies then and how do they affect what you're doing? I mean, obviously they're not changing your plans, but do you think that they will be a positive

or a negative for the space as we see it now? Yeah, I think any step towards a more digital side of it and move the industry forward and have more people using the technology is a positive step for the industry.

So at this point, we need education campaigns to talk about what digital currency is to have the infrastructure, like everybody should have a digital about what digital currency is, um, to, uh, you know, have the infrastructure, like everybody should have a digital wallet, digital currency wallets. So they know how to spend and, you know, that, um, so I think all those are going to be moving towards that direction. And then, uh, at some point people will realize, okay, who, you know who controls my my my assets right who is in custody of my money

um i've known i've i've known well and you know i know the technology i know how to how to go around and you know keep some digital cash now which one should i keep right so that's the evolution of of uh of this story i think yeah i agree 100 i think at first it's a threat but then people become comfortable with transacting digitally and having a wallet and they realize there's a better alternative and they inevitably go towards that um so china is ahead they understand the power of blockchain maybe the united states is doing it and just not telling us, but it seems like as far as blockchain, you've got like a sunny Island over there and we're over here on the top of Mount Everest freezing our asses off. So do you think that the United States is

way behind and that it's going to be problematic for us? I think, yeah, I think so. Unfortunately, yeah. It's just, you know, in the past several years, the, the center of innovation, the center of, uh, adoption is really not in the U S. Um, so, uh, I mean, I, I still hope our Congress can recognize it. And then with a new one administration, I, you know, I, maybe things will change, but we'll see. Why is the United States so far behind? Is it a fear or is it just too big and too slow? Are they dismisses of the technology? Because it seems like anyone with a brain would assume that,

hey, I don't know how my cell phone works, but I use my cell phone. I don't know how the internet works, but I use the internet. I don't really know how the blockchain works, but it's going to be running everything right so well why don't they get that again the u.s is the major beneficiary of the current public structure right the current financial system the u.s it's in the middle it's in the center of it um you know to um political size the you know the financial system for certain reasons, for geopolitics, for any of the reasons. The U.S. has the absolute power to do so.

So I don't think it's in the U.S.'s interest to push for a brand new power structure, a new financial system. Yeah, so that's... So they're not stupid. They just don't want to see it happen, obviously. So they're dragging their feet purposefully. Yeah, unless there's going to be a path that they can use the technology for their own dominance.

But you would think that a digital dollar would be that? I think so. And that's exactly with the Facebook Libra fiasco and all the back and forth and all that. So now I think Libra will probably launch pretty soon with basic digital dollar, digital IDS dollar instead of basket of currencies. And that's the main hurdle. And you wonder why that is, right? So with digital dollar, you're basically, you know, publicizing, you're pushing dollar everywhere in the world and that's to the benefit of

the U S yeah. So. Right. And I mean, they even went as far as to rebrand it, right. It's no longer libra it's dm or something and they basically have like uh they've had the advertising agencies and prs hard at work removing the facebook name from everything to make it seem like it's more of a collaborative effort but it's still libra but so now like you said it's literally just a stable coin it's just another stable coin it's a stable coin packed to us dollar said, it's literally just a stable coin. It's just another stable coin. It's a stable coin packed to US dollar, right? It's not independent stable coin.

It's not a basket of currencies. You know, again, this is, and that wouldn't have any problem with the regulations in the US. No, but I mean, but it's also, there's nothing new and innovative now, right? They made this big deal about changing the world with Libra and this currency. And, you know, obviously you would transact on Facebook with billions of people and it would

be easier and less friction. And now we just sort of have tether. Yeah. It's a Facebook endorsed, um, us, us dollars. Um, I think the impact it's more going to be, I mean, the impact has never been technology, right? The impact is going to be the distribution. So we'll see how many people will jump on this when it's ready. But again, I think anything that I can increase adoption of technology, it's good. And people in the end, you know,

things will happen. And then, you know, if centralized entities are really not that good, as we say, there could be issues, then people will see. And then there's going to be choice. So it's good for the industry, I think. We just need more people to recognize the potential of the technology. Right. Well, I mean, we're at a point in history right now

where it'd be hard not to recognize it right i mean 2020 has obviously had its challenges but the the silver lining obviously is that bitcoin has emerged sort of as a shining star seeing corporations and billionaires and the store of value narrative which by the way it's hilarious because in march like everybody was saying store of narrative uh you know, that, that was dead. The store of value narrative went down with everything else. And then obviously sort of Phoenix from the ashes. But do you think that we'll continue now that we've established this huge

bull run? We're seeing the Michael Saylors and the micro strategies and Paul Tudor Jones, everyone, right. They're all Elon Musk and Michael Saylor on Twitter talking about Bitcoin, right? With memes. Do you think that like we're more firmly established now that Bitcoin is more firmly established as an asset and that we should now really have that narrative in place?

Yeah, I think Bitcoin, you know, every time Bitcoin goes down and up, you know, a different, another major run, Bitcoin is just that much more likely to stay forever. And that's, you know, that's the power of the Bitcoin network. It's simple. It's easy to understand. And it has a great narrative. You know, it's simple it's it's it's easy to understand um and it has a great narrative uh you know it's the first block it's first cryptocurrency and um yeah i mean i think it's just more and more likely that bitcoin will be with us forever i love it i, you had to wonder in March earlier this year when we saw it drop so aggressively in the, you know, in that moment that everyone expected it, if you were a Bitcoin maximalist to shine, there was that time. I mean, were you scared there for a little while?

Did you, was your belief shaken at all? I mean, that's probably, I don't know how many times this has played for me. I think you've been around for a don't know how many times this has played. You've been around for a long time. You've been around for a long time. And this is hardly the first time. I mean, I really can't remember. Every time it feels like this. I mean, this time, really, it's like one or two years that Bitcoin has been down. But yeah, I mean, in the last several cycles, I mean,

Bitcoin could be in the ditch for three years. Sure. And, um, yeah, but, but it will bounce back. Um, so that would imply that we're kind of just at the beginning of this, right? I mean, we've been, it's, it's been winter since 2000, late 2017, effectively, I mean, mean and and through earlier in 2020 so i mean if you even look at the cycles it seems like we're still to use the meme statement from the community we're very early right we're still very early yeah i think i mean this is like my when i first joined the industry obviously i, I really started with Bitcoin, that I only saw two possibilities of Bitcoin, right?

One is that it's going to go to zero, and then the other possibility, it's going to be really, really valuable, right? I don't know how valuable it is, but I think it's going to be one of the two. And like I said, I mean, the longer time Bitcoin stays above zero, then the longer time it goes,

it's possible that it will go to the other direction. Right. So what, I never even asked, what got you into Bitcoin in the first place? I know you have a long history as a coder and I mean, you had a platform before that's really incredible. And that could probably, honestly, we could have probably a whole other podcast talking about, you know, your launch school and teaching people to code and make more than a college at you know

college graduate uh without going to college but you it's safe to say that you probably were pretty early certainly on the coding side but when did you get into bitcoin and realize that this is where you wanted to spend your time and energy? I think it was pretty early. I think it's 20, well, for me, right? So going through the financial crisis last time, like 2009, 2010, really started to, it got me started to be interested in like economics and finance and, you know, a lot of stuff of why things were happening. And also trained as an engineer, so I have an intrinsic curiosity in new ways of distributed tech. So when Bitcoin came around, it's really this joining force of these two, uh, two directions. Um, and then, uh,

I think it was very obvious what they wanted to do. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think for me that was just, you know, it was when I found Bitcoin, it was very much, uh, uh, you know, people say call the buck, right. So it's kind of like that. Um, yeah. So, um, but you know, we started building nervous network, uh, quite a few years later, uh, in early 2018. And this is, you know, where we find where I found that, you know, I no longer want it just to be a, um, uh, sort of enthusiast or I wanted to be, uh, like a builder of this space as well. So that's already 2018.

Yeah. I want to touch on it. So I talked about, I just mentioned launch school and I find it so interesting. So you basically, I mean, maybe you should give, give the background of it, but I did read that, you know, your graduates, I guess, are the people who went through the course were making an average of $110,000 a year coming out. So I think it sort of touches on the idea that college is clearly sort of dying and there's a better way, right? Certainly in 2020, when people are paying Harvard

rates to sit at home and watch classes on their computer. Yeah. I think, you know, college definitely has their places, right? I think for, if you want to be a doctor, a lawyer. Yeah. I mean, also for kids that don't know

what they want to do and for a lot of high school graduates, they probably don't have a clear picture of what they want to become. So college, this,

you know, it's a great place that you can, it's expensive, but it's a place that you can go and find your next. I understand.

I mean, that's, I went to the University of Pennsylvania, you know, it's a Ivy league school, insanely expensive. And I went, is that where you can? Yeah. Oh, wow. Hey, nice. I graduated in 99. Go Quakers. But I went there to find myself and that was probably the most expensive place on earth to go find myself. Right. Exactly. It's because everybody, everybody else went there as well. So that's the natural choice. But I think like for long school, for example,

we started and then, you know, for people that know what they want to become, they know they want to become a professional software engineer. There's definitely a much, much more efficient path to get there. And because, you know, that industry is very much meritocracy.

I mean, if you can produce, you know, working products and then it's not so difficult to judge where your level is, um, uh, for, uh, for a peer. Um, so once you have that, I mean, it's much easier that you can just level up to that, to that level instead of, you know, spending four years in college. Right. And like I said, I mean, if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or head directly to wall street, that Penn degree is more, I mean, it doesn't even matter what you learned, right. As long as you have the diploma and you didn't fail. Um, but that doesn't mean that you actually learned the requisite skills as well as you could have for, for, you know, what you inevitably want to do. It's funny. You know, I talked to blockchain companies all the

time. We talked about getting people jobs. Nobody asked where he went to college in this industry, right? They just, do you have other ways to prove your skills? Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the key, right? So, you know, when diploma is no longer just a proxy of your values and your skills for a lot of industry. I mean, there's no other way to, there's no easy way to do that, but for, uh, software engineering, it's very simple. Um, you know, just, Hey, you know, build this project in three days and come back to me and we'll see what you can build. Um, and then we'll have a conversation. I can pretty much gauge where you are.

So what age should we be teaching our kids to code? So what age should we be teaching our kids to code? I mean, yeah, I think, I mean, I, I'm maybe a little bit controversial here. I, I think kids should start with playing. I agree. I just, you know, playing computer games, I think it's great to getting into, you know, liking computers and then, I mean, that's how I got started, right? So I started playing video games, computer games,

and then I think about, okay, how can I cheat? And then you started to learn all about just, oh, I need to use this, how about memory management? How do you peek into, you know, the loading of the game and then things like that. And then I think about how do I program my own games? And that sort of drove me to start programming. And it was a very early days and the games are very simple, but it was fun.

I really enjoyed it. And, you know, it taught me a lot about programming in general. So, yeah. I love the games, but I never got into the programming part. I don't know what year you know you were born but i started my first gaming was on a commodore 64 oh yeah i think i'm maybe a few years after you i'm 44 years old so yeah i'm a few years after you i started with apple yeah but then yeah then eventually we got like the macintosh you know at the small screen

and but uh yeah i mean i was playing computer games from when I was a little kid. I agree with you. I mean, now, of course they say screen time is terrible for your children and we're going to destroy their brains, but I guess there's a trade off there. Interactive. It's better than just one way reception of TV. Yeah. So that's, so that that's so interesting, but let's assume that our kids start with

play. I mean, at what age is it reasonable for a child to really start coding so that, you know, by the time they're of college age, they could theoretically, you know, high elementary school age. And that's, you know, when there are more than enough to, but even then I think, you know, programming at that age is probably still felt like play. Right. So you don't teach them sort of the workhorse through the industry languages and let them play coding that. I mean, that would be kind of boring. You just make it a game. Yeah. Just make it a game. Right. So it's, you know, it's the same sort of logic and problem solving, but then, you know,

the environment is more like exploration and expression and game and play. So that will get them interested. And then, you know, again, it doesn't have to be like a very math focused or a beauty website. Yeah, you doesn't have to be like a very math focused and, um, or a beauty website. Yeah. You don't need to stand over them with the ruler, slapping them on the knuckles every time they go something wrong. Yeah. Um, I find it very hard not to do that with my daughter when she's practicing piano, but then when I just leave her and let her go for like an hour, she just has fun

and whatever. And I'm standing over here yelling at the getting it out wrong so i probably could learn something um so the the coming years obviously crypto moves at the speed of light so like a year in this industry is 10 years in any other industry but like what does nervos look like in a year five years 10 years what are what are the you know the biggest plans and what you see coming yeah so uh so last year you know we spent uh plans and what you see coming? Yeah. So, so last year, you know, we spent, we spent a lot of time building up the infrastructure. So now, you know, next year, I think it's going to be the perfect option for Nervos, where you should be able to see more applications launching on Nervos. Then, you know, we're going to build more sort of solutions for specific use

cases where it's not just the technology, but it's going to build more sort of solutions for specific use cases where it's not just the technology, but it's going to be a, you know, multiple pieces all fit together to enable certain, you know, features. And, you know, we're already seeing, you know, tremendous demand for this and then tremendous interest for developers want to build unique applications. I think that's the other thing that we want to enable is to be able to build unique applications,

things that you cannot build anywhere else on Nervos. And then we talked about inoperability before in this podcast. I think any application built on Nervos blockchain is basically multi-chain apps. So you'll be able to access multiple blockchains, right? So you build a DeFi app. Let's say you build an ICO, right? You do ICO on Ethereum.

You can only use ETH and tokens to invest in ICOs. But here you can use any assets. You can use Bitcoin, ETH. You can use Polkadot you know adam all other cryptocurrencies for those for those applications um i think those are going to be important so it's like uh the movie field of dreams if you build it they will come right from our childhood so you but you focused more on product in the past and making sure that the blockchain was up to snuff and now it's time for adoption. Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, the next year it's

going to be basically adoption. And what kind of apps are you looking for to be sort of the first and biggest, you know, built and that are likely to be adopted? Yeah. So we talk about, you know, built and that are likely to be adopted. Yeah. So we talk about, you know, cross-chain apps, which I think will fill a void. You know, currently this type of apps, you can only see in centralized exchanges. So basically, you know, you logged in centralized exchange and then you have access to all the currencies and then you can do like lending and then, you know,

all that in centralized exchanges. But, um, for on the decentralized side, you can only build within, you know, segregation of different blockchain ecosystems. Um, so we want to have a decentralized platform, but you can have access to all different assets and cryptocurrencies and build apps that, um, natively can support all of these. And user experience is also field seamless. Um, so I think, you know, and cryptocurrencies and build apps that natively can support all these. And user experience also feels seamless.

So I think that will be an important step for us. And then from there, really, we're also going to be looking into the Web3 space. And then there's a lot of internet companies in China that are interested in looking into how to utilize blockchain tech to uh you know expand their user base and you know add interesting uh you talk about nft i think that's that i think that's going to be a trend that's going to be huge and not just about you know arts and collectibles and i think that is a pretty big big piece as well but i think the ability to tokenize um future income streams and make it financial instruments

i think that adds another dimension of like general social networks and yeah we saw it here i mean there's a guy in the nba spencer dindie, who tokenized his salary and future earnings, and you can basically buy a part of his career. Yeah. And I think this is, again, if it is something off-chain, it's a little bit harder, right? So it's not like it can be done. And for reputable people, you can probably trust them. They will enforce these contracts.

But for pure digital income, digital creation, this is much easier to do so. Um, and then we're already seeing a lot of sort of digital creation, um, you know, that can, that can be part of that. Um, so yeah, so we look forward. So that's very exciting. So you've basically built something that will allow people to do whatever they want. So it just got to bring them in and let them do it. But nobody else, right. And, and it's not siloed off like almost every other project. It's really,

really cool. So where should people after this follow you and, and follow the, the, the pro progress of Nervos? Yeah, I'm KN Wang, you know, on Twitter, KNWANG. And to follow Nervous Network, just find us on Twitter. Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. I think it's so interesting what you guys are doing and

if the space continues like this, I think that the rising tide will hopefully float all boats as they say, right? Yeah. Pushing the industry forward. I think that's why we're here. Awesome. Well, thank you again so much. the rising tide will hopefully float float all boats as they say right yep yep yep yep pushing the industry forward i think that's why we're here awesome well thank you again so much all right thanks scott