Web3.0 Entrepreneurship Guide: Discover Permissionless Innovation | Web3.0 Master Class (Phase 3)

On July 2, the Web3.0 Master Class x Web3 Social Club hosted by BlockBeats and co-organized by MetaMask, Mask Network and Keystone Wallet, with the theme of "Discovering Permissionless Innovation", invited the founder of MetaMask Wallet Kumavis (Aaron Davis), founder of Mask Network SuJi and Keystone Wallet CEO Lixin shared their stories for entrepreneurs. The three guests will focus on how the entrepreneurial team cooperates with the open source community, how to effectively stimulate "Permissionless Innovation", how to deal with team separation and shortage of funds in the early stage of entrepreneurship, and what problems Chinese Web3.0 entrepreneurs should pay attention to. Exchange and discuss. Hope to continue to inspire and help Web3.0 entrepreneurs.

Click to listen to the podcast of this issue: 《 Dialogue with MetaMask: Discovering Permissionless Innovation|Web3.0 Master Class (3)》

BlockBeats: Welcome to today's Web3.0 Master Class. In this issue, we have a conversation in English. The invited guests are Kumavis (Aaron Davis), founder of MetaMask Wallet, SuJi, founder of Mask Network, and Lixin, CEO of Keystone Wallet. First of all, please introduce yourself to the three guests.

Lixin: Hi everyone, I am Lixin, the CEO of Keystone hardware wallet. In fact, I officially entered the encryption field in 2013 and started to get in touch with Bitcoin. We started working on the Keystone wallet in 2017. We spent about three years doing things related to Bitcoin security. We are also very lucky to start doing things related to Ethereum and Web3.0 at the end of 2021. We are Become a hardware wallet partner of MetaMask, and currently integrate with the MetaMask webpage plug-in and its mobile application. Today, I am also very happy to have the opportunity to have such an exchange opportunity with SuJi and Aaron, the founder of MetaMask wallet. I also hope that everyone can gain something from today’s exchange. The last word is to let everyone focus on building together.

Suji: Hello everyone, I am Suji, the founder of Mask Network. Mask network is mainly engaged in the Web3.0 social protocol, and it is also a middleware between Web 2 and Web 3. Some functions can be realized through Mask Networkg, including sending encrypted tweets or on various social platforms, For example, display the NFT held by users on Twitter or other social applications. Well, Mask Network has actually been integrated with the MetaMask plugin for three years, including the rpc aspect of one of its cross-plugins, which is also the first cooperative project. Suji himself is also an old user of Little Fox Wallet, and he has also done a lot of exploration and construction in Web3.

Mask Network is now also Do NEXT.ID, a project similar to DID, because now we can see that more and more users and projects hope to realize or use DID compatible with evm. Then NEXT.ID also hopes to become such a bridge between Web 3 IDs, and this is also one of the projects in cooperation with Little Fox Wallet. NEXT.ID also has many existing cases in progress, including its URL, and you can check it out yourself.

Aaron Davis (hereinafter referred to as Aaron):I am Aaron, the founder of Little Fox Wallet, and I am very happy to have the opportunity to communicate with you today. At present, the team has 100 members who are working on making Fox Wallet the most secure encrypted wallet. In addition, the entire community now has more than 20 million (BlockBeats note: there are now 30 million) users. I am very grateful to Rhythm for today's invitation.

Little Fox Wallet was officially established 6 years ago, and in the past 3 years I mainly Focus on security research, focus on some issues in the supply chain, so that the little fox wallet can become the safest wallet.

BlockBeats: Thank you three Introduction of guests. The theme of our AMA today is "Permissionless Innovation", which is a topic that concerns all Capital and Web3.0 developers. The three guests present today can also be regarded as pioneers in promoting Web3.0 open source cooperation. I would like to ask you to talk about your interpretation of permission less innovation.

Aaron:Okay, so today we talked about permissionless innovation. In fact, this concept has existed since the birth of the Internet. At that time, anyone could build their own server, or build your own website. But later, with the emergence of platforms, this open spirit has gradually faded away. These platforms do not allow you to do a lot of exploration and innovation, and the space is limited. This is why Web3.0 platforms like Ethereum One of the reasons for the success is that the innovation without permission or the feature without permission determines that anyone can build their own plug-ins without permission, or add some new functions, some new things . This way, people with interesting ideas can innovate and experiment a lot, and publish their ideas.

Little fox wallet it succeeds One of the reasons for this is that at the very beginning, it did not intend to tell everyone what the blockchain is or what it should develop into. It just allows everyone to establish such a connection, so that researchers and experimenters can build their own blockchain. The community builds its own applications, and the role of the little fox is to provide security guarantees during the period.

Suji: Permissionless innovation has indeed been around since the very beginning, but in the Web 1 and Web 2, there is a problem with the modernization of Web 2. For example, if you build a server, you have some data and assets, but these data and assets are often controlled by the platform or company, and you need various API or SDK. But sometimes your (API or SDK) application may be rejected, in fact, you can no longer get your own assets.

This is especially true in Web 1 It is a very serious problem in the era of Web 2. Fortunately, we have ushered in Web 3. After entering the era of blockchain, we have the opportunity to innovate without permission. This is also the field where Mask Network is located, that is, Web 3 Socialize this area. We see things like DID (decentralized identity), social graph, and some others (products, protocols), building a bridge between Web 2 and Web 3, and we all see opportunities for permissionless innovation in these areas.

We see a lot of The number of very interesting innovations is also increasing day by day. For example, last month, Mask Network held an Ethereum developer conference in Shanghai. Some developers from the Ethereum Foundation had a total of more than 1,000 applications to join From the hackathon to the Demo day, there were a total of more than 40 projects displayed, which was indeed a grand event. The reason for such a grand occasion is that the application does not require any permission, and can easily interact with the underlying protocol. They do not need to obtain anyone's permission, and they only need to build based on the underlying protocol. This is also an inherent meaning of permissionless innovation.

We are seeing more and more There are more and more chains compatible with Ethereum, and more and more functions are built on wallets and wallets, not just doing a transfer or financial-related transactions. In addition, you can also display NFT, which has some social functions, and even metaverse, etc. In the future, we believe that we will see a decentralization of the entire social field without permission, thank you.

Lixin:Keystone is a hardware wallet, and it is also a partner of MetaMask hardware wallet, so I hope to use the example of cooperation between Keystone and MetaMask to illustrate the theme of our question, that is, permissionless innovation.

The first example is Keystone is a hardware wallet, and it is different from Trezor or wallets like Ledge that are connected by USB. Keystone uses QR code scanning to connect to Meta Mask. Keystone issued the EIP 4527 proposal not long ago. This proposal actually defines a protocol for the interaction between the QR code and MetaMask. It can be implemented between any software wallet and Keystone without permission. Compatible, and hardware wallets can also achieve integration with MetaMask.

This is actually a The great result is a software wallet called Air gap.it that turns your old phone into a QR code-based hardware wallet, or cold wallet. You just need to install the software of Air gap.it, and then you can connect to MetaMask by scanning the QR code after setting your phone to airplane mode, but at the same time, it also becomes a cold storage wallet for mnemonic words, which greatly improves In addition to its security, this is a good example of permissionless innovation.

The second example is In about January this year, Little Fox launched its Flask. This developer version allows developers to build many interesting applications based on Little Fox without permission. For example, after seeing the launch of Flask, Keystone felt that The idea is very cool, so the BTC Snap was created based on Flask, that is, you can sign a Bitcoin transaction through the BTC Snap on Flask, or sign a Bitcoin transaction on MetaMask. When Keystone developed BTC Sna, it didn't actually need the permission of the Little Fox team. However, when the Little Fox team knew that we wanted to make such a Snap, it took the initiative to help provide some APIs to better realize this function.

Summary through this example In terms of Web 3, it not only allows innovation without permission, but also allows everyone to help each other. Even a big team like Little Fox is willing to help and build with us. This makes Web 3 and Web2 completely different. Different, and that's why Web 3 is such an interesting place to play, thank you.

BlockBeats: These two examples are particularly interesting, especially the Flask version that cooperates with MetaMask, so can Aaron expand this version Do some introductions, and what other interesting products have developers developed now?

Aaron: One of the reasons for MetaMask's early success was a hands-off approach that allowed developers Developers can develop their own, it just provides connections. As the ecosystem developed, different kinds of smart contract wallets emerged. Layer 2 has become popular, and various functional protocols have been developed, but not all Layer 2 chains are compatible with Ethereum. Everyone will want to integrate Layer 2, and other completely different Layer 1 chains. We were a very small team at the time, and we wanted to do some of these things, but our resources could only do part of it, and we couldn't follow through with it all. So far, we've been just a bridge for people to get what they want. But now there are new protocols and ways of interacting and developing. The growth rate of these developments is also very fast, too fast for us to keep up. So we need to find another way to enrich and innovate it. So we came up with the snap system, which is equivalent to a system based on plug-ins. But it is different from a plug-in, that is, it has a greater responsibility in terms of security, because it involves the user's key and user asset security, we need to consider how to do it.

This is something we've wanted to do for a long time, but there are all sorts of obstacles, especially when things like Google's extension There are obstacles on such a platform. Because we simulate this type of experiment in a sandbox environment. This technology actually came from a chance encounter with the Agoric team. Agoric is now building a blockchain product for the Cosmos ecosystem through which users can build smart contracts and JavaScript. They're building a whole suite of tools. We built Lava mode on this basis, Lava mode is a JavaScript supply chain security system that protects MetaMask, which can protect any website and wallet. We all use JavaScript as the native language of web pages. We also include installed snaps in our snap system from Agoric using hardened JavaScript. You go to a website or a Dapp now and they prompt you to install this extra functionality in the form of a snap. It will then tell you what permissions it needs.

For developers who are familiar with how to operate. We can give it part of the HD Key Tree. Related to a certain chain ID, for example, they add support for a certain chain, such as Bitcoin, we can give them the same as the usual Bitcoin private key. We can use new ways to solve obstacles and continue to be a gateway, for example, adding new blockchains and adding new account types, such as contract accounts. We also have some other plans to allow Snap contracts to arrange transaction confirmation screens to display additional information, such as security information, etc.

BlockBeats: Ask again , Will these Snaps developed by MetaMask be integrated into the official version of MetaMask?

Aaron: Good question, yes it will be integrated. But right now we're mostly dealing with APIs. Before it all rolls out, it's going to take a look at how people use Snaps, how you create a user interface for snaps, and how it relates to confirmation screens and buttons and all those pieces. So it is still the developer version, but it will definitely be deployed to the production environment. It just means that this process needs to be careful and prudent. We look forward to using it in batches. That's why we built it. We can use it for everyone. Generally speaking, it is still experimenting now, but it will definitely be integrated into the official MetaMask in the future.

The road to entrepreneurial team growth

BlockBeats: People rarely talk about the story behind MetaMask. In fact, the team has a long history of struggles, including problems such as lack of financing, team separation, and layoffs. Aaron shared with us the team's entrepreneurial experience, the difficult choices they made, and the important moments, hoping to be helpful to all entrepreneurs present.

Aaron: MetaMask has been established for 6~7 years now. At that time, the team was very small, because at that time we were completely non-profit, it was a very important part of the ecosystem, and we hoped that users could trust us, so that users would feel that safe wallets would not go Scam them, be trustworthy.

And because you want to say that your key is owned by you and kept by yourself, but after all, you are deploying it on such a software, or hosting it on this software On, so trust in this software is very important.

But with the little foxes becoming more and more popular, the team needs to expand. So there are more people to find BUG and fix it. At the same time, it is also to help more users understand not only the wallet itself, but also knowledge about blockchains other than wallets, including cryptography and Ethereum. In addition, we also need a strong security team that can respond to some information about bugs reported by others in a timely manner, and can also solve these bugs.

Then the Swap function appeared, which is currently the only source of income for Little Fox, which is a very convenient function. Users find a platform for trading through the built-in Swap of Little Fox. During this process, Little Fox will charge a service fee. This income is currently the source of all expenses for the team, such as development, security code audits, and so on. The security team spends from here as well, and I'm glad there haven't been any major breaches so far. All bugs are also dealt with immediately after they are reported.

BlockBeats: Then I want to ask Aaron again, what do you think is such a long-term development in MetaMask? During the process, what things did the team do right, or what decisions did the team make right? In fact, many teams have been eliminated or “dead” in the 10-year course of encryption in the wallet track. So Aaron, what do you think has allowed MetaMask to survive for such a long period of time and achieve such great success?

Aaron: This question is indeed very good. To be honest, it is difficult to say why it is successful.

First: Timing is very important, the little fox came out very early.

Second: Don’t use the product as a destination Come and see. The little fox is actually another portal or gateway for you to access the Internet world. You will not see the existence of the little fox, it is a service on the Internet that you and you want to visit, if you need to perform a certain behavior, the little fox will pop up to help you complete such a behavior. That is to say, this wallet is not an end in itself, it is just a part of the whole journey, which is also a concept we follow.

Third: Luck. Another co-founder of ours has been saying that when you start to make an application that you think is correct, it slowly becomes popular, and more and more people use it, you actually It is an opportunity to manipulate your users to go the wrong way. In the process, you can make yourself profit. If you choose not to do this, more and more people will trust you, and you will get more and more profits. If you get more and more users, then you have a greater chance to continue to squeeze your users and make profits for yourself; if you choose not to do so, then such a trust and more and more users will actually form a benign cycle, your product can continue to be produced.

BlockBeats: I very much agree with this point of view. Whether you are starting a business in Web2 or Web3, it is very important to stick to your values. Let’s also ask Suji to share his entrepreneurial story.

Suji: I actually started buying Bitcoin in 2014 , I bought Ethereum in 2015. Fortunately at that time, the university professor was the co-founder of BitCash, and other professors also had a deep understanding of Web3.0. The reason why I say lucky is that Crypto was still a very small field at that time. Although many people in our field have participated in it now, few people really knew about Crypto at that time. I just had many professors involved in it.

In 2017, I founded Mask Network. At that time, the team had less than 10 people, and then experienced the IC0 bubble burst in 2017. Financing was very difficult. All VCs avoided the entire encryption field, and it didn’t get better until 2020. The years from 2017, 18, 19 to 2020 are very long, but we still survived. In 2020, fields such as DeFi and NFT became popular, and in 2021, Web3 social networking became popular, so Mask Network successfully completed several rounds of integration, and these VCs began to be interested in new fields.

In this process, the open source and open community plays a very important role. At the very beginning, we received donations from the community through Gitcoin, including Mihai Alisie, the co-founder of Ethereum, who also retweeted our tweets. After the donation, I also tweeted to express my gratitude to him. On Gitcoin, many OGs donated to us, gave us the funds we needed to survive the bear market, and helped us survive. This is why Mask also continued to donate on Gitcoin afterwards, which is also a feedback. After we issued Mask Token, we also donated a large amount of Token to Gitcoin.

The cooperation with Little Fox began in 2018 and 2019, when the two parties officially started communicating. At that time, Little Fox had just started to think about making Snap, and there were not many people in Little Fox’s team at that time, only about 20 people. I showed the specific cooperation method to Little Fox, and finally you can bind your Twitter public key with your Ethereum public key, that is to say, through such a Snap method, your little Fox is tied to your twitter. Although this feature is not yet complete, it is still in progress.

From our story, we can conclude two points. The first is to believe in the power of the community. The second is to innovate.

BlockBeats: Well said, now is really a good time for entrepreneurs to seriously build . Next, I would like to ask Lixin, because there are not many hardware teams in the Crypto industry, and it is very difficult. So I would like to ask, what is the biggest challenge that Keystone has encountered today?

Lixin: The host asked this question very well. As a hardware wallet, you actually face a challenge, especially compared to software wallets, hardware wallets need to manage the supply chain, and especially in the epidemic era, some problems in transportation and e-commerce will pose challenges. This makes it much harder to do a hardware wallet than a software wallet. You can iterate quickly with a software wallet, but with a hardware wallet, you must be careful in every decision, because once you deliver the wallet to users, it is very difficult to make any changes.

But for Keystone, the most difficult thing is not the management of the supply chain, because our team is actually an old man in the supply chain industry, the most difficult Or how to gain the trust of the community. A friend outside of Crypto asked me if it was difficult to sell hardware wallets. I said it was difficult, just as difficult as selling insurance to others. You said that your code is open source, but for ordinary Crypto users, they have no technical background, no way to audit your code, and no way to know what kind of functions you provide, or you want to deliver such How much effort has been put into a wallet, but of course you also need to gain the trust of these ordinary users, which is the most difficult part.

How does Keystone solve it? We make the product as hardcore as possible by listening to the opinions of the community, especially the opinions of Builders. For example, we have a good relationship with Nick Johnson, the founder of ENS, and some Bitcoin maximalists who are fanatical about Bitcoin. , we value the opinions of these individuals.

We have added a lot of hard-core features, including saying that you don't need to memorize mnemonics yourself words, or you don't need to trust the mnemonic words, because the wallet can keep your mnemonic words. You can roll dice, you can throw any point from 1 to 6, and then the device can automatically calculate the note word for you, which is a very important embodiment of the hard core of the product.

In addition to hardcore products, we also need to make it trustless, this is how we solve the community A form of trust. Special thanks also go to Little Fox and his team. Because when doing integration, Little Fox gave us a green light to make integration easier.

BlockBeats: I agree with Lixin’s point of view, because the audience of hardware wallets is very different from other products in the Crypto industry. Their users are really hardcore, and most of them are Bitcoin Maximalists and OG Crypto players, so the experience shared by Lixin is really helpful. Let's go back to today's topic, permissionless, so let's start with Lixin this time. I really want to know what kind of innovations will be behind this Keystone.

Lixin:According to Keystone’s internal calculations, the western Web3 community In China, the penetration rate of hardware wallets is around 10%. It is expected that this number will rise to 20% or even 30% in the next round of bull market. In the next round of bull market, if the number of users in the entire Crypto field reaches 100 million, a penetration rate of 20% or 30% will make the demand for hardware wallets very high.

In order to meet such needs, the first thing is to make hardware wallets easier to use and obtain for users.

We are doing several things, first, we are developing the next generation of hardware wallets, The next generation of hardware wallets will inherit all the advantages of the current version, including large touch screens, QR codes, etc., and will also add some new and cool features.

In addition, its price will drop significantly compared with the current generation. The price is $169, and the price of the next generation will be reduced by half, which is $80. In addition, we will also make Keystone more open source and more secure, including some security solutions provided by two security vendors. That's the first thing we're doing.

Second, it is mainly to solve the problem of mnemonic words, because Web2 users need to enter In Web3, mnemonics are still a big challenge, and we are working with the Little Fox team to solve this problem. For example, through MetaMask Flask, which is still in the proof-of-concept stage, the multi-party computing solution is used to solve the problem of mnemonic words and realize the solution without mnemonic words. On the one hand, users do not need to write down the mnemonic phrases themselves; on the other hand, cutting-edge technologies such as multi-party computing can be used to ensure the security of assets. We are committed to enabling users to explore the Web3 world with a Web2 experience.

BlockBeats: This direction is very correct, and I think I am looking forward to the progress after Keystone. Let’s ask Suji, please share with us some thoughts on the development of Mask Network, and what areas Mask is mainly focusing on now. I know Mask is working on Next ID now so maybe Suji can share with us about that too.

Suji:Mask has always focused on Web3 social, specifically , then in the era of web1 and 2, social networking includes all kinds of entertainment, etc., and the social experience is always closely related to your ID, which means that for Mask, although he is not an expert in DID or ID , but it is also necessary to make efforts in this field, so I am also cooperating with experts in different fields, for example, in terms of encrypted storage or decentralized storage, mainly with Arwave and ipfs to build a storage layer, This project is also currently in progress. In the field of DID, it is mainly to cooperate with various decentralized identity solution providers through Next ID, including Ceramic, CyberConnect, etc., hoping to become a bridge between Web2 and Web3.

In terms of innovation, the field of Web3 social is currently in a very early stage. If you look at the valuation, you will find that there are actually no projects The valuation has reached such a level of 2 billion to 3 billion US dollars. Although the valuation of ENS may be so high, ENS is not a pure DID project. In contrast, whether it is DeFi or NFT, some projects in these fields have achieved very high valuations.

Mask and Next ID are currently open source, including Mask is 100% open source, and Next ID is 90% open source, mainly to provide various All kinds of technical documents, and various solutions, so that every developer can benefit, and it is also developed without permission, thank you.

BlockBeats: Thanks Suji, I am looking forward to Mask's new products and some new developments. Next, let’s ask Aaron. We know that MetaMask is very convenient to use on the PC side, but the experience and optimization on the mobile side may not be particularly good. This may require other apps to do some targeted optimization. We can see from the development of the Internet in the past 10 years that the trend of transferring applications to mobile terminals is indeed irreversible. In response to this question, I would like to ask what Aaron thinks and whether there will be some corresponding innovations after MetaMask?

Aaron: This question is very good. Angle to see. Just like the iOS store and Google Play store we see now, the two of them are completely isolated, and the two ecologies are equivalent to a walled garden. As far as Apple is concerned, they have locked down their ecosystem to only fully iOS-based apps, and they do it on purpose. But that wasn’t the case at the beginning. In the beginning, Apple actually made web-based apps, but maybe due to some restrictions, they finally turned to native iOS mobile apps. Later, they monopolized the App Store and the entire iOS application. Although Apple's Web App is still developing gradually, Apple is not too motivated to continue to develop Web App, because Apple can get 30% of the app's revenue from the App Store.

It seems to be a bit biased, but I am just speaking from a macro framework thing. From the perspective of Little Fox, we always regard ourselves as a browser, we are just a user's Agent, you can imagine it as an agent, we just help users accomplish what they want to do, we are not a purpose.

In fact, from the perspective of little foxes, we are also avoiding pure browsers, We also don't want to be labeled as a browser company or browser team. To a certain extent, we are concerned about competing directly with a large company like Google. Because Google is so big, and we have long felt like a small team. We also have the same mentality for Facebook.

Actually, in our opinion, the best experience for users is still to use DApp plus any browser to call identity service during browsing Providers, such as Little Fox, allow you to access through authorization.

But from the perspective of the Little Fox product itself, we are always improving the user experience on the web and mobile. Our current development progress is also much faster, because the income we get through the Swap function can support the expansion of our team, which may mean that we can make more bold improvements.

Web2 and Web3 startups are different

BlockBeats: Aaron you What do you think is the biggest difference between Web2 and Web3 entrepreneurship and innovation?

Aaron: This question is actually quite difficult to answer because it is a very big question. Because Apple (Apple) is already a very large company, but most Web3 companies are still small. Consensus may be relatively large, but it is still small compared to the behemoth Apple. There may be a unique point in Apple's culture, and it is also a point that some people don't like. It is a culture of extreme secrecy, mainly to prevent leaks before new products are released, and also to ensure that everyone will have surprises when new products are released.

But in Web3, I rarely see such a culture of extreme secrecy, maybe you Invitation-only when creating a chat room, or Discord will require some restrictions. But in general, do you think that everyone will not grope and work in the dark like Apple does, or share what they are doing as much as possible, at least in Web3 you will not hear the stealth mode, that is, Incognito mode is such a word.

Why is open source important? How to cooperate with the open source community?

BlockBeats: A great feature of Web3 is the open source attribute. When it comes to open source, I would like to ask Suji, because Mask Network is also one of the largest sponsors on Gitcoin. How does Mask Network cooperate with the community during the R&D process?

Suji: Taking Mask Network as an example, there are many interesting functions, and some anonymous community members proposed, and some of its members not only come up with ideas, but also participate in the process of developing them. As an entrepreneurial enterprise, its development process will be divided into several stages. At the very beginning, the founder and the core team have to define the way its SDK interacts with some external applications, and then need to cultivate the culture, and then there will be many developers and many users to participate, And make suggestions.

From the perspective of Mask, it may be in the first stage, but it is also 30~40% has entered the second stage.

The just-concluded ETH Shanghai is also a good example. More than a thousand developers participated in the conference. They may not have heard of Mask Network before, but the success of the conference will help Mask scale, which is also very important for Web3. Because it is hard for you to imagine that as a project party of an agreement, you need to hire 10,000 engineers.

Binance has 3,000 employees, about 1,300 of whom have engineering backgrounds, Coinbase started with 4,500 employees, and recently laid off 1,000 people, but the number is still large , but it is hard to imagine that a protocol will employ so many people, so a more appropriate approach for the protocol is to retain a core team, about 100 people, at the same time there will be additional communities , including, say, 1000 communities of developers. Then 1,000 of them may be able to think of or start 100 different projects. You can give them some community funding and financial support at the beginning, and then wait for their projects to have a better commercialization prospect. At the same time, you can invest and introduce them to other investors. If these 100 different projects are further open-sourced, then each of them will attract more developers. If things go on like this, the ecology of the protocol will be gradually grow.

In addition, for Mask Network, no matter what happens, it will always remain open source, which is already part of the culture, and at the same time It is also very important.

In addition, there is a small confusion for entrepreneurs, if you have a good product Hesitating whether to open source or not, the answer is that you must go open source, and let more communities participate. You may think that it would be easier not to open source at the beginning, but the situation may be completely opposite to what you think. For example, if MetaMask is not open source, it actually has no way to gain trust, and the process of gaining trust through open source will take a long time. It will take a long time to open up all your source code, and then For wallets like this in China, it will take a long time to gain the trust of users, and then it may take a while to carry out an additional development based on it, so the open source process will take a long time, which may be the first When you choose not to open source, it may take longer to not let the community participate.

In addition, you can’t have too many core team members, and you still need to allow the community to have an ecological participation around the team.

Suggestions for Web 3 Chinese entrepreneurial teams

< /p>

BlockBeats: Thanks Suji for the great insights. As for Web3 Chinese entrepreneurship, there is another very important question, which is about the project "going out". Lixin may be more suitable to answer this question, because before Keystone made a hard wallet, it first started to do overseas markets, and only recently began to promote it in China. On the topic of going to sea, do you have any advice for everyone?

Lixin:First of all, let me respond to the open source mentioned by Suji, The great advantage of open source is that if the project is run in an open source way, it can actually attract many engineers from the open source community, and these engineers themselves are very enthusiastic about open source. These engineers often have relatively strong coding or writing skills and communication skills. Keystone also follows the concept of open source, and has also recruited many engineers from the open source community.

Refused to work hard, communicate frequently with the community

In addition, in response to Aaron's statement that Apple has a stealth mode, I just want to provide the first suggestion for Chinese entrepreneurs. In China, there is a cultural psychology of keeping a low profile and finally making a big splash. But if you want to do it in the Web3 field, it's better not to do this, or be able to actively communicate with the community instead of choosing the mode of burying your head and hard work, because it is unwise. For successful projects in the Web3 field, even at the stage of just having a small idea, the project founders actually tell the community their ideas loudly and seek feedback from the community. Their product itself is built around the community. But also do it for the community.

This is also the first suggestion I share with the Chinese community, because I think for the Chinese in this culture , always like to keep a low profile. We always like to stay in, say, stealth mode, and then suddenly make a splash in the community. But I think in the Web 3 world, especially if you want to introduce your product to the wider community, such a model is absolutely not feasible.

If we look at all the successful projects, we can see that the founders of these projects, even in the conception stage, never Hesitate to speak up for your own ideas and get feedback from the community and try to build the community around the community for the community. I guess that's the first thing I want to share, which is don't leave your product in stealth mode, and don't hesitate to tuck it in if you're proud of it. Even if it's just an idea, keep it open.

The second thing I want to share is how the early Keystone was marketed. In the early days of Keystone, I spent a lot of time recommending the product to people who really cared about security and talked about it a lot on Twitter, community members of other hardware wallets, and the like.

You can see that there are a lot of people in our community who really care about security and they really want a better Ledger better product. I spend a lot of time recommending products to those people, talking and giving feedback to them, and sending them simple devices. I think it's really important.

Then the third suggestion is just mentioned by Suji, if you want to make an excellent Web3 product , it is necessary to cooperate with the open source community, you can contribute to other open source projects, or define some open source standards or protocols through cooperation. For example, at the very beginning, I thought about cooperating with Little Fox Wallet to define such a standard for integrating QR codes. Cooperation with the open source community is also very important, it can help you get more traffic attention, and it can also help you grow the developer community, so that you can really do a good job of a Web3 project. These are the three suggestions for entrepreneurs, thank you.

BlockBeats: Thank you very much for Lixin's answer, I believe everyone has gained a lot. My last question is for all the guests. The current boom in Web 3 entrepreneurship is still unabated. What do you most want to say to entrepreneurs who are preparing and already in Web3?

Aaron:If we look at the current Web3, we will find that giants have already entered. But, I feel like we're still at a very early stage where we're still exploring what we can do and how we can do what we want to do. So if you have any ideas, please don't hesitate to enter the Web 3 field and do it boldly.

Suji: Let's not ask when to build Web3, now is the best time. We now see that in the field of Web 3, there are actually many buzzwords emerging one after another. I am very optimistic about the next 10 years, I think in 5 years we will see giants in GameFi, social or entertainment, in a ten-year period, I think many important things in the current human society will be in the future It will all be done in Web 3.

Lixin: We are actually in a bear market right now, which may prevent some people from entering Web3 Entrepreneurship in the field. But including myself, Suji and Aaron may have experienced at least two or even three rounds of bull-bear cycles. I personally have a strongly bullish attitude towards the future of Web 3. Although the boom in the application layer has declined now, the popularity of DeFi and NFT has also declined. Let’s take Uniswap as an example here. It was established in early 2018, which happened to be the bottom of the last bear market at that time. So, if you think the Web 3 field itself is cool and want to enter this field to start a business, don't hesitate now. A bear market is often the best time to enter a business in this field.

As a wallet provider, including Keystone and MetaMask, it is actually an application belonging to the infrastructure layer. Now we can see that there has actually been a substantial development and progress in the infrastructure layer, including the wallet that does not require mnemonic phrases mentioned by Keystone and MetaMask, and hopes to give Web 2 users a seamless Enter the experience of the Web realm. In addition, in fact, there has also been a huge development at the level of the public chain, so in the long run, the bull market is actually brewing. Still the same sentence: If you are optimistic about Web3, you can enter this field and start a business now.

I have another personal lesson here. Around the end of 2021, Web3 will start to catch fire. However, at the end of 2020, there was a sign of the start of our latest round of bull market, which is the summer of DeFi. But at that time, I was a Bitcoin purist, so I almost completely missed the summer of DeFi, and almost missed the last round of the bull market. Here is an enlightenment I want to give you through a lesson of mine: If you want to start a business in the Web 3 field, you must keep your mind open, you can choose to develop on Ethereum, but you You can also explore other Layer1 chains. In conclusion, an open mind is very important.

About Web 3.0 Master Class

Web 3.0 Master Class is developed by Rhythm BlockBeats A series of activities launched for Web 3 enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and practitioners. Invite experienced entrepreneurs, investors/institutions, developers, communities and other industry pioneers to teach multi-dimensional content such as their own entrepreneurial experience, product operation skills, and project investment direction.   

About Web 3.0 Social Club

Web3.0 Social Club is a Twitter Spaces series hosted and hosted by Mask Network. Web3 projects and developers gather here to exchange and discuss ideas for building state-of-the-art social networks and infrastructure. Learn more

< /p>

Related reading

Review of the first issue: " Web3 Startup Guide: How to Cold Launch and Complete Early User Attraction< /b>》

Review of the second issue: 《How do Web3.0 startups get financing? | Web3.0 Master Class (Phase 2)》

Welcome to BlockBeats Communities talk about Web3.0

BlockBeats Twitter: https: //twitter.com/BlockBeatsChina

BlockBeats Discord: https ://discord.gg/R9fuWFyrTj

BlockBeats Telegram: https://t .me/theblockbeatsApp

BlockBeats Wechat: blockbeats_cathy (please note Web3.0)