After "graduating" from Ant, they flocked to Web3

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

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

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

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

But it must also be acknowledged that this deep bear market in Web3 seems to be more lively than before. Even in a bear market, some people are still discussing compliance, ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proof), and Bitcoin ETFs. There are also those who choose to enter the market at this moment.

"When I communicate with my colleagues at Ant, I often draw comparisons between AI and Web3, as their development trajectories are quite similar." Jerry Li compared that over the past sixty years, there have been three waves of artificial intelligence, each time with investments ranging from billions to tens of billions, with peaks and troughs continuously alternating, until the advent of OpenAI. "This new large-scale technological revolution requires going through one cycle after another to truly bring about leapfrog development."

Jerry Li once had several prominent labels: former Chief Architect of AntChain, former R&D Director of Apple China, top scorer in the college entrance examination in Shanxi Province, and now he has added another one------a newcomer in Web3.

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

"The industry is still too early; compared to AI, it hasn't even reached the previous round of development. Currently, the total market value of the entire cryptocurrency market is less than half of that of Apple alone." Jerry feels that the Web3 pie seems too small compared to his previous employer.

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

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

Rebellious and unstable, the growing pains that Web3 is experiencing have made "parents" shake their heads. After the collapse of FTX, which had a market value of 32 billion USD last November, regulators around the world began to impose stricter regulations on this "troublesome kid."

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

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

In the public chain track, there are long-established Web3 genesis projects, such as Ethereum, which have already built their own moat with the "network effect" of their ecosystem, and there are also several all-star lineup projects that come from privileged backgrounds.

"The public chain market, although there is a lot of competition, is still very imperfect and has a long way to go." Recently, Jerry has been attending meetings around the world, which is his first step in adapting to his new identity. After running a circuit, he gained a lot. "After communicating with many projects, our confidence has actually been strengthened."

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

This is to prepare for the future of Mass Adoption.

Mass Adoption is a term frequently mentioned in the context of Web3. In other contexts, it can be described as the "iPhone moment of the industry" and the "last mile," but the core issue is quite clear: how can we enable ordinary people to use Web3?

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

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

CP was once an OG of the Ant Chain team. He joined the initial form of Ant Chain in 2015 when it was still an interest incubation group.

"They say that if anyone in Ant Group wants to talk about blockchain, by the time they ask the second person, my name is definitely mentioned." CP has slightly curly hair, and when he speaks, there’s a hint of a Cantonese accent. He often gives a smile that makes it feel like he’s just chatting casually, but upon closer listening, the content he presents is very professional and detailed. Ant Chain holds the largest number of patents in the world, and CP alone holds hundreds of blockchain patents.

For Extensibility, CP gives an example: "In games, aside from player input on the front end, there are also background tasks, such as map refreshes, time and weather changes, or when a big boss is defeated, the small monsters next door will also be eliminated, etc. In blockchain, there are no background tasks, because all executions in blockchain must be interacted with by users."

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

For blockchain, which currently finds it somewhat difficult to play board games, achieving smooth interactions requires higher demands on the computing layer. "We want to achieve one hundred times that of the EVM." Thanks to the experience accumulated in the AntChain, CP added, "In fact, current test data indicates that we are already able to approach two orders of magnitude at the computational level."

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

"In the era of Internet finance, products like Jiebei and Huabei are innovations that have gone from 0 to 1. We have all experienced the process of turning a vague concept into a concrete commercial product, understanding the complexity behind it." CP believes that taking the same path again in the era of public chains is challenging, but fortunately, there are experienced references.

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

Artela's testnet went live in September, and currently, it is adopting a targeted invitation system for ecological partners. Defi and Fully On-chain Games may both become focal points for future development. CP stated that Artela does not intend to engage in the regular combination tactics of airdrops and public chains, but rather aims to explore innovation with ecological applications. They will be focusing on development in the coming months and will officially launch the public beta around December.

It can consistently achieve hundreds of millions of daily active users, and without a doubt, Ant Chain has already reached the ceiling in certain areas of Web3. However, their activity seems to be vaguely isolated from Web3.

Just as the decentralized nature of Web3 should bring about "open source" rather than "patents". Compared to the mainstream public chains in foreign technologies, there seems to be some "mismatch" with the non-token blockchain, also known as consortium blockchain, which is more suitable for the domestic context. Ant Chain aims to pave a different path for Web3 in China, focusing on open consortium chains and industrial Web3.

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

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

In the same year, Jiang Guofei, the "number one" of Ant Chain, joined Ant Financial, serving as Vice President and President of the Financial Technology Business Line, overseeing Ant Blockchain. The strategic level of Ant Chain within the group has been constantly elevated. Ant Chain is gaining momentum, with cross-border remittances, supply chain finance, electronic invoices, judicial evidence storage... In a short time, applications based on the industry side have fully blossomed.

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

CP also became the company's internet celebrity engineer for a time. Jack Ma mentioned CP during the second World Intelligence Conference, along with his widely circulated matchmaking anecdote.

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

In 2020, Ant Blockchain announced a brand upgrade to Ant Chain, and the company's executives stated that the decision "is no less than the decision to establish Alipay."

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

Taking cross-border remittances as an example, an Ant Group official told the WSJ., that there are no technical barriers to cross-border remittances, but the level of support for this technology varies depending on the policies and regulations of each country. Therefore, such projects are closer to customization. "At that time, we collaborated with Standard Chartered Bank, which has always been our long-term partner."

Even during the Spring Festival, the Whale Probe, which has over a hundred million daily active users, faces the problem of unsold collections and difficulty in breaking through barriers. Previously, the digital collections launched by Whale Probe were mainly cultural and artistic products, which are hard for young people to find trendy. "However, my dad really likes it; this is the only product I've made that he has consistently used." The work content of CP is of great interest to family members, and Whale Probe may be the easiest product for them to understand.

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

"The consortium chain that strips away the concept of digital assets cannot discuss rights confirmation incentives. The consortium chain only handles data-related aspects. To truly reconstruct production relations, I believe we are still far from that stage."

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