For years, I instructed myself that I’m not the founder sort. As an alternative, I attempt to be that robust operator who makes founders’ goals come true. Maybe the avoidance of being a founder comes from my Chinese language upbringing. As my mom typically says: “A gun shoots the primary fowl that sticks its head out.”
She didn’t need me to be that first fowl.
So till lately, my profession was outlined by the concept of working arduous towards another person’s imaginative and prescient—till I stumbled into crypto. Crypto is self-sovereignty, ranging from custodying one’s personal keys. The crypto group encourages possession through participation. Sure, all of us like to see magical web cash going up, however the trade has profound monetary, social and technological implications to our society.
Crypto is a as soon as in a lifetime alternative for a technology to precise uncooked expertise whereas proudly owning a chunk of it.
I used to be extraordinarily fortunate that my first job in crypto was in enterprise improvement at Consensys. The job gave me a perspective on the complete crypto stack: from the bottom layer (Linea), to middleware (Infura), to the person interface (MetaMask).
I used to be having enjoyable. Folks began to know me not as Shuyao Kong, the worldwide head of BD at ConsenSys, however as “Brother Bing,” a Decrypt columnist and founding father of Scorching Pot DAO.
However a small voice started to develop louder in my head questioning: Are you able to do one thing by yourself?
Many individuals have entrepreneurial itches however most don’t scratch them. I knew that I used to be pushed primarily by three missions: (1) working on the cutting-edge of crypto tech; (2) welcoming younger expertise to crypto; and (3) incubating tangible crypto merchandise for rising markets.
As I used to be exploring, my good outdated Consensys community performed the magic. Not solely has ConsenSys incubated a number of well-known merchandise (together with Decrypt), but additionally impressed a category of crypto founders, operators, traders and rebels who’re nonetheless pushing the boundaries.
When my former colleague Yi Tang messaged me in January, I knew he was up for one thing stable. Yi and I have been on the entrance traces in 2018 attempting to carry Asian Pacific governments and large companies on-chain. He’s now a distinguished crypto investor at Qiming Enterprise, one of many largest funds on the planet.
“We’ve a reasonably stable portfolio firm that’s on the lookout for a enterprise cofounder,” he messaged me on Telegram, and despatched me MegaETH’s twitter deal with. Wanting by means of the Github repo, I couldn’t assist however marvel who can be so dumb as to name themselves “MegaETH.” I imply, I like having ETH within the title, however Mega gave a 2017 ICO vibe.
I used to be not over the moon.
However I used to be curious to be taught in regards to the tech, so I scheduled a name with Yilong, who had began MegaETH after finishing his PhD from Stanford’s pc science division. In his sometimes calm, regular voice, Yilong walked me by means of his motivation, system-design philosophy, and imaginative and prescient.
Merely put: He wished to construct a scalable base layer so devs can create straightforward to make use of, quick, low cost crypto-native dapps.
The thesis is straightforward and intelligent. After a decade, nobody has succeeded in scaling a blockchain that’s as person pleasant as Web2. Solana, which was a step in the appropriate route, nonetheless faces scaling challenges and remains to be in beta. And the Ethereum L2s collectively solely scale the mainnet by an element of 10, which is fairly meager.
Since no blockchain is scalable sufficient, dapps supply inferior efficiency leading to poor person expertise. I typically joke that builders are dishonest the blockchain as a result of they’d relatively put information off-chain than on-chain resulting from poor efficiency points.
These are the issues that MegaETH will try to repair.
As Yilong defined the pondering behind MegaETH, there was a captivating, quiet confidence in his voice. Inside an hour, I went from “cool tech however so what” to “this factor will Make Ethereum Nice Once more.” My thoughts was 80% mega-aligned after the decision.
The subsequent day, I met Lei Yang, who would develop into our third co-founder and CTO. Lei is already a well known blockchain researcher at MIT. His means to clarify difficult blockchain ideas in probably the most normie-friendly manner was the best I’ve seen in crypto.
The MegaETH Group started to take form, nearly, and I signed on in March to guide all of the enterprise and advertising and marketing efforts.
There was quite a lot of work to do, clearly. However there was additionally the enjoyable of a startup. Since we lived everywhere in the world, the founding workforce met in individual hardly in any respect—as soon as at ETH Denver and later in Boston, when everybody traveled to Lei’s PhD thesis protection. These in-person hangouts have been great moments. As an illustration, we realized that Lei is a fan of rabbits. He really goes to a park close to MIT and feeds bunnies each week. In his spirit, we’re designing a MegaETH emblem of a lighting-fast bunny rabbit.
Alongside the way in which, we’re studying about one another’s communication fashion, weight loss program, and even members of the family. Now, as I write these phrases in the midst of the night time in Dubai, it strikes me that whereas my entrepreneurial journey may need began from some type of imprecise intuition, it actually took off after I met the appropriate folks.
A number of issues are protecting me up at night time. We’ve but to obtain funding. We desperately want a developer evangelist who can nerd-snipe devs to our ecosystem. And we don’t also have a web site but.
However to this point, regardless of what my mom taught me, it feels actually good to stay my head out. And I haven’t gotten shot but.
