After "graduating" from Ant, they flock to Web3

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

In the tech circle of 2023, there are major news almost every day; it is the inaugural year of generative AI and also the deep bear year of 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 venture capital firms in crypto, Paradigm, is undergoing a paradigm shift, stating that it will no longer focus solely on cryptocurrency and the Web3 space, and will begin to expand its areas of 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 admitted that this deep bear market in Web3 seems more lively than before. Even in a bear market, some people are still discussing compliance, ZKP (zero-knowledge proofs), 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 parallels between AI and Web3, as their development trajectories are very similar." Jerry Li compared, over the past sixty years, there have been three waves of artificial intelligence, with billions to tens of billions in funding almost every time, and peaks and valleys continue to alternate until OpenAI emerged. "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 titles: former Chief Architect of AntChain, former R&D Director of Apple China, and top scorer of the college entrance examination in Shanxi Province. Now he has added another one------a newcomer to Web3.

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

"The industry is still too early, and compared to AI, it hasn't even reached the development of its last round. Currently, the entire market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market is less than half of that of Apple Inc." Compared to his previous employer, Jerry seems to think that the Web3 cake is still too small.

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, and its predecessors, the concepts of "cryptocurrency" and "blockchain," were first released in 2008 through Satoshi Nakamoto's "Bitcoin White Paper," which is only 15 years ago.

Rebellious and unstable, the growing pains that Web3 is experiencing have made "parents" shake their heads. After the FTX crash with a market value of $32 billion in November last year, regulators around the world began to put a tight leash on this "little brat."

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

The Artela team has chosen the public blockchain track, which is part of the infrastructure of Web3, also known as the "highway" of Web3; a road is necessary to transport everything.

In the public chain sector, there are long-established Web3 genesis projects, such as Ethereum, which have already built their own moats through the "network effect" of their ecosystems, and there are also several all-star projects that come from a background of privilege.

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

Artela's biggest difference from other chains does not lie in the current "involution" of Scalability (performance scalability), but rather 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 often 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 more about building another "Alipay" in Web3.

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

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

"They say that if someone in Ant Group wants to talk about blockchain, they will definitely mention my name by the second person." CP has slightly curly hair and speaks with a slight Cantonese accent, making it feel like casual chatting, but upon closer listening, the content is very professional and detailed. Ant Chain holds the largest number of patents in the world, and CP alone possesses hundreds of blockchain patents.

Regarding Extensibility, CP gives an example: "In games, besides player inputs on the front end, there is also the back end, such as map refreshes, time and weather, or when a big boss dies, the little monsters nearby might also be eliminated. In blockchain, there are no back-end tasks, because all executions in the blockchain must interact through users."

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

For blockchain, which currently finds it a bit difficult to play board games, achieving smooth interaction requires higher demands on the computing layer. "We want to achieve a hundred times that of EVM." Thanks to the experience accumulated on Ant Chain, CP added, "In fact, current test data shows that we can already approach two orders of magnitude at the computing level."

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

"The Borrowing and Spending products of the Internet finance era were innovations from 0 to 1. We, as a group, have experienced the process of transforming 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 poses many challenges, but fortunately, there are experienced references.

Most of the team members at Artela come from Ant Group. "A cohesive team of a dozen people progresses similarly to a team of twenty or so." 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, and Amino Capital.

Artela's testnet went live in September, and it is currently adopting a targeted invitation system for its ecological partners. Defi and Fully On-chain Games may both become key areas of focus in the future. CP stated that Artela does not intend to engage in typical public chain activities such as airdrops and conventional combinations, but rather wants to explore innovation with ecological applications. They will be dedicated to development in the coming months, with a formal public test planned around December.

It can steadily achieve over 100 million daily active users. Undoubtedly, Ant Chain has already reached its peak in certain areas of Web3. However, their activity seems to be subtly isolated from Web3.

Just as the decentralized nature of Web3 brings about "open source" rather than "patents". Compared to the mainstream direction of public chains in foreign technologies, there is somewhat of a "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 mature, but Ant had regarded blockchain as a core strategic initiative. "At that time, Ant said it would focus its investment, but actually, 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 a lot of potential, especially in the context of globalization, having financial applications, I think 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 "serving finance with technology."

In the same year, Jiang Guofei, the "number one" of Ant Chain, joined Ant Financial as Vice President and President of the Financial Technology Business Line, overseeing Ant Blockchain. The strategic level of Ant Chain within the group has been continuously elevated. Ant Chain is gaining momentum, with applications in cross-border remittances, supply chain finance, electronic invoices, judicial evidence... In a short period, applications based on the industrial end have fully taken off.

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 studies early on.

CP also once became the company's internet celebrity engineer. Jack Ma mentioned CP at the second World Intelligent Congress, along with his widely circulated matchmaking anecdotes.

"We have an engineer at Ant Financial who wrote 'engineer' on his dating resume, a code-writing programmer, and as a result, no one clicked on his resume; the girls were not interested in him. Later, he changed his resume to say he was a 'blockchain engineer,' and he received over two hundred love letters."

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

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

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

Even during the Spring Festival, Whale Exploration, which has over 100 million daily active users, faces the problem of unsold collectibles and difficulty in breaking into new demographics. The digital collectibles previously launched by Whale Exploration were mostly cultural and artistic products, making it hard for young people to find them trendy. "But my dad really likes it; this is the only product I've made that he has consistently...