Duan Xinxing: Capital, Talents and Attention from Atomic World Are Heater for Crypto Space
With the notable labels of former senior engineer of Lucent Bell Laboratories, scholarship recipient of Gates Foundation, organizer of TEDxNanjing…, Duan Xinxing is now, better known as the founder of Bytom blockchain.
Inspired by a speech talking about bitcoin and blockchain are great social experiments, Duan Xinxing began to set his foot into the blockchain sphere. While engaging in project developing, he also co-wrote the book “Blockchain: Reshape the Economy and the World” (published by China CITIC in 2016).
The acquaintance with Chang Jia (founder of 8BTC News), and the consideration of his family in the South, led him to embark on something new with 8BTC, which later opened up the story of Bytom.
Accompanied by the fame and admiration, there are also unavoidable doubts about Antminer B3 Bytom (BTM) ASIC miners…
MANAGE TO CONNECT MULTI-ASSETS
FROM THE SUBSTANTIAL WORLD VIA PUBLIC CHAINDuan first came into blockchain in a bitcoin-and –blockchain themed speech, in which bitcoin and blockchain are compared to a great social experiment.
Since then, Duan has been mulling about the possibilities of the blockchain sphere. Faced with the attraction and challenges of the new industry, he believed that questions are more significant than answers, and raised a series of questions for himself –
What are the shortcomings in the existing monetary and financial system and centralized system? Paper money can only be spent for once, while digital currency may have the double-spending problem, then how to address to this issue? How to solve the Byzantine failures? How to balance between security and high performance (TPS and scalability)? What’s the future of DApp (decentralized app)?
“Start with these questions, it’s easy to get to the essence and painpoints of this space,” wrote in his WeChat official account.Bearing these questions and thoughts in mind, Duan took the position of vice president and chief researcher in OKCoin, which marked his official foray into blockchain. During this period, he was also active in writing “Blockchain: Reshape the Economy and the World”, which is the first blockchain-themed book published by China CITIC Press (a state-run publisher) in 2016. In the same year, his baby came.
In the following year in 2017, Duan met Chang Jia — founder of 8BTC. In April of that year, he made the decision to come back to the South, and joined 8BTC in May, since then he has been in charge of technical projects.
What Duan values on 8BTC is its role as a “water seller” who connects the community together by serving as an information-and-source provider.Apart from information connection, he also visions to connect multiple assets.
This led Duan to make the decision of creating a public chain via which various assets including assets from the atomic world could get registered, circulated, exchanged and programmed. This is the foremost outline about Bytom chain.
USER NUMBER RANKED TOP THREE WITHIN CHINA
ONCHAIN-AND-OFFCHAIN SYNCHRONIZATION IS LONG TERMBytom mainnet has been launched in late April. Considering the large user base, in a bid to avoid users from losses, Bytom adopts the approach of iteration in development instead of a one-time large version, which explains its relatively slow mapping process.
Currently the mapping of Bytom has been in the stage of negotiation with various large exchanges and wallets, the remaining ERC20 tokens will soon be switched into mainnet cryptocoin, as Duan said.
Still in an iteration, it is rather difficult for Bytom to have precise statistics of its user amount; Previous data shows that user number of bytom in China was ranked among top three after EOS, and its users out of China are concentrated in the U.S. and Korea, followed by Europe.
Up to now, bytom’s core team members have not changed, and there are many more great talents joining.
When it comes to the synchronization between onchain and offchain asset, Duan answered “As far as the current situation is concerned, the synchronization of onchain and offchain assets has not yet been reached. This is actually a long-term job, before that we have a lot to do on the development of underlying technology. In this context, the synchronization issue remains to be solved by individuals and enterprises that will be onchain in the future.”
“It is the similar case with Ethereum. Ethereum did a lot of work on the underlying protocols in early days, but it hasn’t focused on how to use ERC20 to issue various tokens at the very start.”
“The synchronization of assets onchain and offchain will be a naturally spontaneous process.”
“And the process also involves issues related to finance, law and compliance, rather than a duty limited within its development team. We are mainly focusing on the development of underlying interactive protocols, perfection of basic functions, as well as community operating, migrating asset onchain are not concerned yet for the time being.”
“To accomplish this goal, we also need a recovery environment with prosperity and bubblish growth. Only in this way, would traditional enterprises embrace it and be in the ecosystem when they see great benefit from blockchainization.”
CONTROVERSIES ABOUT ANTMINER B3Accompanying the glories are controversies.
According to Bytom Economic Whitepaper, 33 per cent of total BTM in supply is reserved for mining, and mining machines shall meet the hard condition to support the artificial intelligence ASIC, which causes controversies about B3 bytom (BTM) miner.
Complaints from the first batch of buyers alleged Antminer B3 about its exaggerated power capability in its marketing and quick price falling for the second batch.
About the criticisms, Duan said there were many misunderstandings.
When other public chains adopt POS, Bytom is the only domestic public chain to adopt POW algorithm, which is verified and adopted by both bitcoin and Ethereum. What Bytom centers on is asset, so security is always on top priority for Bytom.
Bytom wants to provide services for artificial intelligence projects via its computing platform. Against this backdrop, few domestic miner producers could meet our requirement to make such a miner, Bitmain — the largest and senior miner manufacturer — taking the initiative to roll out such a miner comes as no surprise.
“Miners work normally and are equipped with artificial intelligence service. It can also meet the dual mode switching service, but the cost performance may not be high. Users who come for investment purposes will find it not worth it.”
“It is, after all, the first generation, and there is much room for improvement and growth. Competition is intense in a market spurred by strong profits, in this context, other miner makers, after Bitmain, can make better products if they are willing to devote more effort.”
“Some misunderstandings go that we have interests with Bitmain. We did have some discussions over the verification of the security issues on Bytom’s underlying algorithm. Actually, Bytom’s consensus algorithm and code are open to all on the internet, miner makers and chip producers can all design mining machines for Bytom (BTM) mining according to that.”
BEARS ARE CAUSED BY THE STOP OF MARKET GROWTHThe past two years witness the market go into the current bear from the ICO craze.
Going through the ups and downs, bulls and bears, Duan Xinxing made the judgement that the current bear is caused by the stop of market growth, and it is now in the inventory market.
In such a market, people no longer buy crypto asset with fiat, what’s worse, those “air coin” projects are trading worthless “air coins” for valuable assets, which leads to the reduction of the inventory in the market.
To bring momentum back into the market, Duan proposed three advices,
“THE INSTILLATION OF TALENTS AND CAPITAL. THE GROWTH IN THE CURRENT MARKET LIES IN THE MASSIVELY CRITICIZED CRYPTO EXCHANGES WHICH OFFERS A CHANNEL FOR FIAT-TO-TOKEN TRADING.
POW CONSENSUS MECHANISM. IT HELPS TO TRANSFER POWER LIKE ELECTRICITY IN THE SUBSTANTIAL WORLD INTO ONCHAIN ASSET.
MIGRATING PHYSICAL ASSETS WHICH ARE NOT EASY TO GET CIRCULATED AND PROGRAMMED IN THE ATOMIC WORLD ONTO BLOCKCHAIN. THIS IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY WE START BYTOM.”
“If everyone keeps consuming the inventory in the market, the bear will get worse.” Duan added.
THE CREATION OF A DECENTRALIZED PUBLIC CHAIN
After a plurality of identity switch, Duan said Bytom is the most devoted project.
Before that, his job is more like that in a traditional company, launching a project and then accomplishing it; while for Bytom, he has to promote it in the community apart from internal duties.
It is comforting that the community are making contributions to Bytom. The recently popular block browser of Bytom is in fact developed by fans. This is a practice of decentralization as the whole community is co-building it.
As his blogs show, Duan also has interest in Buddhist sutras, in which he said the cause-and-effect logic is a great enlightenment to his technical work.
When asked about the identity he most wants to be remembered ten years later, Duan said,
“In the society, it should be a distinctive entrepreneur and creator who has created something meaningful and valuable;
and at home, it should be a good husband and a good father.”
