Our web3 entrepreneurial project, yellow

In three months, I changed three directions.

In this spring, a new project in Beijing has planned a new project, and the project points directly to the air point -WEB3. Wu Xin, an Internet operating manager with no Web3 experience, is also my friend and was urgently mobilized to participate in the development of the project. However, the progress of the project is not as smooth as imagined. After changing the direction of the project, the company finally decided to stop the project.

Coincidentally, a web3 entrepreneur also shared his experience on social platforms -the returnee background. At the end of last year, the web3 project entrepreneurship started in Shenzhen. "Originally full of confidence, but after seeing VC again and again, I started to doubt myself." If you do n’t complete the financing in the next two months, you will turn off the company to find a job.

Half a year passed, web3 gradually silent from the hustle and bustle. The entrepreneurial team who came from Wen Sheng seemed to receive bad news halfway. This is the most controversial track in the VC circle this year, and it may now be the fastest track.

A hurried web3 project

"Meaningless overtime", Wu Xin thought so.

That was the middle stage of the company's web3 project. The project team met every day at night. Wu Xin listened to a two -hour meeting, but found that everyone seemed to be in a meaningless discussion. "No one gave Web3 a clear definition, and various abstract words run through the meeting. I found that everyone seemed to talk about a bunch of empty content." During that time, Wu Xin secretly delivered a number of resumes. She began to believe that web3 made the work in front of her pain.

Everything started from the beginning of this year. At that time, the leaders directly found Wu Xin and asked her to understand what "NFT" and "Crypto" (cryptocurrency). She felt inexplicable and stayed in the Internet industry for so many years, and she never heard these two words.

Wu Xin has worked in a well -known Internet factory in the industry for several years, and his position is overseas operation, Base Beijing. But starting this year, the leader asked her to move into a new project team to start preparing for the web3 project. The company is a well -known Internet listed company. It is not surprising to open new projects.

There is no doubt that this is a test water. The company has just recruited a community operation with web3 experience, but in addition, the team staff of the entire Web3 project selected from the original Internet operation team. No one is familiar with web3. "The leaders may just read some articles and reports. I think this is the air outlet and let us do it."

What is web3? Wu Xin is still unclear. In 2014, the founder of Ethereum Gavin Wood proposed the concept of Web3 in a blog, which seems to be a new Internet operation mode: the information will allow users to publish, custody, irregularities, and never leaked, that is, "Go to go Centralized network. The Institute of Public Policy at Cambridge University defines Web3 as "assuming the next -generation network technology, legal and payment infrastructure -including blockchain, smart contracts and cryptocurrencies."

This concept has been hot since 2021. At that time, the price of Bitcoin rose at a height of $ 69,000. NFT only generated a transaction volume of more than $ 22 billion last year, and its wealth was surging. As a result, the Silicon Valley giants have started to test their own web3 projects in the firstt of Web3, Twitter and Reddit, and American Internet companies such as META, Google, Amazon, EBAY. In the first -level market, in 2021, the investment company's investment with digital cryptocurrency projects has more than $ 27 billion.

Obviously, no one wants to miss the cake, including Wu Xin's company. According to the leadership, the new web3 project needs to be learned, but the original app operation still needs to continue. After the New Year, Wu Xin and his colleagues invested in the Internet of the two generations at the same time.

However, in just 3 months, Wu Xin felt that the project was going yellow. Almost every month, the project will replace the large direction once, completely overthrow the work before, and do a new thing according to the meaning of the leader, and every direction requires Wu Xin and the team to study a lot of research and research time. At the beginning, the team wanted to do the function of imitating OpenSea (NFT trading platform), and then wanted to add the function of adding Mirror (Web3 blog platform). Later, the team decided to imitate a crowdfunding platform and abandon the previously explored Mirror and Opensea.

Although the leaders will comfort everyone, "Web3 is a brand new field, which is normal to overturn reorganization." But the company did not accept such progress in the end. The summer is approaching, and the progress of the project has stopped, and the web3 project team has been dissolved. "It does not think that this project is worth investing in money."

Web3's dream was officially blown.

Why can't web3 be done?

What experience is an Internet company breaking into the web3?

The first thing faced was a lot of new knowledge and "industry black words". In the early days of the web3 project, there were very few Chinese materials related to Web3. Wu Xin needed to read a lot of English materials. A large number of terminology undoubtedly added a threshold to learning.

Three months ago, the U.S. Sequoia changed Twitter's signing to: "Mainnet Faucet. We Help the Daring Buidl Legendary Daos from Idea token Airdrops. LFG", six cryptocurrency industry terms appeared. At the same time, Sequoia also reveals the determination to enter cryptocurrency investment, it can also explain how abstract the web3 field is. "It is very painful to learn Web3 without any foundation." This is Wu Xin's true experience. And it may be scarce of consensus. In the field of web3, the term "consensus" is often mentioned. The value of NFT requires people to have consensus, and the value of virtual assets requires consensus -the entire web3 requires users to have consensus: ownership and autonomy of their own data and property.

But Wu Xin soon discovered his distrust of this statement. "A very important feature is decentralization, but as a company, all we do must be centralized. For profit, is it contrary to decentralization?"

Such suspicions have continued to deepen with the frequent project plan. One week after Wu Xin completed a market research, another new market research task was sent off, and the previous survey was completely overturned. In the new field, the most secure entrepreneurial model is imitation, but the web3 industry is poured into a large number of products every day. Before figured out who imitates, it is necessary to try and error over and over again.

Over time, Wu Xin also discovered the change of the project team. In the early days of the web3 project, foreign colleagues in the team were more enthusiastic about web3. There was no obstacle to English documents, and the learning speed was faster. However, under the circumstances of changing the direction, foreign employees have also become somewhat resistant. "The tone and complexion are not very good.

A meeting made Wu Xin complete the life of this project without much time: the product manager did not recognize what the operation did, but what the product manager was doing, but Wu Xin, who was operating, did not know.

"The product believes that they can do the operation of operation, and the operation is available. The internal coordination of the department has problems." A blockchain product manager also revealed his similar concerns on the social platform. The unclear division of labor allows the internal crisis of the web3 project team.

Shortly after the company's project was terminated, LUNA coins, known as the "Moutai of the Currency Circle", fell sharply, and the market value of various digital coins evaporated about 400 billion US dollars. Wu Xin thought when he saw this news, "It's okay."

When the dollar VC goes to Singapore to see web3

Wu Xin's web3 project team failed, but just cut the shadow.

In April of this year, Wang Huiwen, co -founder of Meituan, immediately changed the signature of the APP to: Crypto was learning. Guo Yu, a well -known retirement programmer in the industry, also publicly stated that we are studying Web3. The Internet factory is enthusiastic -Tencent founded its own XR department, and the bytes have compiled a meta -universe team. In May, it launched the first web3 project "Cheers Up Period" in May. Ali announced the provision of NFT solutions overseas. Yingke even renamed the Ying universe and decided to All in web3.

In the VC circle, the wave of friends in the US dollar fund is particularly excited.

"The wave of friends who invested in TMT that year started to watch the web3 project in Singapore." A VC investor in Shenzhen revealed that most of the friends around the dollar funds were originally rich in overseas study and life background. Many people chose to go to sea this year - Either look for the consumer Internet project in Southeast Asia, or go to Singapore to see Web3.

But those who really tasted the cake have not appeared. Fang Tong, a partner of a two -currency fund in Beijing, revealed to the investment community that the overseas team of its international fund is very aggressive in the Web3 project, but the Chinese team hesitated.

She still remembers countless embarrassing questions and answers. Since the beginning of this year, I have received more and more BPs about Web3, and I have also seen many web3 entrepreneurs. However, whenever Fang Tong asked why he had to give the data "on the chain", the other party began to vaguely. What impressed me was that a web3 entrepreneur said that he hoped to encourage everyone to open and share data through the method of dividing, but it was immediately interrupted by Fang Tong.

It is difficult for traditional VCs and investment committees to vote for such projects. "There is no way to convince us to measure project standards with traditional business value." Fang Tong said. "There is no practical significance and application value. All the economic models are based on the aftermath of the latecomer. Only someone in the back can pick up the inventory. The talents in front can make money. I feel that I can make money when I come in, so it becomes a good plate to see who is well designed, and it can attract more people to take over. "

In the eyes of web3 entrepreneurs, speculators and bubbles are everywhere. In the first -level market, the VCs rushed to enter the game, but did not know much about Web3. He remembered that a CVC took a few people to talk about web3 and pretended to enter the game, but there was actually no output. Afterwards, Silin regarded this as "white". In the entrepreneurial circle, speculation became more explicit. In a nearly 400 -person entrepreneurial group chat, he even decided to give up the project after seeing the founder made a stroke. A web3 job seeker also stated on the social platform that he had been in an internship on a domestic NFT startup company, but no one paid for one month after joining the job, and finally left in anger.

Now, Fang Tong will constantly remind the team, "Sober, sober, sober."

Tencent has sounded the alarm clock

Twitter founder Jack Dori was a Bitcoin enthusiast, but in December last year, he scolded Web3 on Twitter to become a "venture capital company". Fund A16Z. "The user does not actually have Web3, but this is a sport with decentralization and community."

Contradictions and differences are still there. Not long ago, columnist and A16Z's star investor Marc Andreessen had a dialogue. This conversation was like a conversation experienced by Fang Tong, full of stuck shells and abstract words that are unpredictable. This is unavoidable, where is the future of web3? Or does it really have a future?

The latest alarm bell is Tencent. According to reports, insiders inside Tencent revealed that Tencent is planning to dismiss the "Phantom Nuclear" business this week, and the news has been conveyed in the fantasy nuclear base. Interface news also learned from people familiar with the matter that the matter was basically true, and as early as July, the business of the fantasy nuclear abroad had stopped.

Tencent Magic Nuclear was launched in August 2021. At that time, the domestic NFT boom was vigorous. At that time, the Alipay and Dunhuang Fine Arts Research Institute released two NFT skin, and the price was once fired to more than 100 million.

Subsequently, Tencent launched the NFT release platform Phantom APP. From the perspective of many industries and the number of hidden circles, the magic nucleus is already a domestic digital collection platform. In March of this year, the fantasy nucleus completely erased the NFT character in the platform and adjusted it to "digital collections". In addition, WeChat also remedied the public account and applets that sold digital collections in the secondary digital collections. This regulatory behavior coincides with the bear market in the NFT market, causing the digital collections to be severely frustrated.

In addition to the risk of compliance, Phantom nuclear has also faced slow -selling issues. Taking the "Master of Hongyi Master Calligraphy Calligraphy Digital" and "Shizhuzhai Painting Book" in June this year, the two digital collections closed the transaction without being sold. In some social media, there are several hidden circle players bluntly saying that "the magic nucleus is IQ tax."

The biggest difference between digital collections and foreign NFT concepts is that digital collections cannot freely conduct secondary transactions. NFT is the same as Bitcoin and Ethereum. It belongs to a form of tokens and naturally has certain financial attributes. Support, and restrict secondary transactions.

The suspected end of the fantasy nucleus also indicates that the risks that domestic web3s may encounter to a certain extent, which is also a problem that all web3 entrepreneurs need to face.

(Some interviewees in the text are a pseudonym)

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