Dialogue Suji Yan: Anti -giant, becoming a giant

Dragon Tu Gao, also wants to be Jackie Chan.

Wen ｜ Guo Yunxiao

Edit ｜ Liu Jing

Source ｜ Dark Waves (ID: WAVES36KR))

Cover Source ｜ Vision China

If the rapid death is the eternal feature of the Internet, in the world of web3, the rotation cycle of life and death is compressed to a more extreme: a web3 project may only be half a year or even shorter from life to death. This forced the founding people of the web3 to be a home run player faster -such as establishing CVC earlier.

Mask Network was established in 2017 and focused on the bridge from Web2 to Web3. The original product form was to allow users to publish encrypted pushes on traditional social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to protect their information from being obtained by the platform, and then evolved to users through the existing social relationship network to achieve decentralized communication. Payment rewards, document storage and sharing functions. This social infinite extension attribute allows Mask Network to continuously accommodate more content and expand a richer ecology until one of the most senior players in the field of social fields today.

In the past two rounds of WEB3 cycles, Mask Network is the survivor of the big waves. Recently, Mask Network Instead of the fund's first barrier, the new brand name Bonfire Union was launched. In the traditional world, the number of US $ 42 million is not really true, but for Mask Network, this means that they can not only leverage the social structure of Web3 from the perspective of product and network protocols, but also have incubation and cultivation to meet the spirit of encryption and cultivation. The ability to open source spirit, creativity, and vision, so as to gain greater influence in the layout of the web3.

During the interview, Suji Yan described the establishment of this fund: "GP and LP saw these early incubation and investment, and said it was better to make a FUND." A considerable part of the investors of Mask Network became LP of Bonfire Union, other investment People also include predecessors or current executives/partners from various fields, including web3 well -known project parties, top US dollar venture capital funds, head financial companies, and head Internet companies. In fact, before that, Mask Network has already used various methods such as incubation, cooperation, and investment to extend the tentacles to most of the known segmentation tracks.

As the soul figure and founder of Mask Network, Suji Jan shows the image of "Web3 Emperor". He graduated from Han Han and graduated from his high school. He seemed to have a similar character to the once rebellious teenager. After going to the University of Illinois at the University of Illinois to study computer engineering, he dropped out of school. During the exchange of Japan, he also went to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Station as an independent reporter of Caixin Media. During Tulson's future as an autonomous driver engineer, he came into contact with the blockchain, and then met his current wife -a core contributor to Bitcoin. Under various influences, he entered the encryption world, and then founded Maskbook (later renamed Mask Network).

Even in the Web3 circle, Suji Yan's alienation image is quite prominent. For example, in order to express the rebellion spirit, he was interviewed in the image of "women's clothing programmers", and he also jointly launched the "Anti 996 Lisense" with his wife to resist the work system of the Internet industry that they think is unreasonable, as well as more commonly mentioned social networking in social networking The media never endless criticism.

Suji Yan's language is full of philosophy and historical outlook. In the interview with Waves in the dark, almost every question he answered with allusions, trying to connect the human past, the present and the future of the digital world, and the inextricable connections. In his opinion, the web3 digital revolution occurs in response to human development trajectory and naturally occurred. Perhaps affected by him, everyone in the investment fund of Bonfire Union also has a strong idealism. For example, Cecilia and Taylor, the partners who joined one after another, will also use the word "digital revolution" in unison.

But a vision they also mentioned at the same time is: to be the Tencent War Investment of Web3. This is surprising: Web3 is widely understood as an anti -giant and antitrust Internet form. In this strange industry, countless people manipulate the words such as encryption, consensus, decentralization, and the desire for business success or wealth. On the one hand, SUJI tries to fight against the giants, but at the same time, they do not avoid the ambition of being a giant.

How would he answer this set of contradictions? Recently, the Dark Waves talked with the Bonfire Union team including Suji Yan.

Pay attention to the three major sections, the digital world can break the physical boundary

Dark surge: There are no real giants in the Web 3 world. The form of CVC is only common in exchanges and public chains. What is your investment logic?

Taylor: I think it is a concept of ecology. For example, starting with the smallest IDEA, we provide a small "dropout scholarship". After that, we also sponsored GRANT on Gitcoin, giving Web3 social -related projects with thousands of to tens of thousands of dollars in funding support. For some projects that may be more commercial and possible, we will choose to donate. A little bigger-for example, like the "ETH SHANGHAI" hacker hosted by us at the end of May this year, if the Founder gets the award, if we want to formally raise funds, we can use Bonfire Union to invest, a single investment amount is about 20-1 million Between dollars. For those very mature projects, even without our investment opportunities, we will cooperate with them ecologically. Simply put, it has been established from childhood to large ecology. Our strategy can cover all stages of projects. According to the above logic, we will look at the three major blocks of social, infrastructure and entertainment.

Dark surge: In the past three months, many areas of Web3 have slipped. What is your priority of your investment layout?

SUJI YAN: Indeed, currently social, entertainment, DEFI and other projects have basically lost. It is difficult for you to find a $ 35 billion company in the market now. But investment must be pursuing oversized standards, such as Ethereum, one for a lifetime. The essence of people is to socialize. The world of benchmarking web2, social tracks will definitely appear 100 billion U.S. dollars.

Dark Yong: Social interaction is the origin of the web2 era and extends to everything. Will this logic come again in web3?

Suji Yan: Mask Network is basically the earliest and earliest social projects that are still living in Web3. In fact, social networking naturally has an inseparable relationship with many other fields. For example, sending pictures is one of the most basic social needs. It has existed since web1. The technologies in this include CDN, database, Social Graph, a bunch of AI algorithms behind. To the picture sent by the other party. These are basically redesigned in Web3. Maybe Google Cloud or AWS is very powerful, but its storage method has completely changed after decentralization. Similar to this, the opportunity for social extension is almost a reappearance of the past, these are investment opportunities.

Dark surge: Many views believe that the most important thing in web3 is "pulling new" at this stage. Will your investment focus on this?

Suji Yan: The new things are established in the bull market. But when we invest, we must first think about what this investment is. For example, if we occasionally buy a front auditorium, we are willing to see new things, but the more important thing is whether it can generate value. This is especially important in Web3. Essence

Taylor: Latin is an important theme in Web3 Investment. We have investment agreements and infrastructure, but La New is more about the application layer. In the application layer, this newly pull is something that is worth discussing slowly, and some of them are particularly unsustainable. We have seen too many subsidy war in Web2. The difference between XX to Earn in Web3 is not much different. Is it important to use the products of new users to use products or become a good network effect.

CECILIA: Many Single IP GameFi projects look very good, but Web3 games are not purely operating products. They have added a lot of token transactions in the first and secondary markets, and they cannot escape the market cycle of the entire Crypto. A GameFi project that lacks benign Tokennomics design is difficult to live on the length of the project party design.

Dark surge: What is a "good web3 investment"?

Suji Yan: Many people think that web3 is worthless. I think the value of value comes from the process of digitalization of human society. In the future, it will generate a super sovereign digital world that is in the real world in the future. The new world needs new banks, new cinemas, new post office, etc. There are countless new opportunities. To persist in decentralization, you can become part of these things.

CECILIA: Even in the field of entertainment or specifically in the field of Gamefi, we have invested in relatively biased infrastructure projects. For example, we have invested in Double Jump.tokyo. They helped many IPs of Japanese well -known game companies to do Blockchain Adoption. This matter itself is sustainable itself It can support it for a long time to unlock it and have relatively stable performance in the market.

Dark surge: How to identify and control the risks in Web3 investment?

Suji Yan: We will separate some donations from real investment. First of all, we have a lot of donations that support Public Good. These are funded from the DAO of Mask Network. This part is more like a university donation fund, which has nothing to do with the main body of Bonfire Union. Secondly, we will not hold a large number or put the money into the DEFI protocol.

Dark surge: Overseas funds are rarely exposed to Chinese projects, and in turn, domestic US dollar funds also rarely reach native overseas projects, but many people will use China and the United States or globalization to describe you. Suji Yan: We adhere to internationalism, and the digital world has no physical boundaries. At the same time, we have offices in Singapore, Japan, and the United States. At the same time, employees also come from different cultures and countries. This can also help us in the investment in the world's first -line projects in the world.

When investing occurs in web3 world

Dark: What kind of money do you invest -cash, stablecoin, or Token such as Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Suji Yan: We will not set this restrictions for ourselves, and we will not set up the investment target.

In the previous cycle of 16-18, in fact, a large number of Web3 investments use Bitcoin and Ethereum. Because the amount of stable coins was less than $ 5 billion at the time, it could not meet the investment needs of LP. The project party is also willing to collect Ethereum. The Token in the bull market itself is an upward trend. Many projects are also based on the ecology of Ethereum, which has received a lot of official help. The problem is that the price of Token has fluctuated huge. After several cycles, people still tend to use the U standard to measure the final return of investment. From 20 years, many new compliance structures and stable coins have emerged, and the project party will basically not take the initiative to choose to take token.

From the perspective of fundraising, the practice in the industry is now fundraising and stable coins, and there may be different structures according to different nationality and taxes. All in all, what kind of currency can be raised or even token depends on compliance capabilities.

Dark surge: What is the first goal of bonfire union investment -for financial return, the ecology of Mask Network, or something else?

CECILIA: I had caught up with the bear market as soon as I joined the battle in OKEX. At that time, I made more equity investments around the ecosystem of the exchange, such as the infrastructure of the exchange, trading components, in -gold components, and so on. I understand this like this more pure combat investment.

We have two roles in Mask Network. The first one is more similar to the previous, and the scope of cooperation that can be cooperated as the plug -in ecology is very wide. Another angle, in fact, treat Bonfire Union as a separate fund and make ance. We will make some pure financial investment. Even if the project and Mask Network products are very direct in the short term, we will invest in it, and we will invest in Essence

Dark surge: How are you different from the traditional CVC in the traditional sense?

Suji Yan: Although Bonfire Union is a CVC Structure, Mask Network itself is not entirely a company in the traditional sense. You can understand that Mask Network is an important part of the Ministry of Social Affairs in the Digital World, so the Bonfire Union may be more like an investment. Our investment serves the entire digital world and gets rewards from it. Instead, it is secondary to serve Mask Network.

Taylor: The concept of public items runs through web3. If you say that the demands of classical combat investment are strategic coupling, financial returns, and trend look tower, what we do is very similar to these, but deeper is to focus on public goods. We do not need to use strategic investment to deal with competition.

Dark Yong: Where does the investment team come from? Will you participate in the Mask Network business other than investing?

Suji yan: Cecilia bumped in the exchange before joining the exchange, and the traditional VC was before the Taylor joined. Next, my personal energy will still be placed on Mask Network. We hope that Mask Network can take root in the social track of Web3, but there are still many problems in terms of products, technical, financial, and so on. Other members in the investment team will participate in the work of some Mask Network itself, but most of the energy will be in terms of investment and the ecological collaboration between our partners and the company.

Dark: What is your decision -making mechanism? Are there any special places for web3?

Suji Yan: It is an IC. Three of us are better at people in a certain field. In the face of the corresponding projects, there will be a higher right to speak.

In fact, web3 investment has a characteristic, everyone invested very small, and then slowly injected. The reason for the macro may be that the capital is not sufficient in the previous two years, but there are also some micro. COINBASE, Binance and other central exchanges, compliance or audit projects. This equity project is actually not a real blockchain project. They are relatively unreasonable how much shareholders occupy. For shareholders with a high proportion, the overall decision -making process will become faster, and the obvious change is that the process of DD will be very different.

Dark: Where is the difference?

Suji Yan: In fact, traditional DD methods are rarely used. Web3's DD has become a very internal thing. Teams, business models, historical revolution and other information are all public on the chain or written in the code. A few partners can't see these things, but Mask Network has a very powerful technical team to help us make technical verification, and will also give us Portfolio technical support after investment. This is our advantage. Outstanding Web3 investment institutions like Paradigm must have excellent technical support capabilities. Dark surge: Many early foundations in traditional fields focus on people, but many founders in Web3 tend to be anonymous. How to deal with this situation?

Suji Yan: Many founders may be semi -anonymous. He will not tell us the real name but abcd.eth, then ABCD.ETH is his true self. Because all the operating records of the web3 are open, the resume of the founder should correspond to the interaction on the chain. We look at these more when we are DD, instead of depending on who his surname is, how much he looks, living in Alabama or New York, and too many risk control factors.

People in Web3 are still the sum of new social relationships and are more direct and transparent.

Dark surge: Is the trust between you and the project because the same builter?

Suji Yan: I understand the bigger reason because we are Operator. We have experienced the entire process and we will not ask some stupid questions.

Dark surge: What is "very stupid question"?

Suji Yan: I have been in contact with a Founder and talked to me for a while I can go online when I got the version of the product. I think it is difficult to cast this mentality.

Dark surge: What is the post -investment service required by the web3 project?

Suji Yan: After the investment, there is actually no correct answer when you solve the problem of "what should I do in the face of some situation", then when you ask the wrong question. I think those stupid problems are not needed to consider a web3 entrepreneur. In addition, technical capabilities are also critical. This may be that most VCs are lacking. They cannot afford so many programmers, but this is the advantage of CVC.

CECILIA: At the level of strategic decision -making, Mask Network, as a project that has finished all the processes, we can provide some direct experience or gain experience in the industry. The practical experience in the new industry is very valuable. In addition, we have invested a lot of plug -in projects. Both Mask Network and these projects can interact directly, and we will also promote and build the community of the investing project.

Many institutions say that they can introduce exchanges, market merchants and other resources. This post -investment service with web3 characteristics is actually increasingly homogeneous. If it is only a relationship introduction, it is much more important, and the internal experience or personal experience of the exchange will be much more important. We are entrepreneurs, so we know how to help entrepreneurs.

Taylor: The cold start phase of the web3 project will need a lot of help. For example, if Founder needs to do social applications, first of all, you need an identity system, you can directly stuff the web3 identity system; for example, you are a game, which can directly let Mask Network user experience. The combination of products provided by the battle investment/ecological fund is unmatched by financial investment funds. Just like Tencent can give many invested companies on the stage, we have seen that there are many 10 billion US dollars companies on this stage.

Opposing the giant is to oppose its coloniality and non -advanced nature

Dark surge: What is the meaning of bonfire union?

Suji Yan: On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to bomb the British Parliament Building and eventually failed. Since then, the GUY FAWKES mask and Bonfire Festival have appeared in the prototype of this incident. The story is still being adapted to people. Mask Network's LOGO source is Laughing Man, Victor Marie's novel "Smileman", and the movie "Shell Motor Team" all involve this image. Mask and Bonfire's two brands of names are paid tribute to each other.

Many VCs claim to be a certain Capital or Ventures because they think they are a Bankr or a Capitalist. We believe that Crypto and Web3 are also a cause of human significance.

Dark surge: What is the ultimate vision?

Suji Yan: Decentralized digital world.

Dark surge: What can ordinary people do in this ultimate vision?

Suji Yan: In fact, the Internet and even mobile Internet eras are no different from life in the 1980s. The important thing is to eat. I bought it by myself and now changed to takeaway. But the new era will create greater markets, more employment, and greater progress. I think the life of ordinary people will not change much, but in the future, if you look back from 50 years later, you will feel that your current life is incredible. Taylor: You have to eat for dinner. But only when talking about the economy, this digital world will also be a world with higher efficiency and smaller friction. When everything is written on a decentralized platform to become an open attribute, the economic efficiency it brings is actually much higher than before.

Dark surge: How to view the relationship between this "belief" and the financial return within a certain stage? Will it conflict?

Suji Yan: The short -term is definitely conflict. But in the long run, you will find that the "investment digital revolution" is right, and everything else is wrong.

CECILIA: In fact, hugging the ideology of web3 is a disguised guarantee for the medium and long line returns. We have seen too many projects in Silicon Valley. Founder has a good background and also invested in large funds, but their performance in the secondary market was not good. Because he just thinks that web3 has desirable technology, he still uses the thinking of web2 during the operation of the project, and may not even think about what to do.

Dark surge: Many people also criticize the web3 financial attributes. What is your opinion?

Taylor: It is a bit like the early Americans went to the west to rush the gold. Gold rushing like a financial attribute of web3, but all kinds of things will keep up. There is no way back at this matter, and all kinds of things must be seen. Now what we mentioned that San Francisco thinks is the international metropolis instead of the past gold, even if the name is so direct.

Suji Yan: I think everyone is criticizing that it is right. Too much financial melting is not good. But the more open finance and more comprehensive market -oriented reform must be progressive and advanced, and the power opposes its power is local and short -term. We do not make short -term investment in investment, so we don't think that short -term opinions are important to us. If we think there is a digital world that will appear, it will definitely not be based on existing knowledge, so we must invest in innovation.

This is the most prone to achieved results, and it is also a confirmation of the current stage where the web3 is located. From the perspective of investment, the low -end financial fruits have been taken away by the DEFI project party, but there are other opportunities, such as games, entertainment, etc. The logic of socializing to these is much like Tencent War Investment.

Dark surge: What does Bonfire Union want to do the Tencent War Investment of Web3?

Suji Yan: Tencent has chatted on social communication. It can also be e -commerce, games, and entertainment. We actually cast according to this idea. If Mask Network is a web3 small Tencent, then it should be easier for everyone to understand our investment logic.

Dark: But Tencent is obviously a giant in a web3. Is there some conflict here?

Suji Yan: The giant is not bad, and even monopoly can be understood by efficiency. We do not violate the nature of business.

I think I can understand the Internet giants of today's world: in the past few decades, the Internet is a new continent, and these giants are East India Corporation. When they look at the new continent, they can see digital serfs. They can do whatever they want. Although the digital world is not a physical continent that exists, it is not much different from the world where human existence exists. It has its natural law, and private digital property is sacred in it.

We want ARGUE to not "should a huge commercial entity exist". What is to oppose is its "coloniality" and "non -advancedness". The matter is a reactionary, retrogression social reality.

Dark surge: How to ensure that Mask Network "does not change"?

Suji Yan: Even if "Code is Law", it is difficult for us to say how we do not change ourselves, but we see an open example like Linux and Ethereum. We can learn the positive examples of these predecessors. There is no problem with business, and people need business and free markets to live.

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Dragon Tu Dragon, I also want Jackie Chan

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