Former Huawei engineer Jiangong Chain was invested 5 million yuan to provide distributed storage on the beta version of DApp in November

Li Wansheng believes that the capital winter is a good time to pick up treasures in the primary market.

Wen | pencil road reporter Wu Xusheng

"The investment managers are all going on a trip, and there are no projects/money to invest." This phrase has recently been often mentioned in the capital markets of the blockchain space. The market is down, the market is cold, and capital has withdrawn from the blockchain circle. At this time, some institutions that rarely appeared were laying out the primary market. Pencil Road learned that recently, the nbs (next blockchain system) team received 5 million angel round investment, becoming one of the few blockchain projects in the cold winter of capital to receive investment. NBS is a public chain built based on the IPFS protocol, and its application areas include digital culture product storage, cross-border trade payment, etc. The project was officially launched in October last year, and the founder Li Wansheng worked as a network security and software engineer in Huawei, Happy.com and other companies in the early days, and later started many businesses at home and abroad. In November, the team plans to launch a beta version of the dapp to verify the stability and ease of use of the network before developing a commercial system with real value and profit model.

Note: Li Wansheng promises that the data in the article is correct and is responsible for the authenticity of the content. Pencil Road is an objective and true record, and the speed recording tone has been backed up.

The pursuit of high TPS goes against the core idea of blockchain

At about two o'clock in the afternoon, Li Wansheng appeared in the co-working space of Building 23 of the Incubator of Zhongguancun Software Park. In a cramped conference room, he told the story of his birth with NBS. In addition to his loud Shandong Mandarin, there was also the "rumbling" sound of someone snoring during a lunch break next door.

Rolling back the "ledger" of Li Wansheng's career, the resume can be described as "plump". He has been the backbone of well-known companies, and has started many businesses across fields and across borders. In 2007, he joined Huawei as a network security and software engineer, and has repeatedly turned the tide within the department, identifying bugs in the h.323 protocol of the national standard and rewriting the code. "Now I dare to come out and do my own public chain, most of the technology was trained in the Huawei period."

In 2011, he left Huawei and joined Happy.com as a system architect. After working for Happy.com for 2 years, Li Wansheng left his job to start a business and went to the United States to make an e-commerce platform similar to salted fish. In 2016, he returned to China to do an Internet financial platform. On the one hand, it is limited by policies, on the other hand, due to the small platform and the difficulty of business development, it had to be closed last year.

The mutual gold platform could not be done, but he encountered the blockchain outlet. Regarding blockchain, he heard about it as early as 2009. At that time, he was still working at Huawei, and he had friends working on Bitcoin wallets, but he didn't care because the price of Bitcoin was low at that time. At that time, in his view, Bitcoin was a product of the combination of network programming and secrets. "I don't think this thing is useful."

Later, when he did the mutual gold platform, he found that very few people were willing to store their identity information and real money on the platform. "No one trusts you, you're still a small platform, what if you run away with the money?" In addition, the advent of Ethereum also allowed him to see that blockchain technology can be used in other areas besides electronic cash.

But at that time, he felt that the market reaction was too extreme, and many project parties were promoting hundreds of times and thousands of dollars. "It's not a healthy market, and the profits from drug trafficking are not that big." As a result, he did not rush to start the project, and in the second half of last year, he began to explore in depth how the blockchain landed, and finally found that this technology is also flawed.

For example, data storage is a problem, when the amount of data on the chain reaches a certain level, ordinary computers can not run the client normally.

For example, some public chains desperately pursue tps and reduce the degree of decentralization. In Li Wansheng's view, this is contrary to the core idea of blockchain technology. The pursuit of TPS inevitably reduces the degree of decentralization, "who will give their data and assets to a small number of rich people to verify and manage." ”

During his exploration, he tried to "destroy" the Bitcoin network and help a friend retrieve his lost private key. One of his friends held hundreds of millions of bitcoins in the early days, but lost them due to improper management of private keys. Li Wansheng tried to retrieve the private key by verifying all the addresses through the computer, and finally found that this was an unfinished task. "Today's computers can't reverse crack private keys based on public keys, and if future quantum computers come out, humans may also design new consensus to counter it."

This attempt made him deeply aware that in the blockchain system, the cost of doing evil is much higher than doing good. He also believes that blockchain technology can use code to build trust between people, and reconstruct the collaborative relationship and value distribution between people through consensus.

Storage is a landable scenario

According to Li Wansheng, in the game and music industry products of a large Internet company, the company divides content contributors into 9:1, the platform takes 9, and the creator takes 1. "It's obviously unreasonable, not a pow."

After some exploration and preparation, he officially launched the "nbs" project in October last year. This is a public chain based on the ipfs protocol and built with smart contract virtual machines. The main landing scenarios of nbs are digitally digitizable thing assets, storage, routing and distribution of digital assets, etc.

In Li Wansheng's view, music, movies, pictures, articles and some digital solutions can be stored on the chain. After these digital assets are on the chain, when users trade or retrieve other people's works for use, they are completed by smart contracts, reducing the human operation process and maintaining the interests and asset security of both parties to the transaction to a certain extent.

In addition to the storage of digital cultural products, he believes that NBS can also play a certain role in the financial field. For example, bills, cross-border trade payments, private information exchange, etc.

Technically, NBS uses IPFS protocol + blockchain ledger + smart contract virtual machine. The ipfs protocol is essentially a distributed storage and transmission protocol for content addressable, versioned, peer-to-peer hypermedia. This protocol encrypts files after cutting and storing them on multiple nodes, allowing data to be stored in a decentralized manner and reducing the amount of data stored on a single node.

In addition, the team also uses the blockchain ledger layer to complete the transfer of tokens, the value of digital content is referred to by tokens, and the transfer of token ownership is the transfer of ownership of digital content. At the same time, the platform provides smart contract virtual machine support, dapp developers can easily and quickly develop business systems that meet their own industries.

In terms of economic models, there are two main roles within the nbs ecosystem. One is the storage space provider, who can get a certain income when providing storage space, and the more space is contributed, the more the benefit is obtained; the second is the data storage provider, who needs to pay a certain fee when storing data on the chain. nbs adopt post (proof of space time) consensus, the more space to contribute, the more nodes participate in the verification can get more value return.

When it comes to digital products such as music and movies, many people will think that if Tencent and other large companies take a shot, it will be a dimensionality reduction blow. They want technology and technology, they want funds and funds, and the small team has no ability to fight back, which is a major contradiction in the Internet market.

In this regard, Li Wansheng believes that the blockchain did not make the cake bigger, but modified the way the cake was distributed, and in the case that bat has mastered the power to distribute the interests of the industry, they will not give up their vested interests, which is insoluble. Bat and other companies will not do public chains, if bat does public chains, it needs to return most of the value to users, which will greatly reduce revenue, equivalent to self-severing an arm.

The capital winter is a good time for the primary market to pick up treasures

At this stage, the market is sluggish, and some of the project parties are struggling with salary cuts and layoffs, and some are simply running away with the intention of "one hundred". Li Wansheng's team has been working on development at a fast pace. Currently, they have a team of five people, in addition to him there are three technical developers. He introduced that these "brothers" are all CTO-level, resigning from the original company to join the team with a salary cut, mainly optimistic about the prospects of the project. "It's not me fooling them, there's a 'coolie' left, and almost all the work except technology is done by him."

In September of this year, they received an angel round of investment from Ore Capital for a total of 5 million. Li Wansheng often writes some articles on blockchain technology and applications and sends them to the community, Cui Guannan, founder of Ore Capital, has long been concerned about Li Wansheng's technical blog, and has been observing the work of the NBS team in technology, Cui Guannan is to recognize the technology, concept and attitude of their team expounded in Li Wansheng's article, and take the initiative to discuss investment matters with him.

When it comes to the financing process, Li Wansheng poured bitter water. He recalls meeting "countless" investors at the beginning of the project last year. At that time, the investor's reaction was to recognize the technology and the landing scene, but when asked about community building, he was no. The community infrastructure is well built, and the project with a large user base is more favored by investors. "After the project starts, they can issue coins to the exchange, and they can fast-forward and fast-out."

But in Li Wansheng's view, most of the community users on the project side are "gamblers" who go to a hundred times and a thousand times. This is not a real community, such a community is not healthy, should first let the product land, have application value and then do user operation, so that users can truly participate in the construction of the ecosystem. So, they currently have only two communities, and the total number is less than 1,000 people.

Since the beginning of this year, the capital market has cooled down step by step, until it has recently fallen nearly a freezing point. On the one hand, some project parties have shifted from the crazy recruitment and financing of a few months ago to "layoffs and run away"; on the other hand, there is no mature application landing in the market. All of this makes the future of the blockchain industry slim.

However, Li Wansheng believes that it is now the cold winter of capital, and it is also the spring of capital and technical personnel. The downward trend of the market can clean the air project, "what can be retained in the cold winter is a certain confidence, which is the time when the primary market collects treasures." In addition, technicians are no longer affected by the hundred times coin and can concentrate on development. ”

In his planning, the promotion of the NBS project is mainly divided into four parts. The first step is to build the basic network after the team launches several dapps for testing; the second step is to add incentive mechanisms to the network, so that users who contribute to the platform can get the corresponding value return; the third step is to make a smart contract virtual machine, so that the network can be automatically programmed; and finally on the basis of the first three steps to achieve landing applications.

Currently, the team is advancing in the first phase. In November, they plan to launch a dapp to test whether the network can run properly.

"The specific time of the main network may be affected by technology development, etc., but the goal is very clear, that is, to build the main network, increase the incentive mechanism, start the intelligent peace agreement, and finally achieve the application in the industry." Li Wansheng said.

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