EthSign, which involves global participation from Sequoia: The new Web3 track triggered by WeChat's "Mini Agreement"

Original Title: "We Are a Full-Time Team Now! Let's Talk About the Story of EthSign"

Original Author: Yan Xin, Founder of EthSign

In 2018, someone created an application specifically designed for recording functions on WeChat Mini Programs. This application, invested in by ZhenFund, caused a sensation in the VC industry as soon as it was launched. However, it only lasted for 48 hours.

In this application called "Xiao Protocol," both users can confirm and bind a "non-formal agreement." User A writes a message and shares it with User B. Once B confirms, the Xiao Protocol will write the content along with the signatures constructed from both users' WeChat IDs on Ethereum.

Utilizing the immutable characteristics of the Ethereum network, a statement that might have been verbal becomes, from a certain perspective, a deterministic entity.

Such a simple application resonated within the industry and even led to completely unexpected scenarios. Overnight, Xiao Protocol received 120,000 visits, with thousands of users experiencing the application. Unfortunately, after 48 hours, it was taken down by WeChat.

Now, in the wave of Web3, infrastructure has once again become a leading target, and those problems that seemed unsolvable in Web2 have found new solutions through blockchain technology.

On March 9, the Web3 infrastructure startup EthSign announced the completion of a $12 million seed round financing, with Sequoia Capital participating simultaneously from China, the U.S., and India for the first time. Sequoia India and Mirana Ventures led the round, with participation from Amber Group, Circle Ventures, NGC Ventures, HashKey Group, and Matrixport.

In today's DID and NFT environment, EthSign's story can be told on a grand scale. Next, let's return to April 2021 and see how the EthSign team narrated their story when they were officially established.

After more than a year of preparation, we are excited to announce: EthSign is officially setting sail.

A brief introduction: EthSign is a decentralized electronic protocol signing application

EthSign Originates from Real Pain Points

Electronic signature services that have been practically used in many business scenarios often make users uncomfortable due to their centralization:

• Users must verify signatures and retrieve signed agreements with the service provider's permission.
• Agreements containing trade secrets are uploaded and stored in the cloud of internet giants.
• If an electronic signature service provider goes bankrupt, the data on the server will inevitably be deleted.

After becoming familiar with and understanding the consensus and transparency that blockchain can provide, we are no longer satisfied with notarization from authorities. An event can be directly proven by tens of thousands of nodes on the chain. The platform no longer acts as an intermediary between users and information but rather as a tool and browser: we provide a user-friendly interface, but it is not necessary! Users can also directly search for or verify information from the blockchain—this is what we hope to achieve, reconstructing traditional scenarios with new protocols and networks while striving to promote automation and decentralization.

Now is a Very Suitable Time to Web3-ify These Familiar Applications

In fact, applications hoping to reconstruct some daily life scenarios through new technologies like blockchain have been common in the last bull market. The flourishing of applications relies on the maturity of infrastructure. Smart contracts are Ethereum's greatest creation, but in the last bull market, the most used smart contracts were probably just ERC-20. The application potential of smart contracts has only begun to be fully explored since DeFi Summer—the maturity of infrastructure likely takes about two years, followed by an explosion of applications.

In the entire Web3 tech stack, storage layer projects like Filecoin, Sia, and Arweave are still in their infancy, and the network is continuously upgrading itself; the computing layer of Ethereum is striving to expand to sidechains by providing better interoperability; the development of key modules in middleware, such as smart contract Trigger platforms, messaging services, and caching services, which have long been overlooked, is also beginning to be claimed by various full-time teams. It can be anticipated that the fully upgraded Web3 stack two years from now will elevate the richness of application scenarios, user numbers, and asset accumulation to a new height.

Image adapted from Placeholder's 2017 Investment Thesis, now we have reached 2021!

Our application involves various layers of the Web3 tech stack. Many of these projects are still in rapid iteration, and we will collaborate with them, continuously tracking progress and applying their developments. Based on our familiarity, we will strive to become the most competitive application development team two years from now.

We Are a Full-Time Team Now

EthSign actually started in the second half of 2019 when I was working as an investment manager. Potter and I spent the entire summer discussing DeFi and decentralized storage. By October, Potter found Jack and several other enthusiastic computer science students at the Blockchain Association at the University of Southern California to help write code; they had all taken Jack's class (Jack is the TA for all blockchain courses at USC)! Projects with part-time teams inevitably progress slowly, and due to our initial unfamiliarity with React and Web3.js, we only created the first usable version by June 2020 when we participated in the Hackfs Hackathon co-hosted by ETHGlobal and Protocol Labs.

The front end of the first version was created by Jack, who self-taught React in a month.

Later, we found Nicole in the Philippines and Claire, who specializes in interaction design, which made our front end less hackathon-like. Finally, we showcased the second version of EthSign at the Dorahacks Hackathon in February this year, by which time we had begun to integrate Magic to allow traditional users to create cryptocurrency wallets through email accounts; and with the surge of Ethereum, we had to migrate the smart contracts to Matic to reduce users' gas fee consumption.

Second version: We finally started considering user experience!

After this Hackathon, we received a lot of positive feedback and suggestions. The NFT and Bitcoin craze is rapidly expanding the boundaries of Web3, and we saw the potential for our designed application to actually serve businesses. Therefore, we resigned to establish Buildblock (meaning brick by brick), a very young but clearly goal-oriented engineering team. EthSign will be our first project!

The new version, which is the real official version, will be launched in early May!

EthSign Will Have All the Functions of Traditional Electronic Protocol Signing Platforms, But We Will Not Stop There

We have gradually clarified the layering of protocols and applications in our design. The project's front end is an electronic protocol signing platform, but the smart contract can be abstracted as an interaction platform between identity and content, which can support or become:

• Credentials for off-chain assets on-chain
• Endorsement or certification platform
• Credit system construction for on-chain identities
• Interface for DAOs to interact with the off-chain world

We will continue to integrate other protocols or components and will also be integrated into other application scenarios. As users gradually get accustomed to using Web3 identities and storage in different scenarios, we will form our own network effect.

Alright! We have already started working diligently! We will frequently update our project progress, research on new features, and daily operations on Medium.