Dialogue with Cancer: The Glory and Dreams of Ethereum's Namesake, the Crypto OG

Author: Claudia, Deep Tide TechFlow

"Crypto OG", "Namer of Ethereum", "BTS Guardian", "Co-founder of Waterdrop Capital"…… Along the path that Cancer has walked, there are many shining labels.

These labels are like medals of a knight; you can sense his glory and dreams along the way without even getting close. From founding Bitcamp, supporting BTS, to now Waterdrop Capital, it is not an exaggeration to say that Cancer has witnessed the entire history of the rapid development of public chains…

Deep Tide TechFlow dialogues with crypto OG, Cancer, the founder of Waterdrop Capital, attempting to present some of his reflections and accumulations after experiencing multiple bull and bear markets.

Turning the celebration of a few into the future of many

Deep Tide TechFlow: Could you please introduce yourself? As an elder in the crypto world, what made you decide to enter the crypto space?

Cancer: Actually, my experience is quite simple. I graduated from university in 1997 and came to Shanghai. I initially worked at the Aerospace Bureau and later changed several jobs. I worked at Siemens and then went to Infosys. In 2013, I was working as an SAP consultant and casually learned about Bitcoin, which I found quite interesting. I couldn't help but pay attention and participated in many community discussions. At that time, I found SAP quite boring after doing it for a long time, and I was participating in more and more Bitcoin activities. One day, I thought, why not just quit my job and do this full-time.

At that time, the entire community in China was still very small. There was a Garage Cafe in Beijing where a bunch of people gathered, and some people gathered in Shanghai as well. I organized a Bitcamp with some friends, including Da Hongfei, Lan Ling (Sun Ming), Xu Yiji, Chuxia Hu (Gu Ying), Datou (Zhang Yinhai), and Wang Guan (101 Spaceship). We often held events and invited guests to share, letting more people know about these things, and thus began to walk this path. Later, I continued to invest and started businesses, experiencing many things, and always wanted to attract more people to join.

In May 2014, at the invitation of Bitcamp, Vitalik met the Chinese community for the first time at Yangpu Chuangzhi Tiandi in Shanghai. This is a photo of the organizers with Vitalik. From left to right: Wang Guan, Kaku, Datou, Da Hongfei, Vitalik, Cancer, Xu Yiji, Chuxia Hu, Lan Ling.

Deep Tide TechFlow: Was there a particular event or moment that deeply moved you when you went all in?

Cancer: For me, going all in should be a natural thing. But if I had to mention a moment, I remember it was initially because of BTS. At that time, the community mainly consisted of Bitcoin and Litecoin, along with a few other minor coins, which were basically altcoins of Bitcoin. They also mined and were similar to Bitcoin, but changed some things, such as the interval between blocks.

When BTS first came out, it was quite stunning overall because it allowed asset issuance, and some designs, viewed from today's DeFi perspective, were quite advanced.

I remember the first version of the white paper discussed collateral, stablecoins (which weren't called stablecoins at that time), and other financial designs, which required some effort to understand. When the white paper first came out, the translation speed was very slow. Later, I couldn't wait any longer, so I translated it myself and added some of my interpretations, publishing it on Babit. It seemed to attract quite a few readers, and people began to recognize me.

Later, ETH was born. Because Professor Shen Bo was familiar with Vitalik and the BTS team, they often gathered in North America to discuss issues.

At the beginning of ETH's establishment, Shen Bo invited me to translate the white paper, and later I named ETH in Chinese as "Ethereum." Many people in the crypto world recognized me this way.

From The Merge to New Narratives

Deep Tide TechFlow: Recently, due to Ethereum's merge, people have started to nostalgically review Ethereum's development history. You mentioned earlier that you are the Chinese namer of Ethereum. Why did you choose the name "Ethereum"?

Cancer: I once discussed the name "Ethereum" with Charles Hoskinson. "Ether" is quite easy to understand, and the character "坊" has some thought behind it, but it's not that complicated. "坊" means workshop, which aligns with the -eum root, implying that Ethereum is a workshop for creating smart contracts.

Deep Tide TechFlow: From translating the white paper back then to your views on Ethereum in recent years, have there been any changes?

Cancer: After translating the white paper, Chuxia Hu represented our Bitcamp and invited Vitalik to China, where he toured Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen. The response was not very enthusiastic, and people found it hard to understand what he was saying. After participating in the ICO, I didn't pay much attention for a long time because when ETH first came out, the wallet was very difficult to use, and the overall user experience was quite poor. It wasn't until EVM came out that I really started to focus on it.

Another significant event was when Wanxiang got involved. Wanxiang's participation was essentially a stroke of genius for the Chinese community's involvement in blockchain.

At that time, the Ethereum team faced significant financial difficulties. CEO Xiao learned about this through Shen Bo and was very optimistic about smart contracts, so he invested $500,000.

Later, CEO Xiao, Shen Bo, and Vitalik together established Wanxiang Blockchain Lab, starting annual summits, which gradually became a milestone in the rise of the Chinese blockchain industry.

Vitalik is a very intelligent person with an idealistic temperament. He has deep thoughts on almost every concept related to the industry and spends a lot of time writing and speaking. I have a book he gifted me called "Ideals," which contains many important but quite complex articles he wrote. You can see that he often consults experts from different fields, striving to understand every important concept and trying to express it in a way that ordinary readers can understand.

During the development of ETH, he gradually attracted some key team members, such as Gavin Wood, who had strong software engineering capabilities, proposed the concept of EVM, and ultimately realized it, turning the concept of smart contracts into reality, which sparked a huge wave of innovation and led the direction of blockchain development. The whole process is a fascinating entrepreneurial story.

Deep Tide TechFlow: Currently, do you support PoW or PoS more? Since The Merge, Ethereum has transitioned to PoS. What are your thoughts on these two mechanisms?

Cancer: Recently, there has been much debate about PoW and PoS. Among the supporters of PoW, notable figures include Jan, the founder of Nervos, and A Jian, the former editor-in-chief of Ethereum enthusiasts. I agree with their view that PoS somewhat weakens decentralization and security, but I still support ETH's transition to PoS.

This weakening could be fatal for a startup project, which is why ETH chose PoW at the launch of its mainnet. However, after 8 years of development, with a huge market cap and sufficiently decentralized tokens, this weakening is almost negligible. We shouldn't exaggerate this weakening, while the improvements in efficiency and reductions in energy consumption are real and should be supported in this direction.

Deep Tide TechFlow: Indeed, you have witnessed the entire history of the rapid development of public chains. What do you think about the latest Layer 1 narratives? For example, what are your thoughts on the recently Move language-driven public chains, Aptos and Sui?

Cancer: Diem is dead, leaving behind Move. If we look back at the history of the IT industry, we can see that programming languages have been continuously evolving and iterating, from FORTRAN to C to Python to JAVA. The languages used in blockchain/smart contracts will also undergo such evolution and iteration. The initially used languages may not have had the time to become strong enough, user-friendly, or secure, and these needs will be met by later emerging languages.

Public chains are similar. After BTC, there have been stories of new public chains emerging. So far, ETH should be the most successful, along with COSMOS, which has promising prospects but is not yet successful enough, and ICP, which generally belongs to future projects. I can only say that Aptos and Sui have the opportunity to lead a wave of trends.

The rise and fall of a project depend on its philosophy and the right timing.

Deep Tide TechFlow: Many people refer to you as the "Guardian of BitShares." Looking back now, BTS had some forward-thinking ideas, whether it was decentralized exchanges, synthetic assets, stablecoins, or community autonomy… Even the later EOS, which focused on high-performance public chains, became a core narrative of the last bull market, but in the end, both BTS and EOS have relatively "declined." What do you think are the reasons for this and the lessons learned?

Cancer: BTS and EOS have some commonalities, as their founder is BM (his community account is called bytemaster, so abbreviated as BM).

The problem with BTS is that its underlying foundation is not perfect, and it lacks a solid foundation in terms of security and decentralization. The DPoS consensus mechanism indeed has shortcomings in security.

BM is an outstanding technical architect, but he was not so insistent on the concepts of decentralization and security. He often lowered some requirements for decentralization and security for user experience, TPS, and other factors, which buried hidden dangers for both BTS and EOS from the beginning.

BTS had some advanced applications, such as on-chain order book trading, collateral lending, and stablecoins. However, after BM left BTS due to the inflation incident, BTS lost the ability for continuous evolution at the underlying level. Most of the time afterward was spent on minor functional fixes. After the emergence of EVM and later cross-chain and AMM, BTS gradually declined.

Later, I often thought, if I could go back to the past, how should BTS have acted? The emergence of EOS provided an experimental opportunity to answer this question. EOS was very dazzling at its launch, a star of ICO, supporting smart contracts, fast speed, and astonishing TPS, but ultimately EOS also declined.

I believe the decline of BTS and EOS can find some common reasons. The biggest commonality between these two projects is:

1. The project team prioritized user experience over considerations of decentralization and security;
2. They lacked seriousness in treating the community and their investors.

During the BTS period, BM left after the inflation incident, which indicates what? It shows he did not take decentralized governance seriously. He might have been more focused on creating a cool project, thinking that how to handle his relationship with the community was not important, which is fatal for the leaders of public chain projects.

What did the EOS project team do? After raising a large sum of money, they converted it to BTC and did not spend much on project development.

Why do we need public chains? Public chains provide a system that can operate securely without needing to trust anyone, allowing everyone to be treated fairly enough. This way, people from all over the world can gather. Whether the underlying security is lacking or users feel significant unfairness during development, both are fatal for public chains and will severely limit their development.

So I believe the crux of BTS and EOS lies in cultural/values aspects.

Every step taken counts.

Deep Tide TechFlow: You have many identity labels, and your main identity now is co-founder of Waterdrop Capital. Could you introduce Waterdrop Capital to us? For example, what projects have you invested in?

Cancer: Waterdrop Capital is an institution established by several friends in the crypto circle, and it has been around for seven or eight years now. In recent years, we have invested more in blockchain infrastructure, Polkadot ecosystem, DeFi, NFT & Metaverse fields. Our link3 page ------ https://link3.to/waterdrip lists relevant information in detail, and interested friends can check it out.

Deep Tide TechFlow: It seems that VCs in this industry are quite homogeneous. What are the characteristics of Waterdrop, and what are your investment methodologies and standards?

Cancer: I think the biggest characteristic is that all of our partners are early participants in the blockchain industry, familiar with the entire development history of the industry. We have participated in many startup projects and experienced several bull and bear markets, which gives us better judgment on the growth paths of projects in the industry. We now have our own investment framework, focusing on early-stage projects, valuing the team's understanding of blockchain, Web3, and other concepts, as well as the team's execution capabilities.

We hope to engage with excellent teams as early as possible and provide them with comprehensive support in terms of resources, not just funding, based on mutual recognition.

Deep Tide TechFlow: After experiencing so many bull and bear markets, what are your feelings?

Cancer: This bull and bear cycle is closely related to the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike cycle. Excellent projects have the vitality to survive through bull and bear markets.

There is a saying that in a bull market, you make money and accumulate funds, while in a bear market, you learn, research, and pick up bargains. However, in practice, this reasoning is understood by everyone but is hard to serve as a strong guide. Because the market will always have various black swan events, such as this time, the Fed's interest rate hikes were quite clear, but no one expected that the incidents with LUNA and Three Arrows Capital would drag down a series of institutions.

I have recently been reading a series of works by Taleb, including "The Black Swan," "Antifragile," and "Fooled by Randomness." His core idea is that the market is unpredictable, and market participants should not try to predict the market but manage their investment portfolios based on the principles of antifragility, striving for controllable losses in bear markets while having sufficient amplification of gains in bull markets.

I believe this idea is quite realistic and profound, and as an institution, we must adhere to long-termism.

Deep Tide TechFlow: In the future, what areas will Waterdrop Capital focus on for investment, and how do you plan to move forward?

Cancer: Currently, we are most focused on the infrastructure and applications of Web3, and this will be a key area for future investment. First of all, after experiencing market testing over the past two years, Web3 has been widely recognized as the direction for the development of the next generation of the internet.

At the same time, the construction of Web3 infrastructure has also reached a certain level. As the infrastructure continues to improve, there should be an explosion in applications. We believe this direction is consistent with our investment focus.

Deep Tide TechFlow: In your opinion, what is the investment you are most satisfied with, and what led you to make that investment choice?

Cancer: Personally, I can't think of the most satisfying one, but there are a few that left a deep impression, including BTS, ETH, and Loopring.

At that time, there were relatively few projects in the market, and I invested in BTS simply because I found the project interesting; it was very straightforward.

I invested in ETH because I translated the white paper and understood it well, and later they had an ICO.

The founder of Loopring, Wang Dong, was a friend from our community, and later when he started Loopring, we recognized his abilities and direction, so we invested in that project.

When we invested in Loopring, there was no concept of Layer 2 yet. They went through various changes and ultimately chose the Layer 2 direction, which was after we had invested in Loopring for several years.

Deep Tide TechFlow: In a previous interview, you mentioned that a bold life requires not only endless money but also the realization of ideals. What is your ideal now?

Cancer: I still don't have endless money; I'm quite short on funds and need to work hard to earn money. But I can't say that my current ideal is just to focus on making money. I still hope to do some meaningful things that transcend monetary value, as long as my finances are relatively healthy. For example, can I create something new that hasn't existed before? Can I regularly express valuable opinions to the community? I want to strive to create some value that transcends money.

Now, the entire industry is developing too quickly. Even for someone who entered the circle relatively early, their understanding may not fully keep pace with the current development of the era. So the most important thing is still to learn and understand. Continuously iterating oneself to strive to output some valuable things.