The Web3 Revolution: Escape, Faith, The Great Migration

Produced | Tiger Sniff Technology Team

Author｜Zhou Zhou

Head image｜IC photo

"I'll go to (Web3 Company) after Byte's year-end awards are distributed, and friends from another department of Byte will join me." Byte employee Zhang Beihai said to Huxiu.

As the youngest and only major Internet company that is still growing rapidly and has great opportunities, many employees of ByteDance chose to give up "Dance" and began to explore new industries. Some of them are technical staff in charge of Feishu, some are visual designers, some are in charge of TikTok business, and some are "technical bosses" who joined Byte in 2014... They are all born in the 90s, most of them are born in the 95s, They enjoy Byte's 18 salary, options with huge value-added potential, free three meals with changing patterns, and full snacks and drinks.

However, this series of top-level treatment from domestic and even global companies cannot keep their determination to change careers.

Unlike Zhang Beihai, Tencent's senior product manager Plato is not even willing to wait for the year-end bonus. "I'm not young anymore, and I don't want to live a life where I can see the head at a glance." At the end of 2021, Plato resigned from Tencent headquarters, chose the creator economy track, which has been on fire recently, and officially started his own Web3 entrepreneurial road.

Tiger Sniff observed that Ali, Ant, Tencent, Byte, NetEase, Meituan, at least six major Internet companies have "high P" (senior managers or senior technical personnel), and have given up stable high salaries and considerable options. Actively explore the Web3 world.

There are more and more "high P" former big manufacturers joining the Web3 track, including: Wang Huiwen, co-founder of Meituan, Zhao Feng, technical director of Ant, who joined Byte in 2014 and retired with nearly 100 million options in 2020 Post-90s programmer Guo Yu and others.

In April this year, Wang Huiwen changed the Instant App signature to: Learning Crypto. As the founder of Meituan, he paid attention to Crypto a long time later than Wang Xing. As early as 2013, Wang Xing was already optimistic about Bitcoin and invested. However, "There is no precedence when hearing about DAO", Wang Huiwen has some new understanding of Web3. He believes that the blockchain has torn apart the Chinese Internet, and the main contradiction of the Chinese Internet has changed from the contradiction between giants and startups to the classical Internet and blockchain. the contradiction between . In 2020, he retired from Meituan and started a new track.

Guo Yu is one of the earliest Web3 practitioners. He has paid attention to Web3 since he joined Alipay in 2011 and shared his experience at the weekend sharing meeting of the Alipay Experience Technology Department. After he resigned from ByteDance in 2020, he seldom studied it again. Classical Internet, and began to concentrate on the technology and application of blockchain. Zhao Feng is all in Web3 like Guo Yu. As a former Tencent Mobile QQ Architect and Alipay Product Director, he has entered the game in 2018 and has attracted many colleagues from Ant and Tencent.

From big factory executives to big factory young people, the Web3 industry is constantly attracting Internet talents. In the first 20 years of the 21st century, the Internet was probably the most friendly industry for most Chinese young people, although people now complain more about its various problems.

Web3 refers to a decentralized online ecosystem based on blockchain technology, which many believe represents the next phase of the internet. A partner of a traditional investment institution said to Huxiu: "The current Web3 industry is very similar to the Internet in 2000." And this sentence is being mentioned more and more frequently.

Looking back in 2000, Baidu, Ali and Tencent were just established, Alipay will be in 3 years, QQ Music will be in 5 years, BOSS will be directly hired 14 years later, KEEP will be 15 years later, and Douyin is the "last national Internet product". "It will not be born until 16 years later. In fact, most of the Internet companies we know today were born between 2000 and 2010. Many of these companies and their products were accompanied by huge controversies at the beginning of their birth, but this did not affect their commercial value, far exceeding that of traditional companies.

So, as the "new generation Internet", have the latest versions of Baidu, Ali and Tencent already appeared?

In fact, in the Web3 industry, some products already have the "prototype" of national mobile phone products , such as MetaMask (decentralized Alipay), STEPN (decentralized KEEP), Audius (decentralized QQ Music), OpenSea... They already have millions or even tens of millions of users around the world, and 3 companies were even named as the 100 most influential companies in the world by Time magazine this year.

Among them, MetaMask is currently one of the Web3 products with the largest number of users. In March 2022, its monthly active users exceeded 30 million, and its growth rate was as high as 42% in the past four months. The latest valuation of the company behind it, ConsenSys, has quadrupled to $7 billion.

Abundant products, high valuations, a large number of users... These all remind people of the Internet in the wild era around 2000.

escape

"Look at the end at a glance." Now this sentence has become the voice of many Internet people.

Twenty years ago, a group of entrepreneurs introduced various innovative models of the Internet into China despite uncertain policies and risks of compliance. At that time, there were no factions on the Internet. There were hundreds or even thousands of companies competing in each segment, and there were new IPOs every month. There are many cases where a small company surpasses the development of traditional enterprises for decades in terms of scale after three to five years of development.

However, it is no longer what it used to be. In the past three years, there have been few Internet companies that have frequently experienced ten-fold or hundred-fold increases in valuation and allowed investors to obtain a hundred-fold return like the current Web3. This may also be one of the reasons why many capitals escaped from the classical Internet and poured into Web3.

Entering 2022, some capital parties' investment in Web3 can be called "crazy". According to incomplete statistics from Tiger Sniff, from January 1, 2022 to April 26, 2022, Sequoia Capital, one of the world's largest venture capitals, has invested in 17 Web3 companies at a rate of one investment per week. Sequoia is considered to be the most successful early venture capital in the Internet era, but in the Web3 track, it is facing more intense competition. Its competitor Coinbase Ventures invested in 71 companies in the first quarter of 2022 alone, almost one investment a day, excluding rest days. The "war" between capitals has reached a fever pitch.

People in big factories work as hard as their predecessors, but they have already missed the period of the fastest development of the company and the industry. What is even more frightening is that the layoffs of various big factories are like the plague, one after another, and there is no stopping trend.

"The development of the Internet is getting slower and slower, and the elderly care is okay." An employee of a large factory said to Huxiu. She compares Internet companies to "nursing homes" for young people. On the one hand, they hold far higher salaries in traditional industries and enjoy a good working environment; A lot of repetitive and meaningless work.

A former project leader of a large domestic factory said to Huxiu: "When I first came in, I was incubating innovative projects. However, as time went by, this project became more and more important, and the whole system lacked innovation, and I started to engage in politics. , Our boss came from a bank, likes to engage in politics and bureaucracy, and has a serious style of work. I am used to the free and flat working mode of the Internet before, and now the company's environment has no way for me to gain a sense of accomplishment."

The classical Internet has existed for more than 30 years, from Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web in 1991. The classical Internet is still "young". However, compared with Web3, its "oldness" is not only reflected in its age, but also in its system, culture, spirit and other levels.

There is a "slang" in the Web3 world called OK Boomer (OK, old man), which can be said to anyone over the age of 22 who disagrees. If you are in an important position in the government, 35 years old is definitely a young man, and 50 years old is the starting point of your career; if you are in the management position of a large state-owned enterprise, 35 years old is the age when you can just show your talents; if you are in the Internet industry, 35 years old It is the age to be optimized; and in Web3, 22 years old may not be absolutely young.

In Web3, experience is the least important, and the spirit of innovation is the most important. After all, it is built on the blockchain technology, and this technology has only been born for 14 years, so there are not so many rules and shackles. These qualities make him a better fit for youngsters.

The trend of Web3 has gradually become obvious, so that no major Internet company dares to ignore it, but they can no longer enter battle as easily as they did 20 years ago.

Tiger Sniff once mentioned in "Internet Giants "Overseas Battle" Web3" that Ali, Tencent, Byte, Ant, JD.com, Bilibili, Netease, and almost all major Internet companies have set up teams to explore Web3, while the top three major companies : Ali, Tencent, and Byte have already invested overseas. In a domestic open recruitment channel, Tencent even directly stated that job seekers are required to understand blockchain frameworks such as Bitcoin and Etherrum.

But still more and more people choose to leave the big factories.

migration

A "Great Migration" is taking place on the Internet.

Entrepreneurs worked tirelessly like stubborn ants to "move" Web2 (classical Internet) products to Web3 one by one. Zheng Xiaoyue is one of these mighty entrepreneurs.

He is the CEO of a small and medium-sized Internet company in China. He once led a team of nearly 200 people at Netease. Now he has developed a product called MetaNotey, all in web3.

MetaNotey (Decentralized Weibo)

This product is a bit like Weibo in the Web3 version, and a bit like Tencent documents in the Web3 version. He tried to "move" Internet products such as Weibo or Tencent documents to Web3 to make it more decentralized. "For most Internet users, the threshold for understanding and using Web3 is too high. We hope to become a bridge between Internet users Web2 and Web3, and become a community platform for aggregating NFT content and user subscription communication." Zheng Xiaoyue said.

Plato is also doing the same thing as Zheng Xiaoyue. He worked in Tencent for eight years. He decided to resign in the second half of last year. The goal is to "move" WeChat reading and Kindle to Web3.

As a veteran of the goose factory, Plato started two startups within Tencent in eight years, and he has also grown into a senior product manager along the way. Perhaps because of his fondness for reading, Plato’s two ventures in his spare time are both related to “books”. Once in 2014, he brought hundreds of authors from Douban to build a paid reading website; once in 2017, he built a smart bookshelf with his friends from Tencent and Tsinghua University, compared to the self-service book borrowing machine in the library. , his smart bookshelf has doubled in capacity, only one-third of the library in appearance, and only about 20% of its cost. Until now, you can still see it in Kexing Science Park where Tencent IEG is located. To the smart bookshelf developed by their team.

Perhaps the first two book entrepreneurial projects were not sexy enough. He did not choose all in until he encountered Web3.

Compared with Internet products, Web3 products have some common features, such as: decentralization, immutability, every piece of data is owned by the user, and data can be bought and sold. Taking decentralization as an example, whether it is Weibo, WeChat reading or Tencent documents, they all have the common characteristics of Internet products: all data is collected, stored, and used by an Internet company alone. This kind of centralized Internet product often only has one or two nodes. Once it is destroyed, the data will also be at risk of disappearing.

On the Web3 version of Weibo or WeChat reading, every "Weibo" and "book" published by people can be minted into NFT (non-homogeneous tokens), and these NFTs are all stored in blocks such as Ethereum. chain. The blockchain is equivalent to a collection of tens of thousands of databases. It has countless nodes, so the data is difficult to be stolen or destroyed.

The utility of Web3 goes beyond that.

Take Web3's hottest track NFT last year as an example. When a Weibo, an article, and an e-book are minted into NFT, they become an asset. After you write a Weibo, you will no longer be unable to know the price of the content you created like before. Every Weibo you post is equivalent to a commodity. As long as someone thinks it is valuable, it can be bought and sold by bidding . This may give birth to a highly developed digital property rights society. Each piece of data will have its own value and price like a house or a car. Everyone can easily display, trade and make profits on the data they generate.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was sold for $2.9 million after his first tweet was made into an NFT in 2006, but recently people don’t recognize the value of this tweet, so now this tweet NFT The latest quotation fell back to 280 US dollars, a drop of more than 10,000 times. It should be pointed out that because the current NFT market is in the early stage of development, some works have been pushed to inflated prices, which is in line with the relationship between supply and demand. As more and more works enter the market, the price will gradually tend to normal levels.

The above two products are the latest attempts made by two Chinese Internet practitioners to transform into Web3, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

STEPN (Web3 version of Keep), Metamask (Web3 version of Alipay), Braintrust (Web3 version of BOSS direct employment)... thousands of Internet products have been moved to Web3 by entrepreneurs. It is foreseeable that there will be more in the future.

Well-known products in Web3

Social networking, music, writing, finance... Every Web3 track is now crowded with a large number of entrepreneurial projects.

This scene has frequently occurred in the Internet industry.

In the "thousand regiment war" of Internet food delivery platforms, only a few companies such as Meituan and Ele.me remained in the end. During the period of competition between Mobike and Xiaohuang, hundreds of bicycle companies emerged overnight. There used to be countless new tracks born every year in the Internet industry, but now it is no longer what it was then. But the Web3 industry is reproducing this lively scene.

Just like everyone has countless APPs on their mobile phones now, maybe in the future everyone will use countless DApps (blockchain version APPs) every day.

Break the circle! Break the circle! Break the circle!

The decentralization of Web3 is essentially pursuing a kind of extreme equality, which is also one of the reasons why more and more people are attracted to participate in it.

However, equality in technology may not be true equality, and sometimes even creates greater inequality. Everyone's quality is completely different. There is no doubt that certain professional talents are more suitable for Web3, although Web3 is constantly breaking the circle to attract more forms of professional talents.

Previously, the Web3 industry has experienced several entrepreneurial waves. Brock, a researcher of OKX, told Tiger Sniff: The birth of Ethereum in 2013 allowed the blockchain and smart contracts to be closely integrated, and many DApps (blockchain applications) came into being; Sexual mining" gameplay detonates the Defi market; in 2021, NFT Summer will get out of the small circle of "Crypto" at the circulation level. These have made great contributions to the Web3 industry in terms of infrastructure and attracting audiences.

From the invention of Bitcoin, to the creation of Ethereum, to Defi, NFT, and now DAO, each wave of blockchain has attracted a group of entrepreneurs and screened a group of people for more than ten years.

The emergence of Ethereum has attracted a large number of programmers to participate in it, the emergence of Defi has attracted a group of professional financial talents on Wall Street, the emergence of NFT has attracted a large number of artists to settle in it, and the emergence of DAO has attracted all kinds of professionals.

“I have been exposed to cryptocurrencies for a long time. Tencent employees spontaneously created two WeChat groups specializing in Web3 investment, and the groups were full. Projects that can promote the industry.” A former Tencent employee said to Huxiu.

People who are new to Web3 have the same mentality and a strong defensive mentality; while those who decide to all in web3 have different reasons. Some people like to cut leeks and run away; some people like high-risk investment; some people are simply attracted by innovative financial models, while others hope to change traditional industries through new technologies and business models.

Liars, idealists, leeks and doers gather here. Who is more suitable to grow in the soil of Web3 under the big waves washing the sand?

A group of venture capital institutions stayed.

Although the Web3 model has actually had an impact on early venture capital institutions, there are still a group of forward-looking institutions that remain, such as Sequoia Capital, a16z, Coinbase Ventures, etc. Sequoia Capital once invested in half of China’s Internet, and a16z invested in Facebook, Groupon, Skype, Twitter and other American Internet giants in the early days, but now they publicly stated that they are all in crypto. These are the most famous VCs in the Web2 era, and they chose and almost all in the Web3 track.

Sequoia Capital once changed its "vision" to: Help adventurous people build great DAOs

And other new VCs are not far behind, and the competition among some VCs has reached a fever pitch. For example, Coinbase Ventures mentioned above has invested in 71 Web3 companies in the first quarter of 2022 alone.

The competition among these investment institutions is extremely fierce, and the "beginnings" of the VCs involved are even more mottled and complicated.

OKX has invested in hundreds of projects in 2021, covering core tracks such as NFT, GameFi, and DeFi. Researcher Brock told Huxiu: "Traditional VCs obtain shares issued by companies through investment, and often require higher rounds of financing. Tokens obtained by Web3 investment institutions through investment can be sold at any time after the lock-up period, making exit more flexible. In addition, institutional investment is an important source of funds for start-up companies, so institutions have more initiative. In the Web3 field, project parties have various sources of funds, and ordinary people can participate in project investment through public offerings, purchasing tokens, etc., so not only investment institutions select projects, but powerful projects also have some requirements for the comprehensive strength of VCs.”

"Traditional investment has been developed for more than 10 years, and a set of mature value evaluation standards have been formulated for Web2 companies. Web2 is a platform economy, and market share is used to determine victory and defeat. Web3 uses blockchain and other technologies to create readable and writable , the third-generation Internet protocol that can realize value transmission, and return the value created by users to users, which may be counter-intuitive to traditional VCs who are familiar with Web2 investment. Web3 is built on the blockchain. To understand the Web3 project, you must first study the principles of blockchain technology, token economy, governance mechanism, etc., and it will be easier to understand the feasibility of the Web3 project with the underlying knowledge structure." Bullock said.

In addition, Internet elites and Wall Street elites are also "flocking" to Web3.

These two industries have exported a large number of talents and companies for Web3. From another perspective, talents and companies in these two industries are the most active in entering Web3.

Financial giants such as NYSE, JPMorgan Chase, and KPMG are all trying the latest Web3 gameplay. SEC deputy chief economist Scott Bauguess and SEC official Justin Slaugher have also joined blockchain companies, which has become a very normal phenomenon. Financial practitioners, especially financial elites, are the group of people who value their blood and experience the most.

For a long time, Internet practitioners and financial practitioners have always been the largest group of people in Web3, and more than 70% of the employees of some large Web3 companies come from the Internet. The channel to enter Web3 seems to be "monopolized" by these two industries. It was not until the outbreak of NFT that people from all walks of life were able to enter Web3 on a large scale.

Clothes (Nike Adi's virtual shoes) Food (Coca-Cola McDonald's NFT collection) Live (Sandbox) Travel (virtual cars launched by BMW, Ferrari, etc.) Play ((NBA Super Bowl Disney Christie)...NFT at an incredible speed Spread in traditional industries and try to change traditional industries. This also allows professionals in other fields, such as painters, sneaker designers, photographers, jewelry designers, etc., to deeply participate in the world of Web3.

"DAO Thought" and "Web3 Culture"

Blockchain is a technology, DAO is a system, and Web3 is a culture.

DAO is a form of decentralized organization, which can be understood as a "decentralized company". It is an economic system built on the blockchain. People with the same ideas and consensus can form a DAO. People don't necessarily need a blockchain to form consensus. In the Internet world, when people strongly agree with a video or article, even if it is continuously deleted by the centralized organization, people will spontaneously store and reprint it and keep it on the Internet. Such behavior actually coincides with DAO's thinking and Web3's culture.

But the spontaneous consensus of human beings is fragile, without the guarantee of technology + system + culture, these consensus may exist overnight or for a while, but it is still partial, one-sided, and fleeting. People need blockchain + DAO + Web3 to record and guarantee the actions and consensus we cherish.

In 1915, Chen Duxiu published an article in "New Youth" edited by him, advocating democracy (Mr. De) and science (Mr. Sai). At that time, reformers and innovators who stood at the forefront of the times discovered that the Westernization Movement (technology) could not save China, and the Revolution of 1911 (system) could not save China, so the New Culture Movement (technology + system + ideology and culture) came into being.

The same is true for the development of Web3, which is different from other technical forms in that it is more like a collection of "technology + system + culture". If you only "Westernization Movement" (only develop blockchain technology), but not "1911 Revolution" and "New Culture Movement", then such Web3 is just empty.

This may be seen from the current position of Chinese entrepreneurs in Web3 companies. Chinese entrepreneurs can build the world's largest exchange, but they cannot invent NFTs that focus on cultural attributes such as Boring Ape, Azuki, and Cryptopunk.

Azuki NFT

Decentralization is the spirit of Web3 and the core of the Internet.

In terms of system, the centralized Internet is increasingly criticized by people. Whether it is Twitter, Weibo or Facebook, there are disadvantages of centralized companies, such as casual browsing of user privacy, personal data as their own, and big data killing. These problems are determined by the deep-rooted genes of Web2 Internet companies, and it is difficult for them to solve them by themselves or blindly through supervision.

Recently, an employee of a large factory was accused of "peeking" at the start-up company's work documents. It has been nearly a month since the incident, and the official has still not responded. Such incidents are not uncommon, and it is absolutely impossible to eliminate them. People do not have any chance to resist or choose. Even if a small individual is violated, they will not get any explanation. Moreover, most of the time people do not know their privacy or data. Rights have been violated. This is not because Internet companies like to do evil, but because of their own inherent institutional decisions. And once the situation of "small government, big company" appears in society, the severity of these problems will increase exponentially.

How to dispel the "evil side" of big factories? Take away their overly centralized power.

It should be pointed out that the Web2 Internet is not a completely centralized world. In fact, it is more decentralized than when Web1 and the Internet were not born. However, Web2 Internet companies generally believe in the idea of centralization.

The emergence of Alipay, WeChat, and Didi actually gave people an additional choice. Before these Internet products appeared, people could only use products provided by banks, communicate with each other by telephone, and hail a taxi by the side of the road. And the Internet actually provides people with new choices.

Starting from this logic, the decentralization of Web3 is reflected in two layers: the first layer is the social scope, the emergence of Web3 provides new opportunities for ordinary people and entrepreneurs, and makes this society less monopolized and centralized; The second layer is Web3 itself. Its core idea is to believe in decentralization, and it is committed to decentralizing every Web3 product in the system.

People are accustomed to the life style of the classical Internet, and think that every picture, every message, and every article they post should be freely shared and circulated by people. Data is money and power. This is a truth that every large Internet company knows. However, this truth is limited to large institutions. Data is money. Big companies can turn data into money and power, but individuals cannot.

Web3 allows data to circulate more deeply. It makes the power of data no longer limited to countries and large enterprises, but returns to everyone.

Each of your footprints on the Internet may seem ordinary, but when gathered together, it forms a value. And when these data can only be authorized by ordinary people to institutions in need, people can obtain benefits through their own network footprints, and even conduct frequent data exchanges with others .

Web3 attracts the craziest capital, the most ambitious young people and the most imaginative projects. What connects them is a kind of trust.

This kind of trust comes from small life scenes.

A Singaporean who wants to buy a house in Australia may need to go to various departments to apply, and it takes a week to succeed. However, in the Web3 system, it only takes a few seconds. In the past, people needed to set up a company to accomplish a complex goal, but now people only need to set up a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).

Web2 (Internet), so that everyone can instantly see major events happening around the world even at home. Web3 has created an independent global economic system outside the current world system, allowing everyone to do a complex business with strangers who have a global consensus anytime, anywhere.

write at the end

In China, blockchain and Web3 are still one of the most controversial industries. Some blockchain company CEOs, even if they are worth more than 100 million yuan, have more than a thousand team members, and even appear on the cover of mainstream magazines around the world, they are criticized by the old mother as "blind".

This ideological conflict has lasted for 10 years and will continue to exist. It took only 30 years for China to evolve from an agricultural society to an industrial society and then to a digital society. Looking back, every ten years is a revolutionary subversion.

Children who planted seedlings in the fields at that time would not have thought that they would work in a factory in the future, because at that time they could not see a factory; children who played in factories would not have thought that their future work would be staring at skyscrapers every day. watching a screen, because there are low-rise houses as far as the eye can see; and children running between skyscrapers, perhaps the place of future work will be in the field, at sea, underground, and even the concept of work will be recognized. Digest.

Inherent thinking is still lingering in people's minds, but the world is definitely changing. People "flow" into this track from the Internet, finance, art and other industries, integrate blockchain technology into products, put DAO thinking into companies, and integrate Web3 culture into the digital society.

This is a "migration" that has been going on for 10 years, and the main force has just left.