Aero Wang, Co- founder of Nebulas and NEO: “At the bottom of last crypto cycle, I thought AntShares (NEO) was dead.”

Full content: https://community.nebulas.io/d/77-aero-wang-i-thought-antshares-neo-was-dead

Q2. Whether it was at Antshares (NEO) or Nebulas, I believe that Aero has a lot of heart-felt stories, could you share one with us?

1. “At the bottom of last crypto cycle, I thought AntShares (NEO) was dead.”

Since we are sharing our experiences to encourage each other to live through the winter, I will share with you a story of our early blockchain development, which happened during the last crypto crash. It was in mid 2015, the second year after Antshares (NEO) was founded. At that time, a considerable amount of seed funding was raised in the form of bitcoin. This fund had not been used yet, and its value had shrunk by nearly 50%. In contrast, during 2015, a lot of
hype was about the internet finance, equity crowdfunding, and even the stock market.

So at the time, no one was truly optimistic about NEO, including the seed investors and founders of NEO. No one in NEO had very strong confidence then. Even within the blockchain industry, people were mostly interested in permissioned blockchain such as R3 or Hyperledger, and sometimes even we would think that perhaps R3 and Hyperledger got the right approach. Should blockchain be a technology that simply improves traditional organization and its work efficiencies? So we had our doubts too, whether a classic token blockchain like bitcoin has a future.

In 2015, I remember that there were only three and a half team members in NEO (because one of them was an intern). We didn’t know what to do, and there was no salary for the founders. Da Hongfei and I were doing an unpaid entrepreneurship. So it came to a point that we needed to spend NEO funds, which was partly raised in bitcoin. At that time, we paid our team members in fiat currency. The fund we raised was only about 300,000 RMB. In fact, it couldn’t last very long. Even the basic salary for the technical team was a problem, let alone the expenses on any commercial promotion.

So we thought that we might need to abort the project, and before that happened, should we let everyone have a chance to withdraw? So the nine seed investors were given an opportunity to withdraw their investment in equivalent fiat currency. I remember there were two investors who chose this option. Of course, the other investors also had their doubts. Because at that time, the funds raised in bitcoin had lost half its value, the withdrawal in fiat currency was a kind of welfare.

1. “ We would encourage Bitsclub memebers to hang in there, because at least give Antshares (NEO) a chance to try and make mistakes.”
   But since Bitcoin had crashed, it was impossible for everyone to withdraw their investment. For those who joined us from Bitsclub, we would encourage them to hang in there, because at least give Antshares a chance to try and make mistakes.

But in retrospect, I think at that moment, I felt the event would bring us mix feelings in the future, because after all, Antshares was China’s first open source public chain project.
Those who chose to quit during the seed period, I have met them again later in the blockchain industry, and we all talked about it. Everyone was emotional, that they had doubts in a project that they used to create or believe in. This is actually very normal.

1. “If you understand the spirit of the times, in fact, it has little to do with ability, but a lot to do with choice. Ordinary people can do great things too.”

Back to now, our situation is similar to the situation in 2015, the magnitude has increased, but the basic situation is the same. People feel lost. They are trying to see if there is a classic development direction in the traditional sense. The blockchain community have a generally low morale, and project startups are tightening their belts. Things will spiral up, and it won’t be a straight line. In my personal experience, if you have seen the origin of the Chinese blockchain community, Hitters Xu organized Bitsclub, from a few to a dozen people. From a dozen to hundreds of people, then we held the first blockchain international summit. From subculture to mainstream culture, from a group of geeks to some traditional organizations, from small companies to big corporations, the Top 500 or BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent.) More people, more experts, more resources are invested in this industry, then you will believe that the vitality of blockchain technology really goes beyond the imagination of all the participants.If you understand the spirit of the times, in fact, it has little to do with ability, but a lot to do with choice.

So it’s important to make a choice and stick to it. No one has superpower, everything is done by ordinary people, a group of people who have been working together for years, so ordinary people can do great things.