Canaan Creative CEO Zhang Nangeng: From Dropping Out to Nasdaq

Author: Super Jun

Tonight, as Zhang Nangeng stands on the stage to ring the bell for his company's listing at Nasdaq, with the lights shining and the applause roaring, he will surely think of that distant night when his mentor refused to let him take a leave of absence.

It was the second year that Bitcoin entered the Chinese people’s vision, 2012. The price of the currency fell from 30 US dollars in 2011, and it dropped to 2 US dollars. In 2012, it slowly recovered, fluctuating between 10 US dollars, harvesting people’s devotion to the hope for the future. Like all the recovery years, the signal of singing joy has not come yet, and the sad song is humming. Between the despair of reality and the faint dawn of hope, it is the beginning of the emergence of heroes.

In late November in Beijing this year, the wind of early winter was bleak. In the dormitory building of Beihang University, Zhang Nangeng, a doctoral student, walked back and forth in the corridor, taking pictures of the railings. He likes to watch anime and is addicted to Bilibili. Those passionate anime worlds have built an era of yearning in his heart. At present, he has a very passionate and exciting opportunity. If he devotes himself to Bitcoin at this time, he will be able to activate another parallel universe. But in reality, he is just a lonely doctor, who has spent his whole life studying in the vast sea of ​​books in a humble house in Shenzhen University, like a prisoner.

Give it a try. As shown in the picture below, after a night of burning ambition, Zhang Nangeng decided to discuss with his mentor to drop out of school to start a business, but in reality, his mentor flatly refused. While he was worried, his blood was overflowing, and he had no choice but to give it a try. On November 28, 2012, the first day of Bitcoin halving, he felt the urgency and sense of responsibility of a great mission, so he posted a message on Renren.com to make it clear: If the dropout fails, I will drop out directly. Determined.

At this time, Zhang Nangeng was confident from the recognition of the Bitcoin world. His nickname ngzhang (hereinafter referred to as Zhang Nangeng) was already a well-known ID in the community. The so-called community at that time was mainly bitcointalk.org, which was just a continent in the chaotic era. It was the place where Satoshi Nakamoto helped to create and speak in the early days. Until April 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto abdicated the chief developer's scepter to Gavin and chose to retire. Five months after Satoshi Nakamoto retired, on November 9, 2011, ngzhang posted a post on bitcointalk.

"FPGA development board 'Icarus" is the first product of the third stage (FPGA) of Bitcoin mining. He named the FPGA mining machine he created Icarus, which comes from the name of one of the heroines in his favorite anime "Heaven's Lost Property". In the work, the heroine has powerful power and almost destroyed a new world called Synapse by herself. Mapping to the reality of Bitcoin mining, Synapse may refer to the popular GPU mining at that time. The emergence of FPGA mining machines is almost a dimensionality reduction attack that destroys GPU Bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin mining can be simply divided into four stages: CPU stage, GPU stage, FPGA stage and ASIC stage. Specifically, computer mining in the era of Satoshi Nakamoto was the CPU stage, followed by geeks’ graphics card mining, which was GPU mining. The Ikaros mining machine developed by ngzhang was the world’s first product in the third stage of FPGA, and the Avalon, which will be discussed soon, was the world’s first successfully mass-produced product in the fourth stage of ASIC. In short, ngzhang opened the two stages of Bitcoin mining with his own strength. He was the first person to make two industrial leaps and the first person in the world to make a mining machine. In a digression, the second person in the world to make a Bitcoin mining machine chip was Fried Cat, a young genius of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who had a magnificent Bitcoin career. However, he suddenly disappeared during the Spring Festival in 2015. It has been more than four years since then, but his whereabouts are still unknown. At that time, one in the south and one in the north, one pumpkin and one baked cat, opened the twin stars of China's mining industry. I don’t know where FriedCat is now, whether he is wandering the streets or living in a secluded apartment in a foreign country. A few days later, I will watch my former friend Pumpkin Zhang ringing the NASDAQ bell on the big screen in the crowd. What will he feel then? With a sigh, I have to stop writing. I will write the story of FriedCat later.

In terms of development, Gavin inherited Satoshi Nakamoto's will and worked with global developers to promote the evolution of Bitcoin code. In terms of computing power, ngzhang led the team to launch two generations of products. At the same time, he was able to overcome the devil of human greed twice and disperse the computing power globally in time. The miners' nodes shined around the world. From Icarus to Avalon, the sound of mining machines is like breathing one after another around the world. That is also the breathing sound of the Bitcoin network, which is getting stronger and stronger. From this level, Satoshi Nakamoto's will has quietly been continued in ngzhang.

Back in June 2012, the community was in an uproar because of a piece of news. There was a "Butterfly Lab" in the United States that was researching a new generation of ASIC mining machines, which was almost successful and would be launched soon. ASIC, whether it was a GPU mining machine or an FPGA mining machine, was a dimensionality reduction and a heavy blow to the mining machine. So there was a feeling of sadness and joy in the community. By then, Butterfly would control most of the global computing power, far exceeding 51%. Then they would be able to carry out a 51 attack on the Bitcoin network, which was something that geeks were extremely reluctant to see. Even if Butterfly had no motivation to attack, it had this ability, which the community could not allow.

This time, ngzhang stepped forward and claimed that he would also launch an ASIC mining machine named Avalon. In the anime story, Avalon is an elf country, an isolated utopia, resisting all interference attacks and protecting the peace of all people on the island of utopia. Reflected in the reality of Bitcoin, ngzhang is holding the sincerity of "maintaining the world peace of Bitcoin" to develop the Avalon mining machine to resist the arrival of the butterfly mining machine. In September of the same year, ngzhang developed and demonstrated the Avalon mining machine. It was originally planned to be mass-produced and delivered at the end of the year, but then encountered unknown bottlenecks in technology and the progress was slow. So at the end of November, ngzhang was melancholy for many days and asked his tutor to drop out of school to start a business. After the tutor refused, ngzhang resolutely dropped out of school and threw himself into it. Four months later, in March 2013. The Avalon mining machine was successfully mass-produced and launched on the market, throwing the first wave of wealth creation myths in the global mining industry.

Bitcoin is so successful now, but it is not born this way; the Bitcoin network is not born solid. This is inseparable from the efforts of people with lofty ideals. The emergence of Avalon and ASIC mining machines has increased the difficulty of the Bitcoin network by a trillion times. Now it is an unbreakable shield for global computing power and the base for the safe growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

At that time, ngzhang was selling mining machines on Taobao, and his head portrait was a still of Cao Cao. The thoughts of the otaku were very meaningful. This still is from the 17th chapter of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms": Cao secretly summoned Wang Hu and said, "I want to borrow something from you to suppress the people's hearts, you must not be stingy." Hu said, "What does the Prime Minister want?" Cao said, "I want to borrow your head to show everyone." Hu was shocked and said, "I am innocent!" Cao said, "I also know that you are innocent, but if I don't kill you, the army will definitely change. After you die, I will take care of your wife and children myself, don't worry."

In short, Cao Cao said to Wang Hu, the grain officer, "I will lend you my head today to stabilize the morale of the army. I will provide for your wife and children in the future, so you don't have to worry about it." In reality, ngzhang said to the miners, "Come and buy my mining machine to print money." In ancient times, printing money was a risk of being beheaded, which is the original sin that Chinese people feel deeply about. But in the future, you don't have to worry about the expenses of your life and your wife and children, because my mining machine, this money printing machine, will provide for you.

The first generation of Avalon is indeed a money printing machine. In March 2013, the first batch of 300 units was shipped worldwide. I asked Teacher Haibo to help me trace the history of the chain and restore the year. At that time, the total computing power of the entire network was 31.28T, and each Avalon was 60G. At that time, the entire network produced 3,600 bitcoins every day, so each Avalon mining machine could produce 5-7 bitcoins every day. At that time, the Cyprus crisis broke out. In just one week, Bitcoin soared from US$30 to US$260, so an Avalon mining machine could earn 5,000-10,000 yuan a day. So for a while, Luoyang paper was expensive and a machine was hard to find. The fate of many people's Bitcoin has intersected with Avalon. Wang Chun, the founder of Yuchi, crowdfunded and ordered one. Bixin's Starry Sky initially spent 120,000 yuan on crowdfunding and had 10 Avalon mining machines, which paid back the investment in one day; Wu Jihan was also an agent of Avalon chips in the early days.

Ngzhang led Avalon and ran all the way, encountering product launch delays and shipping disputes, from the era of Avalon and BBQ Gemini, to the era of Avalon, Ant, and Bitfury, to the current era of Shenma, Bitmain, Canaan Creative, and Xindong Mining. The wind rises and the tide surges, and many mining industries have been blown away by the wind and rain. The former wave follows the latter wave, and each generation is a hero. Ngzhang, Avalon, and Canaan Creative still survived. This time, they represent the entire blockchain industry and impact the Nasdaq market, and are about to become the first blockchain stock.

I have met ngzhang several times. He has a typical northern otaku look, wears glasses, is peaceful, and speaks in a gentle voice. When I first met him, his company was preparing to move south, from Beijing to Hangzhou, to accept investment from Forest People and others to reorganize Canaan Creative. In my impression, Canaan Creative has experienced many twists and turns in the capital market, which is probably comparable to the ups and downs of Bitcoin. The initial news was that Luyitong spent a huge amount of 3 billion to acquire it. Later, Luyitong was questioned by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The stock market ushered in a big bear market, and the case was dropped. Then it was reported that it was preparing to list on the New Third Board, Hong Kong, and the main board, but all failed. This time it successfully landed on Nasdaq.

Another time I met him, we were chatting about the market, he pointed at the trading orders on the screen, and said with disdain, "People nowadays brag about crashing the market with just a few hundred coins. Back then we crashed tens of thousands of coins on MtGox, and now they have the nerve to talk about crashing the market with just a few hundred coins."

He is indeed qualified to say this. He initially sold boards and mining machines to get 40,000 bitcoins. He sold them all in one go, bought a Camry, and drove around Beijing excitedly. Today, 40,000 bitcoins are worth 340 million US dollars. A few days later, Canaan Inc. raised 100 million US dollars in its IPO. If compared across time and space, that Camry is equivalent to 3.4 Canaan Inc. IPOs.

This is not a mockery, but a sigh, and a feeling of the Bitcoin wave. In the past seven years, the wave has been magically up and down, and the people involved don’t know what day it is. Zhang Nangeng, from dropping out of school to Nasdaq, has experienced thousands of industries, which is not the Silicon Valley story of blockchain. All the way to this point, my inner feelings are particularly complicated and unspeakable. Suddenly, I think of the two images of "thousands of sails" in ancient poems:

"A thousand ships pass by the sunken boat, and a thousand trees bloom in front of the dead tree."

"A thousand ships have passed by, but none of them is the one I want. The setting sun is reflected on the water."

【over】