Block Journal Interview with V Systems CEO Alex Yang
Block Journal had a chance to interview Alex Yang, CEO of the up and coming blockchain ecosystem company V Systems (http://www.v.systems) at The Capital conference hosted by CoinMarketCap in Singapore from November 12 to November 13, 2019.
David H (Crypto Godfather) (http://www.twitter.com/cryptogodfatha) chatted with Alex shortly after The Capital conference kicked off with an anonymous on-stage talk between V Systems’ anonymous founder Sunny King and CoinMarketCap’s anonymous founder Brandon Chez.
The pair discussed Proof-of-Stake, invented by Sunny King, and how it is shaking up the blockchain industry, previously dominated by Proof-of-Work mining. They also discussed their respective companies, the markets, the future, and much more.
Alex Yang shares with us his insights into V Systems, Sunny King, PoS, the markets, and more in this exclusive interview.
DAVID: Alex is talking about the opening of the CoinMarketCap conference where Sunny King, the anonymous founder of V Systems and Brandon Chez, the anonymous founder of CoinMarketCap spoke on stage.
They had a chance to talk a lot about the project, the market, and what’s going on in the industry.
Alex, what did you think of their talk?
ALEX: As I mentioned to David. It’s their first open appearance. I think they have come a long way to this stage. You know, open to the public.
I like it very much!
They knew each other from way back, like 6 years ago, when both of them started their respective projects. They had email communications.
I think they have touched on the very fundamental ideas of blockchain as an industry and how it has come along in the last 6 years.
So they talk about Proof-of-Work, Proof-of-Stake, and staking. And very important issues in the current consensus debate. They also talk about their view on the dominance of Bitcoin. So those kinds of topics from pioneers shed light on the audience. That part I think is brilliant, to hear directly from them in person. They really think about the future of the industry, how we can use blockchain to better the world. So that’s the part I like.
DAVID: We certainly found it quite interesting, too. We were especially excited to see Sunny King.
Sunny King is a very mysterious, almost Satoshi-like figure in the cryptocurrency space. Vitalik Buterin has been quoted: “Sunny King may be the most original altcoin developer out there”.
What do you personally think of Sunny King?
ALEX: I admire him a lot. I’ve invested all myself into them, right? That can say everything already.
He’s a very deep thinker. Every time we talk about anything, he really has a way he can think about the wider picture. He knows the industry very well. He knows each topic, he does very deep research about them.
Vitalik was inspired by his work. He has a strong mathematics background. That part I can tell you. He’s definitely a first class mathematician. That kind of training has helped him in designing the architecture of the consensus and ecosystem, economics in his works. Especially in VSYS, which has a very strong personal feeling.
DAVID: You mentioned a little about Supernode Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-Stake itself. Can you explain as simply as possible to people that might be watching, how Proof-of-Stake works?
ALEX: So when Proof-of-Work came out, it definitely had a big impact on the world. It still proves to be very dominant in the crypto world. But, there’s also a lot of debate about energy consumption. When Satoshi designed this he had no idea. Later on you’ll see all this mining pool competition.
Proof-of-Stake definitely took another approach. Instead of using the hash power to compete against each other, it uses a new concept based on how much coins you own and how long you own it. So it provides a new environment friendly. It is very easy to launch a Proof-of-Stake blockchain yourself. In the future, if the world is going to be changed by blockchain. We’ll see millions if not billions of blockchains out there, then Proof-of-Work may not be the dominant one. Consuming too much energy. Proof-of-Stake gives people a new way to organize consensus. It also has a root from the finance world, it’s like how much you own in this piece of interest and that can reflect in the future return you’re going to get. Our vision is that Proof-of-Stake will get more and more popular. We’ll see a lot of staking players around the world. People come to realize another way to provide tokenomics to reach consensus.
DAVID: Now that we understand a little more about Proof-of-Stake, the term ‘Staking 2.0’ has been popping up around the internet when discussions about V Systems come up, can you tell us more about that?
ALEX: Sure, this is a very new idea. It came to our minds about two months ago, we had our smart contract released then we started to introduce smart contracts to the projects. As a way to help the ecosystem, we will give the startup project some VSYS, or even some Bitcoin to help them with initial financing. We’ll help them in many ways. We’ll give them tailor made wallet, tailor made explorer, and they’ll have a toolkit to organize that. So in return they’ll give some tokens back to the investor. However, we don’t keep the tokens to the team. We got to find a way to return all the tokens from the incubated projects back to the network. But, what’s the best way to do that?
We have this Supernode Proof-of-Stake. So people participate in our staking, they get rewarded in VSYS coins. Could we rely on the same mechanism to give the derived tokens also to the VSYS staking holders?
So every coin holder will have an interest in not only VSYS but also in the project that VSYS will help to bring into the blockchain industry. We feel very excited about this idea. We call it Staking 2.0, so hopefully we can make a big organization where all the coin holders will feel they are part of the network. They will benefit not only from our work but also from the projects we bring into our family.
DAVID: So one of these projects you talk about I assume is the Tachyon Protocol that was just launched with Bithumb Global. Can you tell us about any other projects, anything you can share about what might be coming up?
ALEX: As you mentioned, Tachyon is from a very solid team. They already have a business. Millions of dollars, about 3 million daily users. They run about 5,000 servers with 2 engineers, which is amazing. They think that with blockchain they can get more individual hubs or bandwidth providers to join their network. So they can have a new way of connecting people which we call ‘The Next Generation of Internet’ that will help people another way other than TCP/IP to do all the messaging, data packaging, etc., which we feel very excited about.
The other two which we are working on, one is called ‘Home’. We gave the team a gift, ‘home.io’ (the url). That says a lot about the ambition of this project. So it’s going to be our stablecoin project on the V System. We all know stablecoin is the pillar infrastructure of a new blockchain ecosystem. The way we do it is by using mortgage as the backing asset. But, there’s a lot of work we have to do with lawyers to make it compliant and compliance friendly. So the way that ‘Home’ will work is that each ‘Home’ coin holder will be part of a very specific mortgage assets. Hopefully help to do some innovation in the finance world. Another one is called ‘Walk Bank’. One thing that is interesting to mention is that the first thing we always do is check their website. The actual domain name. We gave walkbank.com, this domain to the project team. This project already has 80 million downloads. 5 million daily active users. They are very legitimate. They are an app that people can check the ForEx prices. They will make themselves as the one entry for all currencies. By all currencies, I mean fiat and crypto. So if you have an account with them you can have access to not only crypto, but all currencies on their platform. You can do various things: swaps, pair trading, whatever.
DAVID: One last question, what’s your opinion on the current state of the crypto markets?
ALEX: One thing I can say is that it’s very volatile, it changes every day. I think the cycle is about 2 to 3 months. One thing worth to mention is that currently there are a lot of countries that are noticing the application side of blockchain. Including China recently. They are going to use blockchain technology for its national currency. I think that is very encouraging, especially for companies like VSYS — a technology company. We think this kind of move will help the world to adapt, to adopt the technology with even faster speed. Faster way than before. We feel we need to move faster, ahead of the curve, since there are a lot of new joiners. But, we are confident, we have been in this industry for 6 years. We’re part of it. We want to make the applications that will really make a difference. Better, more efficient, reducing costs.
The market itself, short-term, I couldn’t tell. But, long-term, I’m very bullish. I think that it’s a way that we can help the world with alternative ways for new formats of organization to deliver new products, new services. Especially in decentralized finance (DeFi). We can tell that finance companies take a lot of profit, even bigger than the rest of other sectors, thanks to their licenses, etc. They pretty much dominate. There’s a high entry barrier. If blockchain can find a way to provide a decentralized finance that will help to better allocate financial resources. I think it should be encouraged and embraced by the world. That’s also our slogan: “Re-architect blockchain decentralized finance” That’s a field we can help to make a difference there.
