Nervos: Meet the Team Behind the Project
The key architects of the Nervos Network have come a long way together to guide the project to the point where we now find ourselves. They spent many years building and working on different blockchain and crypto projects all over the world, forming a collective body of knowledge and expertise that has been integral to Nervos’s success to date. These architects understand blockchain’s capabilities, promise, and limitations. Their various experiences inspired them to come together and build a new blockchain network — based on the shared vision that the power of these systems should be reserved for high-value, fundamental tasks, specifically with a focus on store of assets. Nervos was built with this purpose in mind, and we believe it is unlike anything that has come before.
The original team members behind Nervos have all built or contributed to many open-source blockchain projects. The foundational concepts of Nervos were formed from insights gleaned while working on these projects. Although our work is heavily technology-focused, the products we create are the result of close human collaboration.
As Nervos has gained recognition, we are often asked about our team. Here is some background on our core team members — those who have played an outsized part in shaping Nervos.
Jan Xie: Lead Architect and Researcher
Jan has become a thought leader in the blockchain space through his skill and his participation in successful projects, most famously Ethereum, where he was a core researcher and developer. He was also a co-founder of ethfans.org, and an architect at Peatio. In addition, he founded the blockchain infrastructure company Cryptape.
Passionate about blockchain’s potential, Jan believes “its greatest power lies not in processing transactions but in storing value. Network functions should be spread across different layers or components. Rather than coupling all functions into a single unit, slowing transaction throughput to a crawl, developers should process these activities on a secondary layer, leaving the base layer of the blockchain to store only the value of assets. This achieves speed and scalability while preserving decentralization and security for the crucial function of the blockchain: the store of value.”
Kevin Wang: Researcher, Token Economics
Kevin has held key roles throughout the technology space as a consultant and engineer. He previously worked on enterprise data solutions at IBM Silicon Valley Lab. He also co-founded Launch School, an online school for software engineers. At Nervos, Kevin focuses on token economic research, and has been a driving force behind our unique approach.
“We believe that a well-designed economic model should go beyond the consensus process and ensure the long-term sustainability of the protocol as well,” Kevin says. “in particular, the economic model should have a sustainable way to raise revenue to compensate service providers (typically miners or validators) and to maintain a low barrier to participation, ensuring that the network remains decentralized over time.” Kevin believes strongly that a “blockchain’s native token must have convincing intrinsic value.”
Terry Tai: Jack-of-all-Trades
Terry has been involved in software development since he graduated university in 2009. He got involved in blockchain in 2014 when he became a core developer at Yunbi / Peatio cryptocurrency exchange. Subsequently, he co-founded Teahour.fm, one of China’s most popular tech podcasts. He joined Cryptape — the largest and most recognized blockchain engineering team in China — as Chief Product Officer in 2017 before leaving to co-found Nervos.
Terry explains: “Nervos is a paradigm shift. Our Cell Model for decentralized applications will make development more flexible, more scalable, and more accessible to real businesses.”
Daniel Lv: Community Building
At Nervos, Daniel focuses on community, leading our growth in China and internationally.
Daniel has co-founded several successful blockchain companies. He is the co-founder and former CTO of imToken, the world’s most popular Ethereum wallet and former CTO of Yunbi. As a Rubyist, Daniel organized the Ruby China community for 10 years and co-founded ruby-china.org.
Daniel is also the host of the podcast Teahour.fm. Crucially, this is where it all started back in 2013, when the Nervos core team met and bonded over a shared vision of new technology and a new economy.
It is perhaps ironic that while technological networks can be designed to be trustless, human networks require trust. This first meeting began a long relationship of trust among our founders, which ultimately set us on the path to where we are now.
Team Vision, Team Effort
We are lucky at Nervos to be led by these talented and passionate individuals. Ultimately, Nervos is a full team effort, and everyone in the organization — as well as our community — has an active part in our growth and success.
While we are building a complex technological system with the capability to positively reshape our financial infrastructure, fundamentally, we are a team of people pulling together to make big things happen.
