![Header Da Bing new](https://img.decrypt.co/insecure/rs:fit:3840:0:0:0/plain/https://cdn.decrypt.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Shuyao-Da-Bing-Larger-v3.png@webp)
For years, I told myself I wasn't the founder type. Instead, I try to be that strong operator who makes the founders' dreams come true. Perhaps the avoidance of being a founder comes from my Chinese upbringing. As my mother often says: “A gun shoots the first bird that sticks its head out.” »
She didn't want me to be the first bird.
So, until recently, my career was defined by the idea of working hard to realize someone else's vision, until I stumbled upon cryptography. Crypto is self-sovereignty, starting with keeping your own keys. The crypto community encourages ownership through participation. Yes, we all love to see the magic Internet money rise, but the industry has deep financial, social and technological implications to our society.
Crypto is a unique opportunity for a generation to express their raw talent while also owning some of it.
I was very lucky that my first job in crypto was in business development at Consensys. The work gave me perspective on the complete crypto stack: from the base layer (Linea), to the middleware (Infura), to the user interface (MetaMask).
I was having fun. People began to know me not as Shuyao Kong, the global head of BD at ConsenSys, but as “Brother Bing”, a Decrypt columnist and founder of Hot Pot DAO.
But a little voice started to grow louder in my head, asking me: can you do something for yourself?
Many people have an entrepreneurial itch, but most don't scratch it. I knew I was primarily motivated by three missions: (1) working at the cutting edge of cryptographic technology; (2) welcome young talents into cryptography; and (3) incubation of tangible crypto products for emerging markets.
While I was exploring, my good old Consensys network performed the magic. Not only has ConsenSys incubated several well-known products (including Decrypt), but has also inspired a class of crypto founders, operators, investors, and rebels who are still pushing the boundaries.
When my former colleague Yi Tang messaged me in January, I knew he was up for something solid. Yi and I were on the front lines in 2018 trying to put governments and big companies in the Asia-Pacific region on chain. He is now a leading crypto investor at Qiming Venture, one of the largest funds in the world.
“We have a pretty strong portfolio of companies that are looking for a company co-founder,” he Telegramed me and sent MegaETHTwitter handle of. Browsing through the Github repository, I couldn't help but wonder who would be stupid enough to call themselves “MegaETH.” I mean, I like having ETH in the name, but Mega gave it a 2017 ICO atmosphere.
I wasn't in heaven.
But I was curious to learn more about the technology, so I scheduled a call with Yilong, who had launched MegaETH after completing his doctorate in Stanford's computer science department. In his typically calm and firm voice, Yilong explained to me his motivation, system design philosophy, and vision.
Simply put: he wanted to create a scalable base layer so that developers could create easy-to-use, fast, and cheap crypto-native dapps.
The thesis is simple and intelligent. After a decade, no one has managed to expand a blockchain it's as user-friendly as Web2. Solana, which is a step in the right direction, still faces scaling challenges and is still in beta. And the Ethereum The L2s collectively only develop the main network by a factor of 10, which is rather meager.
Since no blockchain is sufficiently scalable, dapps offer lower performance, resulting in poor user experience. I often joke that developers cheat the blockchain because they prefer to put data off-chain rather than on-chain due to poor performance issues.
These are the problems that MegaETH will try to solve.
![megaeth](https://img.decrypt.co/insecure/rs:fit:3840:0:0:0/plain/https://cdn.decrypt.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image1.png@webp)
As Yilong explained the thinking behind MegaETH, there was a charming, calm confidence in his voice. In an hour I went from “cool tech, but so what” to “this thing will make Ethereum great again”. My mind was mega-aligned at 80% after the call.
The next day, I met Lei Yang, who would become our third co-founder and CTO. Lei is already a well-known blockchain researcher at MIT. His ability to explain complex blockchain concepts in the most user-friendly way possible was the best I've seen in crypto.
The MegaETH team began to take shape virtually and I signed on in March to lead all sales and marketing efforts.
There was obviously a lot of work to be done. But there was also the fun of a startup. Since we lived all over the world, the founding team hardly met in person.—once at ETH Denver and later in Boston, when everyone went to Lei's doctoral thesis defense. These in-person meetings were wonderful times. For example, we learned that Lei is a fan of rabbits. He actually goes to a park near MIT and feeds the rabbits every week. With this in mind, we are designing a MegaETH logo depicting a super-fast rabbit.
Along the way, we learn about each other's communication style, diet, and even family members. Today, as I write these words in the middle of the night in Dubai, I realize that while my entrepreneurial journey may have started from some sort of vague instinct, it really took off when I met the right people.
Lots of things keep me up at night. We have not yet received funding. We desperately need a developer evangelist who can lead developers into our ecosystem. And we don't even have a website yet.
But so far, despite what my mother taught me, it actually feels good to get my head out. And I haven't been shot yet.