Must give the organiser Taipei Ethereum Meetup a big clap. A great line up of speakers, right balance between technology and business discussion, punctual and smooth arrangements — for for free. 100 out of 100. Plus the free lunch and drink, 101 out of 100.
Like a small fans and unlike in University classes, i sat at the very first row to listen to Vitalik Buterin’s talk on Ethereum 2.0. i’ve briefly read the information before but haven’t quite got it. This time i listened again, still just understood probably half of it. Old guys like me will need to study a lot harder to keep up with the younger generation.
Lane Rettig’s talk on Ethereum Kawaii — discussed how to improve the UX of Dapps to the extent that even his grandma will use them. Also raised the concept of DX, Developer eXperience, which includes typical interfaces such as file storage and messaging, both of which are easy on centralised architecture but very tricky in a decentralised environment. An AWS of blockchain is needed.
Vlad Zamfir’s talk on Blockchain governance — explained how Ethereum development team made decisions, e.g. how to decide whether to hard fork in the DAO crisis and now Parity’s multisig contract bug and what the concerns are. Hard to see articles equally informative on the Internet, let alone the local media.
Kyber Network — — DEX, Decentralised EXchange. Solid team building a solution which the problem is waiting for. Will definitely give it a try when it’s launched next year. Founder Loi Luu is from Vietnam, while the team is headquartered in Singapore.
imToken by Ben He— is in my opinion one of the most useful Ethereum wallet on mobile. Introduced in the talk, version 2.0 adds multichain, instant exchange service, token sales and etc. The future is bright for imToken. Team is from Hangzhou, with legal set up in Singapore.
Taiwan has always had a large supply of technical talents, and are currently at like half of the cost of that in Hong Kong and China. Now in front of the blockchain wave, with elements like technology, media, exchanges and events all here, the community is vibrant. Simply in recent two weeks, there are five blockchain events, all up to a certain quality.
Whereas in Hong Kong, the blockchain related events seem to focus on Bitcoin, and from the perspective of investment. Don’t see too many technical events around Ethereum and other blockchains yet. And it seems there are not as many startups around blockchain. When i said seems i mean there do exist a few big blockchain startups who called themselves Hong Kong companies, but apparently they are referring to legal set up. Nevertheless, the talent pool of Hong Kong is surely lacking behind that of Taiwan. Compared with Singapore which unambiguously supports Fintech and blockchainhas, has attracted companies like Kyber Network and imToken, and Vitalik himself, Hong Kong is simply knocked down. And to China, merely not comparable. Not that i have a low self-esteem, but i believe in the Chinese saying, having a sense of shame is a form of bravery.
In my 3.5 days trip to Taipei i ran into quite a number of foreigners, some were having in a short trip, some are based here, while some are staying for good. A few of them spoke Chinese — Mandarin i mean, but luckily one did spoke a few words in Cantonese. To my pleasant surprise, i saw a signature of foreign attendee in Traditional Chinese. But none of these was more encouraging than Vitalik’s respect on local culture. Not only did Vitalik opened his talk in Mandarin, the slides were all in both English and Traditional Chinese. It felt warm to me. It is a big contrast to the “tradition” of tech and business events in the past 20 years.
One more thing. This Taipei trip of mine lasted for less than 100 hours. Before i departed from Hong Kong, ETH to USD was 360; before i departed from Taipei, ETH to USD was 470. i strongly believe this is only the beginning — i don’t comment on price as usual. i’m referring to the technical revolution itself.
https://youtu.be/md9iNDdAmVo
https://youtu.be/9RtSod8EXn4
不得不讚主辦方 Taipei Ethereum Meetup，星光熠熠的講者，技術和商務間適當平衡，有陣容沒雜音，準時順暢的安排，而活動竟然還免費，100分。還送午餐和飲料，101分。
帶著小粉絲的心情，霸著頭排，聽以太坊創辦人 Vitalik Buterin 講 Ethereum 2.0，內容之前約略瞄過看不懂，再聽一次，都只是明白與不明白之間，中坑還要繼續努力讀書追趕年青人。
Lane Rettig 講 Ethereum Kawaii — — 分享怎樣把Dapps的UX做得簡單到常人甚至婆婆都會用，也提出了改善DX developer experience 的概念，即如file storage, messaging 等每個應用都需要的基本功能，幾有趣。
Vlad Zamfir 講 Blockchain governance — — 涵蓋Ethereum怎樣做決策，DAO和現在Parity時間是否該hard folk處理的考慮，內容很豐富，不容易在網上文章讀到，本地媒體更不用說了。
Kyber Network — — DEX, Decentralised EXchange 去中心化交易所，扎實的團隊，實用的產品，明年正式上線時一定會試用。創辦人Loi Luu來自越南，公司設在星加坡。
imToken — 本來就是手機上最好用的以太坊錢包之一，介紹的2.0加入multichain、閃兑、token sale等功能，前途無可限量。何斌和團隊來自杭州，在星加坡開設分公司。
台灣一向技術人員很充足，且平均工資比香港和大陸低了一半，面對區塊鏈這個浪，社群很活躍，有技術，有媒體，有交易所，有交流，單是最近兩週已有五個活動，而且都有一定質量，言之有物。
相對來說，香港的活動似乎比較集中在Bitcoin，也比較從投資的角度去看，暫時不太看到關於以太坊等區塊鏈的技術交流活動，區塊鏈的startup似乎也比較少，說「似乎」，因為還是有一些很具規模的區塊鏈相關公司自我介紹為香港公司，但貌似指的主要是註冊地。反正相對於台灣，技術力量儲備明顯落後，相對星加坡明確支持fintech和區塊鏈，吸引到Kyber Network、imToken以及Vitalik本人等落戶更是技術擊倒，相對大陸，更不用說了，沒法比。不想妄自菲薄，只是知恥近乎勇。
這次在台灣幾日的活動，碰到不少外國人，有出差的也有定居的，居然好幾個都會中文，當然是國語、普通話，但也有一個說了兩句粵語。也有外國出席者簽到時寫的是正體中文名，很難得。而最令我欣喜的是Vitalik除了開場是說了幾句國語，簡報的內容是是中英並存的，非常尊重。這跟過去20年的技術和商業活動的「常規」，相差很遠。
同場加映：出差台灣100小時，香港上機前ETH兌美元360，台灣上機前兌470。而我深信，這只是個開始 — — 我指的是技術和應用，價錢我不評價。
