Original | Odaily Planet Daily
Author: Hao Fangzhou
The story starts with a good friend helping me to create a group - Let me introduce you, this is Zhu Yuxin, the North American manager of Web3 Foundation GCC...
Me: “Hahaha, I saw the event poster on WeChat Moments↓, it turns out it’s you guys!”
Zhu Yuxin: “Yes! We have been helping Chinese Web3 builders for free, which is equivalent to an NGO…”
At that time, I only hated myself for not being a builder
After a brief conversation, this non-mainstream fund positioned as a Web3 NGO fund immediately aroused my interest.
After listening to too many abstract narratives woven by top institutions and watching waves of short-term speculators rise and fall, GCC (Global Chinese Community of Universal Digital Commons) does seem fresh.
According to Zhu Yuxins introduction, GCC has made some very sentimental and interesting attempts in the construction of Public Goods, and has incubated some public goods projects under Ethereum for free. In addition to sending high-quality developers who have not been paid attention to by capital to debut, GCC has also funded and donated to individual representatives in the academic and media fields.
At the same time, Zhu Yuxins optimism about future technology, his anti-speculation long-termism, and even his pragmatic humanism in the communication are fascinating. After the interview, I believe that Zhu Yuxins own experience and choices may also be inspiring and reference for people who are stepping into the door of Web3 and facing career choices.
Odaily Planet Daily edited the interview content as follows, enjoy~
Odaily Planet Daily: Many readers may be unfamiliar with the concept of Public Goods. Can you give some examples? What characteristics do Public Goods usually have?
Zhu Yuxin: From an economic perspective, public goods are non-rivalrous (their use will not weaken the spending power of others) and non-exclusive (no standards/membership qualifications are required for access).
But in reality, there are few pure public goods: even free roads become competitive when congested; and many national forest parks charge foreign tourists.
Electronic public goods also have risks, such as being acquired by technology companies and then switching to a paid-for-service model. Wikipedia may be a special case. It can be seen that public goods in the Web2 field have their limitations.
But in the field of Web3, the limitations are no longer there - the advantages of on-chain, transparent, permissionless, globally available, beneficial to all, decentralized, and open source are fully demonstrated.
Odaily Planet Daily: Which Web3 Public Goods projects has GCC donated to?
Zhu Yuxin: We have launched three rounds of independent donation projects in Gitcoin 15, Beta round, and Gitcoin 18, with a total of 75,000 US dollars. In the latest Gitcoin 19, we cooperated with Mask Network to launch another 30,000 US dollars funding round. If we encounter good projects outside the pool, we will also take the initiative to contact and provide funding. We are closely connected with the Ethereum community. Vitalik also attended the Public Goods theme space in August ( click here to review ); we have also cooperated with Gitcoin officials many times to discuss the difficulties of public goods construction in the Chinese-speaking area ( <a href=https://x.com/ PlanckerDAO/status/1655078721039253504? s= 20 target=_blank>click here to review).
For reference: Gitcoin Grants Beta Round Donation Guide (with 10 selected projects) 16 projects worth paying attention to in the 15th round of Gitcoin donation activities Gitcoin Grants 18 Donation Guide (with 10 selected projects)
Odaily Planet Daily: Would you like to talk about sponsoring developers’ flights to Istanbul? And sponsorship outside of Gitcoin, and your experience and insights from it?
Zhu Yuxin: GCC is still in a very early stage. We have made the following donations:
(1) Fund outstanding builders with experience in Public Goods projects to attend DevConnect in Istanbul, with an estimated investment of $10,000 to $20,000. GCC will also sponsor relevant scholars to publish a Public Goods report (pending final draft) during the event to fully showcase the Web3 Public Goods track.
(2) Fund LP Hu Donghai donated anonymously to all the Chinese public goods communities he recognized in his personal capacity. The amount of funds was relatively large, and he did not want others to mention it. In a private interview with community members, Lao Hu once said self-deprecatingly, I am a public good. The first reaction of the members at that time was: This guy is very bold and is not afraid of everyone taking advantage of him for free. There was a story circulating in the world that when Huobi distributed dividends at the bottom of the year, Lao Hu, as a co-founder, directly gave a Bitcoin (worth about 130,000 yuan at the time) in his personal name to an employee who left early and did not receive dividends. It was very generous. After slowly understanding Lao Hus experience, I began to understand that when a person takes the creation of public value as the standard of action, his practice path itself can really be regarded as a kind of abstract and vital public good. Under the coordination of Lao Hu, GCC recently donated 50,000 US dollars in the name of the institution to a professor with a European university background who is said to have met Satoshi Nakamoto and studied in Chiang Mai. It also donated to Remix Chinese Community to localize Web3 community content such as the zk field into Chinese, with an estimated donation of more than 100,000 US dollars.
(3) Funding other technology-oriented projects that are less financially well-off, such as Soul Wallet, an open source wallet that allows users to retrieve keys through non-custodial wallets or friends.
During this process, we found that the projects that ranked high in the Gitcoin donation round were mostly in the publishing research fields. For example, Blocktrend is an original professional blockchain media from Taiwan; Nowhere Publishing is a physical bookstore with a Hong Kong background located in Taiwan, which uses NFT technology to transform the book publishing process; Matters Weekly is a Web3 media that came out of the Matters community and has close ties with the Ethereum community; viaPrize is the winning project of the Zuzalu Hackathon, which aims to create a global crowdfunding bonus platform to incentivize the creation of public goods; DeSci is a decentralized scientific organization dedicated to using blockchain technology to study topics such as moon landing and carbon emission reduction.
There are still a large number of developers who are not very vocal about themselves, and this will be the focus of GCCs next step - for example, our Gitcoin donation will focus on funding projects in the fields of cryptography, staking/LSDFi, Web3 social, developer tools, etc. If your project does not belong to these categories, but you still think that your project is helpful to the construction of public goods in the Chinese community, you are also welcome to apply, and we will evaluate it according to the actual situation of the project.
Odaily Planet Daily: Where did GCC find these projects, or did they take the initiative to find GCC?
Zhu Yuxin: GCC has established contact with SpringX, an incubator guided by BuilderDAO (attached with the list of 11 selected projects in the first phase ); and plans to contact KOLs, media organizations, etc. to help spread the project; at the same time, it has also established VC partnerships with some large funds such as OKX Ventures, and outstanding selected projects will have the opportunity to be further contacted in the future.
In addition, GCC will also have dedicated team members who will proactively contact entrepreneurs from Jike, Zhihu, and Twitter, as well as winning projects from hackathon competitions. Related projects are also welcome to contact us .
Odaily Planet Daily: Where does GCCs funding come from? Are there any return requirements? Are there any other benefits besides economics from doing this?
Zhu Yuxin: In general, GCCs operating model is shifting from individuals to funds.
Previously, the main source of funding was from individual LPs, but I come from a Web2 background and believe that donations for Generate Power for Love are unsustainable. If we encounter a good large-scale public goods project in the future, we will need to support its development with a VC-like structure while bringing returns and cash flow to GCC.
Therefore, GCC is also considering early-stage investments other than donations, such as direct investments of less than 1 million yuan. After being supported in the early stages, it is also okay for projects to further commercialize in order to promote adoption. For those very mature projects, even if we do not have investment opportunities, we will try to cooperate with them in the ecosystem. For those small projects with a lower possibility of commercialization, we will still insist on free donations. Our strategy can cover projects at all stages, which is actually to establish an ecosystem for the development of public goods from small to large.
In addition to financial returns, I would also like to ask: Does everything have to pursue profitable results or carry a predetermined purpose?
The GCC community has a strong atmosphere of cultural digital nomads. In addition to Web3, it also links 706, Sihai, and cultural salons in various places. In GCC, you can come into contact with all kinds of people - hard-working developers, ecological evangelists, talented artists, etc. The collision with these different souls is itself a kind of feedback and the spiritual benefit of this fund.
Odaily Planet Daily: To truly understand GCC’s focus on the field of Public Goods, you need to know more about the people behind it. What is the team background, and how did you join?
Zhu Yuxin: Let me talk about myself first. I have not been exposed to Web3 for long. I have just been at GCC for two months. I am still studying the deep technical architecture, but I have a technical background and should be able to get started quickly. After graduating from Sun Yat-sen University with a degree in economics and management, I briefly did investment. At that time, I was at Frees Capital (Frees invested in Santonban and Three Squirrels, and founding partner Li Feng invested in TRON). I was also a KOL with hundreds of thousands of fans on Zhihu and WeChat official accounts. After graduating from Columbia University with a masters degree, I stayed in New York and worked as a data scientist in a large technology company. Later, I joined GCC as a brand and North American manager to connect North American project resources.
I chose Web3 because I am optimistic about the transformation of production relations by Web3 compared to the transformation of productivity by AI. With blockchain technology, we can have data sovereignty itself, so that we are no longer harvested by the recommendation algorithms of large institutions. The digital nomad lifestyle advocated by Web3 can also allow a Nigerian programmer to get the same pay as a programmer based in the United States. All of these sound like a skinny but beautiful ideal. I always feel that life should not be lived lightly. As Borges said, Death is like water disappearing in water. I want to be a person remembered by the world, and it may be easier to achieve this in the revolutionary Web3.
My first impression of GCC was sentiment, contrary to the previous impression that the cryptocurrency circle was very speculative and profit-seeking. LP Hu Donghai, former co-founder of Huobi and founder of Honeycomb Miner, thought about how to give back to blockchain infrastructure after becoming financially free. In his early years, he donated to various public goods projects and founders of small projects on the verge of bankruptcy in his personal name. Later, he wanted to make donations more transparent in a more institutional and procedural form, and GCC was born.
There are more than 10 core team members with diverse backgrounds: Bruce was a full-stack engineer at Alibaba and the founder of LX DAO, Constantin was a lawyer at Hillhouse Capital, Hazel was a reporter at a large financial media, and Jason is also a very insightful serial entrepreneur. I will tell their stories with GCC one by one when I have the opportunity. Everyones centripetal force is different from the profit-seeking culture, and the vision is to help others realize their dreams. The first time I attended the weekly meeting, I found that everyone was very real and interesting, and they also had a sense of charity.
Odaily Planet Daily: What is your prediction for the Web3 industry? Which areas will you focus on next?
Zhu Yuxin: I am not very interested in GameFi and SocialFi, but more interested in anti-fraud and anti-witch. I think data science technology can be used to break through limitations. I will bet heavily on zk from a technical perspective. Simply put, I dont look at directions that are too speculative. I focus on technological innovation, including the combination of Web3 (innovation in production relations) and AI (productivity upgrades) to promote equal pay for equal work worldwide.
