Article written by: Lesley, MetaEra

On May 15, at the Conflux Digital Finance and Ecosystem Development Conference held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, Professor Long Fan, founder of Conflux Network, appeared in the public eye again. This Tsinghua "Yao Class" alumnus, MIT PhD, and current professor at the University of Toronto has almost faded out of the public eye in the past few years, never accepted media interviews, and quietly led the team to promote the technical exploration and global expansion of Conflux as China's only compliant public chain.

Faced with the RWA craze, the Memecoin boom, and the accelerated development of stablecoins, the pace of the blockchain era is faster than ever. How does Conflux maintain its technical focus? As the only compliant Chinese public chain, what is the long-term thinking behind Conflux's compliance identity?

In this exclusive interview, Professor Long Fan systematically shared for the first time his path selection, independent judgment on industry trends, and advice to young developers.

The original intention of starting a business and the technical foundation of Conflux

MetaEra: Please briefly introduce yourself. You are a PhD from MIT, an alumnus of Tsinghua Yao Class, and the founder of Conflux, and you also have many other identities. If you were to introduce yourself, which identity would you like people to remember first? Why?

Professor Long Fan: I am a computer science researcher, that is, I study computer science. You can think of me as a "scientist," which is probably the simplest identity that covers everything I do. Whether it's the founder of Conflux, or studying at MIT, or teaching at the University of Toronto, they are all part of this identity, or the experience of growing up with this identity.

MetaEra: If you can only use one sentence to introduce Conflux, what would you say? Is there a sentence that can make ordinary users remember what Conflux is doing now?

Professor Long Fan: I think what Conflux is doing now is to insist on being a high-performance public chain based in China or Asia, and to become an important infrastructure in the Web 3.0 era. This is what we have been doing, and it is what we will continue to do.

MetaEra: Did we start to determine this definition in 2018? Or is it the result of our team's gradual exploration over the past seven or eight years?

Professor Long Fan: Our team has been thinking this way for 18 years. In a fashionable way, it is called "never forgetting the original intention", and we have been doing this all the time.

MetaEra: Currently, Conflux’s Twitter profile defines the project as related to “stablecoin” and “payment”, so compared with Ethereum , Solana and other public chains, what are the major advantages of Conflux in the field of stablecoin and payment?

Professor Long Fan: I think the biggest advantage of Conflux technology is that our overall technical architecture achieves high-performance TPS without sacrificing decentralization and security. Our network can support 3,000-6,000 TPS, and the confirmation time is also very fast. All of this is achieved without sacrificing the number of nodes or security.

This is one of our major technical advantages, and it has been verified for a long time. For example, since the launch of the Conflux mainnet, there has been zero security incidents, which reflects the stability and credibility of the architecture. What we are doing is based on our unique market or industry position, focusing on what we are better at doing, or what we should do. You have seen that we are actively promoting offshore RMB, stablecoins and other directions, and we are also focusing on cooperating with China Telecom on BSIM cards. You can understand the BSIM card as an entrance to the blockchain world. It is our key channel to connect to real-world application scenarios.

In fact, all of these are explaining what we can do as the only compliant public chain platform originated in China compared to other public chains. Our unique advantages in this position will indeed bring different advantages and changes to our on-chain ecosystem. This is why we focus on these things.

Compliance is not something that can be achieved through hard work, but rather something that can be achieved through long-term belief and path selection.

MetaEra: Recently, Conflux and its partners signed a strategic cooperation agreement for cross-border trade scenarios along the Belt and Road Initiative. I would like to know which of the many scenarios mentioned at the meeting you think can be implemented quickly ?

Professor Long Fan: I think there are two aspects worth paying attention to. In fact, the content released at the conference are all projects that will have clear progress in the next month or several months, and have predictable implementation paths.

For example, our ecological partner AnchorX has already prepared everything from compliance and other aspects for the offshore RMB stablecoin that is currently being promoted. The main aspect that is still under negotiation is: how to release the offshore RMB stablecoin in a better way so that more people can access it and apply it to these scenarios. So soon there will be compliant offshore RMB stablecoins running on our chain, and then we will also launch a series of ecological solutions to help this project expand its influence. This will be a priority direction of our next public chain development strategy.

The second is the BSIM card. The entire technology development process - not only the software level development, but also the overall coordination with telecom operators and card suppliers. In fact, for a long time, some things were not completely within our control. But I am very happy that the development and coordination of these technologies have been basically completed recently. We expect to launch one or several BSIM cards in some overseas markets of China Telecom in the next few months, so that users can really use BSIM cards. If the effect meets expectations, we can expect more promotion, and even possible cooperation with other operators. Speaking at the meeting was Eastcompeace, one of the largest credit card manufacturers in the world. They are actually motivated to take this as a possible pilot and increase investment in this direction in the future.

MetaEra: In fact, Conflux is one of the few public chain projects that has significant advantages in compliance. It has not only actively promoted its implementation in mainland China, but also achieved good development results in Hong Kong and even the international market. Such an identity and positioning is quite special. Do you think that such a path can send a positive signal to the entire industry - that it is entirely possible for Chinese blockchain projects to embark on a development path that is both international and localized under the compliance framework?

Professor Long Fan: This is the route we have always adhered to. The signal we send out is to tell everyone that compliance is possible and that we can persist in this way.

Now we are the only compliant public chain in China, which actually has its historical reasons. This is not to say that we fought for it, but that in the previous wave of supervision and policies, most teams took the initiative to give up this matter. Many of them are due to short-term strategic considerations. For example, the cost of compliance and communication with regulators in China is too high, so they moved to Singapore. This is the choice of many teams. Because we insist on the path of compliant development, the compliance costs we bear are actually very high. This also means that we must be more restrained in many decisions. For example, we cannot issue new tokens at will.

Another aspect is that many people were not willing to try this before because they generally believed that it was impossible or unnecessary to try. But we have always believed that this is possible and are willing to work hard for it, even if we sacrifice some short-term benefits in the process. We always believe that in the long run, this is of great value.

At the same time, our ideas are more natural. Because most of the members of our core team graduated from Tsinghua University, and there are also some researchers who have studied abroad. Everyone is doing something very technology-oriented and serious. We would think, why do we have to go into exile abroad? We can insist on taking a normal development path. We always believe that it is not completely impossible to communicate with regulators on the matter of compliance. We are willing to try to communicate and explore what can be done. In fact, in the process of communication, we also found that supervision is not completely impossible to communicate. Everyone has his or her own starting point, and regulators also have their positions and considerations. But as long as both parties are willing to communicate, the logic and reasons of both parties may be gradually clarified, and finally find a solution that is mutually understood and can continue to move forward.

MetaEra: Actually, Conflux has also been actively deploying in Hong Kong recently. In this process, what role do you think Hong Kong plays? For example, will the policy support be stronger? Will the environment be more relaxed?

Professor Long Fan: First of all, Hong Kong can now be understood as a "special zone" for blockchain. We can understand it this way: when China faces a new thing that has both opportunities and huge risks, it often chooses to set up a special zone for pilot projects. Blockchain is such a typical example, and Hong Kong happens to play this role. Because blockchain brings some financial risks, such as capital flows and cross-border supervision. For the country, it may be less stressful to pilot in Hong Kong, a place that is already open to capital. This is the current positioning of Hong Kong. You can think that for quite a long time, various applications in Hong Kong will be legal, and there is no need to worry about various policy risks. This environment directly leads to an obvious result: compared with the mainland, the compliance cost in Hong Kong is much lower.

In fact, we look at this from the perspective of the characteristics of the industry. The industry is now in a window period. Not only in China, but the vast majority of blockchain projects around the world are distributed offices. In this case, "where are the people" and "where is the project registered" are often two separate things. You will see that recently many projects have chosen to register their projects in Hong Kong regardless of where the team members are located. The reason is simple: once it becomes a "Hong Kong project", it is much easier to promote compliance and it is less likely to encounter unnecessary troubles. From this perspective, Hong Kong is in a natural policy dividend period, which is a very important window of opportunity.

Of course, I recently talked to people in the industry and found that Hong Kong now has a certain sense of urgency, which mainly comes from the United States and other overseas regions. Other places are moving very fast on blockchain. Although Hong Kong's policies are relatively open, Hong Kong locals are also reflecting: Is the current policy strength still too conservative? If the current pace continues, some key opportunities may still be missed in the future. This may also be the direction in which Hong Kong needs to further adjust and accelerate its policies in the future.

RWA is evolution, Memecoin is humanity: the two polar survival rules of the blockchain world

MetaEra: We noticed that you haven't been interviewed for a while. So we would like to take this opportunity to hear you talk about the changes that the entire industry has experienced in the past few years. For example, what do you think of the recent RWA sector and the market boom caused by Memecoin? How do you and the Conflux team judge whether a track is a "trend" or a "bubble"? In addition, in the face of the constant switching of hot spots, will Conflux choose to actively pursue certain market hot spots, or stick to its established technology and strategic path?

Professor Long Fan: First of all, I have always seen it this way. RWA is not a bubble, and stablecoins are not bubbles either. They essentially represent the entire industry's continuous search for new narratives in the process of breaking through regulatory barriers and breaking through the limitations of the existing framework to optimize its own development path. This matter itself is meaningful and is an important step forward for mankind in making better use of blockchain technology.

We used to talk about "stablecoins", and now we talk more about "RWA", but it is essentially the same thing, only the concept is constantly expanding and the narrative is constantly evolving. It can be understood that people in the industry are constantly revising and upgrading the narrative, reinterpreting how blockchain should be used in a way that is easier for the outside world to understand and accept. Therefore, I think this is a good thing, not a bubble.

In fact, the outside world's acceptance of these concepts changes with time and social context, so-called "one time, another time". Take stablecoins for example. At the beginning, no one was optimistic about stablecoins, thinking that it was just an alternative means for speculators to withdraw money when they could not withdraw money, but now, no one says that anymore. When you find that stablecoins are already among the top ten buyers of U.S. Treasury bonds, it means that its usage scenarios and influence have far exceeded the cryptocurrency trading itself. The main application scenarios of stablecoins now are no longer speculation, but are reflected in payment, transfer, and especially cross-border trade. Of course, exchange scenarios still exist, but they are no longer mainstream. Things are always evolving, and so is RWA.

At first, everyone's impression of stablecoins was that they were "coin speculation tools", which was considered speculative, improper, and even a bubble from the perspective of many Chinese people. But now we see that through the RWA method, some real assets can be digitally packaged, thereby providing a new source of liquidity for assets that lack liquidity in the real economy. At this time, people suddenly realized that RWA can serve the real economy and has real value. But in the final analysis, this thing could have been done before, and now it is just a change of name and narrative to promote it.

In the final analysis, this is a change of perspective for the entire blockchain industry, conveying the same core point of view to the outside world: blockchain technology is valuable and has real application space. So I think RWA is by no means a bubble, it is just an upgrade in the narrative of our industry and a way to communicate with the times.

MetaEra: So you think Memecoin is a bubble.

Professor Long Fan: I think Memecoin is an ancient need of mankind. In fact, it is very simple. Gambling is an ancient need of mankind. If gambling is definitely a bubble, then Las Vegas casinos should have closed long ago.

When it comes to Memecoin, my opinion is that humans have a primitive need to "take a gamble", and Memecoin is essentially a manifestation of this need, a kind of "gambling in the crypto era."

Memecoin is like gambling, there are people who act as dealers. Even the president of the United States can be the dealer at this table. There are also dealers in Las Vegas casinos. The casino itself is the dealer. So if you want to ask whether this thing is a "bubble", I think the answer to this question depends on your attitude towards "gambling".

If you think that the demand for gambling itself should not exist, then you might regard it as a bubble; but if you admit that human nature has a yearning for risk, excitement and uncertainty, then it is just another way of expression, another card table.

At the Memecoin table, people are betting, chasing ups and downs, and in the final analysis, they are just participating in a game. We have seen the essence of this mechanism, so there is no need to criticize or attack it too much. In the final analysis, everyone is playing a game in this "casino", that's all.

MetaEra: The Conflux team has always adhered to the technical route of "Asia's high-performance public chain" and has not forgotten its original intention from 2018 to now . If the time is extended to five years or even longer, do you hope that Conflux will still be doing the same thing as it is now?

Professor Long Fan: I think we will continue to work in this direction. Of course, if I have any hope, it must be that we will make great progress in what we insist on doing, even if what we do and how we do it are different from what many teams do.

Many teams follow the market rhythm and quickly launch a new project within two weeks once a hot topic appears. But our team is relatively more restrained and stable in strategy. The things we promote are often slow-paced. On the one hand, it takes time for the direction itself to settle, and on the other hand, it does require our long-term efforts to promote it. But we always believe that opportunities in this direction exist. Especially in the context of the current continuous changes in the international situation, the direction we insist on is gradually showing its value and significance. This value may not be so conspicuous in the short term, but in the long run, it is solid and clear.

So if I were to talk about my expectations for the future, it would be that in four or five years, what we are doing will definitely make greater progress than it is now. I am willing to believe that this continued investment will eventually pay off.

MetaEra: In fact, we now see that many developers are constantly pouring into Web 3.0, so if there are new developers who want to join the industry, would you recommend them to work on the underlying infrastructure, application layer, or some other direction?

Professor Long Fan: I think it actually depends on the individual developer and the team situation.

In fact, there are two main styles of doing things in the blockchain industry in China. The first is to be good at seizing short-term opportunities, iterating quickly, and trial and error quickly. This industry does have many hot spots, and there are also many attention scenarios that can be quickly magnified. If you are a team with strong execution and rhythm, and are willing to actively pursue hot spots and trends, then I think you can try more application-oriented directions. Such opportunities do exist. But the premise is, are you really adapted to this rhythm? Adapting to this rhythm may mean that you need to constantly chase various hot spots and try various related products or gameplay.

Another approach is to choose a direction that can be invested in for a long time, whether it is infrastructure, a certain type of segmented application, or a technical gap in the Infra layer. As long as you confirm that there is a real, unmet demand in this direction, you can choose to focus on it. The challenge of this approach is that it requires a true belief in long-termism. Because the entire industry is full of short-term temptations and interference, the flow of funds, users, and resources is highly volatile. It is not easy to persist in such an environment. But on the contrary, the advantage of this path is that there are not many people who are really willing to do long-term things, so the "real competition" faced is not that fierce. The biggest challenge may not be others, but yourself-can you continue to invest, withstand the cycle, and whether you have enough faith and endurance to truly precipitate resources.

Therefore, I believe that every team must ultimately return to its own talents and rhythm and find the path that suits them best.

MetaEra: At this conference, we also saw many projects being built on the Conflux ecosystem. I would like to ask, does Conflux still have relevant resources or platforms to support young developers' continued growth and exploration? Will there be some incentive mechanisms in the future to help more developers join the ecosystem and participate deeply in construction?

Professor Long Fan: Our ecosystem has always had various ways to motivate developers, and we are constantly adjusting and optimizing these incentives. In fact, we have also tried many different paths and models. Our goal is to find projects that are willing to establish long-term partnerships with us, not just short-term cooperation.

In fact, there are many "migratory" developers in this industry - they often migrate between different public chains with the flow of short-term incentives. But for Conflux, we focus more on long-term development, so this type of developer can provide relatively limited help to the sustainable construction of the ecosystem. From our perspective, we prefer to support teams that are truly willing to land, willing to invest, and have clear long-term plans. We hope to establish a solid cooperation with them and promote the common growth of the ecosystem together.

As for another situation, for example, some developers may have already made similar products in other ecosystems, and they think they can just "copy & paste" the code and deploy it, and then apply for a grant, hoping to get 20,000, 30,000, or even 50,000 US dollars in funding. For this model, our support will be relatively limited.