Editor's note: This article is from Beep News (ID: gh_2279df4d40e5), author: Little Apple, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
“Nine defeats and one win is what adventure is all about. It usually involves day-to-day calculations, the frustration of failed experiments, and the bewildering excitement of success before reaching the finish line. The same is true for adventures in silicon and digital worlds. "
—— Zhang Nangeng
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01 Old Otaku
Zhang Nangeng (Pumpkin Zhang), born in 1983, was a doctoral student at Beihang University in 2011. He was majoring in computer system architecture at that time.
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Pumpkin sheet information
This otaku was obsessed with Station B while he was studying for a Ph.D. He followed 500 dramas a year, had a soft spot for Ultraman, and dreamed of maintaining world peace.
Until he came into contact with Bitcoin, studied it for one night, and became very interested in it, he felt that Bitcoin had a 5% possibility of changing the world.
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FPGA mining machine group
On November 9, 2011, Zhang Nangeng published his first post on BitcoinTalk with the ID ngzhang, titled "FPGA development board 'Icarus'".
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02 ASIC Genesis
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The first ASIC miner (garage coffee)
Avalon is not only the name of the "Island of God's Blessing" in the legend of King Arthur, but also the name of the strongest defensive weapon in the Japanese animation "Fate".
According to people familiar with the matter, behind the development of the ASIC mining machine, there is another person named Liu Xiangfu. This person's technology is also very powerful, but this person finally faded out of Pumpkin Zhang's team. In addition, Pumpkin Zhang's wife also participated, but mainly in charge of finances.
Of the world's first three Avalon mining machines, one was used for testing by Pumpkin Zhang's team, one was given to the Bitcoin Foundation, and the other traveled across the ocean to Wall Street.
From September 2012 to March 2013, Avalon spent 6 months from gestation, birth to production.
In June 2012, "Butterfly Labs", an American organization specializing in the development of Bitcoin mining machines, announced that it was preparing to develop a centralized circuit ASIC mining machine that is far superior to FPGA mining machines.
Compared with FPGA, ASIC has higher performance and lower power consumption. If successfully developed, Butterfly will control 51% of the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network.
This completely angered Pumpkin Zhang. He chose to accept the challenge and began to concentrate on developing AISC mining machines. For this reason, Pumpkin Zhang also submitted an application for suspension of school to the school. After repeated communication with no results, Pumpkin Zhang made a bold decision-to drop out of school.
At that time, the currency circle was generally optimistic about the American "Butterfly" company, and believed that the technology of American mining machines was more advanced. However, the plot unexpectedly reversed. Butterfly bounced! The Chinese team headed by Pumpkin Zhang took the lead!
For Pumpkin Zhang, Avalon is his weapon to "maintain world peace".
The shape of the first-generation Avalon mining machine can be described as "simple and rough", and there is no aesthetic feeling of design at all. However, its computing speed has far surpassed that of graphics card mining machines, and a mining machine can dig out 10 bitcoins per day on average.
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Source Baidu Encyclopedia
Despite this, Avalon was still sought after by the market. Three batches of shipments were sold out in an instant. At the highest time, it was fired to 300,000 units.
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03 No more silence
ASIC mining machines are sought after by the market, and Pumpkin Zhang's industry status has been established, and the reputation of "father of mining machines" has spread like wildfire.
Pumpkin Zhang also has a new plan, industrialization of business, commercialization of mining machines, he plans to start a company.
In April 2013, Pumpkin Zhangla came to Bilibili's friend Li Jiaxuan, who is also an IC engineer of Vimicro, as a partner. The two each invested 100,000 yuan to establish "Beijing Jianan Zhizhi Information Technology Co., Ltd.".
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"CANAAN" animation protagonist Canaan (CANAN)
Pumpkin Zhang could have made a lot of money by selling mining machines, but the brain circuit of this "old otaku" is always not on the normal runway.
In April 2013, Pumpkin Zhang felt that selling mining machines was too troublesome and not conducive to the decentralization of Bitcoin, so he only chose the core part of the mining machine-chips to sell.
Chips also take the "dominant" route, starting at 10,000 pieces, about 600,000 yuan, and do not accept small orders, and there are 30 samples for every 10,000 pieces.
Since then, Pumpkin Zhang has open sourced all Avalon mining machine production documents except chips, which has also given birth to various large and small copycat mining machine companies.
Of course, Pumpkin Zhang has more far-reaching intentions, "The core value of Bitcoin is people's yearning for freedom, and Bitcoin mining should not be controlled by a few people."
In half a year, Avalon has issued about 800,000 first-generation chips, and the mining machines made of these chips have interrupted the possibility of individual mining machine companies monopolizing the market.
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In August 2014, One Bit interviewed Pumpkin Zhang
In addition to designing and developing mining machines, Pumpkin Zhang also started to develop a website for Jianan Zhizhi, and also tried to do marketing and public relations work himself. On June 24, 2014, Pumpkin Zhang opened an official Weibo account for Avalon, saying that "Avalon is no longer silent".
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04 Connect with Hangzhou
The period from 2013 to 2015 was the hardest time for the currency and mining circles.
At the end of 2013, the central bank and other five ministries and commissions issued the "Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks", and the price of Bitcoin fell off a cliff instantly. In 2014, Mentougou, the world's largest exchange platform, was stolen and went bankrupt, and people lost faith in Bitcoin. Since then, Bitcoin has also entered a three-year market winter.
The mining machine companies at the bottom of the bitcoin industry have also entered a low period. No one digs bitcoins, and the mining machines cannot be sold. If the mining machines cannot be sold, there will be no money.
That is, in this year, Kong Jianping, an individual investor in Hangzhou, and "Forestman", the head of 1bit, invested 7.6 million and 1.4 million respectively in Canaan Zhizhi. This is a life-saving money for Pumpkin Zhang's team.
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In October 2014, Pumpkin Zhang announced the renderings of the fourth-generation Avalon modules
At that time, Forester worked as a leader in 1bit in Hangzhou. 1bit sold magazines and gave bitcoins in the most prosperous period, and later developed information websites, exchanges and mining machines. He also sees the future of mining machines. Zeng Linchuan, who came into contact with Forester in the early days, commented: "I very much admire Forester's determination and strategy to transform from a practitioner in a traditional industry to the blockchain industry."
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Kong Jianping
When they were desperate, Forester and Kong Jianping found the Hangzhou Branch of Zhejiang Tsinghua Yangtze River Delta Research Institute. Although the Hangzhou branch doesn’t know much about Bitcoin, they have taken a fancy to the team’s technology research and development capabilities and unswerving spirit. The Shuimu Zehua Fund under the Hangzhou branch signed an investment agreement with Canaan Zhizhi in June 2015. And took the lead in leading the investment of 2.5 million.
Zeng Linchuan added to Beep News: "I think the biggest factor in Canaan should be the persistence of Pumpkin Zhang, brother Jianping's management, and the behind-the-scenes planning of the forest people. Their most powerful thing is that they think farther. They have set the goal of listing, so among their peers, they have done a good job in compliance, taxation, and government relations.”
In July 2015, when the 28nm chip of Canaan's new generation mining machine was put into production, an advance payment of 30 million was urgently needed. Under the guidance of many people, Pumpkin Zhang found Yao Yongjie who was far away in Hangzhou. With the approval of the investment committee, in July 2015, Tunlan invested 17 million yuan in Jianan Yunzhi.
With the help of many investors in Hangzhou, Canaan moved to Hangzhou as a whole in 2015. "We think Hangzhou is beautiful. Apart from the beautiful scenery, the people in Hangzhou are also beautiful. They helped us when the company was most difficult." Pumpkin Zhang Zeng said.
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05 accelerated growth
From 2015 to 2019, Canaan Zhizhi ushered in a period of rapid growth in terms of technology and financing.
Canaan has always been at the forefront of the development of bitcoin mining machine chips.
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The unveiling ceremony of the world's first 7nm mass-produced chip
Behind every change of numbers is the decrease of chip energy consumption ratio, and the full improvement of computing power and computing speed.
From 2015 to 2019, Canaan Zhizhi also ushered in a stage of rapid financing development. In May 2017, it received nearly 300 million capital injections from Tunlan Investment, Jin Jiang Investment, Baopu Investment, etc., and the market valuation reached 3.3 billion yuan RMB. In March 2019, according to the Securities Times, Canaan Zhizhi had just completed a round of financing worth hundreds of millions of dollars. After this round of financing, the valuation reached 7 billion yuan.
On the list of global unicorns released by the Hurun Research Institute this year, Canaan was on the list, with a valuation of 20 billion yuan.
According to the prospectus, Jianan Zhizhi's revenue in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 (as of June 30) was 48 million, 316 million, 1.308 billion and 2.7053 billion yuan, respectively. They are 14 million, 132 million, 604 million and 226 million yuan respectively.
According to the deep chain financial report, in January 2019, Shao Jianliang, head of Canaan Yunzhi’s blockchain business department, revealed at an offline event that Canaan Yunzhi’s sales revenue in 2018 exceeded 4 billion yuan.
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06 Listed in Four Wars
On the road to listing, Canaan can be said to be more and more courageous.
In 2016, the first battle of A shares.
In June 2016, the A-share listed company Luyitong announced that it planned to acquire 100% of Canaan Yunzhi at a price of 3.06 billion yuan. Some outsiders think that this is Canaan Zhizhi’s backdoor listing. Later, the performance betting between the two parties attracted the attention of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. After receiving two inquiry letters, the acquisition was terminated.
In 2017, we will fight for the New Third Board again.
In August 2017, Canaan Zhizhi began to seek listing opportunities on the NEEQ. However, this was not a good time. In September 2017, the supervision of the virtual currency market was suddenly tightened. Canaan Zhizhi received share transfers four times. The company asked for opinions, and finally, due to policy factors, Canaan Zhizhi voluntarily gave up listing on the NEEQ.
In 2018, three wars against Hong Kong stocks.
In May 2018, Canaan regrouped and embarked on the journey of listing again, submitting an IPO prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. However, in the second half of 2018, the bitcoin market suddenly took a sharp turn for the worse, and the industry fell into a trough again, and the mining machine business also collapsed. In the end, the IPO application of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange also came to an end.
In 2019, compete on NASDAQ.
On October 28, Canaan officially submitted IPO application documents to the US SEC, planning to raise US$400 million. Listed underwriters include Citigroup, China Renaissance Capital, CMB International, etc. The company plans to list on NASDAQ under the stock code "CAN". According to the latest news, Canaan plans to issue 10 million ADSs, priced at US$9-11 per share, and raise funds of US$90-110 million.
According to various sources, the listing is a foregone conclusion. This listing is also called "the first mining machine stock" or "the first block chain stock" by the industry, but the parties don't think so.
According to the prospectus, Jianan Zhizhi currently mainly provides advanced semiconductor solutions for supercomputing hardware, and is engaged in IC front-end and back-end design and Bitcoin mining solutions. It is worth noting that Canaan already has the ability to design AI chips, which is also part of Canaan’s business model.
For Pumpkin Zhang, challenging the field of chips has a deeper meaning. Chips have always been monopolized by giants. Chip giant Nvidia firmly occupies the top spot in AI chips, followed by giants such as Intel, Google, and Qualcomm.
Pumpkin Zhang once said that the mining machine industry is in an oligopoly state, and there are only a few companies. Canaan is positioned as a technology and computing company. Canaan is not a bitcoin company, nor is it a blockchain company.
On July 20, 2019, the 50th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon, Zhang Nangeng said in an internal letter to Canaan Zhizhi, "Nine defeats and one victory are the true face of an expedition. Before reaching the end, it usually includes daily recovery. A day's calculations, the frustration of failing an experiment, and the bewildering excitement of success. The same goes for silicon and the adventure of the digital world."
07 Going to the United States to ring the bell In fact, when the news that Canaan Zhizhi was about to go public in the United States was in full swing by the blockchain circles, the "old otaku" Pumpkin Zhang, the chairman and CEO of Canaan Zhizhi, had a net worth of The 3.9 billion rich entrepreneur is still paying attention to his favorite animation.
According to Weibo dynamics, a few days ago, he also liked the release of the fourth season of "Rick and Morty". Four months ago, he also answered the question "why station A can't beat station B in the competition" on Zhihu.
This is Pumpkin Zhang, an older homeboy who loves to watch station B, and is about to go to the United States to ring the bell. Looking back at Canaan Yunzhi’s growth from the perspective of Pumpkin Zhang, it is a story of fighting to maintain world peace.
