Jianan past events: floating up and down eight years, or become the first mining machine stocks

Text: Qin Xiaofeng

Produced by: Odaily Planet Daily (ID: o-daily)

Editor's Note: The original title is "Jia Nan Past"

On October 28th, local time, mining machine manufacturer Jia Nan Zhizhi submitted an IPO prospectus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Despite the lack of familiarity, blockchain practitioners who have recently been “named” by the policy dividends have turned their screens on the “first block of the blockchain industry”.

Throughout the blockchain market, the mining machine is the only asset that has physical assets and large-scale capital compliance channels. The "listing dream" has always been the goal of the industry to pursue.

In 2018, Jianan Zhizhi, Yibang International, and Bitian China successively submitted their prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and they also lost. In addition, Jia Nan Zhi Zhi tried to launch A shares and the New Third Board in 2016 and 2017 respectively, all of which ended in failure.

Different from the previous ones, the insiders all expressed confidence in the listing, which seems to be Jianan Zhizhi, and the industry is the closest to this dream.

According to Frost & Sullivan data of the world's largest corporate growth consulting firm, as of June 30 this year, Jianan Zhizhi calculated the share of the bitcoin mining machine market by 21.9%, and the market share of mining machine sales was 23.3%. They are ranked second. Ranked first is Bitland, which has a market share of 64.5% based on miner sales and 65.2% of the market.

Unlike Wu Jihan, who has received much attention from the global media, and Wu Jihan, who has made frequent headlines every move, the inventor of ASIC mining machine, Jia Nan Zhizhi, and its founder, Zhang Nanxuan (Pumpkin Zhang), rarely have stories in the market.

The blockchain industry is an industry where talents are iteratively fast and KOL is “discarded” more quickly. This year's so-called amnesty, next year, there may be no one to care about, or even no trace. Today, I still remember that Jia Nan’s people have come from all walks in 2011, and naturally there are very few people.

Odaily Planet Daily tried its best to collect and sort out the story of Jia Nan Zhi Zhi for 8 years, hoping to restore it one or two.

Dr. Beihang dropped out of research and development ASIC,

Buried in the battle of power

The story of Jia Nan Zhi Zhi, naturally begins with Zhang Nanxuan (Pumpkin Zhang), one of the inventors of the ASIC mining machine.

(Pumpkin Zhang: Zhang Nanxuan)

Back in 2011, the Bitcoin mining chip went through several iterations in the early stages: from PC CPU mining, GPU mining, to the era of regional programmable gate array (FPGA).

In August of that year, Zhang Nanxuan, who was pursuing a doctoral degree in computer science at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, appeared in the bitcoin forum Bitcoin Forum with the ID of “ngzhang”, and in the following time, he promoted his own research and development of FPGA miners – Icarus and Lancelot. , gradually got a reputation.

(Pumpkin account screenshot)

At that time, the outside world knew very little about its true identity, so it was called "Pumpkin Zhang" by ID. This title continues to this day.

Due to the good performance of the mining machine, the business of Pumpkin Zhang is smooth and smooth. Even when going abroad, many foreigners are looking for a mining machine.

However, soon, Zhang Zhang encountered a powerful challenger: Butterfly Labs.

Dr. Beihang dropped out of research and development, the first ASIC mining machine was born

In June 2012, the “Butterfly Lab”, an organization specializing in the development of Bitcoin mining machines in the United States, announced that it is preparing to develop an ASIC mine that is far superior to the mainstream FPGA miners at that time and promised to be in October of that year. Delivered the first batch of ASIC miners. The Butterfly Lab also received a million dollar crowdfunding.

As the mining revenue can be multiplied, the ASIC mining machine is undoubtedly a major advantage for the miners at the time. But for pumpkin Zhang, it is like a heavy hammer.

He began to think about how to compete with it.

In a later interview, Pumpkin Zhang said that the ASIC mining machine was researched at the time for "world peace" to prevent mining machine manufacturers from monopolizing the bitcoin network's computing power by more than 51%, causing damage to the network.

Soon, Pumpkin Zhang found someone with the same idea – American Chinese programmer Yifu Guo. Guo Yifu was also an early aboriginal of the Bitcoin Forum, and the two met in April 2012.

(Yifu Guo)

In September 2012, Pumpkin Zhang and Guo Yifu announced the development of ASIC miners and demonstrated the 60G/s miner samples they made.

The pumpkin that loves Japanese anime is also called "Avalon" for this new mining machine.

Odaily Planet Daily Note: Avalon, the English name Avalon, is the strongest defensive weapon in the Japanese anime "Fate". It is also the nickname of the legendary world of Arthur, the ultimate habitat of King Arthur.

In order to raise funds, the two launched a pre-sale policy: first order, but the specific delivery time is uncertain; even if it is not shipped, it will not be refunded.

This seems to be a "overlord clause" today, but at the time the miners group was a small circle. It was a world of difference with today's "industrialization." Everyone was actively placing orders. The first batch of 300 units were all pre-sold, and the unit price was 1299. Dollar.

In October of the same year, their rival Butterfly Lab failed to deliver the ASIC miner on schedule and was delayed again, which gave the two a chance to breathe.

However, the development of Pumpkin Zhang is not smooth, and the mining machine that should have appeared at the end of the year has also encountered difficulties. In order to overcome the problem, Pumpkin Zhang hoped to take a year off, but was rejected by the tutor, and many communications were not approved.

Is it going to study the mining machine or return it to the campus? Under the pumpkin Zhang Weighing, the former was chosen. To this end, he still graduated from Beihang University.

In January 2013, near the Chinese Lunar New Year, the world's first ASIC mining machine was finally developed with all efforts, and orders were subsequently delivered.

Since then, Avalon and Pumpkin Zhang, these two names have also been loaded into the history of bitcoin development, marking the bitcoin mining into the new era of ASIC.

The computational efficiency of the ASIC chip is a hundred times and a thousand times that of the CPU. This also lays the seeds for the future computing power war.

This year, Pumpkin Zhang is just 30 years old.

Guo Yifu, another technical partner of Avalon, is gradually being forgotten.

Guo Yifu’s LinkedIn account shows that from April 2012, it was co-founder of the Avalon project until January 2015. But after the establishment of Jia Nan Zhi Zhi, Guo Yifu has faded out and has no shareholding.

There is no mention of his story.

Avalon mining machine comes out, pumpkin Zhang open source hardware solution

With the delivery of the first generation Avalon mining machine, the miners ushered in the spring.

The Avalon generation uses 110 nm technology, and the computing power can dig up 357 bitcoins a day. According to the bitcoin price at the beginning of 2013, it can produce more than 200,000 yuan a day.

Some people only dig a few days to return to the original, and then continue to mine, and some people choose to transfer the mining machine at a price of 10 times. The first batch of mining machines also made these early players earn a lot of money.

On February 2, 2013, the second batch of 600 mining machines was pre-sold, selling for 75 bitcoins (about $1,700), which is expected to ship on April 4 of that year; on March 25, the third batch of 600 mines. The pre-sale of the machine starts at 75 bitcoins ($6,900) and the delivery date is after the second batch.

In April of this year, Pumpkin Zhang made two major events in his life.

First, he was a partner of Li Jiaxuan, an IC engineer at Zhongxing Microelectronics. The two each invested 100,000 yuan to establish "Beijing Jianan Zhizhi Information Technology Co., Ltd.".

(enterprise)

Li Jiaxuan chose the word "Jia" with the same sound of "Jia", and Zhang Nan chose the word "Nan" in the name. The English name "Canaan" of "Jia Nan Zhi Zhi" originated from a Japanese anime "Canaan Canaan".

Second, Pumpkin Zhang announced the termination of the sale of the overall mining machine, focusing only on the development and production of chips, and open sourced all hardware solutions except the Avalon mining machine in addition to the chip.

Affected by the open source of the Avalon mining machine, hundreds of mining machine assemblers have appeared on the market.

Should have been in the mining machine market alone, why did Jia Nan Zhizhi withdraw?

Pumpkin Zhang himself explained: "The core value of Bitcoin is people's yearning for freedom. Bitcoin mining should not be controlled by a few people."

The industry is beginning to grow, after the cold winter, the rise of competing products

After announcing the focus on chip development, Jia Nan Zhizhi launched the fourth batch of pre-sales. Pumpkin Zhang said that the chips will arrive 9 to 10 weeks after booking.

Chip development is frustrated, competition is catching up

Unfortunately, the day is not a wish, the chip failed to deliver the mining machine assembler as scheduled. These enterprises that waited for the pot were also due to overdue delivery of mining machines, credit bankruptcy, and eventually closed down.

(Mineral machine assembler applied for Jianan Zhizhi)

The explanation given by Pumpkin Zhang is that it is irresponsible to reproduce the first generation of chips due to the increased difficulty of mining and the advancement of production technology of other manufacturers.

However, this reason did not convince everyone, because in the same period of delay in delivery to ordinary processors, in the same year, Jia Nan Zhizhi sent a batch of 10,000 chips to Switzerland; at the end of August, another 20,000 chips The order is sent out. There are even conspiracy theorists who believe that Jianan Zhizhi relied on pre-sale chips, but in fact raised funds and developed chips for their own use.

In addition, the third batch of mining machines failed to deliver on time. When it was delivered, the market had turned cold and many miners were seriously damaged.

This year, for Jia Nan Zhi Zhi, the word of mouth fell to the extreme. On the Bitcoin forum, there is a lot of condemnation of Pumpkin Zhang and Guo Yifu.

(Recalling Pumpkin Zhang and Guo Yifu)

In addition to the decline in word of mouth, while Pumpkin Zhang concentrated on conquering the chip, Avalon’s market share also dropped sharply, and the roasting cat took advantage of the fisherman’s income.

(Left: Roasted Cat Right: 哔哔News Founder Little Turtle)

The name of the roast cat, Jiang Xinyu, and the pumpkin carp mining machine, is also the second person in the world to build an ASIC mining machine. The American Butterfly Lab mentioned above was not developed until June 2013.

Jiang Xinyu is a student of the Junior College of China University of Science and Technology. He started crowdfunding on the Bitcointalk bitcointalk in the name of friedcat. It was used as a stake in the development of the roasted cat mining machine and anchored with Bitcoin. Many people regard it as the first attempt of ICO in China.

Wu Jihan, the founder of Bitland, also completed the opportunity to invest 60,000 yuan in roasting cats and earned thousands of times to complete the original accumulation of capital.

This year, the development of the roasting cat mining machine was successful, and nearly 40,000 bitcoins could be dug up every month. The computing power market became the world of roasting cats. Due to excessive and concentrated computing power, the community twice triggered a panic of 51% of attacks in two months.

Return to the assembly line and pull back a city

Later, Pumpkin Zhang decided to return to the mining assembly line. On November 15, 2013, the second-generation Avalon mining machine was launched on the line, using 55 nm technology, the official website started at 8000 RMB, and it was also a spot mining machine, which was delivered by SF every other day. The roast cat at this time is gradually losing.

At the same time that a number of mining machine manufacturers stifled, the market gradually turned cold.

At the end of 2013, the central bank and other five ministries issued the “Notice on the Prevention of Bitcoin Risk”, stating that Bitcoin is not issued by the monetary authorities, does not have monetary attributes such as legal and mandatory, and is not a real currency.

After the bitcoin price reached $1,150 in November of that year, it began to fall in a waterfall, with a half-month drop of nearly 50%.

Under the dual role, the market demand for mining machines has dropped sharply, and the industry is coming. The days of Jia Nan’s wisdom were not good enough to start preparing for the winter.

In December 2013, Liu Xiangfu joined Jianan Zhizhi as co-founder and Liu Xiangfu added RMB 50,000.

Viewing the records of the industry and commerce, in January 2015, the shareholding ratios of Zhang Nanxuan, Li Jiaxuan and Liu Xiangfu were 33.4%, 33.4% and 33.2% respectively.

The later stories are repeatedly written by many media.

In May 2013, Wu Jihan and the chip expert Jenke Group established the mining company Bit China.

This year, Wu Jihan was 27 years old.

History is always similar. Every winter is a trial and an opportunity. By 2015, Bitcoin has plummeted, and the mining industry has been sorrowful. The roast cats, which are optimistic and heavily supported by the public, have disappeared in this year. This is also the "unsolved mystery of the industry" to this day.

Bitcoin has continuously launched star products, from ant mining machine S7 to S9, and has occupied more than half of the market share for a long time.

Continuous financing, twists and turns, the first share of the impact mining machine

After the cold winter, Jia Nan Zhizhi also deeply understood the importance of capital. In order to prepare sufficient funds for chip development, Jia Nan Zhizhi began to accept external financing at a high frequency.

Odaily Planet has compiled the financing news of Jia Nan Zhi Zhi from 2015 to the present, as follows:

Photo: Jia Nan Zhizhi 2015-2019 Financing situation

Optimistic about Jia Nan Zhi Zhi, Kong Jianping repeatedly increased

Today, Kong Jianzhi, the co-chairman of Jianan Zhizhi, entered during the financing process in 2015. In February 2016, he again acquired a total of 3.5% of the shares in Yao Yongjie and Yingyi Investment. Kong Jianping explained that it was because of “optimistic about the pumpkin Zhang team”, so the follow-up investment continued to acquire other shareholders' shares.

Yao Yongjie, who entered Jianan Zhizhi at the same time as Kong, has sold shares for several times and has always been a financial investor.

We compared the Hong Kong stock IPO with the US stock IPO period, and the five shares of Jianan Zhizhi's management shares, as shown below:

According to the above picture, Zhang Nanxuan and Li Jiaxuan have the most shares, which are 16% and 16.2% respectively, but the shareholding of another co-founder, Liu Xiangfu, has dropped sharply. At the same time, the equity of Kong Jianping also rose sharply.

According to foreign media Coindesk news, on February 12 this year, Liu Xiangfu has left his daily management position, and no longer serves as an executive board member of Canaan Inc., the holding company of Jianan Zhizhi, and is replaced by Sun Qifeng as an executive director. The specific reason is Liu Xiangfu. There are differences with the overall strategic development of the company.

Coindesk said that the management of Jianan Zhizhi hopes to continue to build the company into a manufacturer specializing in cryptocurrency mining and artificial intelligence chips. Jianan Zhizhi does not mine or mine the mine itself. The leadership hopes to maintain this. State to better achieve IPO.

However, Liu Xiangfu, who has a background in computer technology, believes that there is no way to completely separate hardware and software in the blockchain industry. The company that produces the mining machine cannot be completely cut with the mine and the mining pool business.

According to the US IPO prospectus, in June 2019, Liu Xiangfu wholly owned Urknall Ltd. sold 165,335,556 shares of common stock, of which 54,446,667 shares were sold to Wlyl Ltd. (Kong Kongping) to Root Grace Ltd. (EnguangLi ) 16,666,667 shares of common stock were sold.

The founder is worth 4 billion, and he is listed on the Hurun Rich List.

As of now, Jia Nan Zhi Zhi is still controlled by Zhang Nanqi, one of the founders.

Jia Nan Zhizhi implemented the CEO responsibility system under the management of the board of directors. The CEO has always been Zhang Nanxuan. Prior to this, Jia Nan Zhizhi revealed that this was also to ensure the stability of the company's strategy and tactics.

According to the prospectus, Jianan Zhizhi’s IPO to the US will adopt a dual-equity structure of Class A common shares and Class B common shares, that is, 1 vote for every 1 share of Class A common shares, and 1 share of Class B common shares. Enjoy 15 votes; Class B common shares can be converted into Class A common shares at any time, but Class A common shares cannot be converted into Class B common shares. In addition to voting rights and conversion rights, holders of Class A common stock and Class B common stock have equal rights.

In the absence of over-allocation, Chairman and CEO Zhang Nanyu owns all Class B common stock. This means that in the absence of major changes in the current senior management and corporate shareholding structure, Zhang Nanxuan will maintain control over the listed entity through the AB share model with different rights.

In fact, as early as 2016, Jia Nan Zhi Zhi plans to acquire the 100% equity of the company through the A-share listed company Lu Yitong (stock code: 300423), and go online on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

However, due to the suspicion of "backdoors" and the fact that the policies at the time did not benefit the blockchain enterprises, Jianan Zhizhi was also repeatedly questioned by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and the final listing plan was suspended.

In August 2017, Jia Nan Yu Zhi applied for the listing of the new three board. After three rounds of inquiries, I still failed to get listed. In May 2018, Jia Nan Yu Zhi officially submitted a prospectus application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, intending to list on the Main Board of Hong Kong in the form of red chips. However, after six months, the official website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange classified Jia Nan’s listing application as “invalid”, and the listing plan was once again stranded.

In June and September of the same year, Yibang International and Bitian China submitted IPO prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, but they failed to get what they wanted. This has the current listing of Jia Nan Zhizhi to the United States, the first block of the blockchain.

After several years of development, Bitcoin mining tends to be “industrialized”, and large amounts of funds are running into the market. Mining machine manufacturers continue to innovate. Jia Nan Zhi Zhi is currently ranked second in the market, and the prices of Zhang Nanxuan, Li Jiaxuan and Liu Xiangfu have doubled.

In October 2019, Hurun Research Institute released the 2019 Hurun Report and Hurun Global Unicorn. The rich list shows that in the field of blockchain, Jia Nan and Zhi Zhi are on the list. Among them, Liu Xiangfu and Zhang Nan are both worth 3.9 billion, and Li Jiaxuan is 3.8 billion yuan. There are 494 unicorn companies in the world, and the number of unicorns in the blockchain industry is 11, and Jianan is ranked fourth with a valuation of 20 billion yuan.

In any case, after several times of ups and downs, Jia Nan Zhi Zhi and his founding team are indeed in this frequently changing industry, insisting and laughing to today's people.

And whether it can be successfully listed, if the follow-up performance of the listing? What actions will there be in the competition? The Odaily Planet Daily will continue to pay attention.

Appendix: Jianan Yuzhi Development Events

Reference materials:

"Bitcoin mining machine Avalon, the ideal hometown of cloud cages"

"Pumpkin Zhang and his Jia Nan Zhi Zhi: Three Choices to Miss an Era"

"Hong Kong stock IPO failed, Kechuang board and US stocks became the next direction of Jia Nan Zhi Zhi"

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