Based out of China, one of the largest global centers for crypto, SNZ progresses their mission to empower blockchain projects, through their SNZ hub - a network of global top tier venture capitalists, state-of-the art blockchain technologies, and diverse crypto communities. Founded by passionate engineers, blockchain evangelists, and entrepreneurs, SNZ has a long track record of supporting disruptive technologies to accelerate a new era of decentralized applications.
With a shared vision for leveraging blockchain to expand organizational and human experience, Akash Network is proud to welcome SNZ as valued validators and investors.
Recently, we had the opportunity to connect with Kai of SNZ to chat about projects that have been on his radar and his insights on blockchain’s influence on the ways we collaborate.
What did the beginnings of SNZ look like, and how has it grown since then?
In the early days, we are in search of promising projects, teams, and partnerships, so we are early investors of projects like Ethereum, Cosmos, Dfinity, Polkadot, MakerDAO, and Brave. We believe that blockchain will usher in a new era of decentralized information technology that may change human history fundamentally. We see the coexistence of risks and opportunities and are relentlessly building the SNZ hub with kindred spirits and co-religionists through ups and downs in anticipation of that era.
SNZ was founded by a group of individuals, ranging from engineers and blockchain evangelists, with deep roots in the crypto community. How has your knowledge and experience influenced your investment process?
Our team’s strong technical background has allowed us to explore the fundamental technologies and infrastructures of blockchain at length, diving deeply into the analysis and research behind it. Thanks to this, in the early days we understood that cross-chain was a vital technology, which prompted us to invest in Polkadot and Cosmos.
In recent years, our expertise also led us to invest in public chain, encryption, and other technologies.
Based on our knowledge and research, we have our own framework of how the ecosystem will grow, as well as what the internal and application needs of blockchain will be. For instance, if blockchain were a tree, we wouldn’t just want to invest in the foundational roots and trunk, we’d want to invest in the totality of the tree — including the applications of what the roots and trunk can produce — its branches and leaves.
How do you select what projects to partner with, and what drew you to work with Akash?
We invest a lot in the public chain side. Public chain is more like a platform, and the success of the platform is dependent on how the ecosystem is growing on the platform.
Akash is one of the important projects within the Cosmos ecosystem, which piqued our interest. Decentralized cloud is ultimately going to be the future, which is why we also decided to invest in other projects like Dfinity.
Akash building the decentralized marketplace for the decentralized cloud is potentially a very important project. Based upon these two concepts, we believe that Akash is a great project with a bright future worth investing in.
What blockchain/crypto sectors or types of projects are you currently excited about, and why?
Besides supporting the ecosystem, which is always exciting for us, decentralized finance (DeFi) is still hot, and there are a lot of interesting things happening in the DeFi track that keep it moving.
Looking beyond DeFi, there is growing buzz surrounding non-fungible tokens (NFT), as well as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO). From the technical side, we’re also interested in privacy preserving computation.
What excites me about these projects is the differing logic behind them — for example, DAO is one of the ultimate applications of blockchain. DAO enables blockchain’s potential to enrich and diversify the way people collaborate with one another.
NFT has a large range of applications, extending from the weather and gaming, to assets and finance.
Privacy preserving computation is a hot topic. The concerns about Facebook leaks and people’s privacy are ever-present. With blockchain and encryption, there is open data that we can verify to preserve the privacy of those individuals.
How do you envision blockchain changing the world?
Two years ago, a famous investor and friend of mine said something to me that I remember to this day: The biggest social activity of mankind is trading and blockchain technology consolidates this social activity.
To echo what I spoke about in regards to DAO, we believe that blockchain will evolve the way we collaborate. For example, today there are lots of collaborations requiring a middle man or trust organization, but in the future of blockchain, we only need trust within the code and math.
If you had the opportunity to give advice to your younger self as he starts venturing into the world of blockchain, what would it be?
I would tell myself, simply, to invest earlier. Embrace and believe in the technology, and dive right in.
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