ViaBTC has been one of the pioneers in the crypto industry with an
illustrious track record. Recently we caught up with the CEO, Haipo
Yang and asked him a few questions about the company, its mission
and plans for the future. Read the excerpt of the interview below.
Q [NewsBTC]: ViaBTC is a pioneer in the crypto industry, having
been around since 2016 – what was the idea behind launching ViaBTC?
A [Haipo Yang]: I had my first introduction to Bitcoin and
open-source software around 2011. At the time, fascinated by the
technical principles of Bitcoin, I supported the view that we
should facilitate industrywide progress by lowering the threshold
of tech development via open-source coding. This led me to
blockchain technology and the blockchain industry. Later on, I
started to have some insights into the blockchain space. Back in
2013, I started running Bitcoin nodes and joined the building of
the Bitcoin community. In March 2016, I completed all the code of
ViaBTC Pool on my own in two months. At the time, the inception of
ViaBTC was motivated by factors relating to technology and product.
Back then, the blockchain industry was in its infancy, and many
technologies and products, including mining pools, were immature.
Though the technical requirements for a mining pool are frequently
underestimated, BTC mining pools are tech-intensive projects.
Mining pools demand high stability and strong performance, which
makes it a challenge to build a pool that’s sufficiently stable and
efficient. In addition, mining constitutes a major part of the
maintenance of the BTC network, and I wanted to drive Bitcoin
toward a better future by building a mining pool. These were the
initial motivations behind ViaBTC Pool — I wanted to build a great
product that would become the infrastructure of the blockchain
world. Later on, more and more users chose to trust us, and our
team expanded. Right now, ViaBTC is not just a mining pool. It is
an ecosystem that covers CoinEx, ViaWallet, CSC, and ViaBTC
Capital. The final goal of all these products is to facilitate
blockchain progress by providing reliable services for crypto users
across all categories. Q: Your mission statement reads “Via
Blockchain, Making The World A Better Place,” – can you tell us
what this means? A: The advent of blockchain and crypto technology
has established a new order. Unlike traditional sectors, in the
crypto market, smart contracts are strictly enforced by code, which
is what we call “code is law”. This approach has created a more
credible, transparent, free, and open market. We believe blockchain
technologies that advocate open-source development and freedom
could foster more innovations. For example, popular crypto
categories like DAO, DeFi, and GameFi are all blockchain-enabled
innovations that can break the monopoly held by the giants and the
existing market landscape by granting access to more ordinary
users. ViaBTC’s job is to build the infrastructure of the
blockchain world. As the gateway to the blockchain world for global
users, ViaBTC helps more people enjoy the dividends brought by
innovative blockchain technologies, thus making the world a better
place. Q: How Does ViaBTC fit within the broader ecosystem of
products such as CoinEx, ViaWallet, and ViaBTC Capital? A: At the
moment, ViaBTC Group runs 5 key business segments, including an
exchange, a mining pool, a wallet, a public chain, and an
investment branch, and provides services for more than 4 million
users across the globe. The 5 segments cover the issuance, value
discovery, circulation, and application of cryptos and their
underlying technology, as well as ecosystem-enabled project
incubation. Without a doubt, these business arms are integrated and
interconnected with each other. For example, miners using ViaBTC
Pool can benefit from free, real-time withdrawals through CoinEx.
This, coupled with mining revenue settled on an hourly basis,
allows users to trade and transfer cryptos anytime at no cost.
ViaWallet also offers multiple block explorers, covering BTC, LTC,
DOGE, etc. In addition, when transferring BTC in ViaWallet, users
can tap into Transaction Acceleration, a function provided by
ViaBTC Pool. In a nutshell, with our ecosystem, users can mine,
trade, and transfer cryptos and use DApps. This meets most crypto
demands from a product level. CoinEx Smart Chain (CSC),
infrastructure as a supplement to the ViaBTC ecosystem, offers
developers and users a secure, efficient, low-fee underlying public
chain. Backed by ViaBTC Group’s blockchain resources and tech
advantages, ViaBTC Capital facilitates the progress of
technologies, applications, and the entire blockchain ecosystem by
providing funds, basic tech instructions, market promotions, etc.
Q: How does ViaBTC manage to offer low transaction fees and high
mining profits? A: To earn high mining profits, miners must first
ensure stable block yield. As Bitcoin is itself a distributed
network, it takes time to transmit and broadcast blocks in the
network. If two mining pools discovered a block at the same height
almost simultaneously, an “orphan block” will be generated that
pits the pools against each other — the pool that mined the orphan
block would have been working in vain and could not receive the
block reward. To address such concerns, ViaBTC Pool optimized the
broadcasting and transmitting process of the BTC network through
its independently developed BTC client. Thanks to its high-speed
block updating networks distributed around the world, miners can
discover and broadcast new blocks more quickly. These efforts have
lowered the orphan rate and improved the utilization rate of the
BTC network. To date, ViaBTC remains the mining pool with the
lowest orphan rate, which allows it to offer more steady mining
revenue. In addition, ViaBTC also boasts superior stability. During
the 6 years since its inception, ViaBTC Pool has witnessed zero
technical accidents and provided global users with a safe, stable
mining environment that runs 24/7. Moreover, we provide the most
versatile selection of payment methods in the entire mining
industry, meeting the needs of different miners. For example, the
PPS+ payment method that we invented not only ensures stable block
rewards but also distributes miner fees to users, allowing miners
to enjoy a bigger profit margin. Q: What else does ViaBTC offer
that competitors cannot? A: ViaBTC’s advantages mainly lie in
technical stability and its superior product & services. As
mining pools evolved over recent years, we have seen many changes
in the landscape of top pools. Many new pools attempted to seize
the market with subsidies but finally failed because when it comes
to mining, stability outweighs everything else. If no block can be
mined, all efforts would go in vain. Therefore, ensured stability,
superior performance, fast block synchronization, and low orphan
rate are the keys to earning the trust of miners. Of course,
products and services also matter. ViaBTC Pool has provided many
industry-first services, including PPS+ and Transaction
Accelerator. Moreover, we have always insisted on openness and
transparency by offering mining statistics that are obtainable
through various visual representations. The pool introduced Auto
Conversion to ensure the mining revenue during market swings; it
rolled out Hedging Service and Crypto Loans to help miners lock in
profits in advance and ensure the smooth circulation of funds.
Always focusing on miners’ interests, ViaBTC strives to offer more
practical, effective products and services. Q: What is the biggest
milestone ViaBTC has reached so far? And what is the next major
milestone ViaBTC is striving for? A: In May 2021, our BTC hashrate
share ranked No.1 among all pools. I stress this record not because
I want to brag about our ranking, but because I wish to thank all
miners for trusting in ViaBTC and believing in our products. As you
all know, miners are not always tied together with one pool and can
withdraw their hashrates at any moment they want. However, the
hashrates of ViaBTC Pool have been growing steadily and exceeded
20EH/s last month, which indicates the extensive recognition for
our products and services among miners. When developing a product,
instead of getting obsessed with ranking and hashrates, we strive
to improve our product and offer better services so that miners
would be happy to stay and refer ViaBTC to their friends. Such
word-of-month reputations are authentic. Therefore, for us, the
most important milestone is every moment when our products &
services are recognized by users. Q: How will ViaBTC remain
competitive in the future? A: In terms of the mining pool, we will
keep refining our products, building a global presence, and
providing first-rate, stable crypto mining services for users
around the world. Our efforts will extend to optimizing product
experiences, including a series of improvements and upgrades in
visual interactions and product functionality. Apart from that, we
will also keep enhancing our bottom-layer tech structure, adopt
solid security measures, and provide an efficient, stable mining
network for miners. We will continue to explore other business
segments of ViaBTC Group from multiple dimensions, enhance the
connections between the different products in the ViaBTC ecosystem,
grant users easy access to the crypto industry, and provide more
blockchain infrastructure services for crypto adopters. Q: How have
changes in the Bitcoin mining industry over the last several years
changed the ViaBTC business model? A: Over recent years, the mining
industry has received growing attention, and the BTC hashrate has
also grown higher at an ever-faster pace. At its core, ViaBTC Pool
seeks to provide miners with stable mining services, and there
hasn’t been much change in its business model. Instead, the pool
focused on product updates. Right now, we aim to offer more
innovative financial services like Hedging Service and Crypto Loans
to meet a wide range of demands among miners. Q: What do you
think about the recent downtrend in cryptocurrencies? A: The
current crypto slump is subject to multiple internal/external
factors, including excessive inflation rates around the world and
the decline of global financial markets due to the stringent
monetary policy adopted by the Fed. Meanwhile, the meltdown of
Terra and the related ecosystem has also resulted in extreme market
panic. Under such circumstances, we should focus on development
over the long run. For years, ViaBTC has always focused on
long-term prospects, getting itself through 6 years of ups and
downs in the crypto industry and earning extensive user
recognition. Meanwhile, looking back, we have noticed that the
crypto market has always spiraled upwards. Today’s market has
progressed in terms of technical maturity, market scale, and user
base. As such, we remain prudent but also optimistic and will
continue to build better products for users. Q: What do you
think the future of Bitcoin mining holds? A: As the No.1
cryptocurrency standing at the center of the crypto spotlight,
Bitcoin and all Bitcoin-related businesses will receive more market
attention and be favored by institutional investors. In North
America, some BTC-mining-focused funds have been created.
Meanwhile, many listed companies are also buying Bitcoin or even
venturing into BTC mining and building large mining facilities. As
a result, more institutions have forayed into BTC mining. In an
industry increasingly dominated by institutions, all BTC miners,
mining farms, and mining pools have to enhance their tech capacity
and build better products. Through intense competition, BTC mining
will grow more specialized, and companies with inferior
technologies and sub-par services will be outdated over time.
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