In this article, Sunny Lu, founder and CEO of Vechain, humorously introduces the story of creating Vechain after he resigned as the chief information officer of LV in 2014, and also shares his conversation with Vitalik in 2015, and his first transaction with Givenchy Trip to Paris.
Interviewee: Sunny Lu, Founder and CEO of Vechain
Organization: Shenchao TechFlow
"From the beginning to today, Vechain's vision has never changed: to bridge blockchain technology to the real world." - Sunny Lu
Whether it is Web3, Blockchain, or Crypto, it is widely questioned that it seems to exist only in the virtual world. It is a pure money and financial game. Stories of getting rich or returning to zero emerge in the shock of the K-line chart. And as current hotspots continue to change the narrative direction, what exactly has it left for this not-so-beautiful real world, and what has it changed?
There may be one exception. There is a blockchain project that has been firm in its own path and direction since 2016—bridging blockchain technology to the real world and implementing it firmly. Its name is Vechain.
Vechain has been active in the blockchain field since 2016, and its Proof of Authority (POA) mechanism makes the VechainThor public blockchain more suitable for enterprise use. Unlike Web3 projects that serve the virtual world, Vechain has always focused on applying blockchain to real life through commercialization. So far, Vechain has been applied in different industries, including luxury clothing retail, textiles, food and beverage, energy, automobile, professional services, etc., and has cooperated with Givenchy, Wal-Mart, BYD, San Marino government, etc.
At the beginning of 2023, Vechain cooperated with Boston Consulting to release the third white paper "Web3 for Good", detailing its four strategies for applying blockchain in sustainable development.
With curiosity and questions, TechFlow reporter Sunny interviewed Vechain founder and CEO Sunny Lu in Austin, USA.
Sunny humorously introduced the story of creating Vechain after he resigned as the chief information officer of LV in 2014. He also shared his conversation with Vitalik in 2015 and his trip to Paris in 2016 when he reached the first deal with Givenchy.
**TechFlow: Welcome Sunny, introduce yourself, how did you decide to create VeChain after leaving Louis Vuitton (LV)? **
Sunny: Actually, I've been in the cryptocurrency space or the blockchain space since 2013, so this year marks my 10th anniversary.
At that time, there were not many chains, only Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc., and others were obtained through the return on investment of Bitcoin. Whether it was through mining or trading, you could indeed Get pretty good returns.
I also started to understand the technology itself. The more I learn, the more it feels like this is cutting edge technology, this is the future.
At that time, I had been working in information engineering for about 20 years, and I was always thinking about how to use blockchain technology to solve real-world problems.
But then, and even now, 90% of the apps were related to financial apps, which I personally didn't find interesting.
I'm always trying to discover how technology can be used to solve real world problems. We tried different approaches. The problem is that Bitcoin is designed to be very simple and lean, only a few hundred lines of code, it's coded very lean, so it has some limitations.
Back in 2013 and 2014, we actually experimented with different types of technology, like colored coins, which you probably never heard of:
You can think of it as assigning different colors to specific bitcoins for different purposes.
In addition, you can write a script, similar to a smart contract, but offline smart contract, to perform some automatic bitcoin transactions, and implement more complex applications than simple ledgers and single transactions.
Until 2015, I had a very interesting trip with Bo Shen and Vitalik, we spent a few days in Shanghai and Chengdu.
During the trip, we communicated a lot. At that time, Vitalik shared the white paper of Ethereum and the concept of smart contracts. Even before Vitalik published the Ethereum white paper, the concept of smart contracts existed. He is the one who makes it possible, makes it happen.
And then, that really opened my mind. As you know, smart contract platforms are the perfect answer to those complex problems or to build more complex logic on the blockchain. Well, we can do so much more!
Simply put, if Bitcoin is a bit like Excel, smart contracts can be equations on the blockchain, so I started thinking, can Bitcoin make data immutable, can smart contracts really make activities immutable.
It's really the technical direction I've been able to implement all the ideas I've been thinking about and solve real world problems!
In fact, Vitalik is one of the three founding partners of Fenbushi Capital and the first angel investor in Vechain.
On top of the concept or framework of the EVM smart contract framework, we have made a lot of progress and improved it, making it faster, more scalable, and maintaining the same level of security.
I can say that Vechain is more suitable for enterprise adoption, because we insist that from the beginning to now, our vision has never changed, which is to bridge technology and the real world.
Even a few years later in 2018, when we launched the Vechain blockchain, we actually wrote echain's first genesis block in a homage to Ethereum.
There are other explanations, my experience or resources before creating Vechain.
I have worked for Louis Vuitton and other multinational companies. In 2012, at Louis Vuitton, I worked on a very interesting global project called "Track and Trace" and built a system to trace each product to the original raw material, to the manufacturer, to the warehouse, to the store, Then to the customer.
It was easy to build a centralized system to do this, but then we started looking at blockchains. I think traceability is a perfect scenario, because LVMH (LVMH) is actually unique, they are very large and powerful, and they can build a centralized system to trace the source themselves. However, LVMH still uses some external suppliers, external partners, most of the rest of the luxury industry uses third-party manufacturers, uses external third-party supply chain service providers, so basically this is a Perfect example of how we can build different parties into the blockchain, which is how we started.
**TechFlow: What are the current main goals and achievements of VeChain? **
Sunny: Make full use of the power of blockchain technology, bring it to the real world, and adapt to large-scale, real business applications. That's our vision, and even though we've upgraded a little bit now: going sustainable, it's still essentially the same.
I remember it being really fun. In 2015 and 2016, although we haven't started using the public blockchain, we tried to build a blockchain solution for Givenchy (Givenchy), which was our first user. I don't like to call them customers, I prefer to call them users, because they are users, they use and innovate business processes, and become builders with us to build blockchain applications.
Starting in 2016, I started traveling to Paris to meet my former LV colleagues. I was lucky that the global CEO of Givenchy was both my mentor and my boss while working in Asia. I tried to meet him and try to explain to him what blockchain is, how great and cutting-edge this technology is and where it’s going in the future.
After about 20 minutes...
He interrupted me and said, "Sunny, I don't understand everything you said, just tell me what to do." Fortunately, he trusted me and we made an agreement, "Let me try a pilot case and if it works , we started to expand the application.”
I also remember the name of the product being Infinity, and actually, I believe that's a good sign, it's a pretty good name.
I still remember that the SKU (stock keeping unit) number was 150090, and it was only 3 to 4 months from product development to launch.
During that time, I lived in an Airbnb basement in Paris with some of my engineers, worked closely together, and traveled every day from headquarters to manufacturers to warehouses to see first-hand how Givenchy’s supply chain works. I knew about the process when I was at LV, I just want to make sure you know what the existing process is, how you can improve it by using blockchain applications, how you can change it.
Four months later, we launched the first blockchain solution for supply chain management for Givenchy, and they were very happy with it. So far, we have covered 100% of Givenchy leather goods products worldwide.
**TechFlow: How did you form your first engineering team? **
Sunny: Well, that's how people meet. In fact, in the early days of my understanding of bitcoin and blockchain, I took advantage of my time at LV where I had the opportunity to travel the world.
Every business trip, not only international, but also domestic, because I am responsible for all IT systems and digital solutions, so every time you open a new store in a certain city, such as Chengdu, Xiamen, Beijing, Shanghai, you have to Go there for the opening ceremony, right?
So on these trips, I just start looking for bitcoin meetups, blockchain meetups, and just go there. At that time, not many people participated. We always joke that it's all the same people walking around in a bunch of places.
I used to hang out on the Bitcoin forum Bitcoin Talk, which I think is the only blockchain forum, to communicate with people and learn some ideas and solutions.
It was pretty weird back then to talk about some business applications, and there was no real enterprise-level adoption yet, so my idea got some people's attention.
On my original engineering team, I had one from Morocco, one from Colombia, and several from Shanghai. At first we worked remotely, then flew to Paris to work together. Even if they were long gone, it was still a beautiful day!
It was a very interesting experience: different time zones, different languages. While at LV, I also managed a team in Singapore and I was in Paris working on a global project, so this is not new to me. It's a different style, a little bit of a geek or tech nerd, and it's a lot of fun.
**TechFlow: Can you explain VeChain’s transformation from alliance chain to public chain in 2017? **
Sunny: When we launched our first product on the consortium chain for the first enterprise users, we actually started to realize that the consortium chain is not really a blockchain.
That level of trust is not enough to compare to public blockchains.
There were actually some commercial conversations with clients that sparked this that we've been thinking about for quite some time, but one of those conversations with clients was really interesting.
We were working with Renault, a car company in France, and we were working on some apps with our partners in Paris, and then some other car companies came to me and said they wanted to do the same thing, but better.
Because this is an alliance chain, previous users thought they were competitors!
I said that was wrong, that was not in line with the spirit of decentralization, innovation and infinite cooperation, and I even tried to convince him: we should work together.
These conversations sparked our idea of using a public blockchain. Because on a public blockchain, you don't need anyone's permission to do any kind of application, so it should be open source, free, free to come and go.
Therefore, we made the decision to move to a public blockchain in early 2017.
**TechFlow: Since transforming into a public chain in 2017, VeChain has undergone major strategic changes and progress, including cooperation with Givenchy, Walmart, BYD, San Marino government, etc. With public blockchain upgrades in 2018 and 2021, VeChain has gained a foothold in the field of sustainability. How is VeChain leveraging blockchain to enter the sustainability space after forging partnerships with large institutional partners? **
Sunny: I am from the luxury industry and have worked on a track and trace project.
So I believe the supply chain is something that can be tackled. We have some handy resources, contacts, and my personal connections that can move things forward.
We try to explore every possible way. Actually, it's not a contradiction to us, it's the same methodology. It uses digital means to describe certain business problems so that they can be realized on the blockchain.
Then we look at the benefits or value of blockchain and try to find a way to make it visible and accessible to users.
So we work with different business users. We have worked extensively with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Det Norske Veritas (DNV), who are also partners and investors in digital certification.
We provided a digital passport to San Marino and have worked on many sustainability projects with H&M, The Ocean Cleanup, BYD, etc., who provide the carbon calculation formula behind the scenes.
Phase 1 (2017-2021):
We tried various possibilities of different blockchain applications.
These four years are what we call the 0 to 1 phase:
We launched a blockchain VechainThor,
We have developed some blockchain applications with some business partners and got results.
Some of these results are still beneficial today, and we also tested how VechainThor works with different enterprises, with different business adoption methods.
Phase 2 (from 2022):
We got to the next stage, and what we need to think about is that actually we think reaching hundreds of millions of users is the hardest part, but it's not the only task.
We also need to connect with individual users. This is the beauty of blockchain.
This is also the beauty of web3.
When we talk about business partnerships, usually we're talking about the business model: what's the payoff for the business, you sign the business contract, and the partnership goes from there...
The beauty of the blockchain is that every individual can be treated equally as a business.
You don't have millions of contracts with each individual, you don't even know where they are, they are very decentralized, so like Web3 or blockchain, we need gamification of Web3 to acquire and maintain users .
We think that the future of the entire Web3 should be an equivalent combination of the enterprise model and the gamification of individual users
All people can create value, create collective value for the entire ecosystem, this is our understanding of Web3.
Starting in 2018, we started brewing the next idea, what's next? We need to see the development of the next 10 to 20 years.
There are two very interesting dialogues.
The first conversation happened in 2018 actually during Vechain's rebranding event.
I had a breakfast meeting with a partner at DNV and we went beyond the box to explore the question: what would you really want to do if you didn't have to worry about money, assets and time?
We actually talked about the same answer, which is for future generations, for the children, what does that mean for both of us? That is sustainability.
If you make the world more sustainable for the next generation, your children will be able to live in it more comfortably.
It was a big picture at the time. We don't even know how to do it. But from that breakfast meeting, we nailed down the idea and kept thinking about it because it was just an initial idea.
In 2018, we began to prioritize working with sustainable business projects. We tried BYD's carbon emission calculation and electric vehicle management (battery management), we also tried H&M's recycled material clothing, and we also participated in the project of The Ocean Cleanup.
By 2021, we concluded that this is the right moment, we can announce a new strategy.
But it took us almost two years to publish a new white paper to make our thinking more organized and comprehensive. Web3 or blockchain technology is the perfect answer for sustainable development.
So we've gone quite a long way on this idea, and we're finally moving fast this year. We've released a new white paper co-authored with BCG.
We named it: "Web3 for Better" (Web3 is better), this is the short version of my story.
**TechFlow: How do you think Web3 motivates individual users to be environmentally friendly and consider sustainability? **
Sunny: A very critical question, perhaps we can seek the answer from history.
Web1: 30-40 years ago, when the Internet first started, the focus was on connectivity. Simply connecting to the internet is enough and is fairly passive for the user.
I still remember my days in college, it took 2 hours to load a page and then you just got what was in the page.
You can't get new things. So Web1 is all about connectivity. That's the first thing, that's the infrastructure, that's the first step. Users are fairly passive. This is read-only Web1.
Well-known companies of that era were ISPs, Orange Business Service, China Telecom, AT&T, and companies that made connected devices like Cisco, IBM, etc.
Web2: It focuses on mobility.
After several years of Internet industry development, people's needs have become more. They don't just want to be connected to the Internet, they want to be connected anytime, anywhere.
I still remember, 10 or 15 years ago, every ad was saying “mobile first,” and if you didn’t have mobility, you didn’t have a future.
Thanks to mobility, users have become more interactive. When you interact with the platform, you are talking to other people.
You can generate your own content (UGC - User Generated Content), right?
Well-known companies in the Web2 era are Internet giants such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter or WeChat due to the interactive nature of users.
Web3: Users own their internet data.
Think about the journey a user goes from passive to interactive. What's the next level? The next level is I own my stuff, I own my creations. It is no longer the platform that controls traffic and user data.
In fact, I create user data, I should be the owner of the data, I should be responsible, in control, and I decide how my data can be used.
Blockchain makes this possible.
Whether it's smart contracts, tokens, incentives, token economics, Web3 is about users. Whether it's a large company, enterprise, or individual, the focus of Web3 should be to put users first.
Users are not only more interactive, but also more creative, because I am the owner and I get motivated from my creations, so users go from passive, indirect, to creative.
Yep, this is Web3, and blockchain is perfectly suited for this kind of thing.
From an enterprise perspective, this is my business, so I'm going to blockchain.
From a personal standpoint, no matter what I do, I put my data on the blockchain and how do I make it valuable.
The biggest challenge is getting everyone's work validated and getting value from it.
How individuals are connected from the top, ideologically speaking, the key to engaging users lies in the users themselves.
So whatever we do, we need to think about the user first. We need to think about how to get users to put in the effort and do the same.
If you believe in the same thing, that's the whole key concept of our sustainability strategy. This is what sustainability requires. We see different types of challenges:
There are many terms in sustainability, such as sustainability, ESG, impact, carbon emissions, footprint, etc., and there are many different standards or protocols.
Sustainability is generally a movement led by large corporations or government organizations or large non-profit organizations.
How are individuals motivated? That's the question Web3 can answer.
The real SDGs are actually about getting everyone to contribute and everyone living a more sustainable life. Ultimately, the entire environment (natural, social or economic) is more sustainable and lasts longer.
Sustainability shouldn't just be a corporate project, it should be the bottom line of your life and mine. This is the question that Web3 can answer by working with different types of technologies such as the Internet of Things through smart contracts.
**TechFlow: For people to participate in Vechain's sustainable actions, do you have specific plans and implementation methods? **
Sunny: We identified several pillars of our sustainability strategy:
white paper:
Vechain is one of the few projects in the crypto space that has released three white papers in total.
The first round was in 2017 and the second round was in 2019, we are a bit delayed due to COVID-19 delays.
Now, we have released the third edition of the white paper.
In the white paper, there is a small part of our journey from 2017, 2019 to 2023, the roadmap of our thinking or different steps, different levels.
Basically, from the first two white papers, we just delivered what was promised and thought, and now we provide a larger framework to try to achieve the promises and some of the goals.
This involves strategy as well as an execution level.
Diversified communication
We will call on builders to join us.
We need to have different types of content, different types of formats, graphic design, videos, online and offline seminars, etc. to communicate constantly. That's why I've been traveling a lot. Trying to take every opportunity, with my team, not just me, the whole team tried to travel to different regions to communicate.
We started doing this even before the white paper was released last November, we organized a series of business workshops with different participants (some were individual developers like business operations, media, etc.). Together, they will build and communicate content to bring more people to our vision, mission and inspiration, and try to inspire more people to join us.
It can't be a job that one entity can solve, it's my job, it's everyone's job.
Utilities
We ultimately need to make applications possible, so we call on the builders, they need something, they need tools to build it right? Builders may represent different resources or expertise, but how to adapt and how to use convenient and accessible Web3 technology, we need more tools. That's why we'll be launching a new mobile wallet extension in the summer. VORJ is an aggregator that we just launched a few weeks ago. Actually, I tried it myself. I created a token called "Free Coffee with Sunny" in just 5 minutes without any coding.
When I do workshops with community developers, we use this kind of tool and it's great, you don't need coding experience, you can now create your own smart contracts.
In VORJ, we not only provide users with the ability to create smart contracts, but also an API central library and various other tools to make it easier and faster for builders to adopt, and we are able to build the entire ecosystem.
**TechFlow: In the fast-changing cryptocurrency world, where does the motivation to focus on a certain direction come from? What was your thought process when choosing a direction? **
Sunny: My motivation comes from many sources. Always consider long-term value when making decisions. And constantly think and expand their own strengths, learn and evolve themselves. In addition, it is necessary to cooperate and make yourself competitive. In a project, it is very satisfying to fill in the unknown pieces of the puzzle in the process of realizing a vision.
**TechFlow: Why did VeChain decide to build an engineering team in Dublin? **
Sunny: The more research you do, the more problems you will find with geographic expertise and resource allocation. The European region is more advanced in terms of sustainability concepts and has more potential for possible future applications.
We still maintain global operations. It's just closely related to the talent we need. Dublin is a tech hub, not only for the crypto space, but also for Web2. In fact, our office is directly opposite the Amazon building in Dublin. Our CTO is based in Dublin.
For community locations, our largest community is from the United States, the second largest is in Europe, and the third largest is in Southeast Asia.
For team distribution, we have our headquarters in San Marino, our starting point in Singapore, where we also have a technical center and a commercial center in Milan.
This is a fairly decentralized layout. Operations isn't just about geography, it's about how you grow once you deliver.
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The content is for reference only, not a solicitation or offer. No investment, tax, or legal advice provided. See Disclaimer for more risks disclosure.
Interview with Vechain founder Sunny: From LV to the encrypted world, Web3 is the perfect answer to sustainable development
Interviewee: Sunny Lu, Founder and CEO of Vechain
Organization: Shenchao TechFlow
Whether it is Web3, Blockchain, or Crypto, it is widely questioned that it seems to exist only in the virtual world. It is a pure money and financial game. Stories of getting rich or returning to zero emerge in the shock of the K-line chart. And as current hotspots continue to change the narrative direction, what exactly has it left for this not-so-beautiful real world, and what has it changed?
There may be one exception. There is a blockchain project that has been firm in its own path and direction since 2016—bridging blockchain technology to the real world and implementing it firmly. Its name is Vechain.
Vechain has been active in the blockchain field since 2016, and its Proof of Authority (POA) mechanism makes the VechainThor public blockchain more suitable for enterprise use. Unlike Web3 projects that serve the virtual world, Vechain has always focused on applying blockchain to real life through commercialization. So far, Vechain has been applied in different industries, including luxury clothing retail, textiles, food and beverage, energy, automobile, professional services, etc., and has cooperated with Givenchy, Wal-Mart, BYD, San Marino government, etc.
At the beginning of 2023, Vechain cooperated with Boston Consulting to release the third white paper "Web3 for Good", detailing its four strategies for applying blockchain in sustainable development.
With curiosity and questions, TechFlow reporter Sunny interviewed Vechain founder and CEO Sunny Lu in Austin, USA.
Sunny humorously introduced the story of creating Vechain after he resigned as the chief information officer of LV in 2014. He also shared his conversation with Vitalik in 2015 and his trip to Paris in 2016 when he reached the first deal with Givenchy.
**TechFlow: Welcome Sunny, introduce yourself, how did you decide to create VeChain after leaving Louis Vuitton (LV)? **
Sunny: Actually, I've been in the cryptocurrency space or the blockchain space since 2013, so this year marks my 10th anniversary.
At that time, there were not many chains, only Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc., and others were obtained through the return on investment of Bitcoin. Whether it was through mining or trading, you could indeed Get pretty good returns.
I also started to understand the technology itself. The more I learn, the more it feels like this is cutting edge technology, this is the future.
At that time, I had been working in information engineering for about 20 years, and I was always thinking about how to use blockchain technology to solve real-world problems.
But then, and even now, 90% of the apps were related to financial apps, which I personally didn't find interesting.
I'm always trying to discover how technology can be used to solve real world problems. We tried different approaches. The problem is that Bitcoin is designed to be very simple and lean, only a few hundred lines of code, it's coded very lean, so it has some limitations.
Back in 2013 and 2014, we actually experimented with different types of technology, like colored coins, which you probably never heard of:
You can think of it as assigning different colors to specific bitcoins for different purposes.
In addition, you can write a script, similar to a smart contract, but offline smart contract, to perform some automatic bitcoin transactions, and implement more complex applications than simple ledgers and single transactions.
Until 2015, I had a very interesting trip with Bo Shen and Vitalik, we spent a few days in Shanghai and Chengdu.
During the trip, we communicated a lot. At that time, Vitalik shared the white paper of Ethereum and the concept of smart contracts. Even before Vitalik published the Ethereum white paper, the concept of smart contracts existed. He is the one who makes it possible, makes it happen.
And then, that really opened my mind. As you know, smart contract platforms are the perfect answer to those complex problems or to build more complex logic on the blockchain. Well, we can do so much more!
Simply put, if Bitcoin is a bit like Excel, smart contracts can be equations on the blockchain, so I started thinking, can Bitcoin make data immutable, can smart contracts really make activities immutable.
It's really the technical direction I've been able to implement all the ideas I've been thinking about and solve real world problems!
In fact, Vitalik is one of the three founding partners of Fenbushi Capital and the first angel investor in Vechain.
On top of the concept or framework of the EVM smart contract framework, we have made a lot of progress and improved it, making it faster, more scalable, and maintaining the same level of security.
I can say that Vechain is more suitable for enterprise adoption, because we insist that from the beginning to now, our vision has never changed, which is to bridge technology and the real world.
Even a few years later in 2018, when we launched the Vechain blockchain, we actually wrote echain's first genesis block in a homage to Ethereum.
There are other explanations, my experience or resources before creating Vechain.
I have worked for Louis Vuitton and other multinational companies. In 2012, at Louis Vuitton, I worked on a very interesting global project called "Track and Trace" and built a system to trace each product to the original raw material, to the manufacturer, to the warehouse, to the store, Then to the customer.
It was easy to build a centralized system to do this, but then we started looking at blockchains. I think traceability is a perfect scenario, because LVMH (LVMH) is actually unique, they are very large and powerful, and they can build a centralized system to trace the source themselves. However, LVMH still uses some external suppliers, external partners, most of the rest of the luxury industry uses third-party manufacturers, uses external third-party supply chain service providers, so basically this is a Perfect example of how we can build different parties into the blockchain, which is how we started.
**TechFlow: What are the current main goals and achievements of VeChain? **
Sunny: Make full use of the power of blockchain technology, bring it to the real world, and adapt to large-scale, real business applications. That's our vision, and even though we've upgraded a little bit now: going sustainable, it's still essentially the same.
I remember it being really fun. In 2015 and 2016, although we haven't started using the public blockchain, we tried to build a blockchain solution for Givenchy (Givenchy), which was our first user. I don't like to call them customers, I prefer to call them users, because they are users, they use and innovate business processes, and become builders with us to build blockchain applications.
Starting in 2016, I started traveling to Paris to meet my former LV colleagues. I was lucky that the global CEO of Givenchy was both my mentor and my boss while working in Asia. I tried to meet him and try to explain to him what blockchain is, how great and cutting-edge this technology is and where it’s going in the future.
After about 20 minutes...
He interrupted me and said, "Sunny, I don't understand everything you said, just tell me what to do." Fortunately, he trusted me and we made an agreement, "Let me try a pilot case and if it works , we started to expand the application.”
I also remember the name of the product being Infinity, and actually, I believe that's a good sign, it's a pretty good name.
I still remember that the SKU (stock keeping unit) number was 150090, and it was only 3 to 4 months from product development to launch.
During that time, I lived in an Airbnb basement in Paris with some of my engineers, worked closely together, and traveled every day from headquarters to manufacturers to warehouses to see first-hand how Givenchy’s supply chain works. I knew about the process when I was at LV, I just want to make sure you know what the existing process is, how you can improve it by using blockchain applications, how you can change it.
Four months later, we launched the first blockchain solution for supply chain management for Givenchy, and they were very happy with it. So far, we have covered 100% of Givenchy leather goods products worldwide.
**TechFlow: How did you form your first engineering team? **
Sunny: Well, that's how people meet. In fact, in the early days of my understanding of bitcoin and blockchain, I took advantage of my time at LV where I had the opportunity to travel the world.
Every business trip, not only international, but also domestic, because I am responsible for all IT systems and digital solutions, so every time you open a new store in a certain city, such as Chengdu, Xiamen, Beijing, Shanghai, you have to Go there for the opening ceremony, right?
So on these trips, I just start looking for bitcoin meetups, blockchain meetups, and just go there. At that time, not many people participated. We always joke that it's all the same people walking around in a bunch of places.
I used to hang out on the Bitcoin forum Bitcoin Talk, which I think is the only blockchain forum, to communicate with people and learn some ideas and solutions.
It was pretty weird back then to talk about some business applications, and there was no real enterprise-level adoption yet, so my idea got some people's attention.
On my original engineering team, I had one from Morocco, one from Colombia, and several from Shanghai. At first we worked remotely, then flew to Paris to work together. Even if they were long gone, it was still a beautiful day!
It was a very interesting experience: different time zones, different languages. While at LV, I also managed a team in Singapore and I was in Paris working on a global project, so this is not new to me. It's a different style, a little bit of a geek or tech nerd, and it's a lot of fun.
**TechFlow: Can you explain VeChain’s transformation from alliance chain to public chain in 2017? **
Sunny: When we launched our first product on the consortium chain for the first enterprise users, we actually started to realize that the consortium chain is not really a blockchain.
That level of trust is not enough to compare to public blockchains.
There were actually some commercial conversations with clients that sparked this that we've been thinking about for quite some time, but one of those conversations with clients was really interesting.
We were working with Renault, a car company in France, and we were working on some apps with our partners in Paris, and then some other car companies came to me and said they wanted to do the same thing, but better.
Because this is an alliance chain, previous users thought they were competitors!
I said that was wrong, that was not in line with the spirit of decentralization, innovation and infinite cooperation, and I even tried to convince him: we should work together.
These conversations sparked our idea of using a public blockchain. Because on a public blockchain, you don't need anyone's permission to do any kind of application, so it should be open source, free, free to come and go.
Therefore, we made the decision to move to a public blockchain in early 2017.
**TechFlow: Since transforming into a public chain in 2017, VeChain has undergone major strategic changes and progress, including cooperation with Givenchy, Walmart, BYD, San Marino government, etc. With public blockchain upgrades in 2018 and 2021, VeChain has gained a foothold in the field of sustainability. How is VeChain leveraging blockchain to enter the sustainability space after forging partnerships with large institutional partners? **
Sunny: I am from the luxury industry and have worked on a track and trace project.
So I believe the supply chain is something that can be tackled. We have some handy resources, contacts, and my personal connections that can move things forward.
We try to explore every possible way. Actually, it's not a contradiction to us, it's the same methodology. It uses digital means to describe certain business problems so that they can be realized on the blockchain.
Then we look at the benefits or value of blockchain and try to find a way to make it visible and accessible to users.
So we work with different business users. We have worked extensively with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Det Norske Veritas (DNV), who are also partners and investors in digital certification.
We provided a digital passport to San Marino and have worked on many sustainability projects with H&M, The Ocean Cleanup, BYD, etc., who provide the carbon calculation formula behind the scenes.
Phase 1 (2017-2021):
We tried various possibilities of different blockchain applications.
These four years are what we call the 0 to 1 phase:
We launched a blockchain VechainThor,
We have developed some blockchain applications with some business partners and got results.
Some of these results are still beneficial today, and we also tested how VechainThor works with different enterprises, with different business adoption methods.
Phase 2 (from 2022):
We got to the next stage, and what we need to think about is that actually we think reaching hundreds of millions of users is the hardest part, but it's not the only task.
We also need to connect with individual users. This is the beauty of blockchain.
This is also the beauty of web3.
When we talk about business partnerships, usually we're talking about the business model: what's the payoff for the business, you sign the business contract, and the partnership goes from there...
The beauty of the blockchain is that every individual can be treated equally as a business.
You don't have millions of contracts with each individual, you don't even know where they are, they are very decentralized, so like Web3 or blockchain, we need gamification of Web3 to acquire and maintain users .
We think that the future of the entire Web3 should be an equivalent combination of the enterprise model and the gamification of individual users
All people can create value, create collective value for the entire ecosystem, this is our understanding of Web3.
Starting in 2018, we started brewing the next idea, what's next? We need to see the development of the next 10 to 20 years.
There are two very interesting dialogues.
The first conversation happened in 2018 actually during Vechain's rebranding event.
I had a breakfast meeting with a partner at DNV and we went beyond the box to explore the question: what would you really want to do if you didn't have to worry about money, assets and time?
We actually talked about the same answer, which is for future generations, for the children, what does that mean for both of us? That is sustainability.
If you make the world more sustainable for the next generation, your children will be able to live in it more comfortably.
It was a big picture at the time. We don't even know how to do it. But from that breakfast meeting, we nailed down the idea and kept thinking about it because it was just an initial idea.
In 2018, we began to prioritize working with sustainable business projects. We tried BYD's carbon emission calculation and electric vehicle management (battery management), we also tried H&M's recycled material clothing, and we also participated in the project of The Ocean Cleanup.
By 2021, we concluded that this is the right moment, we can announce a new strategy.
But it took us almost two years to publish a new white paper to make our thinking more organized and comprehensive. Web3 or blockchain technology is the perfect answer for sustainable development.
So we've gone quite a long way on this idea, and we're finally moving fast this year. We've released a new white paper co-authored with BCG.
We named it: "Web3 for Better" (Web3 is better), this is the short version of my story.
**TechFlow: How do you think Web3 motivates individual users to be environmentally friendly and consider sustainability? **
Sunny: A very critical question, perhaps we can seek the answer from history.
Web1: 30-40 years ago, when the Internet first started, the focus was on connectivity. Simply connecting to the internet is enough and is fairly passive for the user.
I still remember my days in college, it took 2 hours to load a page and then you just got what was in the page.
You can't get new things. So Web1 is all about connectivity. That's the first thing, that's the infrastructure, that's the first step. Users are fairly passive. This is read-only Web1.
Well-known companies of that era were ISPs, Orange Business Service, China Telecom, AT&T, and companies that made connected devices like Cisco, IBM, etc.
Web2: It focuses on mobility.
After several years of Internet industry development, people's needs have become more. They don't just want to be connected to the Internet, they want to be connected anytime, anywhere.
I still remember, 10 or 15 years ago, every ad was saying “mobile first,” and if you didn’t have mobility, you didn’t have a future.
Thanks to mobility, users have become more interactive. When you interact with the platform, you are talking to other people.
You can generate your own content (UGC - User Generated Content), right?
Well-known companies in the Web2 era are Internet giants such as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter or WeChat due to the interactive nature of users.
Web3: Users own their internet data.
Think about the journey a user goes from passive to interactive. What's the next level? The next level is I own my stuff, I own my creations. It is no longer the platform that controls traffic and user data.
In fact, I create user data, I should be the owner of the data, I should be responsible, in control, and I decide how my data can be used.
Blockchain makes this possible.
Whether it's smart contracts, tokens, incentives, token economics, Web3 is about users. Whether it's a large company, enterprise, or individual, the focus of Web3 should be to put users first.
Users are not only more interactive, but also more creative, because I am the owner and I get motivated from my creations, so users go from passive, indirect, to creative.
Yep, this is Web3, and blockchain is perfectly suited for this kind of thing.
From an enterprise perspective, this is my business, so I'm going to blockchain.
From a personal standpoint, no matter what I do, I put my data on the blockchain and how do I make it valuable.
The biggest challenge is getting everyone's work validated and getting value from it.
How individuals are connected from the top, ideologically speaking, the key to engaging users lies in the users themselves.
So whatever we do, we need to think about the user first. We need to think about how to get users to put in the effort and do the same.
If you believe in the same thing, that's the whole key concept of our sustainability strategy. This is what sustainability requires. We see different types of challenges:
There are many terms in sustainability, such as sustainability, ESG, impact, carbon emissions, footprint, etc., and there are many different standards or protocols.
Sustainability is generally a movement led by large corporations or government organizations or large non-profit organizations.
How are individuals motivated? That's the question Web3 can answer.
The real SDGs are actually about getting everyone to contribute and everyone living a more sustainable life. Ultimately, the entire environment (natural, social or economic) is more sustainable and lasts longer.
Sustainability shouldn't just be a corporate project, it should be the bottom line of your life and mine. This is the question that Web3 can answer by working with different types of technologies such as the Internet of Things through smart contracts.
**TechFlow: For people to participate in Vechain's sustainable actions, do you have specific plans and implementation methods? **
Sunny: We identified several pillars of our sustainability strategy:
white paper:
Vechain is one of the few projects in the crypto space that has released three white papers in total.
The first round was in 2017 and the second round was in 2019, we are a bit delayed due to COVID-19 delays.
Now, we have released the third edition of the white paper.
In the white paper, there is a small part of our journey from 2017, 2019 to 2023, the roadmap of our thinking or different steps, different levels.
Basically, from the first two white papers, we just delivered what was promised and thought, and now we provide a larger framework to try to achieve the promises and some of the goals.
This involves strategy as well as an execution level.
Diversified communication
We will call on builders to join us.
We need to have different types of content, different types of formats, graphic design, videos, online and offline seminars, etc. to communicate constantly. That's why I've been traveling a lot. Trying to take every opportunity, with my team, not just me, the whole team tried to travel to different regions to communicate.
We started doing this even before the white paper was released last November, we organized a series of business workshops with different participants (some were individual developers like business operations, media, etc.). Together, they will build and communicate content to bring more people to our vision, mission and inspiration, and try to inspire more people to join us.
It can't be a job that one entity can solve, it's my job, it's everyone's job.
Utilities
We ultimately need to make applications possible, so we call on the builders, they need something, they need tools to build it right? Builders may represent different resources or expertise, but how to adapt and how to use convenient and accessible Web3 technology, we need more tools. That's why we'll be launching a new mobile wallet extension in the summer. VORJ is an aggregator that we just launched a few weeks ago. Actually, I tried it myself. I created a token called "Free Coffee with Sunny" in just 5 minutes without any coding.
When I do workshops with community developers, we use this kind of tool and it's great, you don't need coding experience, you can now create your own smart contracts.
In VORJ, we not only provide users with the ability to create smart contracts, but also an API central library and various other tools to make it easier and faster for builders to adopt, and we are able to build the entire ecosystem.
**TechFlow: In the fast-changing cryptocurrency world, where does the motivation to focus on a certain direction come from? What was your thought process when choosing a direction? **
Sunny: My motivation comes from many sources. Always consider long-term value when making decisions. And constantly think and expand their own strengths, learn and evolve themselves. In addition, it is necessary to cooperate and make yourself competitive. In a project, it is very satisfying to fill in the unknown pieces of the puzzle in the process of realizing a vision.
**TechFlow: Why did VeChain decide to build an engineering team in Dublin? **
Sunny: The more research you do, the more problems you will find with geographic expertise and resource allocation. The European region is more advanced in terms of sustainability concepts and has more potential for possible future applications.
We still maintain global operations. It's just closely related to the talent we need. Dublin is a tech hub, not only for the crypto space, but also for Web2. In fact, our office is directly opposite the Amazon building in Dublin. Our CTO is based in Dublin.
For community locations, our largest community is from the United States, the second largest is in Europe, and the third largest is in Southeast Asia.
For team distribution, we have our headquarters in San Marino, our starting point in Singapore, where we also have a technical center and a commercial center in Milan.
This is a fairly decentralized layout. Operations isn't just about geography, it's about how you grow once you deliver.