A Review of the Seven "Disappeared" King-Level Encryption Project Founders

Founders are part of the project's narrative, but many crypto star founders have faded out of the stage in recent years. This article identifies seven founders who "disappeared" and explores why and where they left. (Synopsis: Interview with "female stock god" Cathie Wood: Revealing Ark Invest's cryptocurrency investment methodology) (Background supplement: Harvard University leads, which well-known American universities are betting on cryptocurrencies? Whether it's Vitalik's geeks, Jeff Yan's trading instincts, or Do Kwon's hubris, they define the soul of the project in a way. But in the past few years, these "crypto star founders" have faded out of the stage one by one. Recently, Story Protocol founder Jason Zhao announced his resignation as CEO, reigniting the conversation. A young Korean-American, an entrepreneurial teenager at MIT summer camp, a student in Lee's Feifei lab, the youngest product manager at DeepMind: his script could have led to a star sequence in Silicon Valley. Instead, he chose to write his own chapter in the crypto industry and left after three and a half years. Rhythm BlockBeats sorted out seven "disappeared" founders, some took the initiative to turn around, and some were forced to withdraw; Some said goodbye with idealistic moderation, others hastily exited amid scandals and controversies...... Of course, they are just a microcosm, and more and more founders will definitely leave after issuing coins and start the next life that they should be fine. Someone else's child who moves from "metaphysical" to "real" On August 16, Jason Zhao typed a sentimental text on X, announcing that he would step down as a full-time CEO after 3 and a half years of founding Story, only as a strategic consultant, and devote himself to a new AI project Poseidon ( who just received a $16z $15 million seed investment ) last month, said that space, The new industrial revolution in cutting-edge fields such as life sciences has rekindled his enthusiasm. But the post, viewed by 5 million people, received only 2,000 likes. Jason Zhao, Korean-American, grew up in Austin, Texas, and began to run the local TED x Austin Youth in high school, and when he attended the MIT Launch training camp at the age of 19, he and his peers founded the political lobbying crowdfunding platform PolitiFund, with a 2400-point SAT, chose Stanford University among the full scholarship invitations of almost all Ivy League schools. After receiving a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Stanford University, he continued his master's degree in computer science to focus on the research of artificial intelligence, studied under the "godmother of AI" Li Feifei in the computer vision laboratory, and entered Google's AI lab DeepMind after graduation to become the youngest product manager. With this set of scripts, he is a proper winner in life from any point of view, and if he is still working in an AI factory, he may also receive a "heavy transfer" invitation from Zuckerberg, but fate does not let him go this way. 2020's "DeFi Summer" introduced him to blockchain, and his background in philosophy and artificial intelligence led him to think about "artificial intelligence reshaping creativity and enriching content, blockchain determines digital property rights and gives verifiable scarcity to data." , IP+AI+Blockchain, made him a successful $140 million project at the age of 25 Story Protocol was born. Make IP (IP) programmatic and on-chain tracking of usage and distribution, driving new business models such as royalty, licensing, and AI training for creators. They launched the Story Academy to promote the Builder program for entrepreneurs and developers. Partnering with Yakoa to detect IP duplication and manipulation with AI; Integration with the Pastel Network to ensure document rarity and asset scarcity; Partnering with Lit Protocol to enhance transaction security and privacy; Partnered with Stability AI to bring on-chain licensing and copyright tracking to AI model training. Story's business logic, source: Starzqeth But let the chain and entity link this "application" product, although the narrative is grand, but seems to be inconsistent with the current Crypto, in the six months after TGE, they cooperate with Justin Bieber, BTS, BlackPink, Adidas, Crocs and other well-known brands, but this does not change the fact that the revenue on the Story chain is in single digits or double digits most of the time. Adam Cochran, a well-known venture capital analyst, pointed to a nearly $6 billion fully diluted valuation compared to this revenue, and questioned whether the project was more focused on "fancy presentations." But in fact, before Zhao exited, Story still gained the trust of capital, Grayscale launched the Story IP trust, Heritage Distilling Holding Company (CASK) launched the IP DAT program with $220 million in private financing, and the market value of IP reached a new high when he left. His departure may not be decent but not embarrassing, perhaps for this young man who completed the path of other people's lives before the age of 26, after experiencing this journey, his inner bias changed from "Plato" to "Aristotle", from IP to the construction of more tangible physical AI, he plunged into a new world, perhaps a wider wilderness is still waiting for him to explore. Jason's "X" Banner – Raphael's Academy of Athens, center left: Plato's finger pointing up "idea/metaphysical", right: Aristotle's palm down "Experience/Order of Reality" There has been no news from Gavin Wood for a long time...... "I don't know where Gavin Wood is now." When Ethereum hit $4,000 again, someone suddenly thought of Gavin Wood, the most core co-creator of Ethereum's early days, the author of the Ethereum Yellow Book, the creator of the Solidity language, and the founder of Polkadot. It seems that his voice has not been heard in the crypto world for a long time. In October 2022, Gavin Wood announced that he would step down as CEO of Parity Technologies. It was an active withdrawal from Polkadot. For the industry, this is the second project he has exited after Ethereum. Gavin Wood was born in Lancaster, UK, and has a PhD from Cambridge University, specializing in music visualization and human-computer interaction. Before entering the crypto world, he was a researcher at Microsoft and an active contributor to several open source communities. In 2013, he met Vitalik Buterin and became one of Ethereum's earliest co-founders. Not only did he write the first Yellow Book (Yellow Paper) Ethereum, but he also personally implemented Ethereum's first client and invented the Solidity language. He laid the groundwork, so to speak, for the availability of "smart contracts" ...