Terry Tai is the CEO and co-founder of the Nervos Network, a blockchain structured to prioritize decentralization and offer minimalism, flexibility, and security. ^[1]

Education

Tai graduated from Sichuan University, Jinchen College, with a BS in Computer Science in 2009. ^[1]

Career

While attending university, Tai worked as a Ruby engineer at Omniquest International until April 2010. He then held the same position at Intridea, a web and mobile application development company, until May 2012, when he co-founded Fengche.co, a project management tool with real-time collaboration for small businesses and teams, and worked there until June 2014. During this time, he co-founded and hosted Teahour.fm, a Chinese technical podcast for developers, with Kevin Wang. ^[2]

In June 2014, Tai worked as a core developer for Yunbi, a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange, until June 2015, when he co-founded Baoquan, a one-stop service platform for e-data attestation and blockchain development. There, he worked as a project manager and developer until June 2016. He then worked as the chief architect on the Zhiren project, working on backend architecture and system design until June 2017. Tai later joined Cryptape, a blockchain research and engineering consultancy founded by Jan Xie, and worked as the CPO until January 2018, when he co-founded Nervos with Kevin Wang, Jan Xie, Daniel Lv, and Cipher Wang. ^[2]

Nervos Network

In an interview with CryptoMurmur, Tai discussed the Nervos Network and its early development stages, and the blockchain community, starting with his thoughts on what makes Nervos’ community “unique”: ^[3]

“Nervos is still in an early stage. Supporting & contributing to a fresh new project is a very cool and adventurous undertaking. I would describe our community members as a group of futurists with an adventurous spirit.”

He also shared his thoughts on other blockchain communities: ^[3]

“I highly respect both the BTC and Ethereum communities. Moreover, one of our co-founders was on the research team of Ethereum, and contributed a lot to the Casper consensus protocol implementation and Ethereum Python client. Although the Nervos community supports both philosophical ideas in different ways,  those two communities stand very much on their own merits in terms of research, ideology, and so on, which I admire.”

“Just like the open source community. Both developers and advocates from the beginning are still playing very important roles right now, even though a lot of big companies have joined the game. No matter when, the values established by the early members are critical.”

When asked how Nervos sets itself apart from competitors, Tai responded: ^[3]

“Nervos, in our design concept, differs from other public blockchain projects in many ways. Flexible Support for Crypto Primitives, no need for a hard fork. Our Layer1 protocol CKB doesn’t use an account model. Instead, we use a UTXO-like model called a Cell Model. It has a better Bitcoin Interop. It can take advantage of UTXO tech like MimbleWimble. Our Layer1 protocol CKB uses PoW. Nervos is not a single blockchain, it’s a layered architecture including both Layer1 & Layer2 protocols.”

At the end of the interview, he shared his thoughts on the future of crypto and blockchain: ^[3]

“Let me just describe this in one point of view - Trust Boundary. In today’s world, trust is incredibly valuable, but there are barriers to trust. Trust exists mostly within the boundaries of families, tiny teams, and firms, not giant companies and nations. A way out? Yes, through blockchain technology, that breaks through whatever trust barriers to raise the bilateral cooperation efficiency and strengthen human beings’ collaborative relationship. Don’t you think it sufficient for us to see a more prosperous future via blockchain technology?”