Early Days of Ethereum

Victor Wong is the co-founder and chief product officer of BlockApps, and one of the developers behind the Haskell Ethereum client. His experience building startups in China proved invaluable as he helped bring Ethereum to enterprise customers and predicted early on that China would become a major blockchain market.

Background: From Security Now to Bitcoin

Victor discovered Bitcoin between 2010 and 2011 through the Security Now podcast with Steve Gibson:

"I forget the exact date, but it was like 2010 or 2011, somewhere around there, when Steve Gibson did an episode of it on Security Now, right? And so, like, that was how I heard about it."

Before Ethereum, Victor had founded companies in Beijing, gaining deep experience in the Chinese tech market. This experience would later prove valuable when Ethereum expanded globally.

Path to Ethereum

Victor met Jim Hormuzdiar through a VC in Beijing while both were working in China. After returning to the US around 2014, they reconnected and began exploring blockchain technology together.

Victor was part of the early Ethereum community, and in January 2015, he attended the Crypto Economicon conference in San Francisco, where he met Kieren James-Lubin in person for the first time. The three would go on to found BlockApps together.

BlockApps and the Haskell Client

BlockApps developed a Haskell Ethereum client and API layer designed to make blockchain development accessible. While Kieren and Jim focused on the core client development, Victor led product and business development.

The BlockApps vision was to create a REST API that made Ethereum accessible to traditional web developers - an approach that initially met resistance from the decentralization purists in the community:

"There was a general suspicion of servers… at the time, you know, like a peer-to-peer network, it's like every peer is both a client and a server."

Microsoft and Enterprise Ethereum

In late 2015, ConsenSys connected BlockApps with Microsoft, who wanted to launch Blockchain as a Service on Azure. Victor led the business engagement:

"My background was like, my previous company, I had tried to work with Microsoft in building apps when they had their first mobile platform. And it took me like six months to get a meeting. And I had a cousin who was like a VP at Microsoft. So it was really hard. So it was amazing to me that they were just coming to us and they wanted to launch something with us in two months."

When the Java client team pulled back from the partnership, BlockApps stepped up. Victor recalled their internal mantra:

"We got to get on stage and be able to write a dapp in like 30 seconds."

The Microsoft announcement at DEVCON1 in London marked a turning point for enterprise blockchain adoption. Victor observed the immediate impact:

"The day after the Microsoft announcement, there was a spike in the price… I think we just did that."

Building Enterprise Demand

After the Microsoft launch, Victor handled the flood of enterprise interest:

"In the first couple of months, we went from zero to like dozens of companies calling us. And the amazing thing to me was they had actually tried our software… I remember over and over people were like, 'oh, we've been working on a blockchain project for the last few years and haven't been able to build anything. And now we can do something.'"

Predicting China's Role

At Devcon 2 in Shanghai (September 2016), Victor made a prediction that seemed bold at the time:

"I got quoted from them as saying, I think China is going to be one of the biggest blockchain markets in the world… people thought it was absolutely bonkers when I said that, because they hadn't done anything."

Having founded two companies in China and being fluent in the market, Victor served as the China expert for the team in Shanghai:

"I followed taxi, like the way I found that hole in the wall, like, you know, I lived in Beijing, so I've been to Shanghai plenty of times… I just kind of follow where taxi drivers wind up stopping."

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

Victor was instrumental in the formation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), which was conceived at a Starbucks during Devcon 2 in Shanghai. He participated in the series of meetings that followed, helping structure the organization and navigate the negotiations between different enterprise stakeholders.

When the EEA launched in early 2017 with about 30 founding companies at JP Morgan's Brooklyn office, it represented the culmination of the enterprise adoption Victor had helped drive since the Microsoft announcement.

Primary Sources

This profile draws from Victor Wong's appearances in the Early Days of Ethereum Episode 1 and Episode 2, which provide first-hand accounts of BlockApps' founding and the enterprise Ethereum movement.