In the fast-changing blockchain industry, new concepts, new models, and new projects are always emerging, and a lot of invalid and spam information are mixed in them. In this context, how can blockchain industry participants enhance their own blockchain learning capabilities? How to establish reliable information acquisition channels? How to better filter high-quality information and reduce noise?
To this end, Chain Catcher interviewed 5 people including Meng Yan, deputy dean of the Digital Asset Research Institute, Wan Hui, the founding partner of Primitive Ventures, Blue Fox, the principal of Blue Fox Notes, Pan Zhixiong, the research director of Chain Wen, and A Jian, the chief writer of Ethereum enthusiasts. Senior researchers in the industry shared their learning methods and thinking skills in detail on the above issues.
Finishing | Loners Liu
01
Meng Yan, Deputy Dean of Digital Asset Research Institute
1. Everyone must establish his own core competence. This is the foundation of his life, allowing him to give full play to his core competence in any new field.
My core ability is actually to get a new thing, understand it in my own way, and then express it in my own language. My expression may sometimes be more distinctive than the original author, so this Is my core advantage. No matter what job I do, I firmly grasp my core abilities from beginning to end.
2. Establish the so-called first principles. I prefer to go back to the source of some problems. I am not afraid to admit my own ignorance in a certain field, which is what Steve Jobs said "stay hungry stay foolish", so I will not be ashamed to hear some new concepts that I don’t understand, and spend a lot of time reading All kinds of literature, what I want to know is what is the biggest problem in this industry? What is the core fundamental problem?
So in order to solve this kind of problem, what kind of mathematical principles and thinking methods do we need to use, and once I return to this level, I try to start thinking for myself instead of looking at what the predecessors have done. The disadvantage of this is that if you are in a mature field, you will do a lot of repetitive and possibly low-level work, which is far inferior to those masters.
In the new field of DeFi, this way of thinking can make us move forward faster. In this process, we must pay attention to science and engineering thinking, such as mathematical foundations and logical derivation.
3. Have the courage to express. Even though I have not thought about many problems very clearly, I dare to express them in my own language.
This kind of expression is often not very academic, and may cause you to discuss the issues that are not high enough and deep enough. But another advantage is that I think this approach has certain advantages when placed in a new field, because it can help you form a communication with the outside world as soon as possible, and communicate and collide with the outside world and the people around you. This openness The type of communication collision helps you understand many things as quickly as possible.
4. In my past consulting work, of course there were mistakes in the design and judgment of the token economic model, but the main reason was not caused by design mistakes, but realistic pressures, which led to unreasonable design schemes. Distorted, can't fall to the ground as it is.
But of course there are mistakes in judgment. For example, the economic models of projects like YFI will all release their tokens in a short time. This model is an unsustainable or bad model design in our past views.
But its later performance also prompts us to reflect on why our original ideas are not in line with practice. This kind of reflection will also push us to continuously improve the theory in practice.
02
Wan Hui, Founding Partner of Primitive Ventures
1. Read more classic books. Now there are a lot of high-quality learning materials compiled on the Internet, including the open courses of the world's top universities. For example, in terms of Bitcoin, the best course is the Bitcoin Open Course at Princeton University.
At the same time, it will be much more efficient to study with questions. For example, when watching the Bitcoin public class in Princeton, you can list questions such as "metaproblems": How does Bitcoin guarantee scarcity? How to ensure fair mining by miners? What exactly is mining?
"Slow is fast". Don't think about 10 days and 30 days. The establishment of a knowledge system requires sufficient time and patience.
2. Watch less groups, use less social software, and it is best not to use apps with low signal-to-noise ratios such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Toutiao. I haven’t downloaded this kind of application myself, because the information density is too low and it’s too time-consuming (but if I’m still doing consumer Internet investment, I need to update it every day, this is related to the investment object), and WeChat is also fixed a few times a day Take a look at the reply message.
The best way to learn is to discuss with others or answer other people’s questions after you have a certain knowledge base. The best channel for information is actually professionals in the industry. I basically have a few go to persons in each field, which may add up to less than 20, but these 20 people are enough as your extended brain.
I now have two types of browsing habits. In 12 years, I discussed the difference between the two behavior modes with a few PM friends in the Bay Area. One is called Search in Browse (searching for useful information in the screen) and the other is called Browse in Search (looking for useful information in search results) , the former is all information flow products, such as Toutiao Douyin Kuaishou.
It is impossible to learn efficiently through Search in Browse. So the first step to effective learning is to do more purposeful searching and less purposeless browsing. Don't become a human battery in the Internet time.
03
Blue Fox
1. The first is the construction of basic knowledge. If you want to understand the world of encryption, first of all, Bitcoin and Ethereum cannot go around the two mountains.
In the development of Bitcoin and Ethereum, we will encounter various problems, such as scalability issues, cost issues, applied products and market fit issues. A lot of new things are born around the solution of these issues . In particular, the exploration of DeFi has given us a large number of cases and practical experience, and studying them will also bring us many new ideas.
2. The biggest obstacle to early research lies in whether we can sink our minds into research. A lot of knowledge is boring and doesn't seem to have much to do with investment, but it is very helpful to our decision-making. Regarding practical tools, there are not many at present, mainly to keep up with new projects, and then there are some data aids, such as market tools such as coingecko, blockchain browsers such as etherscan, defipulse, duneanalytics, messari and so on.
The problem now is that there are too many new projects. Behind valuable projects are good founding teams and good models. I usually learn about them through various domestic and foreign communities. Often a good project will lead to more good projects. Of course, there will be holes in it.
A team that wants to really do something is completely different from a team that sells concepts. Clues can be seen from white papers, products, and various public expressions. Sometimes, from the beginning, it determines the future.
The most difficult part of blockchain is the complex field, involving cryptography, finance, programming, etc. The core here is the first principle. Sometimes too many concepts may hinder the understanding of the essence of things.
04
Pan Zhixiong, Research Director of Lianwen
1. First, you need to bring (or cultivate) your own real interest and curiosity in this field, so that you can generate self-learning impetus.
More than ten years ago, I especially liked the two distributed and peer-to-peer file transfer products, eDonkey and BitTorrent. They tried to make content distribution more equal, shared, and mutually beneficial. Later, there were some similar products hoping to change the entire centralized Internet. It must be more open, transparent, and censorship resistant.
However, at that time, there was no basic component such as blockchain that could safely deliver value through a distributed network on the Internet, so these projects were small in scale and difficult to maintain for a long time. Since the emergence of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the previous distributed storage and distributed networks have had a native currency and native computing platform. With their blessings, the entire Internet application and underlying architecture will be completely rebuilt Plastic. This is the core reason that has always pushed me to like this industry.
Then, after having the driving force of self-learning, we must build our own learning system, which involves the collection, learning, induction, organization and re-output of information.
However, due to the large number of new terms and concepts in the cryptocurrency industry, it is necessary to have a certain understanding of computer, finance, game theory, and even English vocabulary terms that can be seen everywhere (those new terms may not be accurately translated into Chinese). Therefore, the degree of general knowledge of basic knowledge may also become various obstacles in learning the blockchain industry. There is a simple but difficult way to stick to. Learn and record all the vocabulary you don’t know, and then consolidate it regularly. There may be no shortcuts.
# Acquisition System
Explore an information collection system that suits you. The public information that can be found on the Internet will still be hierarchical, so first achieve coverage, and then after having your own judgment over time, delete content with low information value, and optimize your information organization at any time.
RSS or mailbox system is recommended here as the underlying protocol for information collection, because this is an open standard and can be standardized. Simply put, it is to "RSS" or "email" all source information as much as possible.
Recommended tools include Reeder, Inoreader, Feedly, IFTTT (with email or RSS), etc.
# Information Organizing Tool
The collected information needs to be sorted and classified. At this time, a personal knowledge management tool is needed. The professional term is generally called PKM. Such tools can greatly improve efficiency, so they are generally proprietary software and require some cost.
I prefer to use DEVONThink, but Keep it or Evernote are also good alternatives. Many entrepreneurial teams are also reshaping these tools, such as Roam Research, Notion, and the newly launched Craft are all good, I currently prefer the first one.
# Mind Mapping and Mapping
After finishing the materials, some ideas may be generated based on certain topics. At this time, it is important to use outline diagrams, brain maps, and flowcharts to help organize ideas.
If you have a piece of whiteboard or paper, it will be more intuitive to use directly, and the iPad will also work. If you are using a computer, you can use MindNode or Scapple for your mind map. Keynote or PowerPoint is also good for other general charts.
2. At present, whether it is the DeFi project, the Ethereum community or the public chain technology community, the discussion atmosphere in overseas communities is better, fuller, and more intense, because Twitter can be used as a kind of information exchange, discussion, precipitation and The storage platform lacks such facilities in China, and most of them are carried by closed group chats.
After that, we need to figure out who are the most important participants and influencers in this market, even if these people have been changing very quickly. You can start with the top investment institutions and the top KOLs, and pay attention to what these people are paying attention to.
Or outsource this part of obtaining important information, that is, select some Curator to help you organize the latest information sources, such as domestic and foreign media with research capabilities, research institutions, etc., and let them become the initial point of establishing your own research system material.
Then you need to select some topics of interest for in-depth research. If you feel that your research alone is boring, you can find some like-minded friends or know some experts and ask them directly.
05
A Jian, the chief writer of Ethereum enthusiasts
For how to reduce noise, first you have to maintain curiosity and sensitivity to your favorite topics. For example, I pay a lot of attention to Layer 2, and then I will encounter a lot of information, such as a project that is going to be on the testnet, the main network, or who has proposed a new plan. But in fact, you don't need so much information, because they can be simply divided into several categories, such as state channels, side chains, and Roll Up.
So in the first stage of learning, you have to understand every basic paradigm of the industry, so that you can be more targeted when combing.
As for how to quickly understand this basic paradigm, the common method is to increase your reading and have a basic understanding. You can also directly ask someone who is relatively knowledgeable to directly ask questions, and you can get a relatively fair and reliable result.
In the second stage, you have to consciously think about each problem a little deeper, let yourself think about some different angles each time, and then try to make your own thinking systematized. Every one of us is doing this. , There is no shortcut in itself.
Of course, many people will always stay in the first stage. They are too easily attracted by fashionable things, because some new terms and concepts often appear in this industry.
So the important point is that you have to understand one thing carefully at first, exercise your thinking ability in the process, and then develop the ability and confidence to judge other things.
Of course, in this process, don't confine yourself to a small world, but link yourself with the wider world. When you are facing an issue, you at least know that there are some existing achievements in academia, you can absorb and accept it.
In other words, if you want to take this problem seriously, you can only find a solution to a small problem in greater wisdom, not a solution to a big problem in a small world.
Finally, I want to give you a few words: I hope everyone will care more about the right and wrong things. There will be many different voices in a complex world, but we must believe that there are standards that can compare different opinions and opinions. Understanding or searching for such standards is what we have to do.
However, the judgment of the thing itself is always connected with the wider world of knowledge and with our cognitive abilities. This is the only thing we should keep honed.
Keep the habit of thinking and comparison (only the habit of comparison can help you get rid of partial hearing and partial belief), and stay alert to big concepts.
It is worth checking out:
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Interview with Fenbushi Capital Shen Bo: My understanding of blockchain and investment principles
This is the 332th article of "Chain Catcher",
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