Thunder, which has been silent for a long time, now has a new move.
On February 16, the enterprise digital collection service platform launched by Xunlei Chain, a subsidiary of Xunlei Group, was officially launched. It is reported that the ThunderChain enterprise digital collection service platform is built based on the underlying technology of the ThunderChain. It is a blockchain cloud service platform that provides enterprises and institutions with credible evidence storage technology and digital collection certificates.
In this era when the concept of blockchain is prevalent, Xunlei, which has already chosen to transform to the blockchain, seems to have found a new possibility. The secondary market also seems to be responding favorably. As of the close of U.S. stocks on February 16, Eastern Time, Xunlei’s stock price rose 2.2% to 1.86 yuan.
For Xunlei, is digital collection the best option? Before the prospect of the NFT industry has cleared the thick fog, where will this road lead Xunlei?
Born in the wilderness, also once brilliant
The former Xunlei once stood on the cusp of capitalism.
In 2002, Zou Shenglong, who was still an overseas student, founded Xunlei in Silicon Valley. In China's download market at that time, Internet Express was undoubtedly the absolute overlord.
With its ultra-high update frequency, Netji Express has not only become the leader in the domestic download market, but also provides services to 219 countries around the world.
In 2003, Zou Shenglong brought Xunlei back to China, and a legend of download tool software began at this time. The turning point began in 2004. In this year, Xunlei’s biggest competitor at the time, Internet Express, stopped updating and upgrading, and the reason for stopping was simply that its developer, Hou Yantang, became obsessed with World of Warcraft.
History is always changed by small inadvertent actions. Xunlei, which has no competitors, began to develop rapidly. Based on its own P2SP technology, it continued to seize the original market share of Express.
At the same time, the domestic Internet has just emerged, and the surge in installed computer capacity has also brought a sufficient increase in users to Xunlei. In that era when there was no concept of paying for services, a large number of pirated games, film and television resources, and software services were spread around the Internet by users.
As a result, Xunlei, which has faster downloads and rich resources, has accumulated a large number of users, and Xunlei has also become one of the must-install software on every user's computer in that era.
By 2006, Xunlei's share in the domestic download market exceeded 50%, covering more than 110 million users, second only to QQ, and became the client software with the second largest user volume at that time. At that time, Xunlei could provide users with 90 million to 100 million downloads per day, which was obviously unmatched in the domestic market at that time.
In 2011, Xunlei decided to go to the United States for an IPO. At this time, its share of the domestic download market had reached 76%, becoming "China's largest download service provider."
But this seems to be just the beginning of a slippery slope. On January 7, 2009, the release of 3G license opened the prelude to the era of mobile Internet, and the transformation from PC to mobile has become the general trend. Tencent holds WeChat and mobile QQ, and Ali focuses on mobile payment with Alipay... .Internet giants are eyeing the entrance of mobile phones, ready to go.
However, Xunlei was lost in the way of listing. The hidden worries of piracy, the indifference of the US stock market environment, and the shrinking download market at that time prevented Xunlei from being able to catch the trend of the mobile Internet.
The terminal for surfing the Internet has shifted from PC to mobile phone, but Xunlei, which has not been able to implement APP in time, will inevitably lose users. In Q1 of 2014, the number of paid members of Xunlei reached 5.17 million, which was the second largest paid membership platform in China at that time; by Q1 of 2017, the number of members was 4.08 million, and by Q2 of 2020, the number of members was 3.9 million.
The number of paying members fell again and again, directly or indirectly laying the groundwork for Xunlei's desolation.
Can blockchain be a good medicine for "cure"
What caused Xunlei's downfall was not only the failure to grasp the trend of the times, but also inseparable from the pain point of the tool software's natural difficulty in monetization.
The early Xunlei business model used built-in advertisements and pop-up windows to make money, but this was at the cost of affecting the user experience, and was once stopped by the Cyberspace Administration of China because of the dissemination of vulgar content.
Another form is to launch paid services. After users become members, they can enjoy acceleration functions such as high-speed downloads and offline downloads. This has even caused Xunlei to attract criticism.
However, it is not easy for Xunlei to rediscover the profit growth point. How to transform from a single download tool software has become the top priority of Xunlei.
Cloud computing seems to be the savior of Xunlei. In 2014, Xunlei launched the "Crystal Project" to explore new possibilities with cloud computing and blockchain technology. Its subsidiary Star Cloud has reached cooperation with iQiyi, Bilibili, Kuaishou and other video and live broadcast corporate customers.
Since 2016, Xunlei's cloud computing and value-added service revenue has grown rapidly, and in 2017 it exceeded subscription revenue, and in the 2017 Xunlei financial report, cloud computing products were highlighted.
From the perspective of time span, Xunlei also seems to be an enterprise that entered the blockchain market earlier in China. Some well-known blockchain businesses, such as Wanke Cloud and Wangxin Cloud, are all blockchain projects under Xunlei.
Thunder does have a certain foresight. In 2021, DAO, NFT, and Metaverse became popular keywords at that time, among which Metaverse set off a boom in the capital market. Behind these three, there is an inseparable relationship with the blockchain.
Blockchain is not only one of the six supporting technologies of Metaverse, but also one of the basic components of digital collections that has attracted much attention. Therefore, Xunlei, which has accumulated a technical foundation, is even more comfortable in the metaverse era.
The enterprise digital collection service platform released by Xunlei this time is mainly used to provide enterprises and institutions with a full-link service system such as digital collection design, casting, display, and management. In addition to pure pictures, the platform also supports different types of digital content, such as game props, audio and video, collectibles, event tickets, etc.
In essence, the platform is equivalent to empowering enterprises with the ability of blockchain technology, helping enterprises to connect and adapt to the future world with blockchain technology.
Taking the NFT market as an example, according to data from the CryptoPunks official website, as of October 2021, the number of CryptoPunk sales in the past year was 11,752, with a total cumulative sales of 1.43 billion US dollars. According to the data provided by Nonfungible’s official website, the number of NFT buyers increased by 66.94% year-on-year in 2020, and the number of sellers increased by 24.7% year-on-year. In October this year, the number of NFT active wallets exceeded 150,000, an increase of 97.09% compared to 2019.
Even if the heat of the relevant market is skyrocketing, this is just a warm-up. After all, the concept of the metaverse is still just a fantasy at this stage, and there is still a long way to go before it can be realized and realized as a product. The "2020-2021 Metaverse Development Research Report" released by the New Media Research Center of Tsinghua University within this year pointed out that the commercialization of a large-scale "Metaverse" is still far away.
"Achieve 10 million paid members in the future, cover 1 billion personal terminals, and create tens of billions of value." This sentence, which was once regarded as Xunlei's corporate vision, now seems to be far away, but, at least for Xunlei, this time Finally did not miss the outlet of the market.
However, there is still a long way to go.
Source: Songuo Finance