Conversation Sign Xin Yan: SIGN does not want to be the next VC coin

Guest: Xin Yan, Co-founder and CEO of Sign

Interview: Nianqing, ChainCatcher

On April 1st April Fool's Day, Sign and the community made a joke about "Sign TGE info link". But this is not entirely a joke, because "big come" is true, Sign's token SIGN is about to be launched.

Sign Lianchuang Xin Yan later posted a message saying that for Sign, TGE is just the beginning, and the community does not need to over-hype TGE. The next highlight is the launch of the Sign App, which will become the main portal for users to obtain rewards through contributions.

Last year, the on-chain agreement signing platform EthSign fully upgraded the brand to Sign, reorganized the product logic, and unified the products such as EthSign, TokenTable, SignPass in the Sign Agreement. Meanwhile, Sign began to build its own community, “Orange Dynasty”, and encouraged people to build the Sign community in ways they are good at. Xin Yan has also become more active on social platforms, and seems to have found his role in the community - Chief reply guy @Sign.

Obviously, SIGN does not want to be the next VC coin.

Three years ago, EthSign made its mark due to its participation in investment by many well-known VCs, and became the first and only project of all three departments of Sequoia to participate in the same round of financing. But the VC version of the story is gradually losing effect, and a "renaissance" driven by the crypto community is emerging.

At some point in 2023, Xin Yan suddenly realized that VC coins actually lack a real community. In a recent interview with ChainCatcher, he mentioned that in order to build one's roots, one must get rid of the path dependence of borrowing power from others. Based on this idea, the team decided to remove EthSign's "Eth" and start being themselves. Sign's products also have greater imagination in the process - providing verification services to more countries and working to become the infrastructure of a suprassori country.

At the same time, in order to build a long-term community, Sign plans to allow users to continuously contribute to the network and gain incentives through a more sustainable token economic model. TGE will be completed before Sign App goes live, 40% of SIGN tokens will be allocated to former TGE contributors, including teams, communities and investors, and half of the remaining 60% (i.e. 30% of the total supply) will continue to provide mining incentives for Sign App. The Sign SBT and NFT series currently issued as incentive communities will continue to exist in the Sign App and will be linked to future contribution rewards.

What exactly does Sign App do? What are the plans for the future? How do ordinary users participate in Sign community construction? The following is the full text of the conversation:

Sign App: Infrastructure of Supersovereign States

ChainCatcher: Sign has launched several products now. The three core products are on-chain contract Sign protocol, on-chain identity authentication and visa system SignPass and TokenTable, Token capital flow management tool. You can first briefly introduce the current development status of these products and what are the development plans this year.

Xin Yan: In the past four years, Sign's product line has actually been divided into two main items: one is TokenTable, with the goal of becoming a broker in the currency circle and focusing on token distribution management; the other is Sign-related businesses, focusing on on-chain contract signing and identity verification, and committed to making information verable worldwide.

First is TokenTable. TokenTable focuses on token distribution, unlocking and airdrop management, and realizes the distribution process from project parties to investors and users through smart contracts. In addition, we also have OTC trading services based on unlocking smart contracts. The TokenTable model has been basically verified and will continue to develop steadily this year. Recently, we have served two major customers, one is Kaito, which is also our first case of airdrop based on the X platform, and the other is AI Agent Launchpad platform Virtuals. Other projects on these two projects will also use TokenTable. In addition, TokenTable will also make airdrops to some countries, that is, UBI-related token distribution to achieve minimum living allowance issuance.

Next is Sign-related business. Sign Started from the earliest EthSign to sign and verify the agreement on the chain. Let any information be verified globally, this is one of the most important features we care about. Because digital information in the real world, such as ID, graduation certificate, tax certificate, etc., is difficult to verify and is easily forged. But our technology can already enable verification to be proven on data like blockchain transactions. Based on this, we launched Sign Protocol, around Protocol we have multiple applications, such as EthSign and SignPass, allowing the IDs of sovereign states to be issued and verified on the blockchain, and last year we have worked with two sovereign states Sierra Leone and the UAE.

This year we will focus on promoting Sign, especially in the field of public services. We plan to launch a complete set of blockchain public service solutions to cooperate with the government. Specifically, through Raas (Rollup-as-a-Service), a sovereign blockchain is developed for the government to solve the problem of Gas fees and make it easier for ordinary users to use. The Sign protocol will then run on this chain, providing services such as KYC identity verification and stablecoin payment. At present, our main partners include Thailand and neighboring countries in Asia, the UAE in the Middle East, and Barbados in the Americas. This year we plan to cover 20 countries in this way.

In addition, on the user side, we are developing a super application Sign App similar to Worldcoin. This application is also very similar to Alipay, which can not only verify identity, but also conduct blockchain transactions, and has social attributes. We will install all our current products in the Sign App, and the App becomes a distribution channel for information and various services. Next, promoting the user download of Apps will become the most important indicator of our work.

ChainCatcher: What is the development progress of the APP and when is expected to be launched?

Xin Yan: It is planned in mid-May. We will first TGE and reward the community that has helped our past four years. After TGE, we will launch the Sign App and take out a 30% token share to do Mining (mining) of Sign App, allowing users to mine SIGN tokens by making contributions to the App. This is a key point that drives Sign App.

ChainCatcher: I just mentioned that Sign plans to promote the Raas system in 20 countries this year, but in fact, there are always various uncertainties in the toG business, including SignPass. Which is the more difficult part in this process?

Xin Yan: In the past year, we have spent a lot of time communicating with the government and gradually reached some phased consensus, the difficulty of implementing it is not as high as imagined. I think the most difficult part is finding the right entry point and clarifying the actual significance of SignPass to the government.

There are several reasons why this year is a suitable time. First of all, Trump issued TRUMP tokens. Most countries' attitude towards Crypto depends on the direction of the United States, and the United States is obviously more open, so these countries will not have too many compliance concerns. Secondly, the market this year is relatively stable, neither rising too much nor falling sharply. People outside will think it is more reliable.

The most important thing is that we spend a lot of time in-depth understanding of government needs and clarify why they use blockchain instead of traditional Web2 systems. Web2 is very costly and subject to others for small countries. A small country may pay a 2% handling fee per transaction if it uses an electronic payment system, such as VISA or MasterCard. This means that a considerable part of the funds circulating in the national economy flows to American companies, and the country's funds are very limited and may even be reversely controlled. So, countries like El Salvador have begun to support Bitcoin and they want to get rid of this high-cost traditional system.

The government wants both political achievements and money, and the system provided by Sign actually meets their needs. By working with us, they can launch innovative projects, attract new people to participate and PR, and create economic benefits; at the same time, if these new systems can truly work, they can also bring political achievements to the government.

ChainCatcher: Sign 's products seem to be focusing on how people survive in the hypersovereign world/digital age. What is your product philosophy in person or the entire team?

Xin Yan: This is a very essential question. As a founder, I need to think about what we have raised so much money? What do we believe in? What is valuable for the crypto industry? Is it just a fast and cheap public chain? Probably outdated.

We will regard blockchain as a platform for allocating the best services and assets. Most resources in this world are allocated unbalanced. For example, people in the United States, Singapore and other places can have US dollar accounts, but people in Africa, Vietnam, Turkey and other places cannot access high-quality assets through US dollar accounts, and good public services are also distributed unevenly. Under this premise, we must regard blockchain as a new standard.

The new standard is like the ID system provided by Sign for the UAE. When a person comes to the UAE to apply for a residence permit, this residence permit will also become a stablecoin account he has passed by KYC, which is exempt from the cumbersome process of having to wait until he has applied for a residence permit before applying for a bank account. This means that in the future, people may no longer need to open a traditional bank account, and a government-verified account will be enough.

Blockchain itself is a newer and larger standard, and more and more countries and companies will move closer to this standard. Worldcoin is building the world's largest on-chain ID system, and Binance has also launched BABT (Binance Account Bound Token) for more than 200 million KYC customers, all of which are on EVM. If more companies and government IDs are on the link, EVM can become the greatest common divisor for identity verification in different countries. Based on this standard, cross-border identity and credit verification will be easier.

In this supersovereign world, not only digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum can operate supersovereignly, but services can also be provided supersovereignly. For example, in the future, a company may provide super-sovereign pension or insurance services to the world. These companies may have more reliable credit than governments in some small countries. Once people hold supersovereign USDT or other assets in their hands, the feasibility of such services will be greatly improved.

What we are doing is to build infrastructure for this supersovereign world.

ChainCatcher: Recently Sign and AGI House planned "the first time in history to sign an eternal contract between humans and AI on Sign." What is Sign's current attitude towards AI? Will you consider combining or cooperating with AI in the future?

Xin Yan: AI has been popular for more than two years, and we have been thinking about the value of AI and Crypto. In fact, in essence, Crypto is built for AI, because blockchain and smart contracts are digital systems that are naturally suitable for AI, not humans. Humans are not good at memorizing complex addresses or hexadecimal strings with more than 20 words. Traditional systems, such as bank accounts, are designed with humans as the core, but blockchain and smart contracts are more like tools tailor-made for AI.

Smart contracts can be a bridge of trust between AI and humans, AI and AI. Therefore, we are working hard to turn all Sign's smart contracts into tools that AI can use directly. For example, our documents will be written as much as possible to make AI readable, and the interface design also allows AI to call more conveniently. At present, AI can use Sign, issue tokens, distribute airdrops and other operations through Sign's smart contracts, such as our cooperation with Virtuals.

ChainCatcher: The improvement of encryption regulation in the United States has made RWA increasingly larger and larger. How does Sign serve the RWA protocol specifically?

Xin Yan: The core of RWA is to securitize real-world assets and put them on a super-sovereign platform, allowing global users to buy and sell freely. In this process, the key is to prove the ownership of the off-chain assets to the on-chain users. In fact, our products, especially EthSign, have a wide range of application scenarios in RWA. We have served two typical big customers: Plume and XDAO.

First is Plume, focusing on securitizing real-world assets and packaging them into tokens for issuance on-chain. In this process, whether the user purchases assets or when the asset issuer releases assets, an agreement is required, and these agreements are completed through EthSign. EthSign provides a platform to ensure that ownership on and off-chain is consistent and prove that the legal status of off-chain assets is recognized.

The second customer is XDAO, which supports users to register DAO companies. During the registration process, the shareholder agreement and company articles of association involved are signed using EthSign to ensure the on-chain verifiability of legal documents. This kind of service is widely used in international DAO scenarios.

ChainCatcher: Sign has made many products, including ToB, ToC, and ToG businesses. What is the team building and energy allocation like?

Xin Yan: Currently, our team has only 23 people. I have always wanted to keep the number of people at around 20, but it is a little bit over. Our core philosophy is to do one or two products well, rather than distracting our energy to do too many things. As long as the core product is developed and perfect, customers can use it directly whether it is serving AI, ToB, ToC or ToG, and we don’t need to do too much customization work.

In terms of work methods, we focus more on efficiency rather than forcing the team to do more. The key is to write the product documents and interfaces well, and at the same time serve big customers and create excellent use cases and case studies. In this way, new customers can directly use our products through documents, reducing the team's time cost in communication.

In terms of energy distribution, about 4 out of 23 people are responsible for the development and operation of TokenTable, including OTC and airdrop-related businesses. Most of the remaining members focus on Sign-related products, and their main development energy is currently focused on the Sign App.

How to build a long-term community?

ChainCatcher: How did the decision to make the Orange Dynasty community come about? **
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Xin Yan: Actually, the topic we were talking about just now was a bit biased towards VC narrative. In the past, we have spent a lot of time trying to convince VCs and the serious media to prove the value of our products. This method is essentially to please key people, hoping to attract retail investors and community attention through VC endorsement, and many projects are spending money to do this. After all, as long as you get investment in top VCs in the past two years, you can quickly gain huge community attention.

But at a certain moment in 2023, I suddenly realized that VC coins actually have no community. VC narratives are gradually failing, and projects that rely on VC endorsement are already difficult to truly establish their own foundation. On the contrary, only after the community matures can it attract more users. As a founder, you must get rid of the path dependence of borrowing power from others and get rid of the thinking of "lifting around with the big guys" . The real way out should be to build your own community and build your own brand.

Based on this idea, we took away the "Eth" of EthSign and decided to be ourselves. After that, we started to build a community and sort out our own culture. We realize that the attractiveness of a community does not rely entirely on the product itself, but requires people to feel "fun" and have a sense of belonging. Just like SpaceX, while it is a ToB and ToG business, its vision and mission have attracted the attention of a large number of people who do not use their products directly.

Since last year, we have also done a lot of brand simplification work. Visually, we chose "orange" as the core element. Orange is both eye-catching and inclusive. Users can change their avatar background to orange, and they can integrate into the community without changing PFP. The element of "orange glasses" is also based on this concept. You can easily combine your PFP with your community identity without changing yourself at all.

ChainCatcher: I feel that more and more projects are paying more attention to community construction.

Xin Yan: This is actually not a new trend, it is more like the "cryptocurrency Renaissance" .

Since 2017, the currency circle has been largely hijacked by VCs and has become a VC-driven industry. The project party is eager to show the founder's background history and endorsement of a large organization to VC. But the key to the success of the project lies in the community. As long as you have an active community and there is a circulating token in the community, this token can find various application scenarios in the community.

For example, in ETH, the Ethereum community has 500,000 users running clients and jointly maintain a chain. Many tools and ecological projects, including Etherscan, were developed spontaneously by the community, rather than directly promoted by the Ethereum Foundation. As long as there are communities and tokens, the community will create various application scenarios for tokens. Of course, if ETH could have handled governance functions better at the beginning, it might not have been like today.

In addition, projects do not simply rely on the product's technical capabilities or practicality to support the value of tokens. After all, no token with a market value of more than US$1 billion is purely supported by practicality.

ChainCatcher: Sign clearly tells the community that Sign does not have farm, but there are still some incentives to unite the community, such as SBT. Can you systematically introduce it?

Xin Yan: Being a community is like designing a game. You need an achievement system or medal system to make members feel involved. Sign's SBT is similar to the guild's career setting in World of Warcraft, representing different characters in the community.

Currently, the SBT of the Sign community is divided into several roles, each of which corresponds to a different contribution type:

Series Builder: This is the "Builders Guild" for those members who develop tools or products for the community. For example, a member of us has developed a web tool that allows everyone to add Sign's orange glasses to their avatar. There are also some community members who make other interesting web pages and games.

Support Warrior: This is the “Guide to Supporters” that encourages interaction among community members. We hope that the community will not only communicate with the team and members in one-way, but also communicate, like, forward and comment with each other to form a real community network. The Support Warrior role is designed for members who are actively involved in interactions, replies and support others’ content.

Content Creator: This is the role of “content creator”, which is granted to members who create content for the community, such as writing articles, making videos, etc.

Orange in the Veins: refers to members who actively participate in community activities and drive more people to join the Sign "Orange Dynasty" community through promotion and invitation.

If you make corresponding contributions in the community, we will directly issue the corresponding SBT, and your name will be recorded on it, symbolizing your "professional" identity in the community. Additionally, for those members who want to join but don’t have the time to participate for the moment, we launched NFT. These NFTs are suitable for users who are financially capable but cannot interact frequently, and can be converted into SBT-like incentive forms in the Sign App in the future.

ChainCatcher: The current standard for issuing SBT is determined by administrators, or is there a system? **

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**Xin Yan: Actually, we have a quantitative system behind it, after all, the community is already very large. But we do not want to make this quantitative plan public, because as soon as the plan is made public, many scientists will operate according to this rule and standard. If the first tens of thousands of addresses are all witches, this community will be over.

ChainCatcher: You mentioned in other podcasts that many users of Sign are outsiders, so they can buy BTC assets as an incentive for this group, and SIGN tokens are allocated to people in the circle. What are the specific considerations in this part?

Xin Yan: Yes, we bought 100 bitcoins as an incentive for outsiders. Many of Sign's users are outsiders, and they may not be familiar with SIGN. But BTC, as a well-known asset, is more acceptable and has a bigger gimmick for them, and the price of Bitcoin is relatively stable. Of course, whether it is BTC or SIGN, it is our own money. BTW, BTC is also orange.

ChainCatcher: How to build a long-term community? What are the plans after TGE?

Xin Yan: I think the most important thing lies in the design of the economic model, because this is essentially an economic issue, and we must continue to allow everyone to obtain coins by contributing to this network. Instead of issuing a coin and selling it to retail investors constantly.

Our token economics is actually very simple, 40% is allocated to former TGE contributors, including teams, communities and investors, and half of the remaining 60% (i.e. 30% of the total supply) is used to mine Sign App. We will design a variety of ways to encourage users to contribute so that they can continue to receive SIGN token rewards.

The way most projects get incentives can end before airdrops and TGE. We will try to build a more coherent system, and Sign's NFT and SBT will continue to exist in the Sign App and are linked to future mining revenue.

ChainCatcher: What are your predictions about the current crypto market and which tracks do you prefer?

Xin Yan: It may be a bit difficult to predict the track because there is a lot of randomness in the popularity of the track. For example, the AI ​​track suddenly became popular but then quickly cooled down. This phenomenon is not uncommon in the market. I can share some understanding of the current market and trend judgments.

At present, the crypto market is a market for stock games. Both participants and funds are stocked, and there is not much incremental funds entering. The entire industry is like a "squid game". The stock market cannot bring about a real bull market, and the bull market requires incremental funds and users as the basis. For example, last year's bull market was largely due to the fact that some projects brought new user traffic and incremental funds.

In the future, large-scale projects led by VCs may die in batches, which will lead to mass reshuffle in the VC industry. There is a term called "Tech Vaporware", which refers to those VCs that produce "air": they talk about a bunch of concepts that are incomprehensible, with extremely high valuations, but in the end there is no actual value, and no one really makes a profit from it. For example, some Layer 1 projects have valuations of up to billions of dollars, but their actual uses and profit models are not clear. Such projects will gradually be eliminated by the market.

I am more optimistic about the "cryptocurrency Renaissance" trend. The market will be more diversified in the future, and community-driven projects will become mainstream, rather than relying on the voices of a few "big brothers in the currency circle". In the past, the core circle of the currency circle seemed to be able to determine everything, but now different communities have different cores. In the past few years, many public chain projects such as Aptos, StarkNet, Movement, etc. have been actually driven by the same group of people. Their funds and smart contract developers tend to flow from one chain to another, and the overlap between community members is very high. But now, Ethereum has its own core circle, and Solana has its own core circle. The connections between communities will become looser and more independent, but each community will be closer and the cryptocurrency story will be more diversified.

ChainCatcher: I feel that the Sign team is good at telling stories. Does this have a lot to do with the team’s working atmosphere?

Xin Yan: We do pay great attention to the team's expression skills. As I mentioned before, community construction is more important than simply making products, and the core of community construction lies in the output of culture and values. You need to let users understand your vision and spirit by telling stories. I will specially guide the team members to actively speak on Twitter. Not only me, but the entire team is very active and frequently share their thoughts and opinions. We encourage everyone to build a personal brand, which is of great benefit to personal growth and company development.

As for the working atmosphere, it can be summarized as "high intensity but passionate". Our team is very "club", with a strong competitive atmosphere, a fast working pace and a high pressure. But this "volume" is not passive, but is based on a high degree of recognition of the company's vision. We welcome only those who are passionate about Sign. If you agree with our goals, you won’t feel forced even if your work intensity is high.

I now attend at least one podcast a week, which is a requirement for myself. During this process, I was also sorting out some of my own ideas and repeatedly practicing my ability to tell stories.

ChainCatcher: What is your ideal "new order" like?

Xin Yan: In the past few years, the world has changed very quickly and the global order is being reconstructed at an accelerated pace. For example, Ukraine quickly fell into war from a relatively stable country, with young men aged 20 to 35 almost dead or injured. After the war, the country may face huge debts, similar to the past when China was forced to sign unequal treaties after being invaded by the great powers, pay compensation, cede land, and plunder. This history and reality made me deeply feel that the new order was established very quickly. If you do not actively participate in building a new order, you will be forced to accept the order imposed by others.

My ideal “New Order” is a world of stable services provided by international organizations: Everyone can access financial services, identity verification services, and even visa services through Sign. In the future, I hope SignPass can become a global identity and visa credential, and users can enter any country with just one SignPass.

To achieve such a new order, the most important thing is to actively participate in the game. The new order is the result of multi-party game. If you do not participate, you will passively accept the losses and become the "cut" side. Therefore, I have been encouraging the team and pushing myself to clarify what the future we want, and then invest more resources to work hard to achieve. Only in this way can we become part of the new order and play an important role.