ZCash founder: I am very upset with Jihan Wu, but I don’t think he is lying

In early May, Bitmain announced the launch of the first application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miner for mining on the Equihash network. It is reported that Bitmain's Zcash ASIC miner, Antminer Z9 Mini, has a computing power of 10k Sol/s and is expected to start shipping in late June.

After the news was released, it immediately attracted the attention of the ZCash community. Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn (known as Zooko), a core member of the ZCash founding team, recently revealed that he had a video conference with Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu and discussed some current controversial topics. Obviously, the content of the discussion between the two parties has aroused the interest of the entire crypto community.

Zooko: I am very upset with Jihan Wu

In fact, about a year and a half ago, when ZCash was just released, Zooko and Wu Jihan met once at the LABitConf conference held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The two had a brief conversation, and they have not had any contact since then.

Last month, just after Bitmain announced the launch of the Z9 Mini Antminer, Zooko seemed to realize the seriousness of the problem. In a recent video meeting with Wu Jihan, he first told Wu Jihan that due to the "trust gap" that had arisen, many people were angry with Bitmain, and the ZCash community had to decide to change the proof of work. Zooko even said directly to Wu Jihan:

“ I am personally very angry with you because we did not receive any notice or warning before launching the new ASIC ZCash mining machine. Although I am not as suspicious and hostile as most people, many people - including those who work together to maintain and improve ZCash - have a deep suspicion of Bitmain. This trust gap will have a negative impact on cooperation and will affect everyone’s interests.”

Zooko revealed that Wu Jihan explained that there is a big communication gap between him and the West in China, so they don’t know how to communicate with Westerners. But Zooko believes that although he agrees that this communication gap is an unavoidable reality, the so-called "communication gap" is actually mutual - "I don't know how to communicate with Chinese people either."

However, Wu Jihan said that Bitmain did not know how to bridge the communication gap, so it adopted a "not engaging" policy - quietly releasing products and then saying nothing. Wu Jihan told Zooko:

“ We didn’t even say the Z9 Equihash miner was designed to mine ZCash! ”

For some reason, Zooko did not think Wu Jihan was lying after hearing this. He said:

“I think Wu Jihan is telling the truth.”

Denies using ASICs to mine Monero, admits mining ZCash

Afterwards, Zooko continued to ask Wu Jihan whether he was using ASIC miners to mine Monero, because it seemed that someone was indeed doing so. Wu Jihan told Zooko that he had also seen rumors that there was a large-scale invisible ASIC miner on the market, but he did not have time to verify whether this miner really existed. It was still just a hypothesis, but it was definitely not Bitmain.

Zooko once again felt that Wu Jihan's words sounded very sincere.

Zooko told Wu Jihan that he found that the computing power previously used to mine Monero had been transferred to XMO (Monero Original), which was sponsored by Bitmain/Antpool. Wu Jihan replied that Monero Original had indeed contacted him before and Bitmain also provided sponsorship, but that was not something they were actively seeking.

Wu Jihan said that he has never implemented any stealth mining strategies, and the reason for doing so is that they have too many employees to keep it completely secret. Wu Jihan said that Bitmain has more than 2,000 employees, and large-scale mining operations require hundreds of employees to participate.

Zooko immediately asked Wu Jihan whether Bitmain had a clear rule not to conduct invisible mining. Wu Jihan’s answer was very direct - no.

Zooko then asked a more direct question:

“Are you mining ZCash now?”

Wu Jihan replied:

“Uh, are we mining ZCash now? Yes, I think that’s because there are some sample miners that have been produced, and we have also opened up the ZCash mining service on Antpool now, and now we have a few miners that are being tested. And now, I think our first batch of ASIC miners will be shipped in one to two weeks.”

Zooko had the same feeling for the third time—Wu Jihan was telling the truth.

Wu Jihan said he would consider three suggestions for rebuilding trust

As a businessman, Wu Jihan is obviously more successful than Zooko. But Zooko said he hopes to give Wu Jihan some advice on how to rebuild trust.

Wu Jihan simply replied, "Please!" After that, Zooko made three suggestions:

First, re-establish dialogue through communication.

Second, commit to company policies in writing. In a large, well-organized Western company, if some problems have serious consequences, they will write down specific policies to explain what the company will and will not do, and publish these policies to internal and external personnel so that everyone knows what the company is committed to. If the policy changes, the company also needs to update it in a timely manner.

Third, transparency. In order to gain market trust, Bitmain must be more transparent than small companies, and it also needs to disclose a lot of uncomfortable or problematic information to the public, such as:

• Company structure, such as who owns what, who controls what, financial statements, whether it is profitable;
  

• accurately articulate policies on invisible mining;

• Publish business statistics regularly, such as once a month or once a quarter, to let the market know how much hashrate your mining operation is running, which blockchain, which mining pools, which mining strategies are adopted, what transactions/blocks are processed, etc.

• Disclosure of development and test mining information

Regarding the above three suggestions, Wu Jihan said that he would discuss this matter with the team.

Wu Jihan is not the largest shareholder of Bitmain, but his voting rights are ten times that of others

Zooko revealed that he hopes Bitmain can contribute to the ZCash community, but the ZCash Foundation does not accept any donations at this stage, because such practices will be regarded as bribery or buying influence. But Zooko said that maybe Bitmain can help ZCash with other things, such as integrating ZCash into the BTC.com wallet, because Zooko heard that the BTC.com wallet is pre-installed on all Huawei phones.

In fact, Zooko thinks it would be amazing if Huawei phones really had BTC.com wallet pre-installed. But Wu Jihan said that he could confirm that he had heard about it, but he was not clear about the details and would ask about it.

Next, Zooko asked a question that may be of most concern to people. He asked Wu Jihan, who is the real owner of Bitmain?

Wu Jihan replied that he currently owns about 25-28% of Bitmain's shares, while another co-CEO, Micree, holds more shares than him. In addition, Bitmain has three natural person shareholders, an option pool for employees, and a few venture capital firms that own less than 5% of the company's shares.

So, does this mean that someone can fire Wu Jihan?

Wu seemed confused by the question. Zooko explained that a typical Western company like ZCash would fire the CEO through a majority vote of the board of directors.

After hearing this explanation, Wu Jihan responded:

“Oh, there’s no such thing at Bitmain.”

Zooko was also confused and asked whether Micree could fire Wu Jihan, or whether Wu Jihan could fire Micree?

Wu Jihan said that his shares, as well as Micree's shares, have ten times the voting rights of others. In addition, Wu Jihan also revealed that Bitmain is valued at $10 billion and its revenue in 2017 reached $2.5 billion.

At the end of the exchange, Wu Jihan seemed a little excited and said, "Zooko, thank you very much for your help." Zooko said that he did not give Wu Jihan any help, but hoped so.

Just like that, the video call between the two ended.