For Thunder, the blockchain has become a lost path.
文 | Ratchet
After two years of announcing the All in blockchain, Thunder failed to produce a satisfactory answer.
Today, Thunder’s share price has plummeted 90% from its peak, and the player cloud mine has also been discontinued. The financial report shows that there is no real progress in the revenue of the blockchain business of Thunder.
Besides the overall background of the blockchain industry’s overall cooling, some blockchain practitioners believe that the transformation of Thunder in the blockchain field is blocked, which is related to its “tangledness” in the blockchain industry.
How to balance privacy and regulation, openness and compliance on the chain has become an unsolved problem for Thunder.
A number of Thunder employees have expressed a blockchain. Even within Thunder, Thunder’s blockchain transformation attempt is still controversial.
But for today’s Thunder, the blockchain seems to have become the only direction of transformation.
01 Stock price plummeted
It’s also burgeoning, and its death is also ignorant. The experience of Thunder may be the best explanation for this sentence.
As of the last US stock trading day, Thunder’s share price has fallen to $2.68, down from $27 at two-year highs, and has fallen by 90%.
Less than a month ago, Thunder just released the 2019 Q2 earnings report. The earnings report showed that its profitability still did not improve – revenue of 47.8 million US dollars, down 27.3%; net loss of 2.04 million US dollars, a narrower year-on-year.
Since this, Thunder has suffered losses for four consecutive quarters. If the year is the time scale, Thunder has lost money every year since 2015.
After the Q2 earnings report, Thunder’s share price ushered in a 50% increase, once breaking through $3. However, the US stock research institute said that this “is largely a self-help of the organization”, in order to raise shipments.
In addition, since the end of 2018, the production of Thunderstar has been greatly reduced, and a large number of mines have been shut down. (See “hard mining is a false proposition? A large number of lockouts at the guest cloud mine)
“A company that has lost its future may not have to hold it.” For Thunder, US stock researchThe research institute said.
The bustling and easy to die. Two years ago, Thunder was still experiencing high light moments.
In October 2017, at the launch of the gamer, Thunder CEO Chen Lei shouted the slogan of the “All in” blockchain. Thunder’s blockchain plan has long been exposed.
2017 Player Cloud Conference
In the outside world, Thunder, which started with download tools, has accumulated in decentralization technology such as P2P, and may be one of the most suitable Internet companies for the transformation of blockchain.
Like Bitcoin that year, Thunder’s share price has risen from $3 in August 2017 and eventually reached its all-time high of $27 at the end of November.
How about Thunder’s blockchain business revenue in the past two years?
In the Thunder Financial Report of Q2 in 2019, the blockchain business was integrated into “cloud computing and other Internet value-added services” and was not separately listed. The shared CDN business that Thunder has been vigorously promoting has also been included in this revenue.
Xunlei 2019 Q2 financial report shows that Thunder’s business revenue was 22.5 million US dollars, down 38.3% from 36.5 million US dollars in the same period last year.
In contrast, Thunder’s most traditional subscription service (Thunder Member Service) has seen a slight increase over the same period last year.
The new business is getting worse and worse, and the traditional business is still strong. This makes it difficult for the outside world to understand Thunder’s “blockchain transformation”.
At the level of the Thunder Group, new businesses such as cloud computing and blockchain are under the responsibility of “Net Technology”, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Thunder. In the financial report, the two consolidated the report; but in the specific business, the two have long been separated.
“In fact, since the day of its establishment, Netcom has been relying on Thunderbolt blood transfusion.” Han Wenjie, a former employee of Thunder, said to a blockchain, “Xunlei parent company provides a large amount of financial support for the network every year. Even The overall salary of the network is higher than that of Thunder.”
He revealed that when the network was established, it took a lot of technical talents from Thunder. Although Chen Lei is also the CEO of Thunder and Net, but as a Thunder employee, Han Wenjie can only see Chen Lei at the quarterly Thunder Open Day.
“Chen Lei is in the net most of the time, rarely to Thunder.” Han Wenjie said. The straight-line distance between the two companies is less than 300 meters.
The entire Thunder Group’s publicity focus is also concentrated in the blockchain field.
“Net’s blockchain product ‘Thunderbolt’ still uses the brand of Thunder.” Hu Siyuan, who is close to the network market and public relations department, said to a blockchain, “Now Thunder is exposed in the mainstream media. It has been completely concentrated in the blockchain field.”
Today, in Baidu search Thunder, almost all positive reports are related to the blockchain – the developer contest was held, and the blockchain laboratory was built with People’s Daily and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
But in the eyes of many blockchain practitioners, Thunder’s progress in the blockchain field is thunderous and rainy.
“In Thunder, when you mention the blockchain, you can feel the strange atmosphere between colleagues.” Han Wenjie said, “We don’t say anything, but we all know (not reliable).
Transformation blockchain, where is the problem with Thunder?
In many people’s eyes, the problem comes from Thunder’s “tangling” of its own business and the entire blockchain industry.
02 Tangled
According to Thunder’s original plan, the launch time of the guest cloud should have been in September 2017.
But it is well known that in September, the Chinese currency circle ushered in a major earthquake – on September 4, the central bank and the seven ministries and commissions issued an ICO ban.
This makes Thunder unprepared. As the blockchain intelligent hardware under the network, the player cloud uses the digital currency “playing coins” as the settlement method, which is interpreted by the outside world as “disguised ICO”.
After the release of the “9.44 ban”, Chen Lei hosted a shareholder meeting at the Network Technology Headquarters. “The discussion is very intense.” People close to the top of the Thunder told a blockchain, “There are even shareholders who recommend to “overturn redo” the player cloud.”
But the player cloud at this time is already on the string. “Discussed a variety of solutions, and ultimately chose the original plan.” The above pointed out, “But this way, the release time of the player cloud has been delayed for nearly two months.”
After the “9.4” shock, bitcoin prices began to soar, rising from $4,200 to $20,000. The price of Thunder and the price of playing coins also rose.
However, Thunder has not defined its position in the blockchain industry for a long time.
“Do you want to do public chain, platform, do chain application, or just do the guest cloud business? After the end of 2017, Thunder did not think clearly.” Hu Siyuan recalled.
In 2018, the currency market began to decline. At this time, Thunder finally made a choice: based on the Thunderbolt platform, and on top of it, relying on its own partners and developers to build various applications.
“There was no choice at the time of Thunder.” Hu Siyuan pointed out.
In order to downplay the “coin” attribute of the playing coin, Thunder renamed it “chain” and even eventually sold the business.
Hu Siyuan believes that Thunder has repeatedly hit the wall in the field of blockchain, and has a direct relationship with the burden of burden. “Xunlei is a US-listed company and a well-known Internet brand.” Hu Siyuan said, “There are countless people staring at the many “wild roads” of the currency circle and the chain, and Thunder can’t touch it.”
This makes Thunder full of entanglements when dealing with issues unique to many blockchain industries.
“For example, the Thunderbolt has preset interfaces for supervision in the process of part of the business. However, in the publicity, Thunder does not want this information to be exposed, so that the outside world has doubts about its privacy protection mechanism.” Hu Siyuan said, “On the contrary, when the Thunderbolt promotes its privacy protection mechanism, it often avoids regulatory issues.”
This kind of entanglement is reflected in all aspects of the Thunder blockchain business.
Until today, Thunder’s definition of the Thunderbolt platform is still the “main chain”, not the “public chain” in the industry. The reason is that the Thunderbolt chain is still not as open source as most public chains, and is open to everyone.
“If developers want to develop DApps on the Thunderbolt chain, they need to apply to the Thunder official for approval. This makes the Thunderbolt criticized.” Hu Siyuan said.
“But it’s not hard to imagine that once the Thunderbolt is fully open, it will have a high probability of becoming a ‘big casino’ with spinach, like EOS and Wavefield,” he said.
Not open source, not open, so that the Thunder chain has become a lot of incomprehensible in the eyes of many blockchain practitioners. “Thunder often boast that the Thunderbolt can achieve a million TPS.” A blockchain practitioner pointed out that “there is no way to open the Thunderbolt anyway, just how to blow it.”
03 Future
The loss of the developer’s Thunderbolt chain can only build its own blockchain platform, and on this basis, provide customers with blockchain-based services.
This is similar to the underlying architecture of the BaaS services of Internet giants such as BAT. But obviously, whether it is talent accumulation or technical reserve, Thunder and BAT are far apart.
The official information and public information of Xunlei Chain show that Xunlei Chain has established cooperative relationship with Quantum Cloud Code, Car Network and China Copyright Protection Center, and provides various blockchain services for the latter. The Thunderchain solution covers areas such as product traceability and supply chain finance.
“The problem with this type of BaaS service is that it is difficult for the service provider to form a standardized product solution and rely on it.Standardization reduces costs. “The blockchain practitioners pointed out that “for Thunder, the current blockchain business is bound to lose money.”
Beyond the blockchain, another move by Thunder is quite surprising.
In June of this year, Thunder announced the launch of the “Lifetime Member” service, starting at 2,999 yuan, available for life. “Thunder is going to run?” Some people questioned.
But now, Thunder, there seems to be no need to “run the road.” The financial report shows that Thunder still holds 280 million US dollars in cash assets, which even exceeds the market value of Thunder.
“Overall, when a company’s stock price is lower than the cash value, it usually reflects the extreme pessimism of investors.” In 2016, the former Thunder CFO monk invested in the snowball platform. Explain.
In the eyes of investors, today’s Thunder lacks imagination. However, as a veteran Internet company with more than ten years of history, Thunder’s cash flow may still be the key to its turnaround.
“2019 school recruits, Thunder opened a very high package, and even let many old employees who have worked for many years are upside down.” Han Wenjie revealed, “In May this year, Thunder began internal layoffs, many performance bottom employees , have been ‘optimized’.”
In the eyes of many Thunder employees, this is a deliberate exchange of blood – replacing some of the old employees with new employees with better resumes and more shaping.
In the Thunder, “transformation” is no stranger. “There has always been a confrontation between the ‘Old Thunder’ and the ‘Tencent Department’ inside the Thunder employees.” Han Wenjie said.
In history, the “Tencent Department” represents the “transformation” within Thunder, that is, the network transformation of cloud computing and blockchain business to achieve the transformation of Thunder. The “old Thunder”, most of them tend to use the C-end users accumulated by Thunder to realize the realization.
Besides the grassroots employees, the Thunder high-level executives once had opposing forces, and even caused public guilt.
At the end of 2017, Xunlei Big Data, the Thunder subsidiary that dominated the “Thunderbolt Finance” business, publicly criticized the network blockchain business in the form of nearly big-character posters on official websites, Weibo and WeChat. The financial business of Thunder Big Data is the last attempt of the “Old Thunder” to realize the realization.
Xunlei Big Data said that Netcom’s playing coin business violates national laws. However, their Thunder financial business – cash loans, micro-distribution and binary options – are also in the legal gray.
In the end, the Thunder guilty incident ended with the failure of the “Old Thunder”. “Now the ‘Old Thunder’ are almost all out.” Han Wenjie said.
“Xunlei has not tried other businesses.” Han Wenjie said, “In these years, Thunder has done live broadcasts, online novels and even AI business. The AI business has been done for 3 months, and finally there is no scene, only to give up.
In Thunder, blockchain has become the only development direction of Thunder.
In the future, Thunder can only run blindly on this road.
Although he has left, Han Wenjie still has feelings for Thunder: “The technical level of Thunder is still very top-notch among second-tier Internet companies.”
However, for a thousand-dollar Internet company like Thunder, the “All in blockchain” needs more than courage.
Can Thunder be lucky enough to break into the blockchain industry? No one knows the answer to this question.