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Today we are talking with Jun Li who is the founder of Ontology.
- Ontology is a high performance public multi-chain and distributed collaboration platform.
We’d like to kick things off by asking you a couple of questions regarding your formative years.
1) Firstly, can you tell us the things which interested you the most throughout your childhood and teenage years, and what brought you the most happiness?
When I was a child, my mom worked as a librarian, so I spent most of my time in library and I was able to read a wide range of books and came to know the world through the lens of books.
By reading all kinds of books, I understand the complexity and vicissitudes of the world. Immersing myself in the world of books brings me different emotions. I felt like I have lived different types of lives in advance, which really brings me a lot of happiness and fulfilment. I have kept this habit to this day and I will set myself a goal of reading around 50 books per quarter. Every time I open a book, I can calm down and think.
2) Who were your biggest influences growing up, and why did they have such a profound effect on you?
The biggest influence on me was a Chinese explorer named Yu Chunshun. He has hiked more than 40,000 kilometers all over China since 1988. His journey covered 23 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China, and he is the first man who has trekked through the Sichuan-Tibet, Qinghai-Tibet, Xinjiang-Tibet, Yunnan-Tibet andChina-Nepal highways, and he has also successfully conquered the Tibetan Plateau - the Third Pole. Unfortunately, he died in 1996 while searching for a lost oasis in the Lop Nur in Xinjiang Province.
What I admire him most is that he pays as much attention to the results as the journey itself. More importantly, when he thinks that it is the right thing to do, he will go all out on making it happen, even if there are risks involved.
3) Teenage years are often a turbulent time for many, so on this note, can you name a time which was tough for you, and how you managed to overcome it?
When I was young, I lived in a different place with my parents for a while, so I had to be more independent than my peers and take care of myself. I was able to explore the world on my own, to find out the best way for me to fit in the society. It was a challenge for me, but I am also grateful for the experience as it will be very valuable for the rest of my life.
4) If there was some advice you could give young aspiring individuals, advice which you would really have liked to have heard yourself as a young person, what would it be?
Many young people feel that once they have chosen an industry or a job, they will do it for the rest of their lives. Never let such an idea take root in your mind. Don’t set boundaries for yourselves when you are still young. It’s a big world and you don’t need to decide the direction of your life too early. Try to stay on the road. You should try more and then choose the one thing that suits you best. Keep an open mind. Don’t turn something down or reject too early. You will see that everything has its raison d'être and can help you grow.
We are now going to ask you some questions which will hopefully give our readers something to go on regarding you as a person.
5) Firstly, what are the particular strengths that you feel have made you successful in your field (don’t hold back)?
I will say “believe in one thing and is willing to take risk for it”. Of course, you will need a streak of luck, but the most important thing is that you believe in it and set your mind on it.
6) What would you say is your most controversial opinion as regards to blockchain or the crypto space?
Currently, the blockchain technology is not regulated and has a certain degree of anonymity, which also poses potential risks. On the other hand, the foundation of blockchain technology can easily support regulation and monitoring and can definitely play a bigger role in public governance, financial transactions, KYC, and other areas that require trust.
7) In the course of your day you can become under the most ridiculous pressures and stresses, what is your particular way of dealing with this?
For me, the pressure is also the motivation to keep doing the things I want to do and being the person I want to be. Every person has many different pillars in their lives. For me, the blockchain industry and building the trust ecosystem is one of the main pillars in my life. However, on the other hand, life isn’t just about work, you have more things to explore and experience, you have family, friends, which constitute other pillars in your life. If one pillar falls down, you will still have other pillars in your life to keep life going. Also, if you can strike a balance between them, you can see life is about so much more and everyday will be a joyful experience for you to keep you moving.
8) Outside of crypto/blockchain, what is your favorite thing to do?
Reading and exercise, which can keep both my mind and body active.
We are now going to ask you some creative and humorous questions, and we are sure people will love to see you what you can come up with.
9) What is the most humorous thing you have seen or experienced during your time in the crypto/blockchain space?
I found some of the people who were very critical of the blockchain industry at its early stages have also joined the industry.
10) If you somehow managed to meet Satoshi Nakamoto (that is he is a male person in this scenario) on his deathbed, but only had time to ask him one question, what would it be? Bear in mind you don’t have much time at all, so make it a good one.
Why do you keep yourself anonymous for so long? Is it because you have concerns or fear, or you simply want to keep a low profile? Is it of your own choice or are you forced to do so?
11) Can you give three policies you'd enact if you became the president of a country tomorrow?
The interviewee chose not to answer this question.
Communities are often an important backbone for many crypto/blockchain projects, so we’d now like to get some personal thoughts on the community side of things.
12) What do you feel makes the Ontology community unique compared to others?
The Ontology community has an innate cohesion and you can get support here more easily than other communities. The core team and the community are closely-knit and the team is always responsive to the questions from the community and provide technical support. I think it is more like a big family than a community.
13) Project aside, what are some other crypto/blockchain communities that you admire and why (this is not an endorsement)?
The communities of Linux, Ethereum, and NEO. NEO started in China but has built a global community where members from around the world build the community together.
14) What social-media platform do you like most and why, and are there any improvements which you feel can be made to these platforms for an even better community user-experience?
I like Telegram. Telegram allows people to communicate with each other in an open and
candid way.
I think Telegram can add something similar to the Moments on WeChat, allowing users to create and share information.
15) With the endgame being mainstream adoption, do you think crypto/blockchain communities will still have an important role to play in a post-adoption environment?
The communities will continue to play an important role because they will always be at the forefront of exploration and innovation and can give valuable feedback to the projects to help them improve.
In our penultimate section we are going to ask you a question regarding Ontology.
16) What do you feel sets Ontology apart from your competitors (that is if you have any)?
We are focused on technology and real business in a down-to-earth way. We try our best to deliver the roadmap and our promises to the community and have earned a good name for doing it. We will also honor our promise of creating a trust ecosystem.
Ontology has made considerable progress in technology, ecosystem, and community building. More importantly, Ontology is the only public chain project that has participated in the formulation of blockchain standards of the three international standardization organizations (ISO, IEC and ITU).
Well that just about does it, but before we end this interview we’d like to ask you for something which we believe will say a lot about your belief in the industry, and which may inspire those who are reading.
17) Can you come up with a short argument for our readers on why you feel cryptocurrency and blockchain (or just one) has a bright future?
In today’s society, the Internet and big data infrastructure have encountered a real bottleneck. The technical challenge can be solved, but the cost of trust is too high. Centralized control and data leak have become some of the pain points.
Of all the existing technologies, blockchain is the most suitable system and tool for solving these problems and is likely to be an important part of the next-generation Internet infrastructure.
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