Guest: Xin Yan, Co-founder of Sign
Interview: momo, ChainCatcher
When $12 million in buyback funds hit the market, the Sign team is sending a strong signal: they have sufficient cash flow and are highly confident in future business growth.
The timing of this buyback is much earlier than originally planned by Sign's co-founder Xin Yan. After purchasing Bitcoin with $10 million in profits at the end of last year, and subsequently securing multiple government and enterprise orders due to a surge in demand in traditional fields, Sign's revenue grew beyond expectations. Xin Yan predicts their annual revenue will exceed $40 million this year.
Currently, most Crypto project products are single-dimensional, with project tokens becoming the core product, and profit models dependent on market cycles, lacking practical applications and long-term value.
Sign is attempting a new, sustainable Crypto business model. From Eth Sign to TokenTable, Sign is exploring more fundamental, longer-term products, increasingly resembling a "group" with multiple parallel businesses. Sign is not limited to the crypto market and has begun providing standard asset issuance and blockchain infrastructure services for government agencies and listed companies in traditional fields.
Recently, in a conversation with ChainCatcher, Xin Yan also mentioned that Sign will continuously adjust product directions based on market demands to achieve sustained profitability. After establishing stable software business revenue, Sign will also seek an initial public offering at an appropriate time.
The last time ChainCatcher interviewed Xin Yan was on the eve of Sign's TGE, when he was more focused on sharing the concept of building a long-term community. Four months later, in our conversation, Xin Yan shared Sign's latest commercial progress and the ambition to define global on-chain asset issuance standards as Crypto gradually becomes a global capital market trend.
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach, maintaining the original structure and meaning while translating to English.]Interestingly, although these government agencies are interested in innovative technologies, such as wanting to follow up on the US's stablecoin promotion, they generally lack specific implementation plans. Our role has gradually transformed from initial technical executors to comprehensive technical service providers, helping them clarify implementation paths.
Currently, there are few competitors in this track. The main ones I'm aware of are Sign, Solana, and Ripple. The key to competition lies in whether they can send out teams that truly understand the industry and solve their needs, rather than selling their own products.
Compared to competitors, our advantage is greater flexibility. Because we have no historical ecosystem baggage, we can adopt a "demand-oriented" rather than a "product promotion" cooperation model based on local government needs, helping them develop truly needed functions.
Crypto is the New Global Capital Market: Defining Asset Issuance Standards
7, ChainCatcher: With stablecoin and other digital asset-related regulations approved this year, how do you view Crypto's impact on the global capital market? What role will Sign play?
Xin Yan: I see a clear trend. Crypto will rapidly rise to become an entirely new global capital market. Currently, traditional markets like NASDAQ have actually fallen behind the Crypto market, and geopolitical restrictions, such as barriers to listing Chinese and Russian companies in the US, are weakening its global nature.
In the Crypto-driven global capital market, I see three key elements: first, stablecoins; second, high-speed blockchain; and third, asset issuance standards.
The first two elements are relatively mature, and Sign is focusing on breaking through the third key link through businesses like TokenTable. We might play a role similar to traditional "underwriters" in the Crypto world, establishing asset tokenization issuance standards.
The essence of asset tokenization is value packaging and standardization. For example, packaging a company's profitable business into an assessable asset package and then issuing corresponding tokens. This model is being adopted globally, with even the US advancing stock on-chain. Their core demand is to obtain Crypto market's high liquidity.
This is undoubtedly a huge market opportunity for us. In this process, we not only provide infrastructure support for countries but also promote asset issuance standardization through businesses like TokenTable.
8, ChainCatcher: How far are you from this goal?
Xin Yan: Currently, our direction is completely consistent with our vision. To promote Crypto as the world's largest capital market, we are focusing on: enabling global users to conveniently access Crypto infrastructure and establishing unified asset issuance standards. Sign is already very close to this goal.
Through TokenTable, we are establishing a comprehensive asset issuance standard system covering token issuance, use, unlocking, and airdrop throughout the entire lifecycle, helping project parties better manage token economic models.
In the future, we plan to further standardize our products and better adapt to market changes and regulatory requirements. For example, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act provides clear requirements for token distribution. Based on these regulatory requirements, I will develop mature product solutions for project parties to help them compliantly issue and distribute assets.
9, ChainCatcher: Besides focusing on these products, Sign has also invested significant effort in the community. For instance, you recently plan to launch the Orange Dynasty community and its accompanying APP. What is the purpose of this community APP?
Xin Yan: We designed many interesting mechanisms for the community, such as using Soul-Bound Tokens (SBT) to identify member identities. Community members are divided into four roles based on contribution, such as "Support Warriors" for active interaction and "Serious Builders" for deep participation. However, these mechanisms were previously based on Twitter and mainly relied on manual assessment, which was difficult to sustain as we scaled up. Therefore, we spent months developing an APP, expected to launch by month-end.
The APP codifies these mechanisms, constructing a complete framework including community currency and credit scoring systems. Members accumulate credit points through various contributions, and upon reaching certain standards, can apply to become core team members, working like community "civil servants" and receiving regular rewards.
Because the APP's incentive mechanism is transparent and visible, it will motivate community members more. Additionally, the APP integrates community-specific interesting content like regular board game activities, singing competitions, and member-created mini-games, and includes practical functions like identity verification.
10, ChainCatcher: Why invest so much effort in building this community? What significance does this have for building supranational infrastructure?
Xin Yan: The community is a project's core. Having only revenue might make a good listed company, but to build a great project, you must have a strong community.
An active community will spontaneously create token usage scenarios. For example, our community has derived scenarios like playing online poker with SIGN tokens. In fact, a token's usage scenarios should not be defined solely by the project party but need community members to participate bottom-up.
The community is also our "reserved land", providing us with an exclusive user base and creativity. We will also feed back some customer-developed functions to community users. For instance, border control system technologies developed for countries can be adapted and applied to identity verification in the community APP.
I believe the community will gradually realize that traditional nations are defined by physical territories, but this community with shared currency, credit system, and social network is essentially a "digital nation". When members can freely trade, socialize, and start businesses here, the importance of community infrastructure is no less than that of physical nations.
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