"I'd like to ask you a question in return: besides Hong Kong, where else would be a better fit?" This is indeed a good question. Since Hong Kong issued its virtual asset declaration, there have always been voices pessimistic about Hong Kong's Web3 prospects. However, if choosing a foothold that can be based in Asia and radiate globally, Hong Kong is the best choice for Chinese Web3 investment institutions compared to Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. This dialogue took place during the recently concluded Hong Kong Web3 Carnival. The Hong Kong Ethereum Community Hub (hereinafter referred to as "Hub"), supported by the Ethereum Foundation and jointly launched by SNZ and EHTao, held its opening ceremony at the same time. Notable figures including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, HashKey Group Chairman and CEO Xiao Feng, Hong Kong Legislative Council member Yau Tat-kan, and Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom also participated. The Hong Kong Ethereum Community Hub is an Ethereum community initiated by SNZ, aiming to provide a space for Ethereum ecosystem participants in Asia and globally to exchange ideas, discuss, and learn, thereby promoting the application and development of Ethereum in various industries. Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom also stated in an interview, "I firmly believe that the next chapter of Ethereum will be written in Asia. Hong Kong has established one of the most mature digital asset regulatory frameworks globally, with stablecoin policies, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission's (SFC) virtual asset licensing system, and the continued commitment of local institutions to this market—these are not signals to be observed from afar, but signals to be acted upon immediately." Speaking of community, many people are probably already somewhat "allergic" to the word. As an early supporter of Ethereum, SNZ's actions at a time when the industry is generally confused, amounting to nothing more than building a "community," left me quite puzzled. With a belly full of questions, I spoke with the head of Hub. The first and most important question about the "ancient ritual" of Web3, as mentioned above, is why use this seemingly ordinary organizational form? "When I first joined SNZ, I asked Mr. Shi (SNZ founder Gilles Shi) the same question, and I think my later reflections can answer this question for most people," said Henry, SNZ's CBO and one of the key figures involved in Hub's operations. In the early stages of DeFi application development on Ethereum, SNZ assisted many projects in a similar manner. Around 2017 and 2018, SNZ established a similar community organization, "Neutrino," in Changning, Shanghai, to help emerging projects spread within the community. MakerDAO, one of SNZ's early portfolio companies, benefited from this, gaining widespread attention from the Asia-Pacific community and later becoming one of the important infrastructures in the DeFi field.Henry understands this all too well. Before officially entering the Web3 industry, Henry's view of Web3 was that it was "abnormal." It was only after communicating with Gavin Wang, the managing partner and chief investment officer of SNZ, in a similar community that he realized Web3 is actually a very "normal" industry. The problem is that there's just too much noise, too much of it, and even a veteran like Henry in traditional investment fields can be easily misled. "The industry is chaotic; often you can't find the right people to talk to." This so-called "chaotic" state is determined by the nature of the Web3 industry. On the one hand, Web3 is still in its early stages of development; on the other hand, its decentralized nature means that many projects are free to operate globally from the moment they are born, and as long as there is internet access, they are not limited by geography. Not all people or organizations contributing to a project are in "the same company," so the existence of a community is both a subjective need and an objective requirement. "The reason you have doubts about Hub might be because the concept of 'community' has been demonized," Henry explained. "The communities of retail cryptocurrency traders and KOLs who promote trading are very narrowly defined communities. Our understanding of a community is the collection of all people interested in the application and development of Web3, including everyone already involved. For Web3, without a community, talent is fragmented. People and ideas don't interact, but a community can bring together talent. Most importantly, such an organization has the potential to build industry consensus and influence and lead the future direction while adhering to a decentralized model, allowing the right voices to be heard by more people." I share this sentiment. Since the end of 2022, we have rarely seen any truly groundbreaking products or concepts in the Web3 industry; the industry lacks transformative innovation. We can find thousands of reasons for this, but the core issue is that much insightful advice is drowned out by a deluge of noise—what Trump said, who argued with whom on X, and so on. Some people have become too lazy to think, while those who want to think are trapped in the challenge of filtering information. Tech parks like Silicon Valley and Zhongguancun adopted this type of community in their early days, some eventually nurturing incubators (such as Plug & Play), genuinely driving technological and industrial development, and giving rise to tech giants like Google and ByteDance. Many speculate that prehistoric civilizations had reached the level of interstellar travel, but for some unknown reason, vanished from Earth overnight.If, after billions of years, physical communities and face-to-face dialogues still hold a prominent place, it means that the entity itself must possess value. "The value and significance of a hub is difficult to quantify," Henry stated. "Many innovations are initially overlooked, considered marginal, but often the mainstream begins with these marginalized elements." The Hong Kong Ethereum Community Hub, spearheaded by SNZ, is not a "crypto hub," but rather aims to focus on the Ethereum ecosystem. While there are countless public chains in the Web3 space, only Ethereum has truly grown from a few individuals to a community, eventually becoming a behemoth second only to Bitcoin. SNZ firmly believes that if disruptive innovations like DeFi emerge in the future, they will likely occur on Ethereum. It's not that other public chains are bad, but rather that Ethereum has a more solid foundation. In the long term, the hub's existence is undoubtedly to drive Ethereum's development. But what about the specific short-term goals? Henry recounted several seemingly ordinary anecdotes. Firstly, the Hong Kong Ethereum Community Hub can serve as an open hub; the Whitepaper Reading Club previously contacted SNZ hoping to use the Hub's space to regularly host events reading classic white papers. Compared to online communication, offline interaction is also essential for many community organizations in the Web3 industry. For industry professionals and digital nomads who frequently "roam," the Hub can serve as a "second home," providing a place for colleagues to rest, work, hold meetings, and participate in activities. Furthermore, for Web3-related projects and companies wishing to establish themselves in Hong Kong, the Hub can also provide localized infrastructure support services (such as company registration, human resources, banking, and legal services). Henry explained that dozens of companies, institutions, and organizations have already participated in the Hub platform, with some successfully establishing a presence in Hong Kong. "In the future, there will be 50, or even 100 more. These companies can use the Hub platform to communicate, find potential partners, and also help aspiring entrepreneurs find suitable partners. We also hope to attract more external resources and channel partners to provide comprehensive empowerment to the Hub ecosystem, from capital and technical support to intermediary services. Some of these may be spearheaded by SNZ itself, but we prefer to see 'many hands make light work.'" These things may not seem particularly lofty, but they represent real and tangible needs.As a long-standing investment firm, SNZ knows what it needs, and even more so, what entrepreneurs need. Many good ideas aren't created in isolation, but rather through a chemical reaction during continuous communication. By connecting outstanding talent to foster the collision of ideas, they provide the infrastructure services for these novel ideas to reach the market, and connect these companies into a network to further nurture new ideas. As Henry said, what the Hub can bring cannot be easily quantified by price or ROI, but past successes have shown them that it's feasible. What's wrong with Ethereum? "In SNZ's early Neutrino blockchain co-creation space, many successful cases emerged," SNZ's community manager Leo told me. "The reason we chose to remain bullish on Ethereum and focus solely on Ethereum Hub is because Ethereum is a truly censorship-resistant, privacy-focused, and open-source platform." Ethereum's influence is actually far greater than we imagine. In the pure technology field, the research on FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption) and ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proofs) driven by the Ethereum community has been applied to various aspects, even in iOS system updates. However, these advancements quietly driven by tech geeks have received little publicity. This environment has led SNZ to firmly believe in and actively support any "new thing" that might reignite the Web3 market sentiment. Henry even stated, "While focusing on Ethereum, Hub has no bias. We welcome friends from Solana as well. The development of the overall Web3 ecosystem should not be fragmented. Ethereum's strength does not necessarily mean sacrificing the survival space of other public chains. We tend to work together to make the pie bigger. The future market size and scale will far exceed the current 3 trillion." It's not just SNZ; countless people are willing to cheer for Ethereum, but why hasn't Ethereum attracted as much attention in recent years as it has? Henry distilled the various dissatisfactions and criticisms in the market into three resounding points: There is a need for more teams where people with product, user, and technical expertise work closely together, and a lack of platforms to connect these individuals; those who truly do great, long-term work need a platform to voice their opinions, like KOLs; and there is a need to fully incentivize the community to continue its unwavering investment in Web3, focusing more on issues that are relevant and important to the vast majority of people today. Ethereum itself hasn't changed; it has been steadily progressing according to a plan born from countless rounds of negotiation, but the market atmosphere has changed.The grand spectacle of 2021 exhausted everyone's imagination about Web3. As the grand narratives and visions of billions of dollars in funding teetered on the brink of collapse, people instinctively sought quick, easy dopamine to soothe their restless yet unwilling hearts. This desperate, ill-conceived approach led Web3 astray. SNZ's goal through its Hub is precisely to bring valuable voices back into the mainstream and guide Web3 back onto the right path. "Blockchain isn't anything entirely new; encryption technology itself has been around for a while," Henry said. "Blockchain and smart contracts essentially solve the trust problem, just as Alibaba solved the question of whether to ship goods or pay first for transactions in the global wholesale market more than 20 years ago. For example, DeFi is essentially a more powerful peer-to-peer finance. P2P itself isn't bad, but if it's exploited by greed, it can cause irreparable consequences. Blockchain solves this problem through a trustless consensus mechanism, which is why protocols like MakerDAO have reached this scale." Ethereum may now need some new ideas that aren't limited by history. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also stated at the Hub's opening ceremony: "I encourage everyone to think: What does the world need right now? The answer doesn't necessarily only include Ethereum—it could also be Ethereum plus other things. For example, Shenzhen now has a large amount of open-source hardware and various AI technologies, including AI specifically for music. These directions can be combined by builders to create new things. So I hope everyone can start working on projects that are completely different from Ethereum three years ago." A Turning Point in History "People criticize the Ethereum Foundation for not spending enough effort on user experience and product implementation in the past two years, as well as for long-term resource misallocation and other internal problems, but this understanding is flawed," Henry said. "The Ethereum Foundation should not be seen as the management of Ethereum. They need to focus more on technological iteration and innovation, and solving some infrastructure problems related to long-term sustainability and scalability. Scenarios, products, and applications need to be driven more by the Ethereum community. Furthermore, there is definitely not only financial application; there is also great market potential in other scenarios, such as AI-related applications and digital content." This view aligns with a16z's recent plan to raise 20 billion euros. The sentiment expressed when billions of dollars were still being bet on pure blockchain projects is exactly the same. Leo also stated, "Ethereum's exploration of technologies such as privacy may not have much of a wealth effect, but it has indeed driven the continuous development of the technology and is one of the necessary conditions for the large-scale adoption of blockchain technology in the future.""We're not just focused on commercialization; we're intimately familiar with the Ethereum ecosystem's contributions to all aspects of society." Leo also stated that the Hub doesn't just support crypto-native projects; Ethereum's applications extend far beyond a single field. We welcome all interested individuals, companies, and organizations to learn about and participate in Ethereum's development. Alsa, which aims to natively embed "payment capabilities" into every AI call, has also joined the Hub. Its founder told the author that they hope to contribute real-world use cases, infrastructure capabilities, and large-scale agent usage data to help drive the entire ecosystem from concept to reality. The Hong Kong Ethereum Community Hub's launch ceremony coincided with the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival. Most notably, renowned economist Fu Peng delivered his first public speech of 2026 at the carnival and officially announced his joining the Newfire Group. The Web3 industry has a love-hate relationship with Hong Kong; they love that it has a place on their doorstep willing to serve as a testing ground for Web3, but they resent that after so many years, Hong Kong's contributions to Web3 have been less than satisfactory. When asked for his opinion, Henry raised the question posed at the beginning. "The US and China are the two major markets for technological innovation, fintech, and Web3. Hub, based in Asia, naturally needs to choose a place with a more stable capital market and regulatory environment," Henry confidently stated. "I believe Hong Kong's potential is still far underestimated." Fu Peng, in his speech, expressed that he felt his entry into the Web3 industry might be a significant turning point in history. At this turning point, SNZ established Hub, a16z prepared to invest an additional $2 billion in the industry, blockchain began to penetrate and transform traditional finance, and some persisted in exploring native Web3 applications. Looking back in a few years, we may all have happened to be at this turning point, but some are still taking action, some have started, and some are hesitant. The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, the second best time is today. Ten years ago, Ethereum, after years of community effort, was just beginning to be widely promoted, and today we are not afraid to follow that path again. Over the past decade, those who have achieved great results have done so because of belief, not speculation. The Web3 industry is not as mysterious as some people think; everyone has emotions and desires, and everyone experiences birth, aging, sickness, and death. However, the Web3 industry is also not as simple as some people think; the nature of the projects and the organizational structure of the teams make everything less controllable.Although nearly 20 years have passed and market focus has shifted constantly, the core of Web3 has remained unchanged, just as the throne has been passed down from Yao to Yu, and human nature has remained constant. When the noise of "Web3 has changed" became rampant, investors who witnessed Ethereum's rise decided to continue their mission in the "oldest" way. This is not a regression, but rather, as experienced beachcombers know when the tide recedes: the rising and falling waves always bring some things and take some away, while the true treasures are buried deep in the sand. [Foresight News]