Managing Cycles in Crypto World — Exclusive Interview with ARPA by Jinse Finance

5 min readFeb 17, 2020

The hearts of people across the country are all troubled and saddened by the outbreak of the new coronavirus during the Chinese New Year. The outbreak is very rampant especially in Hubei province of China. It has not only threatened people’s lives and health, but also gave a death blow to China’s economic development. The blockchain industry has not been totally immuned from it as well.

How are blockchain and crypto companies in China doing under the harsh times? Jinse Finance, a leading crypto media in Chinese-speaking community, has interviewed many leading companies in various industry segments such as trading platforms, mining companies, crypto security solution providers, and crypto funds in China to see the current industry sentiment, and to offer a sneak peek to future of this industry.

This article is an exclusive interview excerpt Jinse Finance had with ARPA. The original article has gained over 100k views:

https://m.jinse.com/news/blockchain/586348.html?source=m

Jinse Finance：Under the outbreak, what problems are your business facing? Did the employees start working, is it operating normally, and are there any layoffs? (Cost issues, cash flow issues, working issues) What solutions have you taken to solve these problems?

ARPA CEO Felix Xu：The whole ARPA team started working on January 30 (the eighth day of the first lunar month, right after the national holiday), and has been working remotely. We have been operating normally, and unlike most of the companies, we even added a new employee. We are still recruiting employees at all departments, including engineers for smart contract and MPC.

For us, the blockchain industry is much better now than it was in the second half of 2018 and the first half of 2019. One reason is because China starts to pay close attention and double-down on blockchain industry, and the other reason is that the currency’s market is also on the rise. However, we do see a much slower pace in terms of privacy computing enterprise services. Two projects that should have been started immediately after the holidays were both delayed. The problem is that the communication cost is much higher when we work decentralized since there is no way to show the customer in person.

Jinse Finance: What do you think blockchain technology can do to help the outbreak? In which particular areas it can open up spaces for development?

ARPA CEO Felix Xu：Blockchain plays a major role in fighting against the epidemic in terms of donation and charity. For example, the Red Cross Charity Foundation in China has been in trust crisis during the coronavirus outbreak for mishandling of the donation supplies and funds. Blockchain technology can make the whole process a lot clearer and more transparent. All the disaster relief supplies, medical supplies and donations will be traceable. There’s still some way to go and will also need some policy to be passed at a national level.

During the outbreak, we noticed that many personal data were leaked during the tracing and searching process of the moving patients. These include individuals’ mobile phone numbers, names, ID, etc., which were unnecessary. Regulators can find these people through cross-departmental secure data sharing enabled by secure multi-party computation, do the comparisons, get the results, all without leaking any part of the personal data.

As of today, ARPA mainnet has been running smoothly for more than a month, and it has successfully completed over 10,000 secure multiparty computation (MPC) tasks with a 100% success rate. If the ARPA privacy-preserving computation is applied to the medical data statistics, rescue supplies statistics, social welfare supervision and other aspects related to the epidemic, we believe that its credibility and data privacy security can be guaranteed. It will also bring a significant improvement for epidemic prevention, social relief and the credibility of relevant departments.

Jinse Finance： Looking forward to 2020, what are your expectations for your company and the blockchain industry?

ARPA CEO Felix Xu：It’s been quite a ride for ARPA. We started in April 2018, which was right at the end of a mini-bull market. Then the market died down and we had more than a year of capital winter after that. Therefore, 2018 is the year we take root; 2019 is the year we bud, during which period of time we got onto most of the exchanges. We have developed and thrived quite well since then. We are going to work on some really big projects and work with leading companies to implement MPC and privacy-preserving computation in the upcoming year.

The main real-world use for MPC now comes from fintech industry, financial data and government data. At the same time, we have also contributed to the international industry standard, the only national standard for secure multi-party computation in China. I firmly believe that both corporate and personal data will be better protected and benefit from this amazing technology in the next five years.

I think the blockchain industry will be strongly supported by China on a national level this year. At the same time, we can expect to see new systems and solutions coming online in the field of product tracing and data storage. I think the overall industry development will be better than the Internet’s, at least in China. The Chinese internet industry is going through a cold winter now, and I feel that it is a great opportunity for the blockchain industry to acquire talents (from the traditional internet industry).

Jinse Finance： Many people, including people from around the world supported Wuhan for this epidemic, what actions did your company take to help?

ARPA CEO Felix Xu： We called for a community-wide donation, and each of us at ARPA personally donated. Meanwhile, we launched a multi-language campaign on Twitter to raise international awareness. It is crucial for people to realize the imminence and scale of this unfortunate outbreak.

About ARPA

ARPA is committed to providing secure data transfer solutions based on cryptographic operations for businesses and individuals.

The ARPA secure multi-party computing network can be used as a protocol layer to implement privacy computing capabilities for public chains, and it enables developers to build efficient, secure, and data-protected business applications on private smart contracts. Enterprise and personal data can, therefore, be analyzed securely on the ARPA computing network without fear of exposing the data to any third party.

ARPA’s multi-party computing technology supports secure data markets, precision marketing, credit score calculations, and even the safe realization of personal data.

ARPA’s core team is international, with PhDs in cryptography from Tsinghua University, experienced systems engineers from Google, Uber, Amazon, Huawei and Mitsubishi, blockchain experts from the University of Tokyo, AIG, and the World Bank. We also have hired data scientists from CircleUp, as well as financial and data professionals from Fosun and Fidelity Investments.

For more information about ARPA, or to join our team, please contact us at about@arpachain.io.

Learn about ARPA’s recent official news：

Telegram (English): https://t.me/arpa_community

Telegram (Việt Nam): https://t.me/ARPAVietnam

Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/arpa_community_ru

Telegram (Indonesian): https://t.me/Arpa_Indonesia

Telegram (Thai): https://t.me/Arpa_Thai

Telegram (Philippines):https://t.me/ARPA_Philippines

Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/Arpa_Turkey

Korean Chats: https://open.kakao.com/o/giExbhmb (Kakao) & https://t.me/arpakoreanofficial (Telegram, new)

Medium: https://medium.com/@arpa

Twitter: @arpaofficial