A POWERFUL TEAM
Our story begins with our founder, Dr. Zhenwu Shi. While studying for his Ph.D. at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2013, Zhenwu came across a new digital currency called Bitcoin during a test of algorithms for his research.
After testing its mining algorithm, Zhenwu became intrigued by Bitcoin. He liked the fact that it was decentralized, and that the ecosystem surrounding it was collaborative. After completing his Ph.D., Zhenwu immediately joined Oracle as a senior software engineer. While there, he also continued to learn more about blockchain technology, developing a passion for it.
In 2017, as more and more decentralized applications (dApps) started to be built using blockchain technology, Zhenwu noticed that there was a major problem; the proof-of-work algorithm that many top blockchains relied on for consensus made it difficult to scale dApps due not only to the weak performance of PoW, but also because of the enormous energy requirements.
Zhenwu had firm belief in the blockchain industry, and he wanted to help it thrive. So, he decided to build his own company to provide infrastructure solutions that simplified Web3 development, scaling, node management, and staking. As a result, Zhenwu launched InfStones in 2018.
InfStones originally had two other early founders in addition to Zhenwu, but when the crypto winter hit in early 2018, they left. Sili Zhao, a business analyst and graduate of the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, quickly joined Zhenwu, and would later become InfStones’ Global Director of Business and Zhenwu’s right-hand man.
It was just Zhenwu and Sili for two years, while many people lost faith in the blockchain industry. Zhenwu and Silli worked on business development during the day and building the infrastructure at night. They responded to all incidents 24/7 by themselves. Originally, Zhenwu worked out of his bedroom and Sili worked out of his dormitory.
Refusing to quit, Zhenwu and Sili made a commitment to pursue their vision relentlessly. Sili focused on evaluating new tokens and protocols while Zhenwu focused on building InfStones’ infrastructure platform. Zhenwu and Sili teamed up on generating leads and sales.
InfStones had also been gaining customers, and both Zhenwu and Sili kept their noses to the grindstone, with Zhenwu even sleeping with his phone under his back to ensure that he would receive any alerts so that he would not let any customers down.
To this day, their passion, inspiration, determination, and strength are embodied by the company’s core values, including “Never Give Up.”
There was a lot of uncertainty surrounding the blockchain industry in the first two years of InfStones’ existence. By 2020, many of InfStones’ competitors had pivoted to other aspects of the blockchain industry, chasing the next shiny object. But Zhenwu and Sili held onto their vision and worked on the issues that they believed were crucial to the industry as a whole.
Through persistence, InfStones landed several major clients by the end of 2020, including Binance. After another two years, InfStones had become one of the largest blockchain infrastructure providers in the world, reaching unicorn status in the process. Its solutions are now the gold standard for the blockchain infrastructure industry.
Today, the company employs close to 100 team members from 10 different countries across 4 continents. InfStones has further received USD $110 million in funding from SoftBank, GGV Capital, and many others, validating its business model.
In the coming years, InfStones plans to continue providing exceptional blockchain infrastructure solutions so that companies of all sizes can create, scale, and maintain revolutionary blockchain products that will change the world.
