Kwun Yeung, co-founder and conductor of Forbole and Desmos, shared his journey from digital marketing to becoming a prominent figure in the Cosmos ecosystem, driven by a deep-seated belief in decentralization and user empowerment. Based in Hong Kong, Kwun established Creative Works, a digital marketing and solutions company, in 2005. His transition into blockchain began in 2017 when a client inquired about IoT solutions. This led him to discover the potential of blockchain, which he immediately saw as a way to address his growing dissatisfaction with the practices of the digital marketing industry. Kwun and his partner, Terence, felt it was "not right" to help brands infringe on users' privacy and manipulate their behavior on platforms like Facebook and Google. He sought an alternative that could "get rid of Google, we can get rid of Facebook" by building a decentralized social media network. This vision birthed Forbole, a name that merges "four" (representing a core philosophy) with "bole" (a Mandarin word for someone who can identify talent). Together, the name signifies a platform where individuals can "pick a talent and then refer the talent to some businesses like that using blockchain." Kwun's personal drive stems from his love for social media and a desire to create a system where people can genuinely help each other. He envisions a future where individuals can "introduce our friends our family our fellows our students to anyone that we like we trust and then we can refer them to a good position then we are actually bringing we are actually helping people." His deep dive into blockchain initially led him to Ethereum in late 2017, but he quickly found it "not possible to make this social network work." His research then led him to Steemit.com and its Graphene consensus engine, which showcased the potential of Proof of Stake. This path eventually brought him to Tendermint, Jae Kwon, Ethan Buchman, and the Cosmos SDK. Kwun was particularly impressed by Cosmos SDK's ability to allow developers to "build a lot of different stuff quickly easily and then you can and then eventually the developers can focus on user experience but not those protocol or those p2p layer or you know the consensus." To fully understand the ecosystem and prepare for Desmos, he decided to become a validator, stating, "From my digital marketing background i knew that if i have to approach anyone then i have to understand my audience so i try to learn to be a validator." Forbole's participation in Game of Stakes eventually secured their position as a Cosmos Hub validator, a role Kwun views as essential because "if eventually i built my own social network and then i we would like to use customs hub as the hub for ibc then we have to be a validator on cosmos hub." The creation of Big Dipper, Forbole's popular Cosmos explorer, also arose organically from internal need. In mid-2018, Kwun found existing explorers insufficient for monitoring their own testnet, so they decided, "why don't we just build one for ourselves." It quickly evolved, incorporating features for validator monitoring and alerts, and was submitted to HackAtom 3, becoming the "first community build open source cosmos explorer." Its distinct red theme is a nod to Forbole's primary brand color. Looking ahead, Kwun plans to keep Big Dipper open source and develop a companion multi-token, multi-asset delegation application. Regarding Desmos, his social network protocol, Kwun holds a strong position against projects that "spend shit loads of money on marketing" or rely heavily on venture capital. He firmly believes that "a decentralized network or decentralized application belongs to the users if we if we get a lot of money from from investment from venture capital then then they will eventually control the application control platform." Instead, he advocates for a "bottom-up approach," where the economy is "built by the users but not the venture capitals." Users convert their "work done their workload into some values" and are rewarded with tokens, eliminating the need for extensive marketing budgets. Kwun envisions Desmos for mass adoption, where end-users don't need to understand blockchain, protocol details, or tokenomics; they simply "have to use the applications" like Mooncake. Ultimately, a key benefit of Desmos is to "get more users on the whole cosmos." Kwun also offered a critical, yet constructive, perspective on Cosmos governance. He identifies a fundamental "flaw in the design of the governance" where "people with more stick have more power." He argues it is "not correct" that "one address with more stake with more voting power is counted with more for more photos more cars you know they you cast more votes with more voting power." As an alternative, he proposes a system where votes are counted based on the number of delegations rather than total stake, ensuring validators represent a broader base of individual delegators. While acknowledging potential manipulation, he believes such a change would mitigate the current ease with which high-stake holders can "control the result" or popular figures can sway opinions, a problem he likened to the early days of Steemit. On the organizational changes within Tendermint/Interchain GmbH/All in Bits, Kwun views the long-term impact positively. He states, "I don't think it would affect well maybe in the first off period there is some inferences but i think in long term it is a better it's a better organization." His conviction in decentralization leads him to believe "we don't really need one company to build that," seeing the transition as "demonstrating a new way of collaboration in a community rather than one single company controlling all the decisions," which he expects to benefit the entire ecosystem. When discussing other projects that have impressed him, Kwun highlighted Akash, a Cosmos SDK-based cloud platform. He appreciates its direct solution for developers and its vision where "anyone can share their bandwidth that can share their storage or their computing power for a cloud-based application," aligning with his ideal of everyone participating as a provider in the internet. Outside of Cosmos, he named Solana, valuing its technical speed, responsive development team, and plans to enable users to share storage. Looking ahead to IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication), Forbole plans to run an IBC-enabled Desmos network testnet as part of Game of Zones. Their goal is to allow users from other chains to use their existing keys to "write a message on Desmos" and prove their identity cross-chain, facilitating cross-chain message posting. They are also exploring collaborations with individuals and teams in different regions to collectively run these IBC-enabled Desmos chains. Finally, in a personal touch, Kwun confirmed that the avatar with a guitar is indeed him, and playing the Fender guitar is a cherished hobby.
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Network | Rank | Expected APR | Fans | Voting Power | Commission | Self Delegation | Uptime | Missed Blocks | Infrastructure | Governance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Quicksilver | 113 | - | 99 | 541.6 0.00% | 10.00% | 0 | 100.00 | 0 | 80 | |