BeWater Conference | BMAN: Building a Developer Community Without Anxiety
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BeWater Conference | BMAN: Building a Developer Community Without Anxiety
I look forward to seeing what will emerge from a community like BeWater—one that is calm, open, altruistic, and committed to seeking the essence of things.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsOn September 4, 2021, the BeWater DEVCON Global Developer Conference was successfully held at the China World Hotel in Beijing. Nearly a hundred blockchain developers from around the world gathered in Beijing to engage in in-depth discussions on programming languages, cryptography, decentralized protocols, privacy technologies, secure computation, open finance, and other fields. Developers overseas also participated simultaneously via live video streaming.
BMAN, founder of the BeWater developer community, elaborated on how to build BeWater into a calm, open, altruistic, and essence-seeking blockchain developer community. BMAN quoted a famous saying by Marc Andreessen—the creator of Netscape and founder of A16z—"Software is eating the world," and extended it into a new vision: "Developers are eating the world." He shared with guests and community members present the original intention and mission behind the BeWater developer community.
At the BeWater conference, outstanding speeches were delivered by Ted Yin, Chief Protocol Architect and Co-Founder of Avalanche; Liu Yi, Founder of Octopus Network; Guo Xionghui, CTO of Loopring Protocol; Maxdeath, Senior Researcher at VeChain; Joel Thorstensson, CTO of Ceramic Network and 3Box; Jolestar, Chief Architect of Westar; Starcoin core developers; Evan Shapiro, CEO of Mina; Liu Yisi, CTO of Mask; Andrew, Technical Lead of HECO; Paul Liu, Core Engineer at Dfinity; Austin Griffith, Ethereum Core Developer; and Robert Yan, Asia Technical Lead of NEAR.
Meanwhile, guests including Cheng Xianfeng, Co-Founder of EigenPhi; Yin Hang, Co-Founder & Chief Developer of Phala Network; Michael, Core Developer at Celer Network; Jiang Jiazhi, former CTO of Matrixport; Yang Mindao, Founder of dForce; Pima, Co-Founder of Continue Capital; Pan Kaiyang, CEO of Minimal Wallet, engaged in lively roundtable discussions on various topics.
Below is the full transcript of BMAN's speech:
Hello everyone, thank you so much for coming to the BeWater DEVCON Global Developer Conference today. I've spoken with many developers before, and we often say that perhaps only one WeChat group—about 500 people—can write smart contracts across all of China. Today, 10% of them are right here at the China World Hotel, which I think is amazing. This might be the place with the highest concentration of blockchain developers in China right now. Every attendee submitted their GitHub profile, and we carefully reviewed your code. Each person here has been thoughtfully selected from hundreds or even thousands of developers. Gathering here at the China World Hotel on this particularly memorable day—September 4th—is truly rare and special. I'm thrilled to see all of you.
The BeWater developer community consists of three elements—BeWater, developers, and community. Today, I will talk about these three points.
About Developers
Has anyone here played Loot? From my survey, only about 30% of the audience has participated. Yesterday, I got completely hooked playing Loot. I messaged a developer friend: "Have you tried Loot? Can you check this one for me? Is it worth grabbing?" The developer immediately replied, "Just run this script," and sent me a piece of code. After installing it, I was stunned—it turns out developers grab Loot like this. The script instantly displayed each Loot’s score and rarity. He had crawled every single Loot using code, calculated its value automatically. I was devastated—I realized how low-tech I was. While others were using modern agricultural production techniques, I was still digging with a hoe. In front of such advanced developer productivity, I felt utterly humbled. I was deeply moved. Today’s developers possess incredible creativity—even for something as small as improving NFT-grabbing efficiency. I’m genuinely excited about what blockchain developers can achieve.
This is an era of rising developers. A few years ago, Facebook acquired WhatsApp when it was valued at $19 billion with just 50 employees—64% of whom were developers. Today’s most powerful companies have increasingly high proportions and densities of developers. Take Coinbase: it processes $4.85 billion in daily trading volume with 1,249 employees. But look at Uniswap—its team has only 11 people, yet its daily trading volume reaches one-third of Coinbase’s, hitting $1.69 billion—a staggering figure unimaginable in any Web1.0 or Web2.0 era.
Recently, OpenSea captured 98% of the entire NFT market’s trading volume, achieving $3.42 billion in transaction volume in August alone, with profits exceeding $60 million—yet the team has only 37 people. This is top-tier developer power producing extraordinary results. One elite developer equals an entire army.
Ten years ago, Netscape developer and A16z founder Marc Andreessen famously wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Software is eating the world.” But today, software itself is being eaten—by Web3. Now, it’s Web3 developers who are eating the world.
Look at Coinbase—it represents Web2.0 software, having devoured legacy financial institutions like Deutsche Bank. Coinbase achieved $317 million in annual profit over nine years with just 1,249 employees; Deutsche Bank took 147 years to earn $146 million in profit—with 100,000 employees. Ten years ago, software began devouring the world; Coinbase consumed traditional banks. But now, look at OpenSea—it is consuming Coinbase. Based on August’s profit projections, OpenSea could generate $1.25 billion in profit this year, surpassing Coinbase—and it did so in just three years with only 37 employees, mostly developers. Within a few short years, a 37-person developer team has already overtaken the Web2.0 giant Coinbase. This shows that in the Web3 era, the power and impact of developers are unprecedented. Never before has a single developer—or a small team—created such immense value. An 11-person team built Uniswap into a multi-billion-dollar project. That’s why I believe: Developer is eating the world. This is the first message I want to share with you all: Developers are eating the world.
About BeWater
Many people ask us why we named it BeWater? Why create a community called BeWater? Why choose a name that doesn’t sound like a typical developer community? I believe many in this industry can relate. Let me give an example. Have you ever decided to finally read that book you’ve been meaning to? You sit down in your favorite chair—something I do often—and suddenly feel thirsty. You go to get water, then accidentally glance at your phone—oh no, a coin just surged 60%! You rush to check, a common crypto experience. Loot jumped from 2 ETH to 20 ETH overnight. Someone influential bought a Loot for 200 ETH—you quickly boot up your laptop. But then you discover your heavily invested coin has crashed 20%. Finally, you return to the couch ready to read—only to realize two hours have passed, and you haven’t turned a single page. This happens constantly in crypto. I find this industry incredibly anxiety-inducing. In blockchain, everyone seems unable to stop. Attention is easily hijacked by endless information streams, leaving no time to finish what we originally intended.
So why call it BeWater? Actually, "Be Water" comes from Bruce Lee. We hope to build a community where, amid the anxiety of blockchain, we can all Be like water together.
That’s why we co-founders instantly agreed—to build a non-anxious developer community. I know many financially free veterans in this space still live with deep anxiety. We want to create a community called BeWater—one without anxiety. Together with friends, we’ll Be like water: calmer, more focused, committed to long-term goals. But what does it mean to Be like water? It stems from Laozi’s teaching: “Water benefits all things without contention.” This inspired our naming. Our initial idea was simple: in this age of developer empowerment, we wanted to truly support developers. We aim to be the water behind the scenes—nourishing everything without competing. In this industry, there’s no need to fight for short-term wins. What we’re really competing for is continuity. We focus on long-term, dedicated work. Just like Satoshi Nakamoto building Bitcoin—back then, it was a small group doing highly geeky, passion-driven work. With pure inner love, we want to start from scratch and build a genuine community. That’s why we chose the name BeWater.
About Community
BeWater is a young, pure community of enthusiasts. On August 8, we set a bold goal: to organize a developer conference unlike any traditional blockchain event. That same day, we created a chat group with some partners and instantly aligned. In less than a month, I witnessed the most incredible community I’ve ever seen—the purest, coolest community I’ve experienced. Everything you see today was created voluntarily, late into the night, by our community volunteers and co-builders, outside their regular jobs. Before BeWater, I never imagined such a pure little community could exist in an industry obsessed with profit and efficiency. That’s what blows my mind.
We hold meetings day and night—online and offline. Our website was developed entirely by volunteer contributors. Even our viral video was made by one volunteer using just his smartphone, completely reshaping my understanding of video production. All our online meetings are attended and driven by volunteers. Our poster features a fish named Satofish, flowing with Satoshi’s whitepaper on its body. All the content you see today—the invited developers, domestic and international speakers, every single detail—was collectively created and contributed by our community in under a month.
I remember one meeting vividly—it went until 2 a.m., discussing outreach and design. I’ve never attended such a meeting in blockchain, where people stay passionately engaged until dawn without any incentive. After that meeting, I walked home, arriving past 2 a.m. That moment, I knew—this is what a true blockchain open-source spirit community feels like. In BeWater, I’ve experienced real altruism, true selflessness. It’s mutual recognition, shared conviction, creating together. Like Satoshi’s early email list and cypherpunk group, united by cryptography and a shared passion for the future of money, they created the revolutionary Bitcoin. From August 8 to September 4—less than a month—our BeWater volunteers and co-creators have made a miracle. In a short time, we found China’s top-tier developers, personally inviting and interviewing each one. Volunteers spent hours daily chatting online, reviewing code line by line, designing posters, editing videos, building websites and homepages—all powered by community generosity. We’re running on passion. This is phenomenal. This is the purest open-source community spirit in blockchain, manifesting in this extraordinary gathering of BeWater developers.
What excites me most is that in just one month, we’ve created this developer gathering, uniting the highest concentration of elite blockchain developers in China. I wonder what might emerge from a community like BeWater—one that’s calm, open, altruistic, and essence-driven. We gather geeks and developers, just like Satoshi and the cypherpunks, to collectively create a new world representing the future.
This is BeWater. In under 25 days, we’ve made this happen. On this special day, we gather here, together saying: Be Water, my friend. Hope you enjoy it! Thank you all!
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