A Conversation with Suji Yan: Rebelling Against Giants, Becoming a Giant

By Yunxiao Guo

Edited by Jing Liu

If rapid rise and fall is the eternal rhythm of the internet, in Web3 that cycle gets compressed to an extreme: a project can go from birth to death in six months, or even less. This forces Web3 founders to become all-around players faster — for instance, by establishing a CVC earlier.

Mask Network was founded in 2017, focused on bridging Web2 social platforms to Web3. Its initial product let users post encrypted tweets on traditional social networks like Twitter and Facebook, protecting their information from platform access. It later evolved to let users leverage existing social networks for decentralized communication, payments and tipping, file storage and sharing, and more. This infinitely extensible social foundation allowed Mask Network to continually absorb more content and expand its ecosystem, making it one of the most established players in Web3 social today.

Across the past two Web3 cycles, Mask Network has been among the survivors. Recently, Mask Network's strategic investment arm completed its first fund close under a new brand name: Bonfire Union. In traditional terms, $42 million is hardly an eye-catching figure. But for Mask Network, it means they can now influence the Web3 social landscape not just through products and network protocols, but also by incubating and cultivating creative, visionary projects that embody crypto and open-source values — gaining greater influence across the Web3 map.

In an interview, Suji Yan described the fund's origins this way: "The GPs and LPs saw these early incubations and investments and said, why not make it a fund?" A substantial portion of Mask Network's investors became LPs in Bonfire Union; other investors include former and current executives and partners from across sectors — well-known Web3 projects, top-tier USD venture funds, leading financial institutions, and major internet companies. In fact, even before this, Mask Network had already extended its reach into most known Web3 sub-sectors through incubation, partnerships, and various forms of investment.

As Mask Network's soul and founder, Suji Yan has long presented himself as a "Web3 evangelist." A graduate of the same high school as Han Han, he seems to share something with that former rebel. After studying computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he dropped out. During an exchange in Japan, he reported from inside the Fukushima nuclear plant as an independent journalist for Caixin Media. While working as an autonomous driving engineer at TuSimple, he encountered blockchain — and then met his now-wife, a Bitcoin core contributor. Under these influences, he entered the crypto world and founded Maskbook (later renamed Mask Network).

Even within Web3 circles, Suji Yan's iconoclastic image stands out. To express rebellious spirit, he once gave an interview dressed as a "female programmer." He and his wife co-launched the "Anti-996 License" to resist what they saw as exploitative work culture in the tech industry. And he is constantly posting critiques on social media.

Suji Yan's language is steeped in philosophy and historical perspective. In an interview with An Yong Waves, he answered nearly every question with historical allusions, trying to connect humanity's past, present, and digital future — and the intricate threads between them. In his view, the Web3 digital revolution follows the natural trajectory of human development. Perhaps under his influence, everyone at Bonfire Union carries strong idealist color — partners Cecilia and Taylor, who joined later, both consistently use the phrase "digital revolution."

But they also mention a vision that may surprise: to become the Tencent Strategic Investment of Web3. This is striking — Web3 is widely understood as an internet paradigm against giants, against monopoly. In this bizarre industry, countless people wield words like crypto, consensus, and decentralization, using idealism to varnish desires for commercial success or wealth. Yet Suji and company simultaneously aim to fight giants while openly harboring ambitions to become one.

How does he resolve this tension? Recently, An Yong Waves spoke with Suji Yan and the Bonfire Union team.

Three Focus Areas: The Digital World Can Break Physical Boundaries

An Yong: There are no true giants in Web3 yet, and CVCs are mostly seen among exchanges and public chains. What's your investment logic?

Taylor: It's still an ecosystem concept. Starting from the smallest idea, we provide small "dropout scholarships." We also sponsored grants on Gitcoin, giving Web3 social projects anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars. For projects with limited commercial potential, we choose donation. A step larger — like the ETH Shanghai hackathon we hosted in late May — after founders win awards, if they want to formally raise funding, we can invest through the Bonfire Union entity, typically $200,000 to $1 million per deal. For very mature projects where we don't have investment access, we still pursue ecosystem partnerships. Simply put, feed them from small to large and build the ecosystem. Our strategy covers projects at every stage.

Following this logic, we look at three major areas: social, infrastructure, and entertainment.

An Yong: Over the past three months, multiple Web3 sectors have declined. How do you prioritize your investment layout?

Suji Yan: It's true — social, entertainment, DeFi projects have basically all crashed. You can hardly find any $3-5 billion companies in the market now. But investing must target outsized outcomes, like Ethereum — one of those is enough to last a lifetime. Human nature requires social connection. Measured against the Web2 world, the social track will certainly produce hundred-billion-dollar companies.

An Yong: Social was the origin of Web2 and extended into everything. Will this logic repeat in Web3?

Suji Yan: Mask Network is basically the earliest surviving social project in Web3. Social is naturally inseparable from many other domains. For example, sharing images is among the most basic social needs — it's existed since Web1. The underlying tech includes CDNs, databases, social graphs, and later AI algorithms, all so users can see the image someone sent them. In Web3, all of this basically needs rebuilding. Google Cloud or AWS may be powerful, but decentralization completely changes the storage model. Similarly, opportunities extending from social largely replay the past — these are all investment opportunities.

An Yong: Many believe user acquisition is Web3's most urgent need right now. Do you emphasize this in investing?

Suji Yan: User acquisition strategies all work in bull markets. But when we invest, we first need to understand what the investment actually is. Occasionally we'll buy front-row seats to observe something new, but more importantly: can it generate value? This is especially crucial in Web3.

Taylor: User acquisition is an important theme in Web3 investing. We invest in protocols and infrastructure, but user acquisition is more an application-layer matter. And in applications, how users are acquired deserves careful unpacking. Some acquisition is deeply unsustainable. We've seen subsidy wars too many times in Web2. "XX to earn" in Web3 isn't fundamentally different. Whether new users are product-hunting for subsidies or becoming part of a healthy network effect matters enormously.

Cecilia: Many single-IP GameFi projects look attractive, but Web3 games aren't pure operational products — they incorporate primary and secondary token markets, and can't escape overall crypto market cycles. A GameFi project lacking sound tokenomics design will struggle to survive as long as its roadmap intends.

An Yong: What makes a "good Web3 investment"?

Suji Yan: Many people think Web3 has no value. I believe value comes from the unstoppable digitization of human society — a supranational digital world will emerge parallel to the physical one. This new world will need new banks, new cinemas, new post offices — countless fresh opportunities. Stay decentralized, and you become part of these things.

Cecilia: Even in entertainment or specifically GameFi, we invest in relatively infrastructure-oriented projects. For example, we invested in double jump.tokyo, which helps major Japanese game companies bring their IP onto blockchain. This itself is sustainable, supporting longer-term value unlock with relatively stable market performance.

An Yong: How do you identify and control risk in Web3 investing?

Suji Yan: We separate donations from true investments. First, we have many public good donations funded through Mask Network's DAO — more like a university endowment, separate from the Bonfire Union entity. Second, we don't hold large positions or put money into DeFi protocols.

An Yong: Overseas funds rarely touch Chinese-founded projects, and conversely domestic USD funds rarely reach overseas-native projects — yet many describe you as spanning China and the US, or global.

Suji Yan: We adhere to internationalism; the digital world has no physical national boundaries. We have offices in Singapore, Japan, and the US, with employees from diverse cultures and countries. This greatly helps us access the most cutting-edge projects across global regions very early in their development.

When Investing Happens in the Web3 World

An Yong: What currency do you invest with — cash, stablecoins, or tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Suji Yan: We don't limit ourselves, nor do we limit our portfolio companies.

In the 2016-2018 cycle, a lot of Web3 investing was actually done in Bitcoin and Ethereum. At that time, stablecoin issuance was under $5 billion — insufficient for LP investment needs. Projects were willing to take Ethereum; in bull markets the token itself was trending up, and many projects were built on Ethereum's ecosystem with substantial official support. The problem was extreme token price volatility. After several cycles, people still tend to measure ultimate returns in USD terms. Since 2020, with new compliance structures and stablecoins, projects basically no longer actively choose to take tokens.

From a fundraising perspective, industry convention now is to raise in USD and stablecoins, with different structures depending on nationality and tax residence. Overall, what currencies or even tokens you can raise depends on compliance capabilities.

An Yong: What's Bonfire Union's primary investment objective — financial returns, Mask Network's ecosystem, or something else?

Cecilia: I was previously in exchange strategic investing, joining right at the start of a bear market. We then did more equity investments around the exchange ecosystem — exchange infrastructure, trading components, on/off-ramp components, and so on. That was more pure strategic investing.

At Mask Network we have two roles. One is similar — as a plugin ecosystem, the cooperation scope is very broad: on/off-ramps, wallets, games, NFTs, data analytics tools, DeFi, decentralized storage, and more. From another angle, viewing Bonfire Union as a standalone fund also makes sense. We do purely financial investments — even when we don't see direct, near-term product collaboration with Mask Network, we'll still invest.

An Yong: How do you differ from traditional CVCs?

Suji Yan: Although Bonfire Union has a CVC structure, Mask Network itself isn't entirely a traditional company. You could understand Mask Network as an important part of the social department in the digital world; then Bonfire Union is more like an investment promotion office. Our investments serve the entire digital world and generate returns from it — serving Mask Network as a public good is actually secondary.

Taylor: The concept of public goods runs through Web3. If you say classical strategic investing seeks strategic coupling, financial returns, and trend observation, we do similar things — but more deeply, we revolve around public goods. We don't need strategic investment to handle competition.

An Yong: Where does your investment team come from? Do you participate in Mask Network business beyond investing?

Suji Yan: Cecilia joined from exchange strategic investing; Taylor from traditional VC. Going forward, I'll still devote most of my energy to Mask Network. We want Mask Network to take root in Web3 social, but there are still many unresolved issues across product, technology, finance, and more. Other investment team members participate in some Mask Network work, but most of their energy goes to investing and ecosystem coordination with our partners and portfolio companies.

An Yong: What's your decision-making mechanism? What's special about Web3 investing?

Suji Yan: It's just an IC. Among the three of us, whoever is more expert in a particular sub-sector has greater voice on corresponding projects.

Actually, Web3 investing has a distinctive feature: everyone invests small at first, then gradually adds. Macro reasons may include capital being less abundant than two years ago, but there are micro reasons too. Centralized exchanges like Coinbase and Binance, compliance or audit projects — these equity projects aren't truly blockchain projects, and they relatively don't care what share shareholders hold. But true Web3 projects struggle to accept shareholders with very large stakes. With smaller check sizes, decision processes speed up. A clear change is that DD processes differ significantly.

An Yong: How so?

Suji Yan: Traditional DD methods are rarely used. Web3 due diligence has become something very endogenous — team, business model, history — it's all publicly on-chain or written in code. Partners can't review all of this alone, but Mask Network has a very strong technical team that helps us with technical validation, and provides technical support to our portfolio post-investment. That's our advantage. Excellent Web3 investors like Paradigm all need strong technical support capabilities.

An Yong: Many traditional early-stage funds emphasize betting on people, but many Web3 founders prefer anonymity. How do you handle this?

Suji Yan: Many founders may be semi-anonymous — they won't tell us their real name, just abcd.eth. But perhaps abcd.eth is their true self. Because all Web3 operational records are public, a founder's track record should correspond to their on-chain interactions. We focus more on these during DD, rather than their legal name, appearance, whether they live in Alabama or New York, or excessive risk control factors.

In Web3, people are still the sum of new social relationships — just more direct and transparent.

An Yong: Is trust with projects built on being fellow builders?

Suji Yan: I think the bigger reason is that we're operators. Having gone through the entire process ourselves, we don't ask stupid questions.

An Yong: What counts as a "stupid question"?

Suji Yan: I once talked with a founder who, after some time, told me they got their game license and could launch. Founders with that mindset — I find it hard to invest in.

An Yong: What post-investment support do Web3 projects need?

Suji Yan: Post-investment actually solves "what do I do when facing this situation" — so when you ask the wrong question, there's no right answer. I think those stupid questions aren't what Web3 entrepreneurs need to consider. Also, technical capability is critical — something most VCs lack. They can't afford that many programmers. But this is a CVC advantage.

Cecilia: At the strategic decision level, Mask Network having gone through the complete process allows us to offer direct experience or indirectly gained industry knowledge. Practical experience in a nascent industry is extremely valuable. Also, we've invested in many plugin projects. Mask Network can interact quite directly with these projects, and we facilitate and build connections between our portfolio projects' communities.

Many institutions claim they can introduce exchanges, market makers, and other resources. This distinctly Web3-style post-investment service is becoming increasingly commoditized. Simple relationship introductions mean little; actual exchange insider experience or firsthand knowledge matters far more. We're entrepreneurs ourselves, so we better know how to help entrepreneurs.

Taylor: Web3 projects need substantial help during cold start. For example, if a founder is building a social app, they first need an identity system — we can directly plug in a Web3 identity system. If it's a game, we can directly expose it to Mask Network users. The product integration that strategic/ecosystem funds can provide is unmatched by pure financial investors. Just as Tencent gave many invested companies a stage, we've seen many $10 billion-plus companies grow on that stage.

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An Yong: What does Bonfire Union mean?

Suji Yan: On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the British Parliament and ultimately failed (the Gunpowder Plot). Since then, the Guy Fawkes mask and Bonfire Festival have emerged from his story and this event, and in recent decades the tale has continued to be adapted and presented to people. Mask Network's logo derives from the laughing man — Victor Marie's novel The Man Who Laughs and the film Ghost in the Shell both involve this image. The Mask and Bonfire brand names are both tributes, and interconnected.

Many VCs call themselves某某Capital or Ventures because they see themselves as bankers or capitalists. We believe crypto and Web3 are similarly consequential undertakings for humanity.

An Yong: What's the ultimate vision?

Suji Yan: A decentralized digital world.

An Yong: What can ordinary people do in this ultimate vision?

Suji Yan: Actually, the internet and even the mobile internet era aren't fundamentally different from life in the 1980s. The important things are still eating — previously you bought it yourself, now it's takeout. But new eras create larger markets, more employment, greater progress. I don't think ordinary people's daily lives will change much, but looking back from 50 years in the future, you'll find current life unbelievably backward.

Taylor: You still gotta eat. But just speaking economically, this digital world will also be one of higher efficiency and lower friction. When everything is written on decentralized platforms as public attributes, the economic efficiency it generates is far higher than before.

An Yong: How do you view the relationship between this "faith" and financial returns at certain stages? Is there conflict?

Suji Yan: In the short term, definitely. But long-term, you'll find that "investing in the digital revolution" is right, and everything else is wrong.

Cecilia: Actually, embracing Web3 ideology is a变相 guarantee of mid-to-long-term returns. We've seen too many Silicon Valley projects where founders had excellent backgrounds and raised from big funds, but their secondary market performance was poor. Because they only saw Web3 as having useful technology, but operated their projects with Web2 thinking — sometimes without even fully thinking through what to do.

An Yong: Many also criticize Web3 for being overly financialized. Your view?

Taylor: It's a bit like early Americans going west to pan for gold. Gold panning is like Web3's financial attribute, but everything else follows. This has started and there's no turning back — you'll certainly see all kinds of things being built. Now when we mention San Francisco, we think of an international metropolis, not its past as a gold rush site, even though the name is so direct.

Suji Yan: I think the criticism is valid — too much financialization is bad. But more open finance, more comprehensive market-oriented reform is definitely progressive, advanced. Forces opposing it are local and short-term. We don't do short-term investing either, so we don't think short-term opinions matter to us. If we believe a digital world will emerge, it certainly won't follow existing knowledge — so we must invest in innovation.

Finance is where results most easily appear, and reflects Web3's current stage. From an investment perspective, the low-hanging financial fruit has been picked by DeFi projects, but other opportunities remain — games, entertainment, and more. The logic from social to these is very much like Tencent's strategic investment.

An Yong: What does Bonfire Union wanting to be "Web3's Tencent Strategic Investment" mean?

Suji Yan: Tencent built on social to do messaging, then extended into e-commerce, games, entertainment. We're basically investing along the same lines. If Mask Network is a mini-Tencent of Web3, then using Tencent Strategic Investment as analogy, people should more easily understand our investment logic.

An Yong: But Tencent is clearly a giant that Web3 aims to resist. Isn't there some conflict?

Suji Yan: Giants aren't bad; even monopoly can be understood through efficiency. We don't defy business fundamentals.

I think you can understand today's internet giants this way: over past decades, the internet was a new continent, and these giants were like the East India Company. Arriving on this new continent, they saw digital serfs everywhere and did as they pleased. The digital world, though not physically real, is fundamentally not so different from the world humans inhabit. It has its natural law; private digital property is sacred and inviolable within it.

What we argue against isn't "should a massive commercial entity exist" — what we oppose is its "coloniality" and "non-progressiveness," giants using user data to do all sorts of things they shouldn't, an anti-progressive, regressive social reality.

An Yong: How do you ensure Mask Network itself doesn't "turn bad"?

Suji Yan: Even with "code is law," it's hard to say how we ourselves won't turn bad. But we see examples like Linux and Ethereum that are open and have built ecosystems worth hundreds of billions — we can learn from these positive precedents. Commerce is fine; people need commerce and free markets to live.

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Layout: Yunxiao Guo