On June 12, Chinese President Xi Jinping sent an open letter of praise to Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, chief scientist of the Conflux network and a professor at Tsinghua University.

“In the 20 years since you returned to China to teach, you have turned your patriotism into a journey of serving the country,” Xi wrote. “You have devoted yourself to Tsinghua University and made great achievements in teaching and educating people and scientific research innovation. I would like to express my sincere greetings to you.”

The Chinese president encouraged Yao to continue his journey of “exploring independent training models for innovative talents, promoting interdisciplinary and cutting-edge innovation, building a high-level talent training and scientific and technological innovation base, and making new contributions to achieving high-level scientific and technological self-reliance.” Xi also reiterated his support for Yao in “building a strong country in education and science and technology.”

Conflux is a layer-1 blockchain operating on a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake consensus operated by the Conflux Foundation, also known as the Shanghai Tree-Graph Blockchain Research Institute. It is supported by the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, and the project claims to be the “only regulatory-compliant public blockchain in China.”

On April 1, the Chinese Government unveiled a new public blockchain infrastructure platform led by Conflux Network, dubbed “Ultra-Large Scale Blockchain Infrastructure Platform for the Belt and Road Initiative.” This platform aims to offer an underlying public blockchain for cross-border applications.

“The main focus of the project is to create a public blockchain infrastructure platform. This platform will be able to support the implementation of cross-border cooperation projects along the Belt and Road Initiative,” the government said at the time. 

Conflux represents an outlier in the East Asian country that has harshly enforced its crypto ban in recent years, possibly due to its government affiliation. Despite a country-wide ban on initial coin offerings (ICOs) and crypto trading, Conflux currently operates its own token, which is trading at $0.1947 at the time of publication and has a fully diluted market capitalization of $975 million. 

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