Jack Ma-backed Yunfeng names ex-Ant Group executive as top Web3 architect

Geoff Jiang Guofei – former president at Ant Digital Technology Business Group, responsible for leading the fintech giant’s blockchain project – now serves as the “chairman of the Web3 Development Committee” at Hong Kong-listed Yunfeng, according to a fact sheet for investors published on the firm’s website. Ant is an affiliate of Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post.

The Yunfeng document described Jiang as one of three key figures representing the company’s “powerful Web3 genes and talent pool”. The two other figures are Xiao Feng, chairman and CEO at HashKey Group, and Fosun International co-founder Liang Xinjun, who both serve as independent non-executive directors at Yunfeng.

After joining Ant in 2017, Jiang became a key figure behind the company’s launch of Trusple, a blockchain-backed smart contract platform for cross-border trade. Jiang, who also served as head of Damo Academy’s Fintech Labs, left Ant in 2024 to work as the chief scientist at state-owned China Electronics.

His appointment at Yunfeng reflects the company’s push into what it called “frontier areas”, such as Web3, that would “solve many pain points” in traditional finance including cost, efficiency, geography and security. Web3 is a term used loosely to refer to applications based on decentralised technologies such as blockchain.

Yunfeng had spent US$44 million to acquire 10,000 ether for its “strategic reserve”, which the company said will provide “key infrastructure support” for tokenised real-world asset (RWA) projects. Yunfeng this month also entered into a partnership with Ant Digital Technologies, an affiliate of Ant.