About this byline — pen name, not real name
"Lin Zhixing" is a pen name. I'd rather get that out of the way in the most visible spot.
Two reasons for the pen name: ① crypto content in Chinese sits across several jurisdictions with regulatory uncertainty — exposing a real name doesn't make the writing more accurate, only puts one specific person at risk they shouldn't bear alone; ② Google's E-E-A-T evaluation weights "author identifiability" by stable byline + public résumé + traceable writing history, not by legal name — provided you don't hide allegiance or sponsorship behind the byline. Those two things (allegiance and sponsorship) are itemized below in the conflict-of-interest disclosure.
Who I am · trajectory
I studied CS in college and spent six years writing Web2 backend, mostly payment / settlement systems — distributed transactions, ledger reconciliation, risk-rule engines. The side effect of that job is: every time I see an on-chain transaction my brain instinctively asks "how does this state roll back," "where does double-spend get caught," "if the middleware crashes mid-flow, where did the money go." That eventually became my approach to crypto research — not which token will pump, but where the mechanism leaks.
I held my first own keys in 2018 with imToken (which was rough back then); in 2020 I moved real positions on-chain through DeFi summer — survived the early-era yearn / curve / sushi protocol risks; in 2022 I tracked the Ronin and Wormhole bridge exploits in real time and wrote post-mortems privately. During one of those bridge exploits, roughly 50 minutes before the funds were withdrawn, a friend in Discord was about to make a large cross-chain transfer — that was the moment I decided to write this stuff up for others to read instead of keeping it in private notes.
Three research areas now:
- Wallet security. Seed-phrase management, hardware wallets, social-recovery wallets, abstract accounts (EIP-4337) — every new generation gets at least 10 hours of hands-on time and a record of every UX trap.
- Cross-chain bridge risk. Per-bridge private notes on contract structure, validator set, past-incident attribution. Articles only publish what I can fully verify.
- On-chain phishing defense. I've personally walked through 5+ friends' post-phishing incidents (revoking approvals, moving residual funds, tracing flows on Etherscan). That hands-on experience is the data source behind the phishing defense article.
What I do for this site
I'm the Editorial Lead at ChainStudy:
- Topic selection. I decide what gets published. Criteria: ① real Google search demand ② we can independently verify it ③ existing SERP-top articles haven't covered the actual traps
- Hands-on testing. Most of the hands-on segments are run by me — OKX Wallet, MetaMask, Phantom, Across, Stargate, CCTP all show up in my real interaction history
- Drafting + internal review. I draft most pieces. After the draft, two other editorial members (anonymous) cross-review, then one external proofreader does a final reader-perspective pass
- Corrections. Every correction passes through me. Once a fact is verified, it goes into the corrections log with old / new diff visible
The other two editors and one proofreader stay anonymous on purpose — their existence is to make sure I can't publish on instinct alone. That's the actual function of the institutional-anonymity structure, not decoration.
Conflict-of-interest disclosure — full version
Please read this section. Every line is directly relevant to what you read:
What I currently hold
- BTC / ETH / SOL / USDC / USDT (mainstream, used in daily and hands-on)
- OKB (needed for X Layer gas and OKX-side testing; monthly-monitored to stay below the "enough to test, not enough to bias" threshold)
- Small bags of ARB / OP / BASE L2 governance tokens (airdrop residue, no active accumulation)
What I won't hold
- Any "project-specific token" we positively recommend (no buying a token first and writing about the protocol later)
- Memes / new launches / pre-launch airdrop positions (avoiding the "publish to pump" suspicion)
- OKX / Binance / other exchanges' IEO tokens
What I won't accept
- Any project's paid promotion / review fee / sponsorship (OKX included)
- OKX editorial direction — our OKX content is based on public facts and my own testing. OKX seeing an error gets the same corrections flow as anyone else; no deletes, no rewrites
- "Free hardware wallets" — the Ledger / OneKey I use I bought myself, receipts on file
The site's only revenue source
OKX (欧易) referral links in articles (okx.com/join/OK18866). If you register and trade via those links, OKX shares part of the platform fee with the editorial — comes out of OKX's fee cut, doesn't cost you anything extra. FTC-standard affiliate disclosure shows in the footer of every page that contains those links. We don't collect any info from you through this channel (details in privacy policy).
Articles I've written
What I don't write
- Price predictions / market calls. On-chain tutorials teach you how to do something, not what to buy. No "price targets," no "positioning for X," no "ape into Y" on this site
- Anything I haven't personally tested. If I haven't actually used a chain or protocol, I don't write about it. This is why the site grows slowly
- "Latest airdrop / farming guide" content. Lifecycle too short, and conceptually the opposite of "teach you how not to get burned"
Contact
Corrections, on-chain incident reports, partnerships: privacy@okexcex.com.
I don't operate any official accounts on Telegram / Discord / X / WeChat groups. Anything claiming to be "Lin Zhixing" or "ChainStudy support" via DM is impersonation. That's another concrete function of the institutional-anonymity structure — it makes impersonation harder, not easier.