Written by: Maosike | Deep Tide TechFlow

January 15, 2026, Shenzhen.

A civil lawsuit has been filed in court, with a claim amounting to 200 million yuan. The name in the defendant's seat feels like a distant memory—former Xunlei CEO Chen Lei, the man who once saw Xunlei's stock price soar fivefold in a month, is now the central figure in a case of "corruption and company embezzlement."

Accused of misappropriating tens of millions of company funds for cryptocurrency trading, arranging for relatives to fabricate contracts within the company to siphon off funds… In Xunlei's statement, Chen Lei is described as having "numerous crimes."

Rewind to October 31, 2017, also in Shenzhen, where the launch event for Wangxin Technology was brilliantly lit. Dressed in his signature white shirt, Chen Lei stood on stage and announced in his characteristic tech-savvy tone, "Xunlei will go All in on blockchain," eliciting thunderous applause from the audience.

From being deified to being destroyed, it has only been a few short years.

This is the story of a once-prominent figure's fall from grace.

The Arrival of a Genius

"I met Lei Jun in September 2014. He invited me to join Xunlei, and we talked until around 2 AM." Years later, Chen Lei recalled that fateful night that changed his destiny.

At that time, Chen Lei was a star executive at Tencent Cloud, a seasoned professional in the cloud computing field. Xunlei, on the other hand, was a download tool giant showing signs of fatigue in the mobile internet era, desperately needing a tech-savvy and bold leader to spearhead its transformation.

Lei Jun persuaded him with two reasons that he couldn't refuse: "You're doing well at Tencent, but is it you or Tencent that's doing well? Can you do this well after leaving Tencent?" The second question was, "Do you want to run a company where you have the final say?"

"I was deeply moved by Lei Jun's proposal; I felt he could understand my heart and voice my thoughts. At that time, I admired Lei Jun immensely."

Xunlei's founder, Zou Shenglong, offered a very sincere condition: to serve as Xunlei's CTO while also taking on the role of CEO of the newly established Wangxin Technology. The establishment of Wangxin Technology coincided almost perfectly with Chen Lei's joining, meaning he would have a relatively independent entrepreneurial platform.

Chen Lei's ambitions extended far beyond merely running an ordinary cloud computing company. With the rise of the sharing economy model in 2014, Chen Lei keenly realized that reconstructing the overall architecture of cloud computing through sharing economy methods could innovate CDN technology, particularly addressing the long-standing issues of "high costs, chaos, and poor quality" in the CDN industry.

"The core value of Wangxin Technology is that we want to create a sharing economy IDC, reducing social computing costs through sharing economy methods," Chen Lei stated, explaining that through the smart hardware "money-making treasure," ordinary users could share their idle bandwidth for profit, while Wangxin Technology would integrate these resources into CDN services.

The speed at which this idea transformed into reality was astonishing.

In June 2015, Wangxin Technology launched Star Domain CDN, priced directly 3/4 lower than the mainstream market price, and quickly established partnerships with excellent companies like Xiaomi, iQIYI, and Zhanqi.

By the end of 2015, Chen Lei was awarded the "Outstanding Figure of the Year in the Internet Industry" for leading Wangxin Technology to launch revolutionary CDN technology.

By 2017, the shared computing model of Star Domain Cloud had over 1.5 million nodes online, with a reserved bandwidth of about 30T and a storage reserve of about 1500PB, creating an unprecedented distributed computing network. Chen Lei successfully connected thousands of households into a cloud computing network.

The perfect combination of technological idealism and commercial success seemed to show him the right way to change the world.

In July 2017, Chen Lei was officially promoted to CEO of Xunlei.

However, beneath the halo of success, a complex situation was forming. "Old Zou (Zou Shenglong) wanted to do an MBO (management buyout), but there was a disagreement with the major shareholders, and ultimately this issue couldn't be reconciled, which is why I was put in the CEO position. I was a bit scared at the time, thinking this position might not be good," Chen Lei later recalled.

But history would soon prove that this was just the calm before the storm. A bigger opportunity, or rather temptation, was beckoning him.

The Temptation of Issuing Tokens

In 2017, if you missed Bitcoin, you missed an era.

Across the ocean in Silicon Valley, a wave of cryptocurrency ICOs surged around March and April 2017. Bitcoin regained its upward momentum, rising from $968 at the beginning of the year to $3,000, while Ethereum skyrocketed from $8.3 to over $200.

Various forms of ICOs emerged one after another. The booming market for virtual currencies inspired Chen Lei to find inspiration in blockchain.

"Xunlei is essentially a P2P technology-based, decentralized internet company. From a genetic standpoint, Xunlei has a better chance of succeeding in shared computing than others," Chen Lei once stated. Unlike other companies that follow a B2C path, Xunlei hoped to leverage blockchain technology to carve out a unique C2B path.

Under Chen Lei's push, the blockchain version of Xunlei's money-making treasure, "Wankeyun," was born.

Wankeyun borrowed from Bitcoin's POW algorithm, allowing users to "mine" and generate digital assets called Wankey coins, with a total supply of 1.5 billion, halving production every 365 days, and the mining volume decreasing by half each year.

This design was deemed "perfect," as it had physical hardware as a carrier, bound to actual computing services. Wankey coins were the native digital assets based on blockchain technology within the Wankeyun shared computing ecosystem, closely linked to the economic applications of Wankeyun's smart hardware and shared CDN.

Chen Lei packaged this project as a technological innovation of "shared computing + blockchain," rather than a simple virtual currency issuance, which could avoid the policy risks of ICOs while enjoying the market dividends of the blockchain concept.

On October 31, 2017, Wankeyun was officially launched.

Chen Lei announced the opening of shared computing services to all ordinary individual users, officially launching the "cloud disk mining" and Wankey rewards program. Wankey coins could be exchanged for more value-added services within the entire Xunlei ecosystem, such as expandable storage space, Xunlei membership, and over 200 other services.

The market's reaction exceeded everyone's expectations. At that time, the blockchain concept was extremely hot, and the price of Wankey coins soared. On some trading platforms, Wankey coins rose from the unofficial issuance price of 0.1 yuan to 9 yuan, a 90-fold increase.

Wankeyun was seen as a mining machine, with prices for each unit skyrocketing from 338 yuan to a peak of 3,240 yuan. Wankeyun also caused Xunlei's stock price to rise fivefold within a month. In October 2017, Xunlei's stock price soared from $4.28 to $24.91, reaching a high of $27 at one point.

"Wankeyun, priced at 599, nets a profit of 1,500 if you grab it."

Some players reported that early participants in the Wankeyun Taobao crowdfunding project made their first pot of gold in 2017 by hoarding large quantities through order-snatching software and hiring interns. Even individual users participating in the Wankey rewards program earned dozens of Wankey coins daily through mining, "recouping their investment in just a few days."

"Initially, it was Wankeyun that introduced me to Bitcoin and blockchain, opening the door to a new world," said Jack, a cryptocurrency practitioner based in Hong Kong, to Deep Tide TechFlow.

This was the peak moment of Chen Lei's life and the most glorious period in Xunlei's history.

The technological idealist successfully transformed a traditional download tool company into a trendy blockchain concept stock, multiplying its market value several times.

But beneath the glamorous surface, a crisis was brewing.

The frenzy surrounding Wankey coins had strayed far from Chen Lei's original vision, evolving from technological innovation into pure speculative frenzy.

The Crisis Approaches

Crisis often begins from within.

On November 28, 2017, Shenzhen Xunlei Big Data Information Service Co., Ltd. publicly pointed out that Xunlei CEO Chen Lei was conducting illegal issuance activities with Wankeyun, without using any blockchain technology, and utilizing illegal exchanges to engage in a disguised ICO.

This seemingly strange "self-reporting" was essentially a direct conflict between the old and new forces within Xunlei.

"The internal strife at Xunlei in October 2017 was actually initiated by Yu Fei (former senior vice president of Xunlei), with the core demand being to get rid of me," Chen Lei later recalled.

On November 3, the central bank, mistaking Wankey coins for products of Xunlei's financial sector, summoned the person in charge, Hu Jie. After an explanation, it was clarified that it was a Wangxin business. Hu Jie subsequently submitted an email to Xunlei Group's senior management, pointing out that Wankey coins were not based on genuine blockchain technology, had the appearance of an ICO, and posed potential risks of collective incidents.

On December 9, 2017, Wankey coins were renamed Chainke.

With internal conflicts unresolved, external regulatory blows soon fell.

In January 2018, the China Internet Finance Association issued a risk warning, stating that virtual digital assets issued under the IMO model, such as Chainke, were essentially a form of financing behavior, akin to a disguised ICO.

On the night the Internet Finance Association named Xunlei, Xunlei's stock price plummeted 27.38% at the opening, and the price of Chainke fell in response.

On January 16 and 17, 2018, Xunlei continuously released announcements on its official website, stating that Chainke would completely return to its role as a points function within the Xunlei system, deciding that from January 31 onwards, users would only be allowed to use Chainke within applications and services provided by Xunlei and its partners, in an effort to clear the ICO suspicions.

Following Xunlei's announcement, Chainke's price plummeted from 4 yuan to 2.5 yuan.

Due to regulatory scrutiny, searching for Wankeyun on platforms like Xianyu displayed violation messages, making sellers refer to the hardware cloud disk as "wky" or "mother hen."

On September 17, 2018, Xunlei announced it would package and sell its blockchain businesses, including Chainke, Chainke Mall, and Chainke Pocket, to a technology group.

By the end of 2018, the official price of Wankeyun was 599 yuan, but on second-hand platforms, many Wankeyuns were resold for as low as 40 yuan. The vast disparity between the official price and second-hand prices made it difficult for the Wankeyun model to continue.

Investors were outraged. "Wankeyun is truly the worst thing I've bought in five years." Some players even publicly sought to protect their rights online, as the once golden-egg-laying mining machines turned into piles of scrap metal overnight.

The once-celebrated CEO became the target of public ire, and the media that once praised him began to question his motives and abilities.

The myth of deification was shattered, but the story of destruction was far from over.

The Moment of Destruction

After the frenzy surrounding Wankey coins subsided, a company named "Xingronghe" quietly emerged. Established in 2018, this company appeared to be a bandwidth supplier for Xunlei, but the actual controller was Chen Lei himself.

Chen Lei had his own explanation: "In February 2017, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued regulations to clean up non-compliant market transactions, explicitly stating that bandwidth could only be purchased from licensed enterprises. We shifted from buying bandwidth directly from household users to buying bandwidth from miners. To mitigate the risks of Wangxin, we acquired the shell company Xingronghe, which purchased hardware from Wangxin and sold it to miners. This way, we isolated the risks of Wangxin."

Chen Lei emphasized that the business flow and capital flow of Xingronghe were inseparable from Xunlei, and everything was for the benefit of Xunlei.

However, from the investigation results on Xunlei's side, the situation was not that simple. From January 2019 to early 2020, Wangxin cumulatively paid Xingronghe approximately 170 million yuan for resource node procurement.

The most dramatic events occurred between March 31 and April 1, 2020. Chen Lei, utilizing his final approval authority as both Xunlei CEO and Wangxin CEO, approved several payments totaling over 20 million yuan to Xingronghe within just two days.

Some of these payments were made before the normal payment time, exhibiting a lack of acceptance and settlement processes, characterized by a "same-day order, same-day approval, same-day payment" rapid mode.

Twenty-four hours later, on April 2, the Xunlei board officially announced Chen Lei's removal as CEO.

Chen Lei has a clear memory of the process of his dismissal: "On April 2, around 10:00 AM, I was at home with a fever and didn't go to the office. But colleagues reported to me that a group of men in white coats stormed into the office, ordering all colleagues to stop all work. This happened before I had any communication about it. I was completely unaware of everything before it occurred."

In addition to the fund transfers, Xunlei also accused Chen Lei of poaching personnel before his dismissal.

In March 2020, Chen Lei arranged for Dong Xue and Liu Chao to meet with 35 core employees, arranging for them to collectively resign and join Xingronghe. This directly led to Wangxin paying over 9 million yuan in economic compensation and option buyback fees.

Even more bizarre was the control structure behind Xingronghe: the legal representative Zhao Yuqin is Liu Chao's mother; one of the shareholders of the controlling shareholder "Hong'en Technology," Tian Weihong, is Dong Xue's mother; the legal person Xu Yanling is a relative of Dong Xue and the mother of Chen Lei's driver, Yao Bingwen; Chen Lei has a child with Dong Xue, forming a close interest community.

In April 2020, shortly after being dismissed, Chen Lei left China. On October 8 of the same year, Xunlei announced that former CEO Chen Lei was under investigation by the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau for suspected embezzlement and called for him to "return to China as soon as possible to cooperate with the investigation."

For six years, various recovery and rights protection actions initiated by Xunlei faced significant evidence-gathering obstacles due to Chen Lei being overseas. In the five cases surrounding Wangxin and Xingronghe, multiple announcements mentioned "the defendant's whereabouts are unknown, and the court is using public delivery methods."

By the end of 2022, due to objective limitations, the public security authorities withdrew the case after being unable to obtain sufficient evidence post-filing. Criminal prosecution temporarily came to a halt, but the curtain on civil recovery had just begun.

On January 15, 2026, after more than five years, Xunlei and its subsidiary Wangxin Technology refiled a civil lawsuit, seeking 200 million yuan in damages. The case has now been accepted and filed by the relevant court in Shenzhen.

The list of defendants is long: Chen Lei, Dong Xue, Liu Chao, Zhao Yuqin, as well as Xingronghe and its associated shareholders. The 200 million yuan claim includes approximately 170 million yuan paid to Xingronghe, plus about 28 million yuan in other discrepancies.

Postscript

"I may have committed many taboos of professional managers and indeed offended some people,"

"I'm too naive,"

"You ask me if I regret leaving Tencent Cloud for Xunlei? How could I not regret it? I shouldn't have been CEO in 2017; that would have created enmity with the old team."

This is Chen Lei's self-reflection from 2020.

But once power is in hand, it is hard to let go. When technological innovation intertwines with capital speculation and personal ambition, the result is often catastrophic.

Chen Lei's story is a mirror reflecting the complexity and multifaceted nature of the development of China's internet industry. Technological innovation coexists with speculative hype, idealism clashes with realism, and regulatory lag collides with market frenzy.

In this rapidly changing era, everyone can become a beneficiary of the trend or a victim of history. Chen Lei was once the fortunate one chosen by the times, but ultimately, he was also abandoned by the times.

In the game of technology and capital, maintaining one's original intention is more challenging than achieving success, and keeping that original intention may be the only way to navigate cycles and avoid destruction.

The cycle of deification and destruction will continue, but hopefully next time, we can learn more from it.

References:

1. "5-Year Suspended Case and 200 Million Recovery: Xunlei Restarts Lawsuit, Accusing Former CEO Chen Lei of Secretly Embezzling the Company," Yicai

2. "The Rise and Fall of Chen Lei at Xunlei: White-Clad Men Storm In; Lei Jun Knew Everything," Chief Character Observation