Original translation: Wu said blockchain
Contents:
In this in-depth interview, Bruce, the host of ETHPanda Talk, and Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, discussed the various possibilities of the digital society 100 years from now. ETHPanda is a non-profit organization composed of a group of Chinese builders who focus on Ethereum, dedicated to building a public network for Chinese builders of Ethereum. The interview covers a wide range of future topics, including the future of decentralized identity (DID), the evolution of the credit system, the changes in global identity, the division of labor between AI and humans, the concept of Ethereum nodes on Mars, the future development of encryption technology, and the funding mechanism of open source projects. This article is compiled by Wu Shuo Blockchain and authorized by ETHPanda.
Vitalik also shared his interest and support for longevity technology, explaining how his diet and exercise habits help him stay healthy. In addition, the interview delves into the civil war in Bitcoins history and its similarities to the phenomenon of nationalization in the real world.
Vitalik emphasized the unlimited potential of the future digital society in blockchain technology, decentralized collaboration, and AI assistance, and encouraged more people to join in and jointly promote technological development and social progress. The interview ended in a relaxed atmosphere. Vitalik humorously described Ethereum as a more fun game, encouraging everyone to continue to pay attention to and support the construction of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Listen to the full podcast: Little Universe | YouTube
The following is the full conversation:
Opening Introduction
Bruce: Hello everyone, welcome to ETHPanda Talk, I am Bruce. Today I am very happy to invite Vitalik to discuss with us a very interesting topic - what will the digital society look like in the next 100 years. First, please let Vitalik say hello to everyone and make a brief introduction.
Vitalik: Hello everyone, I am Vitalik, and I am also a Dogecoin holder. I am very happy to chat with you.
Bruce: Today we are going to talk about What will the digital society look like in 100 years. In fact, this topic was inspired in part by Vitaliks speech at EDCON Tokyo some time ago, which talked about the tenth anniversary of Ethereum and the outlook for the next decade. We can see that the next decade may focus more on application-level exploration, based on the solid foundation laid in the past decade.
This time we want to start from the perspective of 100 years from now, break through some limitations, imagine an ideal future society, and then look back at the current development direction. I hope this discussion can bring some new inspiration to everyone.
Besides, 100 years is neither too long nor too short. Maybe by then, longevity technology or mind uploading will have been realized. Then, we can arrange another podcast to review todays discussion.
Vitalik: Okay, I hope both of us will still be alive in 100 years, haha.
Bruce: Yes, yes, yes. Hopefully, we can all stay alive, or we can continue this discussion in the virtual consciousness world.
Will there still be ID cards in a hundred years? Or will all identities be based on DID? How to protect privacy?
Bruce: When we talk about the digital society, we may think about many aspects, such as social governance, such as Network State, DAO, Community, etc. The first question is about identity. Now we all have ID cards, passports, drivers licenses, etc. So, will these things still exist in 100 years? Or will everyone use DID (decentralized identity) and be able to create unlimited digital avatars? There is also the issue of privacy protection. For example, if you put your physical ID in your pocket, others cant see it. How can digital identity protect privacy?
Vitalik: I think there are two issues here. The first issue is where does identity data exist. For example, we now have physical ID cards and passports, but many people have begun to think about how to transform these entities into digital ones, such as putting passports or government IDs on mobile phones. This is not only explored in the decentralized world, but many traditional companies are also thinking about this issue. So, the first is the conversion between physical and digital identity.
The second question is about the centralization or decentralization of identity and privacy protection. There are many options here, such as having a system based on zero-knowledge proof or other cryptographic techniques that follows the principle of minimizing data distribution. In addition, we can also start from the goals of the ID system and think about whether only government-based ID can solve the problem. The goals of the identity system may include proving that you are a person, not a person controlled by AI or multiple accounts, or proving that you are a trustworthy person.
For example, countries currently use passports and visas to determine who can enter the country. Some countries passports can enter more places without a visa, while people from other countries need a visa. This approach is unfair in some ways because it judges whether a person is trustworthy based on their country. In the future, we can think about whether there are better ways to prove a persons trustworthiness rather than just their nationality. Trustworthiness can be based on interactions, relationships, and experiences throughout a persons life, rather than just a single piece of information.
If we adopt a more decentralized approach, the structure of identity will be more complex, because a person may be connected to many people, companies, communities, and networks. This will no longer be a single path like a tree, but a graph structure. We need to combine these diverse paths to create a more complete and fair identity system.
The advantages of this method are higher efficiency, more data, and the ability to reduce the power of a single node. If a node fails or is attacked, the individual will not lose his identity due to the problem of this node, but can still prove himself through other means.
Based on unlimited digital avatars and DIDs, how will the future credit system work? How should people build their own credit?
Bruce: In the future, everyone may have many different digital avatars. What changes will occur in the credit system?
Vitalik: A persons identity and credit are actually very close concepts, because the core of both is to prove whether a person is trustworthy. There are several problems with the current credit system. First, it is completely centralized, and certain organizations decide which data is valuable, which in turn affects your credit score. Second, credit scores usually have only a single number, such as someones credit score is 700, and this score may mean different things to different people or scenarios.
In a centralized system, things that have nothing to do with credit may be mixed in, such as political factors and even some unfair standards. In a decentralized system, we can reduce these problems, but the complexity will also increase. One of the reasons why everyone likes the existing credit scoring system is that it is simple and clear. You only need to look at one number to make a judgment.
But in a decentralized system, credit may become multidimensional. Different people may have different views on the credit of the same person based on different data sources. For example, your credit score is 0.5 in someones scoring system, but it may be 0.7 in another system. Although this increases the complexity, we should not be afraid of these complexities, because it can bring a more fair and diverse credit assessment system.
Will the mainstream sense of identity in the future society be more internationalist? Will it conflict, oppose or even cause war with nationalism?
Bruce: Regarding the question of identity, many people are now international freelancers, flying around, and even living abroad. Do you think that in 100 years, internationalism will become the mainstream? Will people no longer emphasize the country or nationalism? If the country or nationalism still exists, will it conflict violently with internationalism?
Vitalik: In the past, peoples identity and loyalty were often closely tied to their country, because it was difficult to go to different places and maintain relationships in different places. Most people might only stay in one place in their lives, such as being born in a rural area, growing up in a rural area, and eventually ending their lives in a rural area. It is very difficult to be an international person.
But now the situation is different. With the Internet, it has become easy to go anywhere, and being an international person is much simpler than in the past. However, this does not mean that conflicts between tribes or groups will disappear. Even in the Internet age, we still see conflicts between many new communities, such as the debates between cryptocurrency communities such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. These communities have their own beliefs and cultures, similar to new countries, and we can regard these as new nationalism.
Even with the Internet and globalization, the future world will not completely become a single internationalist society. Everyones identity will still intersect with different groups, countries, and cultures. This diversity and intersection of identities may bring both conflict and peace.
I believe that the future will not be a completely peaceful, monocultural world, but a more cross-cultural and pluralistic one. Everyone will have different identities, backgrounds, and loyalties, and these intertwined identities may reduce extreme polarization and the risk of war. At the same time, this complexity of society may promote more understanding and communication, thus avoiding complete confrontation and conflict.
How can humans and AI achieve fair and just distribution (not limited to the distribution of funds, but also including a sense of accomplishment, meaning, and existence)?
Bruce: In the future, we may see humans and AI working together. If we want to coexist harmoniously, it will inevitably involve the issue of distribution, and this distribution is not limited to funds, but also includes a sense of achievement, meaning, and existence. After all, if AI can do all the work, what else can humans do? What do you think about this?
Vitalik: It is really difficult to predict the future of AI. For example, 5 years ago, we had AlphaGo and AlphaZero, whose AI architecture was very simple and had a clear goal - to win the game. They were like rational actors in economics, with clear goals and strategies. Todays AI, such as language models, do not have clear goals, they are just doing text predictions. Despite this, they are much smarter than the AI of five years ago, and they still show higher intelligence despite the inconsistent goals.
We don’t know what AI will look like in 5 or even 50 years. I hope we can develop more tool-like AI, rather than AI that is completely independent and powerful enough to make its own plans. My ideal AI is a tool that can communicate and collaborate with humans a lot, and in the future this interaction may be achieved through VR, AR glasses or brain-computer interfaces. In this way, humans can maintain autonomy and a sense of meaning in this future world.
However, this path may not necessarily succeed. Perhaps it will be difficult to make humans and AI work together, but it will be easier to create a very powerful AI. We cannot be sure of the answer, and the future AI architecture may be difficult for humans to imagine.
Another question is, will we have many AIs, or just one? This is also difficult to predict. Humans have limited communication bandwidth, but AIs may not have such limitations. They may share computing power between different processors, forming a distributed intelligent system that is difficult for us to imagine.
Bruce: After listening to you, I am a little worried that the future will be like The Matrix. I hope AI will be better to us humans. But regarding the issue of distribution, I recently thought of an example. For example, the collaborative distribution of open source projects, especially with Optimisms Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGF), how can we fairly distribute it to contributors?
Vitalik: The problem that Optimism wants to solve is very complex. The goal of RPGF is to reward those who contribute to the project, but it is very difficult to measure the size of each persons contribution. Even if everyone is honest, it is not easy to determine who has contributed the most. And when everyone understands how this mechanism works, they may start to optimize their behavior to maximize their personal benefits, just like some people in academia will cite each others papers to manipulate the evaluation system.
If we expand this model to the funding of all public goods, the problem may be hundreds or thousands of times more complicated. Optimism is currently conducting experiments on a small scale to see where it succeeds and where it fails. This is very important. I think solving these problems requires more experiments rather than theoretical deductions. We can only do it through actual experiments, observe the results, and then make adjustments and improvements.
Will a new social system be needed when billions of people and robots collaborate in the future? Will there be new changes compared to the current socialism, capitalism, and hybridism?
Bruce: This topic has given me a lot of inspiration. The last question about social institutions is: we all know that a small group of people can collaborate through tools like Notion or group rules. But when billions of people, even AI and robots, collaborate together in the digital future, will a new social system be needed? Will this system be new compared to our current socialism, capitalism, or hybridism?
Vitalik: This is a very complicated question. In fact, I think that capitalism is no longer real capitalism in many cases. According to the principles of capitalism, there should be competition between products, good products should stand out, and bad products and companies should be eliminated. But now the concept of competition has changed. If companies want to bypass competition, they can actually do it.
For example, I remember that in 2016, at a Bitcoin miners meeting in Hong Kong, 90% of the miners sat together to discuss how to cooperate. This shows that in many industries, competitors can actually easily cooperate and bypass competition. Many phenomena are not driven by economics, but more by communication and social interaction between people. We may have entered a new model, which can be called a hybrid system.
This hybrid system is not only present at the company and enterprise level, but also at the government level. In the past, companies were capitalist and governments were socialist. Now, companies have become more social, and there is more competition between governments. With globalization and technology, people have more choices. 30 years ago, if you wanted to move to another country, it was very expensive; now, you can just take a 12-hour flight, turn on your computer, and your life can remain basically the same. This allows countries to compete like markets.
The arrival of AI may change this situation further, but it is difficult to predict how it will change. This is undoubtedly a very complex issue.
In addition to Gitcoin (QF), Protocol Guild, etc., what new funding methods will there be in the future? Will there be a brand new open source protocol? To achieve automation and eliminate the gap with commercial companies?
Bruce: We talked about the digital society and the future, and it seems that a lot of things will be based on open source or public goods. And its sustainability, especially how to fund these projects in the long term, may be a big problem. Its not just a matter of funding, but also about the sustainability of collaboration. Now we have Gitcoin and quadratic funding mechanisms (QF), projects like Protocol Guild and Optimism. Will we still use these methods 100 years later? Or will there be some completely new ideas and ideas?
Vitalik: Public goods funding has always faced two core problems: one is the source of funds, and the other is how to distribute funds fairly. Traditionally, public goods funding is usually supported by the government through taxation, and the government has a lot of funds to allocate to projects they consider to be public goods. In the world of cryptocurrency, the issuance of digital currencies provides new possibilities for the funding of public goods.
Cryptocurrencies are not the only example, we now have other forms of digital assets, such as domain names. Domain names like privatejet.com once sold for more than a real private jet. In the future, the metaverse and other digital assets may further expand this trend. For example, certain props or items in the virtual world may cost more than high-value items in the real world. For example, in the next 50 years, we may build cities in space or on Mars, or conduct mining activities in the asteroid belt. By then, we may need to rethink the issue of property rights in space. I hope that the initial owners of these resources will no longer be individuals or countries, but decentralized organizations (DAOs), which can avoid over-consumption of resources while providing continuous financial support for public goods.
Another challenge is how to determine which projects are most important and how to measure everyones contribution to the project. Some platforms are already exploring this issue, such as Juan Benet of IPFS and projects like Tea.xyz, who are developing Contribution Graphs to evaluate the value of contributors. However, this process is prone to conflicts of interest, and designing a fair mechanism is critical.
As for open source protocols, existing protocols such as MIT and GPL focus on code distribution but lack commercial incentives. I think new protocols may emerge in the future to force or encourage commercial companies to give back part of their profits to the open source ecosystem. However, this path is not easy, because we need to balance the relationship between open source and private software while avoiding peoples concerns about the return of open source software to privatization. Zcashs Business Source License is an example, but this approach has encountered some opposition when it was implemented, and it may need to be adjusted and improved in the future.
In summary, future funding mechanisms and open source protocols will require more experimentation and exploration to address these complex issues.
How will the world determine the ownership of digital public goods or open source projects in the future? How to determine the ownership of a piece of code? Or is it still necessary to confirm it?
Bruce: This question reminds me of the future world, where all codes are open source and a lot of content is on the chain. Do we still need to confirm the ownership of these digital commons or open source projects? If so, how do we confirm it?
Vitalik: To answer this question, we first need to understand the goal of the concept of ownership. Generally speaking, ownership has two core goals:
1. Power confirmation: Ownership determines who has the right to make changes to a system or project. For example, who has the right to modify or control the code.
2. Incentive mechanism: Ownership also determines who gets the benefits. If something belongs to you, you can sell it or rent it to others to earn benefits.
However, there is a significant difference between software and other owned resources. Software is non-rivalrous, that is, it can be copied indefinitely without affecting the original rights to use it. If you own a copy of the software and I copy it to you, the copy still belongs to you and does not reduce my rights. This is different from physical resources or other limited digital resources.
Therefore, when we discuss the ownership of open source software, we must take a step back and rethink the concept of ownership from the perspective of its goal. Regarding the issue of power, in the field of open source software, this issue is not very obvious, because anyone can create their own version based on the open source code, and others can choose to accept or reject it.
The biggest exception is the issue of standardization. In some cases, the entire ecosystem needs continuous improvement of compatibility and standards. This requires a consensus mechanism or some form of coordination, which has already begun to be discussed in decentralized ecosystems such as Ethereum. For example, Layer 2 standardization issues, account abstraction, etc. are becoming more and more complex because more and more entities are involved, and it is no longer as small-scale and easy to reach consensus as before.
There is a trade-off we face when developing standards: if we let more people participate in the development of standards, the whole process may become slower. Moxie Marlinspike (founder of Signal) has mentioned that he does not want Signal to become a federal system, in part because he wants to iterate and add new features faster. However, I think he underestimates the feasibility of a decentralized approach. Ethereum is a good example of how, despite having multiple clients, everyone can still agree on issues such as hard forks, but this may become more difficult if the system becomes too complex.
As for incentives, I dont think there will be a one-size-fits-all approach that will solve all problems. Different projects have different needs. Some software may rely on a single company for the majority of revenue, and that company can choose to support the project. However, in more complex cases, more diverse funding models are needed, such as the open source licenses we discussed, cryptocurrency-based public goods funding mechanisms (such as Retro Funding), etc.
In general, future ownership confirmation and incentive mechanisms will vary depending on the specific circumstances of the project, and we need to continuously adjust and optimize based on these needs.
How will scientific research be conducted in the future? Will there be any changes in personnel organization, funding acquisition, etc.?
Bruce: How will scientific research be conducted in the future? Will it still be like today, requiring a Ph.D. and relying on government and school funding? Or will there be new and more efficient ways?
Vitalik: In fact, I think the Ethereum community has demonstrated a new and more efficient way of scientific research and collaboration. For example, in the field of cryptographic research, many new technologies, such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZK Proofs) and cryptographic algorithms, are the result of cross-team and cross-organizational collaboration. A project may be completed by researchers from the Ethereum Foundation, the Aztec team, and some universities. This kind of collaboration is now very common.
In addition, scientific research results are often built on the work of predecessors. For example, StarkWare may develop a technology that other teams continue to innovate on. Now collaboration is no longer limited to physical offices. Communication across countries and organizations can be carried out through various online channels, such as Telegram, Signal groups, or discussions in forums like the Ethereum Research Forum.
Conference culture is also an important part of todays scientific research, especially in the Ethereum community. Although some people criticize this culture, its benefits are obvious. Conferences give multinational and remote teams the opportunity to communicate face-to-face and share ideas. Even if most of the time is spent collaborating online, everyone will meet at conferences several times a year to quickly synchronize progress.
More importantly, this conference culture allows everyone to not just be limited to their own company, but to consider the entire Ethereum community as their team, which promotes cooperation and innovation among companies.
At the Ethereum Foundation, we recently organized a protocol development workshop, inviting about 100 researchers and developers to jointly promote the progress of the Ethereum client. This kind of collective cooperation, combining online and offline, has greatly improved the efficiency of scientific research.
However, this model is not necessarily applicable to all fields. For example, in the field of history, although this collaborative approach is also feasible, the academic community is relatively conservative and it may take longer to adapt to this new model. In fields such as biology, the situation is more complicated. First, biological research requires a lot of laboratory resources, and these laboratories are not simple desk and chair facilities like the ones we use, but very expensive and complex scientific laboratories. Secondly, the incentive mechanism is also a problem. In the field of encryption, openness and transparency are necessary, but in some traditional fields, scientific research results are often not made public, and it is not easy to change this practice.
Different fields have different challenges. Although a decentralized and open source approach may advance faster in some fields, in other fields, it may encounter more resistance and complex incentive issues.
I think that in the next 10 to 20 years, there will be much more cross-company, cross-organization and even cross-country scientific research collaboration than it is now. However, the speed of transformation will vary from field to field, and some fields may adapt to this change faster than others.
Will an Ethereum node be built on Mars? How to solve the delay of interstellar communication? How to achieve interstellar anti-censorship?
Bruce: Just now, when we mentioned Mars, I thought of an interesting question: Can we deploy Ethereum nodes on Mars in the future? If so, how to solve the communication delay across the interstellar space? In addition, how to achieve anti-censorship on an interstellar scale?
Vitalik: This is a very interesting question. On Earth, the speed of light is so fast that the signal transmission time between the two ends of the Earth is negligible. Even between the two farthest points on Earth, the signal delay is only a few hundred milliseconds. In the modern Internet, a delay of less than 200 milliseconds is usually acceptable.
But between Earth and Mars, the situation is different. The distance between Mars and Earth is about 50 to 70 million kilometers at the closest point, and the farthest distance can reach 400 million kilometers. This means that it takes several minutes to 20 minutes to transmit signals at the speed of light, which is a huge challenge for systems like blockchain.
The current Ethereum and Bitcoin architectures cannot directly cope with such large delays. For example, if you generate a block on Mars, by the time it is transmitted to Earth, miners on Earth may have already generated several new blocks. This will make it difficult for the Martian block to be accepted, or even impossible to compete. Therefore, from an economic and efficiency perspective, it is not feasible to run interstellar blockchain nodes under the current architecture.
However, the solution to this problem may be to run an independent Layer 2 solution on Mars, designed specifically for an environment like Mars. This Layer 2 network can quickly confirm transactions on Mars and then synchronize batches with the Ethereum mainnet on Earth when appropriate. This will greatly reduce the reliance on real-time communication and allow Mars and Earth to have their own network rhythms.
As for interstellar censorship resistance, the problem is more complicated. If we want to achieve true interstellar censorship resistance, we may need multiple decentralized networks interconnected between different planets and space stations to prevent any one entity from completely controlling a certain area of the network. Of course, this also means that we need to develop completely new protocols to adapt to this interstellar environment.
Although Ethereum nodes on Mars and interstellar censorship resistance face huge technical challenges, they may be gradually realized in the future through new architectural designs, such as Mars Layer 2 solution.
What encryption algorithms are still missing for the cypherpunks in the future digital society? Will there be new things like PGP, SSL, and cryptocurrency? What role will ZK play in them?
Bruce: We just talked about some social mechanisms and open source issues. Now I want to talk about cypherpunks. The cypherpunk movement has a profound impact on todays encryption technology. PGP, SSL and cryptocurrency are important achievements. If we look back at today from the perspective of 100 years later, are there some encryption algorithms that we have not yet implemented but may become new technologies in the future? What role will ZK (zero-knowledge proof) play in this process?
Vitalik: The new technology of this era must be based on ZK. We can also see now that ZK has brought us many new possibilities. You can prove many things at the same time without exposing all the information. Ten years ago, people did not have this concept. At that time, the discussion usually revolved around two extremes: either you provide all the information to prove your identity (but sacrifice privacy), or you remain anonymous (but credibility decreases). With ZK, we can now enjoy the advantages of both at the same time.
The Ethereum community has also started some applications in this area. For example, in the Zuzalu group, we have started to use a little bit of this technology. I think ZK has many application scenarios.
In addition, there are other technologies such as MPC (multi-party computation) and FHE (fully homomorphic encryption), which have been around for 30 years but are finally becoming efficient enough to be used in practice. Their application scenarios are different from ZK, but they are also very interesting. Another technology that I think is very promising is Obfuscation.
Obfuscation means that you can encrypt a program, and the encrypted program can run, with the same input and output, but the logic inside the program is completely invisible. This is a very powerful technology. For example, I can create a program that contains my private key, but you cant get my private key through this encrypted program. Through Obfuscation, many other cryptographic problems can be solved.
The only problem that cannot be solved by obfuscation is to prevent the program from being copied. To solve this problem, we can use quantum technology. Justin Drake is very fond of a technology called One-Time Signatures. After signing once, you can no longer sign other data. This is very useful in the consensus mechanism of the blockchain because it can completely prevent double-spending attacks.
We cannot achieve this with existing classical technology, because data can always be copied. But if quantum technology is introduced, data cannot be copied. There is a very famous theory behind this - the No-cloning Theorem, which states that quantum data cannot be completely copied.
If we have obfuscation and quantum technology, there will be many possibilities in the future. Maybe these technologies will be difficult to popularize in ten years, but 100 years later, they are very likely to become a reality.
Bruce: ZK has been very popular recently. Many friends are interested in it and have even started to learn it, but many people find it very difficult to learn. Are there any good learning methods or resources you can recommend?
Vitalik: If you really want to learn more about ZK technology, the best way is to try to write a ZK algorithm yourself. Write a Prover and Verifier from start to finish. Through this process, you will understand the key points behind the technology, such as why to do this, how to prove and verify, etc.
I have written a lot about ZK in the past ten years. My idea is that if only a few people understand ZK technology, it is not truly decentralized because everyone has to trust those few people. Therefore, it is very important for more people to understand this technology and why it is trustworthy.
Of course, not everyone needs to understand all the details of ZK, just like most developers today don’t fully understand the internal mechanisms of cryptographic algorithms. They just know the inputs and outputs of the algorithm, and what it can and can’t do. I believe that most people will eventually understand ZK in a similar way.
Mental health: How to avoid EMO and self-doubt in the process of building long-term idealism? Do you have similar situations? How to overcome them?
Bruce: I think mental health is very important when promoting idealistic projects in the long term. For example, developers like Peter sometimes have emotional breakdowns and doubt whether their contributions are really valuable. I have had similar moments myself, especially when I saw someone getting rich overnight because of meme coins, I would doubt whether what I insisted on was worth it. Vitalik, have you ever had this situation? How did you deal with it?
Vitalik: Yes, I have had similar feelings. Such emotional fluctuations are bound to happen, especially when you are committed to a project as idealistic as Ethereum for a long time. One of the most effective ways for me to overcome it is to participate in offline communication activities. Face-to-face interaction makes me feel the power and positive influence of the community again.
When you look at Crypto Twitter or other social media, you are often overwhelmed by negative voices. Many people will say, Ethereum has no practical use, and the biggest application is gambling, or suggest that we admit that we are just making the best casino. It is really tiring and frustrating to hear this.
However, whenever I go to conferences or talk to people who are actually involved in the Ethereum ecosystem, I realize that there are still many people who have very positive visions and are working hard to implement them. This effort and hope is not always visible on the Internet, so face-to-face communication is particularly important.
We humans have millions of years of face-to-face communication history, and our psychology is not ready for a completely online life. Maybe in 20 or 30 years, the metaverse will solve these problems, but it is not yet at that level. So, I think offline interaction is very critical to mental health.
Physical health: What are your eating habits? Do you exercise? What advice do you have for programmers on health?
Bruce: We all know that physical health is very important, especially for programmers. What are your eating habits? Do you exercise? Do you have any health advice for programmers?
Vitalik: Physical health is really important to me, especially because of my lifestyle. I often need to move to different places and move almost every week, so it is difficult for me to maintain a fixed fitness or diet routine. Those health influencers often mention that they have a good gym and a fixed daily diet plan, but for me, such a schedule is almost impossible.
Despite this, I still try to stay active, especially with simple exercises like walking and running. These exercises don’t require any equipment and can be done anywhere. For example, when I arrived in Georgia, I ran a 21-kilometer lap in my backyard. I find running a very convenient way to exercise, not only does it move the body, but I can also listen to an audiobook or podcast while running, which is a good use of time.
As for my diet, I try to keep it simple: lots of vegetables, lots of fish, and try to avoid too much sugar. This approach allows me to maintain healthy eating habits in different environments.
Bruce: You mentioned the topic of longevity, which I know you are very interested in. Why are you so interested in longevity? Is it related to the future technology you imagine, such as uploading consciousness to the Internet?
Vitalik: My interest in longevity dates back to when I first read Aubrey de Grey’s book Ending Aging when I was 13 years old. I identified with his vision of extending life. Life itself is good, and living a few more years is naturally a better thing. Aubrey’s book explains in detail how we can extend life through science, especially those extreme ways of extending life - not just adding 5 years of life, but adding 50 years or more.
Many people have a misunderstanding about life extension, thinking that extending life means getting older and weaker, but this is not actually the case. Aubreys approach is to avoid the problems caused by physical aging through early prevention, rather than waiting until the problems arise to treat them. In this way, the extended time is not only an extension of life, but also an extension of health time. In this way, the quality of our extended life will be closer to our current life state, rather than the weak and feeble 90-year-old people imagine.
When the price of Ethereum first started to rise, I started thinking about how to use this wealth to do something truly meaningful, rather than buying a big house or a private jet. So I started donating to Aubreys organization, and as the price of Ethereum continued to rise, I donated more and more, and now I am a funder in the field of longevity.
Please recommend a book to Vitalik
Bruce: We are about to finish the main interview questions today. Vitalik, can you recommend a recent book or a book that you think is good?
Vitalik: I read two interesting books recently. I did a book review on my blog about two books on the history of Bitcoin. One of them is The Blocksize War by Jonathan Bier, which supports the view of small blocks, and the other is Hijacking Bitcoin by Roger Ver and Steve Patterson, which supports the view of large blocks. They each discussed the recent Bitcoin block size civil war from their own perspectives, and I think both books are very interesting.
People actually like to read history books. There is a joke on the Internet now that many people like to study two topics: one is World War II, and the other is the Roman Empire. I find that the interesting thing about learning about history is that you can think about what is caused by cultural and technological factors of a specific event and era, and what is caused by human nature. This helps us unravel some problems and think about what people would do if they were in completely different situations.
The history of the Internet over the past 30 years is also worth noting. Especially between 1990 and 2010, the development of the Internet was relatively slow, and most of the time it was just a game. However, the emergence of Bitcoin is the first truly valuable thing in the history of the Internet that is completely native to the Internet and has attracted many people to participate. You can compare this phenomenon to the rise of a digital country.
There will also be internal disputes and civil wars within digital countries, which will eventually lead to division. For example, some famous Bitcoin cult figures in the Bitcoin community have begun to praise Solana. I think they may do this because they want to fight against the Ethereum ecosystem by uniting with emerging platforms such as Solana. This reminds me of the alliance between Germany and Japan during World War II, which was formed out of consideration for fighting the enemy together.
I find it very interesting to study these phenomena, not only the history of the physical world, but also the evolution of the digital world. You find that some of the patterns and ideas are exactly the same. Thats why I find it interesting to understand the history of the Internet.
Epilogue: Looking forward to continued exploration and construction in the future
Bruce: That’s all for today’s formal interview. Thank you again, Vitalik, for taking the time to accept our interview and share so many in-depth thoughts. Thank you, Vitalik!
BUTA: Thank you!
Bruce: I have some lighthearted questions, like do you still play World of Warcraft?
Vitalik: Haha, during the epidemic, I tried to play the private server, and it was quite fun. But later I found that Ethereum itself is actually a more fun game.
Bruce： Haha, okay.
Vitalik: I hope everyone can support ETHPanda Talk and participate in the construction of Ethereum together! Thank you!
Bruce: Thank you.
