Original source: Tako
On the evening of February 19, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin conducted a flash text AMA in the Flash Interview Circle in the Tako App. This article sorts out all the AMA content according to the topics discussed. Topics include:
Ethereum’s Past and Future
About Layer 2 Network
Ethereum’s organizational problems
Decentralized social networking, privacy and governance
Some of Vitalik’s worldviews
Ethereum’s Past and Future
Q1
Mable:
I want to ask a cliché question, but I think it makes sense to ask it again in February of 2025.
In your mind, should Ethereum today be closer to Bitcoin or the world computer?
You mentioned in your previous X post that many people who hold a negative view of ETH are just short-term speculators, and their frustration can hardly bring any constructive help to the ETH community. However, many people in the OG ETH-Maxi camp also loudly promote the idea of ETH is money (such as Bankless, the Ethereum maximalist media of ETH Maxis), and compare ETH with BTC, believing that it is another competitive form of digital currency (maybe even a better form of currency).
What is the ultimate narrative you envision for the future adoption of ETH?
Vitalik:
I think these two ways of thinking are compatible with each other.
If you need to tell which blockchains are truly decentralized, you can use a relatively simple test: if its foundation disappears, can the chain survive? I feel that only Bitcoin and Ethereum can clearly answer: of course. Most of Ethereums development is outside the foundation, and the client team has an independent business model. Now many researchers are not in the foundation, and almost all activities except devcon are independent.
Getting to this stage is hard. Ethereum wasn’t like this 5 years ago.
Giving up these advantages in pursuit of TPS (throughput) is a big mistake, because there will always be new chains coming out that suddenly have higher TPS than you. But decentralization and resilience are precious, and few blockchains have them.
These characteristics are conducive to creating a digital currency with long-term value, and also conducive to having a good world computer. However, the world computer also needs to solve the problem of expansion. World computer does not mean a computer that can support every application in the world at the same time, but a place where applications in the world can interoperate with each other. High-performance computing can be placed in L2, which is fine. However, this role still requires L1 to have sufficient scale. For specific details, you can see an article I wrote recently.
ETH is a digital asset suitable for use by the worlds applications (including finance, and other things like ENS, etc.). ETH does not need every transaction to be placed on L1, but it needs to have enough throughput to allow anyone who wants to use L1 to use it at least occasionally.
So the two directions here are also compatible: the features that help Ethereum become a better world computer are also the features that make ETH a better digital currency.
Q2
Mable:
Is encouraging more developers to join Ethereum, incentivizing and retaining existing developers (compared to some new L1 or even L2 with more generous developer incentives, Ethereum is definitely in a more complicated situation) the current priority?
Accelerating network decentralization, improving scalability, and exploring more application scenarios. Among these three aspects, which one do you think is the highest priority for Ethereum at present?
Vitalik:
Here we actually need to find a way to solve three problems at the same time:
Attract more developers
Encourage developers to develop applications that are open source, secure, compliant with public standards, have long-term value, etc.
In the process of solving (2), we need to avoid the ecosystem becoming a closed circle (the we are on the same front because we are good friends of developers phenomenon).
So I recently said that Ethereum’s alignment should be a technical game, not a social game.
I want to talk about the robber problem because I think that in terms of decentralization, the most pressing centralization problem is often not L1, but L2 or wallet or application problems. So the entire ecosystem needs to work together to expand and attract new developers and make progress in these decentralized and trustless aspects.
There are several ways we can help with this:
Education, making it easier for developers to understand why blockchain exists, what should be on the chain, what should not be on the chain, what they need to care about in the field of blockchain, etc.
If some blockchain-specific technologies are too difficult for application developers, the foundation can do it itself, making it easier for developers to integrate. For example, zk programming language, a16zs helios, etc.
Give developers clear standards. For example, if you are making an Ethereum client, there are many tests, you can run the tests yourself to see if your client can pass. If you are making L2, there are frameworks such as stage 1 and stage 2 of l2 beat. This should also be given to zk applications, wallets, etc.
Q3
How do you think Ethereum’s success should ultimately be measured — technological breakthroughs, the breadth of user adoption, or its impact on social equality and power distribution?
Vitalik:
The breadth of user adoption is what matters most right now. The technological breakthroughs are there: zero-knowledge proofs, consensus algorithms, virtual machines, etc. User adoption is there, but the adoption that has received the most attention is the memecoin that dropped 97% in one day (Im not against all memecoins here, I was an early buyer of DOGE anyway, but this one is a completely different category).
I think we need an application that should pass 3 tests:
Can you imagine yourself or someone you know actually using it? That is, the difference between something that is interesting in theory (decentralized uber! awesome!) and something that is actually usable?
Can you make money? If you can’t make money, it’s hard to make your app the highest quality.
If you are not a user or an investor, would you be happy to know that this thing exists? In other words, is there any real value to the world?
It is difficult to pass all three at the same time. Maybe only payment and value storage applications, and possibly prediction markets, have passed now. We need 10 more successful examples.
Q4
It is said that one of the reasons for launching Beacon Chain is because of Casper sharding. In my personal opinion, the decision to create Beacon Chain is one of the most important moments in the history of Ethereum. However, it seems that events like the DAO fork or the Shanghai attacks have received more attention. (It may also be that I have not seen relevant discussions. If so, please provide a link) I would like to ask Vitalik:
When was the Beacon Chain decision made? Was it in 2018?
What was the situation like? Was it a unanimous decision, or was there controversy?
At that time, did you seriously consider upgrading eth 1 to PoS instead of building a new Beacon Chain?
Vitalik:
My feeling is that after the DAO fork, few people in the Ethereum community opposed moving to PoS, and everyone thought it was already decided. There were more people who were very opposed to PoS at the beginning, but opposition to PoS and opposition to the DAO fork were highly correlated, so most of them moved to ETC after the DAO fork. After 2016, at least in the core developer group, I didn’t hear any core developer suggest that we should cancel and make a permanent PoW chain.
The decision to build a Beacon chain was made because we believed that before we move Ethereum to a new consensus algorithm, we should give it a chance to run for a while to ensure that there are no obvious loopholes or problems. So we decided to make the PoS chain an independent chain, let it run on its own first, and then merge this chain with the existing Ethereum to reduce risks. This decision was made around the summer of 2018. We had also considered other roadmaps before, such as PoW -> hybrid PoS -> PoS. In the end, we decided that it would be simpler and safer to open an independent Beacon chain first.
Q 5
Today, Vitalik has grown golden claws and silver scales, and has transformed from a dragon slayer into a dragon. During the Ethereum mining period, it was still a democratic consensus, but now Vs management system is a dictatorial and authoritarian management model. After switching to POS, it has become a peoples congress system. Is it suspected that he secretly joined the party behind everyones back?
Vitalik:
PoW can only be democratic in the short term. Because there are always economies of scale, larger miners are more efficient, so it will become more and more centralized over time.
I think the reason why we didn’t have ASICs before PoS is probably because everyone knew we planned to move to PoS, so no one made ASICs. If we had declared from the first day that we would always use PoW, ASICs would probably have appeared between 2016 and 2019, unless we had been forking and changing the algorithm every year, but this would also centralize the network.
So I think our approach, spending 7 years using PoW for distribution and then moving to PoS, is the best
PoS has its own fairness: if you have 10 times more money, you can produce 10 times more blocks. In ASIC PoW, there are economies of scale, and maybe 10 times more money = 11 times more blocks.
Another point is: PoS is not a governance method in Ethereum. Ether holders do not have the right to choose which EIPs to put on the next fork, etc. If we used PoS to make such decisions, it would indeed be too plutocratic.
Q6
Community Question:
Can you systematically explain in detail how to accelerate the development of Ethereum? Eth has been around for ten years, and is updated once a year. I feel that the development progress is very slow and needs to be greatly accelerated. eth/acc
Vitalik:
Now the main goal is to increase the number of blobs, here are:
pectra, increase blob target from 3 to 6
fusaka, add peerdas, and raise blob target
Continue to optimize peerdas in 2026 and 2027
Add 2D data availability sampling, and then improve the blob target
There is also a roadmap to increase the L1 gas limit, but this is more complicated, such as delayed execution, statelessness, etc.
Q7
Mable:
EIP-1559 Do you think that the ideal dynamic balance design has been achieved at present? What is your personal opinion on the proposals/ideas for reducing inflation of the Ethereum network in the community and the goals that they hope to achieve?
Vitalik:
I think EIP-1559 is misunderstood by many people. The main goal is not to consume ether, but to improve the efficiency of the market. Before EIP-1559, you sometimes had to wait 1-15 minutes for a transaction to be confirmed. Now transactions are almost always confirmed within 1-2 blocks.
This mechanism is completely successful, so we are now considering some optimizations, such as multidimensional gas ( https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7706 ),
There is also this mechanism https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1889013890291318838 .
Q8
In the Web3 ecosystem, some projects implement large incentive programs, such as the Odyssey mission, to attract a large number of users. Recently, projects like Bera Chain and Story Protocol have conducted testnet activities for quite a long time, and it seems that there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of users participating. However, after the token is launched, the actual active users are significantly reduced, usually less than a thousand people. This discrepancy is worrying: how many users are truly participating, rather than joining just to get incentives? At the same time, this may also lead to misleading conclusions in the statistics of the project. Given your emphasis on decentralization and real community building, what do you think of such practices? Do you think that simply pursuing a large number of users - regardless of whether these users are truly active - is in line with the essential spirit of Web3? Or should projects focus on cultivating a relatively small but highly active user base to ensure sustainable growth and real adoption?
Vitalik:
I think this kind of plan is suitable for application trials, sometimes it will fail and sometimes it will succeed. For Ethereum, first, our resources are not enough to support the scale of Ethereum to implement such a plan. Second, our main concern is not just users, but developers. Third, the question of what kind of developers we attract is very important. So I think we can attract developers by using the community method and sponsor some specific fields when needed. But it is better not to rely too much on this.
About Layer 2 Network
Q1
Mable:
Today, there are many L2s, mainly OP stacks, and some zkrollup attempts. I would like to hear your evaluation of the rollups route in the past few years, and I hope it is as objective as possible:
What do you think is done better and what is different from what you expected?
Are rollups generally a good thing for Ethereum or a bloodsucker (I saw you calling for these L2s to give back to Ethereum a few days ago)?
Does ETH really need these L2s?
Vitalik:
So far, our expansion method can be roughly understood as hybrid L1 + L2, but I think no one has clearly defined which transactions should be on L1 and which transactions should be on L2.
Put everything in L2 is a difficult answer to accept because:
This will easily lead to the loss of ETHs position as a medium of exchange, store of value, etc. If you are worried that L2 will steal L1s users and not give L1 anything in return, this problem will be more serious in a situation where L1 does almost nothing.
Operations across L2 still require L1. If an L2 fails, users still need a way to move to another L2. So there are some use cases that are difficult to avoid L1. I wrote an article on this topic here
Put everything in L1 is also a difficult answer to accept because:
If L1 supports many transactions, it is easy to become centralized, even if ZK-EVM and other technologies are used.
The world’s demand for on-chain transactions is infinite. No matter how high the TPS of L1 is, you can always find an application that requires 10 times more TPS (for example, artificial intelligence, micropayments, micro-prediction markets, etc.)
L2 not only provides capacity expansion, but also provides faster confirmation speed through preconfirmations and avoids MEV problems through sequencers.
So we need hybrid L1 + L2.
I think the role of L2 will continue to change, for example, it seems that evm-equivalent L2 is enough now, it is possible that we will see more privacy-focused L2 (Aztec, Intmax, etc.), there may be more application-specific L2 (if an application wants to control its own MEV situation, this is beneficial, etc.)
So in the short term, I think we should continue to improve the capabilities of L1 at the same time, increase blobs to give L2 more space, promote interoperability across L2, and then the market will decide which expansion method is suitable for which application.
Q2
Mable:
The rollup route has been proposed for quite some time. Do you think the current centralized sequencer of Arbitrum/Base/OP is a big challenge for future regulation because it cannot be truly censorship-resistant? Do you think they will move towards a decentralized sequencer solution? If your answer to the previous question is yes, what do you think of MegaETHs centralized sequencer solution?
Vitalik:
Centralized sequencers actually have many advantages:
Centralized sequencers can ensure that users’ money will not be stolen by front-running, etc.
instant pre-confirmations
It is easy to turn a traditional application into a blockchain application because the server directly becomes a sequencer
The decentralized nature of blockchain can be used to avoid the risks of centralized sequencers: the forced inclusion mechanism prevents the sequencer from centrally censoring users, and the optimistic or zk proof mechanism prevents the sequencer from changing or violating the rules of the application (for example, suddenly issuing a token or NFT collection).
However, centralized sequencers still have risks, so we cannot rely solely on centralized sequencers to solve the problem. It is also important to have the ability to trade based on rollup or directly on L1. So I support the two-part ecosystem to promote these two methods at the same time, and then we can see which method is more suitable for which application.
Maintaining the ability for regular users to send censorship-resistant transactions is of course critical.
Mable (additional comment): Actually, my starting point is that the US regulators may go after them. Of course, the probability of this is not very high.
Vitalik: If this happens, there are two possibilities:
The DAO will select a sequencer and a backup sequencer and will always move to the new sequencer.
We use based rollups
I think the first one is worth studying, and I know some L2 teams have thought about this direction in the past.
The second one is an alternative option. There may also be other reasons why we think based rollups are better and start using based rollups more often.
The advantage of Ethereum is that we can try several directions at the same time.
Q3
Mable:
What are the differences between the technical route of ETH 3.0 and the goals it hopes to achieve in the rollup era? Did the 3.0 design plan announced at Devcon last November take into account that rollups do not really provide actual value to the Ethereum mainnet at this stage?
Vitalik:
There is no such thing as ETH 3.0 right now.
Some would say that Justin Drake’s 5-year plan is it, but that plan is only the consensus layer, not the execution layer, so it is only part of the future of the Ethereum blockchain.
The relationship and balance between L1 and L2 is an execution layer issue. There is another roadmap here: strengthen L1 capabilities (increase gaslimit, add stateless verification (stateless proof, such as Verkle) and other functions, etc.), improve interoperability across L2, improve blobs, etc.
I also think that the question of whether L2 pays enough transaction fees to L1 should not be viewed too short-term. For example:
4844 Before, everyones complaints were the opposite: Is L1 sucking the blood of L2?
Now, the blob fee for the last 30 days is 500 ETH
If the blob target is increased from 3 to 128, according to our plan, if the blob gasprice is the same, 21333 ETH will be burned per month, and 256000 ETH per year.
So the narrative here is prone to changing quickly, and now we need to strengthen L1 so that things that should happen in L1 can happen in L1, increase blobs, and then maintain the adaptability of our community.
Q4
Mable:
In the current state of a hundred flowers blooming in the ecosystem, do you think Ethereum needs to strengthen interoperability (not just asset bridging) to connect various ecosystems and actively connect to external ecosystems through standardized cross-chain protocols (such as ERC-7281)?
Vitalik:
I think our first priority should be to improve the interoperability between Ethereum L2, because there are not too many stakers, and everyone has a lot of common interests, so the process will be much simpler. Then we can expand and do more interoperability between cryptocurrencies, and even involve interoperability between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies.
Ethereum’s organizational problems
Q1
Mable:
I believe you have considered a lot before deciding to step up and lead EF again. This is not an easy decision. It is a courageous leap and gaze into the abyss, which is very admirable. Would you mind sharing your entire thought process with us today?
At the same time, I am curious whether you agree with socialism with Chinese characteristics? The starting point of my question is the proper board mentioned in your discussion with Ameen: before embarking on the right development path, do you think that the organization needs a strong leader to guide and correct the direction?
Vitalik:
I think the blockchain community, and the world as a whole, is in a dangerous state. There are many things happening that have no long-term value, or are even malicious, and these things and the people behind them are getting a lot of attention.
But we cant just shout against these things without proposing a better alternative. So our goal should be to do that alternative well and demonstrate that a stable, brighter future is possible.
Here I am talking about both the blockchain community (if memecoin, which dropped 97% in one day, is not our future, then what is?), and a macro-social aspect: many people now think that democracy is impossible and can only be done by the leadership of a strong man. But at DevCon, a political scientist told me that one of the reasons he respected Ethereum very much was that we are a truly open and decentralized ecosystem, and we have succeeded at this scale, which gives him hope. So if we can succeed in this way, the positive impact on the world may be huge, and it will give many people a bright example of success that they can follow.
But decentralization does not mean doing nothing. The Ethereum Foundations philosophy of subtraction does not mean reducing the foundation to 0, but a way to maintain ecological balance. If there is an imbalance in the ecology in one place (for example, one part of the ecology is too centralized, or there is an important public good that others do not do), we can help counterbalance. After solving this problem, the foundation can withdraw from that area. If an imbalance occurs in a new place, we can move resources there, and so on.
In Chinese culture, the way we pursue may be most similar to the thought of Tao Te Ching, but this path requires wisdom and the ability of the foundation to be improved in some areas. It is not a matter of success by doing nothing. Therefore, in the short term, we need to put more effort into making some important pivots.
Q2
Mable:
I am not part of the core Ethereum community so I am not too clear about some of the more detailed political issues. From your own perspective, what do you think are the main reasons why some ETH Maxis OGs left the Ethereum community? When Shuyao and I were recording a podcast, she mentioned a very interesting point: Ethereum needs to be reset to zero before it can be rebuilt (half-joking). At this stage of Ethereum, do you think it is indeed facing a major reshuffle of existing holders and community members before it can find its own way?
Vitalik:
There are many different people with different stories.
For example, many people in the blockchain community would say 10 years ago that the goal of blockchain is to be a global neutral system, protect individual freedom, and counterbalance government hegemony. Now, if a president issues a memecoin, they would say, wow, this is real-world adoption, so good, but why is it happening on other chains? If we can be more friendly to those politicians, it will happen on our chain next time! I personally think that such people have gone astray. Of course, they will say that I am too purely idealistic, unrealistic, etc. Each side has its own story.
Some people would also say that the Ethereum ecosystem is too controlled by OGs and there is not enough space for newcomers to come in. But this criticism is in another direction, and there are different groups making these arguments.
I think there is only one suitable way for us to get out of these difficulties: we need to have some updated stories to explain why Ethereum exists, what ETH is used for, what L1 and L2 are used for, etc. This is no longer the era of infra (infrastructure), but the era of applications (applications), so these stories cannot be abstract freedom, openness, anti-censorship, solar punk public goods, etc., and some clear application layer answers are needed. In the near future, I plan to support more: info finance (information finance is also the direction of AI + crypto), privacy protection, high-quality public goods financing methods, and continue to do a good job in the worlds open financial platform, which of course must include real world assets. There are many things here that are valuable to many users at the same time and are in line with the values we have always had. We need to support this direction again, and this can also give new people more opportunities to come in.
Q3
Mable:
Do you think Ethereum needs more commercial company-type management? Do you think that the current difference between ETH and SOL is essentially a difference in efficiency between different organizational forms and a difference in achieving different goals? What goals are they achieving?
Vitalik:
I think Ethereum is a decentralized ecosystem, not a company. If Ethereum becomes a company, we will lose most of the meaning of Ethereum’s existence. Being a company is the role of a company.
In fact, there are many large companies in the Ethereum ecosystem: Consensys, various client teams (Nethermind, Nimbus, etc.), Coinbase, L2 teams (including Aztec and Intmax, whose privacy technology is very interesting and underestimated by many people).
The best approach is to find ways to give these companies more opportunities to realize their strengths, with the foundation acting as a coordinator.
Q4
Community Question:
Do all employees of the Ethereum Foundation, including the leadership team, have KPI/OKR or other assessment mechanisms? Non-profit organizations generally have problems with inefficiency. Do you think EF has such problems? If so, how to solve it?
Vitalik:
The Ethereum Foundation has been going through a lot of internal changes in recent months, so any answers I can give now will likely be outdated very quickly.
It might be better to ask again in 6 months.
Decentralized social networking, privacy and governance
Q1
Mable:
You have always been concerned about the application of ZK (zero-knowledge proof) technology in the Web3 field. In addition to the application of ZK in asset trading scenarios, in social media networks, in which scenarios do you think ZK can be introduced to achieve privacy protection?
Vitalik:
There are many non-financial ZK use cases that interest me, such as:
Anti-sybil verification. Many services require you to log in with kyc not because they really want to know who you are, they just want to know that you are not a robot, or that if you are blocked, you cant reopen your account 100,000 times. To implement this use case, you only need ZK proof of personhood, or proof of reputation. In fact, sometimes proof of tokens is also sufficient, such as anonworld.
Use cryptography to protect privacy in AI applications. ZK may not be the most suitable technology here, but FHE may be. FHE has made a lot of progress recently. If we can further reduce the overhead of FHE, we may have a chance.
Wrap any Web2 account with zk-snark and use it in web3. zk-email, anon aadhaar, zkpassport, zktls, etc. are good examples
I think this technology has a lot of opportunities to solve many security, governance and other issues in social and other fields by protecting personal freedom and privacy.
Q2
Mable:
You should be aware of @simondlr Simon de la Rouvieres This Art is Always on Sale Harberger tax experiment (patronage as an asset class). Do you think this type of experiment can lead to new progress in decentralized social networks in the future? Are there any mechanisms you expect to see used in decentralized social experiments?
Vitalik:
Yes, I think decentralized social media is a great opportunity to try out a lot of new mechanisms.
The Harberger tax is one example, others are:
A mechanism similar to community notes
https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/08/16/communitynotes.html…
Creator payouts, similar to twitter and youtube but more fair and transparent. You can try retro funding, deep funding, quadratic funding, etc.
Combining social media and DAO governance
Q3
Mable:
This question comes from Tako founder @EEEEdison 1992 : What do you think about the fact that we, as a group of people in the crypto world, are still highly dependent on centralized social applications such as telegram and twitter for communication and collaboration? Building decentralized social media and real encrypted communication tools does not seem to be so popular and recognized. So far, do their developments meet your expectations? What suggestions do you have for teams exploring and building in this field?
Vitalik:
This is also a question that I am very concerned about. I have been working hard to move most of my conversations from Telegram to Signal in the past two years. But Signal is not perfect either. Although it is confidential, it is still centralized and has no interoperability. You need to log in with a mobile phone number, and the server sees a lot of your metadata, etc.
But it is difficult to make a higher quality instant messaging software. I try Status every year. They try to be completely decentralized. They do a good job, but they still have some reliability issues. In fact, there are various small teams making their own instant messaging software, but they are not united, so it is easy for each one to be not good enough.
I recently started using fileverse to do my various documents. I found that the user experience is good enough, and now many people in the foundation use it. If there is a decentralized, encrypted, etc. instant messaging software that can achieve this quality, I will definitely work hard to help the community move to this instant messaging software.
Q4
You have warned of the complexity of crypto-politics (such as The DAO incident, miner voting disputes), and today the Ethereum Foundation, core developers, L2 team and whale holders have formed an implicit power structure. Do you think protocol-level minimal governance is sufficient to deal with the interest game in future hard forks? When the governance needs of the social layer (such as ENS, Gitcoin) conflict with the protocol layer, is there a constitutional-level coordination principle?
Vitalik:
Is protocol-level minimal governance sufficient to deal with the interest game in future hard forks? I dont think there will be serious problems here. This is because almost all L1 protocol decisions are relatively complex technical decisions, and there are few characteristics of good for application A, bad for application B. Sometimes there is a little, for example, if there is an EIP to add a new EVM function, some projects will use it, and some will not, but these problems are not serious, and we have solved them many times.
Q 5
Web3 is supposed to be an equal space for everyone, but Warpcast introduces ranking and automatic comment/DM collapsing mechanisms that create a clear hierarchy. It has effectively become an exclusive social circle for a few influencers, while ordinary users like me, no matter how valuable their contributions are, cannot get the attention they deserve. What do you think of this growing concentration of attention in Web3 social platforms? Shouldnt we strive for a system driven by ideas rather than social status?
Vitalik:
Making social media algorithms fair and avoiding spam attacks is a difficult problem. The advantage of Farcaster is that there is a network with different clients on the same network. So if a client does not do well, anyone can make their own client and chat with the entire Farcaster network from day one. So I am happy that there are Tako, Firefly, and other clients in the Farcaster ecosystem. It would be even better if they can solve some problems that Warpcast has not solved.
Some of Vitalik’s worldviews
Q1
Are you a communist?
Vitalik:
No. I am not a capitalist either. Both are 20th century ideologies. (These words have been stretched and abused to the point of meaninglessness: remember, in the 1990s, Microsoft called Linux communism:
https://www.theregister.com/2000/07/31/ms_ballmer_linux_is_communism/)
I stand for liberty, global equality of opportunity, benevolence and cooperation, human well-being and progress. These are timeless principles. The question is how to use the tools we have now to realize these values in a 21st century context. I have written at length about the various mechanisms I personally support, but I definitely do not claim to be the sole source of good ideas, and I think figuring out the best approach is a shared project that requires both thought and increasingly real-world experimentation.
Q2
Mable:
Today, AI is accelerating the evolution of technology. You mentioned the concept of d/acc before. Now, does the effective acceleration of the decentralization of technological power meet your expectations? Are you worried about any hidden dangers in this regard? I actually feel a little powerless. I know that Folding Beijing may be a future. From a humanistic perspective, I dont want it to happen, but I think it is getting closer and closer to us.
Vitalik:
An important statement needs to be made here: d/acc is not de-acceleration, it is decentralized defensive acceleration 😛
This is important because there are indeed people in this world who support deacceleration and degrowth, etc., but I think this direction is wrong. In a peaceful world, it will delay the improvement of important medical care and infrastructure and cause more people to get hurt. In todays more dangerous world, if we dont accelerate, we will be eaten by those who are willing to accelerate.
Decentralized technology and defensive technology need to compete with other technologies. If the sword advances rapidly, but the shield does not, the world will become more and more dangerous. If centralized technology advances rapidly, but decentralized technology does not, the world will become more and more centralized. So we need to counterbalance these trends. Blockchain is part of this story, but only part of it. There is also decentralization outside of blockchain (for example, p2p network), software and hardware security (the shield of the digital world), many things in the biological field, and so on.
Q3
Mable:
This question comes from @LeotheHorseman : How do you understand the role of Crypto as an anti-establishment infrastructure in achieving Degen Communism? Do you think that the current Memecoin (I am referring more to the rapid launch on Solana) is a beneficial chaos for the realization of Degen Communism? (This term comes from your blog) I didnt find the anonymous function, so I just released it directly. At the same time, I strongly recommend you to play Disco Elysium, I believe you will like it.
Vitalik:
Chaos is not necessarily beneficial or bad, it depends on the situation. The interesting question is, how can we make the rules of the game so that the chaos naturally produced by the community has a good effect?
For example, civil wars in countries have bad effects, unless they are to get rid of malicious tyranny. However, market chaos often has good effects, eliminating old and inefficient companies and giving new companies opportunities. However, sometimes the market can also lead to the problems we see in the blockchain community. So this is actually very complicated.
So how can we make better rules?
I think the current memecoin is far from ideal. I wrote this article last year to see if there is a better direction:
https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/03/29/memecoins.html…
Q4
Mable:
Have you ever been frustrated or disappointed with EF, the community, or the industry in the past year? Looking back on this year, what are some things that have disappointed or even frustrated you? Have you ever thought about taking a break?
Vitalik:
Of course. Probably the most disappointing thing for me recently was when someone said that Ethereum is bad and intolerant because we don’t respect the “casinos” on the blockchain enough and other chains are happy to accept any application, so they are better. If the blockchain community has this kind of moral reversal, I have no interest in participating in the blockchain.
But I found an interesting point: on the Internet, many people will say those things, but when I personally chat with the community, everyones values are still the same as before, so I feel that I have a responsibility to this community and cannot abandon them. We Ethereum need to work together to create the world we want to see. This will require some changes, such as the foundation may not be too neutral at the application layer and need to specifically support some things, but this project is worth doing.
Q 5
Mable:
Ive heard from people in the Milady community that you might have chosen Milady for some reason, but Im still curious how you would explain your identification with Milady?
Vitalik:
I think milady attracts a lot of people because this internet community does two things at the same time:
Not boring
Not malicious
If you look at the circles in the mainstream world today, you will find that it is difficult to achieve both conditions at the same time. Milady is one of the most successful examples.
Q6
When I first entered the circle, I read a book you wrote, Ideal: The Blockchain Genesis of Ethereum, the preface of which was written by your father David. You were only 25 years old at the time, and I could feel from the words that you got along well with your father. It has been fourteen years since you started to get involved in Bitcoin. How have the drastic fluctuations in the cryptocurrency industry and the pressure of work affected your relationship with your family?
Vitalik:
My father and mother bought ETH from the beginning, and they have been paying attention to and supporting me. Before the birth of Ethereum, they bought me a lot of materials so that I could learn more about code. My fathers second wife also supported me a lot. I have always admired them.
Q7
I have seen the term Bronze Age mindset many times. As a Chinese reader of Vitalik, I dont quite understand the meaning of this term. I wonder how Vitalik will explain Bronze Age mindset to Chinese readers.
Vitalik:
Bronze Age mindset is a book written in 2018. The general topic is: opposing the concept of equality between people, opposing rational thinking, thinking that kindness is fragile, and promoting an extreme male perception. You can read the book yourself (or copy the content into a robot to let it summarize):
https://kyl.neocities.org/books/[SOC BRO] bronze age mindset.pdf
I think this book represents a value that has become stronger recently in the Western world, but I am very opposed to this value, because in my eyes, the worst things that humans have done are caused by people with this value. So I see that many people in the US Bitcoin community, technology industry, etc. have begun to raise this idea, and I am very worried recently.
