Vitalik Tako Community Text AMA Interview Full Text

Source: Twitter @TakoProtocol

Thank you for your attention to the @VitalikButerin Chinese text interview that just ended on the Tako client!Vitalik answered Mable and the community questions with great care throughout the AMA event.We have sorted out all AMA content based on the topics discussed.

Topics include:

• The Past and Future of Ethereum

• About Layer 2 Network

• Ethereum organizational issues

• Decentralized social, privacy and governance

• Some of Vitalik’s worldviews

At the same time, I would like to thank @Mable_Jiang and @BlockBeatsAsia for their strong support throughout this AMA!

The Past and Future of Ethereum

Question 1

Mable:

I want to ask a cliché question, but I think it makes sense to ask again in February 2025.

In your mind, should Ethereum today be closer to the existence of Bitcoin or the existence of world computers?

You mentioned in previous X post that many people who have negative views on ETH are actually just short-term speculators, and their frustrations can hardly bring any constructive help to the ETH community.However, in many OG ETH-Maxi camps, there are also many people who are promoting the concept of “ETH is money” with high profile (such as Bankless as ETH Maxis Ethereum’s biggest media), and compared ETH with BTC, believing it is anothera competitive digital currency form (or perhaps even a better currency form).

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 distinguish which blockchains are “really decentralized”, you can use a relatively simple test: If its foundation disappears, can the chain survive?I feel that only Bitcoin and Ethereum can answer clearly: Of course, it can. Most of Ethereum development is a foundation, and the client teams have independent business models. Now many researchers are not in the foundation, except for devconAlmost all activities outside are independent

It is difficult to reach this stage.Ethereum was not like this 5 years ago.

Giving up these advantages in order to pursue TPS (throughput) is a big mistake, because there are always new links coming out, and suddenly there are higher TPS than you.But decentralization and resilience are precious, and few blockchains have it.

These characteristics are conducive to making a digital currency with long-term value and also to having good world computers.But world computers also need to solve the scaling problem.”World Computer” does not mean “computers that can support each application in the world at the same time”, but “where the applications of the world can operate with each other”.High performance computing can be placed in L2, this is OK.However, this role still needs L1 to have sufficient scale. For specific details, you can see an article I wrote recently:

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/02/14/l1scaling.html

ETH is a digital asset suitable for the world’s applications (including finance, and other things, such as ENS, etc.).ETH also does not require every transaction to be placed in L1, but it requires sufficient throughput to allow anyone who wants to use L1 at least occasionally.

So these two directions are also compatible: the characteristics of helping Ethereum achieve a better world of computers are also the characteristics of making ETH a better digital currency.

Question 2

Mable:

Encourage more developers to join Ethereum, incentivize and retain existing developers (ethereum will definitely have a more complex situation compared to some new L1 or even L2 developers’ incentives), which will be the current priority.Level?

Accelerate network decentralization, improve scalability, and explore more application scenarios. In these three aspects, which one do you think is the highest priority of Ethereum?

Vitalik:

Here we actually need to find a way to solve three problems at the same time:

Attract more developers

The applications that developers are encouraged to develop are more open source, safe, comply with public standards, have long-term value, etc.

In the process of solving (2), avoid the situation where the ecology becomes a closed circle (the phenomenon of “we are on the front because we are good friends of developers”)

So I recently said that Ethereum alignment should be a technical game, not a social game.

I think the problem of robbers is because I think in the aspect of decentralization, the most urgent centralization problem is often not the problem of L1, but the problem of L2, wallet or application.So the entire ecosystem needs to work together to expand and attract new developers and advance in these decentralized and trustless aspects.

There are several ways we can help with this:

Education makes it easier for developers to know why blockchain is, what should be on the chain, what should not be on the chain, what needs to be cared about in the field of blockchain, etc.

If some blockchain-specific technologies are too difficult for application developers, the foundation can do it themselves, so that developers can combine it more easily.For example, zk’s programming language, a16z’s helios, etc.

Give developers clear standards.For example, if you are working on Ethereum clients and have many tests, you can run tests by yourself to see if your client can pass.If you do L2, there are frameworks such as l2beat’s stage 1, stage 2, etc.This should also be given to zk applications, wallets, etc.

Question 3

@Anon_tako:

What do you think Ethereum’s success should ultimately be measured by—is it a technological breakthrough, the breadth of user adoption, or its impact on social equality and power distribution?

Vitalik:

The breadth of users adopt is the most important now.Technical breakthroughs have already been made: zero-knowledge proof, consensus algorithm, virtual machines, etc.User adoption has already existed, but the most attention is those memecoins that fell 97% in one day (I don’t object to all memecoins here, I’m an early buyer of DOGE anyway, but this one is a completely different type now).

I think the application we need should pass 3 tests:

Can you imagine yourself or someone you know is actually willing to use it?That is to say, the difference between theoretically interesting (decentralized uber! great!) and actually useful

Can you make money?If you can’t make money, it will be difficult to achieve the highest standard of quality for the application

If you are not a user or an investor, would you be happy to know that this thing exists?That is, is there any real value to the world

At the same time, all three are difficult to pass, and there may be only payment and store of value applications, which are possible to predict the market, and now it has passed.We need to add 10 more successful examples.

Question 4

@Anon_tako:

It is said that one of the reasons for launching Beacon Chain is because of Casper shards.In my personal opinion, the decision to create Beacon Chain is one of the most important moments in Ethereum’s history.However, events that look like DAO forks or Shanghai attacks have gained more attention instead.(It may also be that I haven’t seen any discussion, if there is any, please provide a link) Want to ask Vitalik:

When did Beacon Chain’s decision be made?Is it 2018?

What was the situation at that time?Is this a unanimous decision or is it a controversy?

Have you ever seriously considered upgrading eth1 to PoS instead of creating a new Beacon Chain?

Vitalik:

My feeling is that after the DAO split, few people in the Ethereum community opposed moving to PoS, and everyone thinks this is already a decision.At first there were more people who were very opposed to PoS, but opposing PoS was highly correlated with opposing DAO bifurcation, so most of them moved to ETC after DAO bifurcation.After 2016, at least in the core developer group, I have not heard any core developers suggest that we should cancel and make permanent PoW chains.

The decision to make Beacon chain is because we believe that we are making a brand new consensus algorithm. Before Ethereum moves to this consensus algorithm, we should give it a chance to run for a while to ensure there are no obvious loopholes or problems.So we decided to make the PoS chain an independent chain, let it run by itself first, and then merge this chain with the existing Ethereum to reduce risks.This decision was made around the summer of 2018. We also thought about other roadmaps, such as PoW -> hybrid PoS -> PoS, and finally we decided to start a separate Beacon chain first, which is simpler and safer.

Question 5

@Anon_tako:

Today, Vitalik has grown golden claws and silver scales, and has changed from a dragon-slaying boy to a dragon.During the Ethereum mining period, it was still a democratic consensus, but now V’s management system is an authoritarian and authoritarian management model.After transferring to POS, it became a system of people’s congress, and suspected that he had secretly joined the party behind everyone’s back?

Vitalik:

PoW can only be democratic in the short term.Because there is always economies of scale, larger miners are more efficient, so they will become more and more centralized over a long period of time.

I think it is very likely that our PoS did not have ASIC before because everyone knows that we have plans to move to PoS, so no one has made ASIC.If we declare from the first day that we are always PoW, it is possible that ASIC will come out between 2016 and 19 unless we have been doing bifurcation and modification algorithm every year, but this is also centralized

So I think our method, using PoW for 7 years to do 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 is economies of scale, which may be 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 are placed in the next bifurcation, etc.If we use PoS to make this decision, it will be too rich.

Question 6

Community Questions:

Can you tell me in detail about how to accelerate the development of Ethereum from all aspects?Eth has been updated once a year for ten years, and it feels that the development progress is very slow and needs to be greatly accelerated.eth/acc

Vitalik:

The main goal now is to increase the number of blobs, here are:

pectra, improve blob target from 3 to 6

fusaka, add peerdas, and then increase blob target

Continue to optimize peerdas in 2026 and 2027

Add 2D data availability sampling, and then improve blob target

There is also a roadmap for improving L1 gas limit, but this is more complex, such as delayed execution, statelessness, etc.

Question 7

Mable:

EIP-1559 Do you think the ideal dynamic balance design is currently achieved?What do you think about the proposals/thoughts for slashing Ethereum network inflation in the community and the goals you hope to achieve?

Vitalik:

I think EIP-1559 is misunderstood by many people.The main goal is not to consume Ether, but to improve market efficiency.Before EIP-1559, you sent a transaction and sometimes you had to wait 1-15 minutes for the transaction to be confirmed. Now the transaction will be confirmed almost every time within 1-2 blocks.

This mechanism has been completely successful, so we are now thinking about some optimizations, such as multidimensional gas (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7706), and this mechanism https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1889013890291318838

Question 8

@Anon_tako:

In the Web3 ecosystem, some projects implement large incentive plans, such as the “Odyssey” task, to attract a large number of users.Projects like Bera Chain and Story Protocol have been underway for quite a long time in testnet activities recently, and it seems that hundreds of thousands or even millions of users are involved.However, after the token is launched, the actual active users have decreased significantly, usually less than a thousand.This difference is worrying: How many users are actually involved, not just for the sake of incentives?At the same time, this may also lead to the project party’s statistical data misleading conclusions.Given your emphasis on decentralization and real community building, how do you view such practices?Do you think that simply pursuing a huge number of users—regardless of whether these users are truly active—is in line with the essential spirit of Web3?Or, the project should focus more 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, sometimes it fails and sometimes it succeeds.For Ethereum, first, our resources are not enough to support the scale of Ethereum to implement this plan.Second, we are mainly concerned about not only users, but developers.Third, it is very important to what kind of developers we attract.So I think using community-based developers to attract them, and you can sponsor some specific areas when you need them.But it’s better to rely too much on this.

About Layer 2 Network

Question 1

Mable:

Today, there have been many L2s, mainly OP stack, and some attempts to zkrollup are also made.I really hope to hear your evaluation of the rollups route in the past few years, and I hope to review it objectively as much as possible:

Where do you think you are doing better and what is different from what you expected back then;

Is rollups generally good for Ethereum or blood sucking (I saw you calling for these L2 rewards 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 don’t think anyone has clearly defined which transactions should be in L1 and which transactions should be in L2.

The answer “Everything is put in L2” is difficult to accept because:

• This easily loses the medium of exchange, store of value and other positions of ETH.If you are worried that L2 steals L1 users and don’t give L1 any rewards, this problem will be even more serious in a situation where “L1 does almost nothing”

• The operation across L2 still requires L1. If there is a problem with one L2, the user still needs to have a way to move to another L2 by himself. So there are some use cases that are difficult to avoid. I have written an article on this topic here:

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/02/14/l1scaling.html

The answer “Everything is put in L1” is also difficult to accept because:

• If L1 supports many transactions, it is easy to change centralization, that is, using technologies such as ZK-EVM and others

• The world’s demand for on-chain transactions is unlimited. No matter how high the TPS is, you can always find that an application requires 10 times more TPS (such as artificial intelligence, small payments, small prediction markets, etc.)

• L2 not only does capacity expansion, L2 can also provide faster confirmation speed through preconfirmations, and also avoid MEV problems through sequencers.

So we need hybrid L1 + L2.

I think the role of L2 will continue to change. For example, now it seems that evm-equivalent L2 is enough. It is possible that we will see more privacy-oriented L2 (Aztec, Intmax, etc.), and there may be more application-specificL2 (If an app wants to control its own MEV situation, there are benefits here, 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, and promote interoperability across L2, and then the market will decide which capacity expansion method is suitable for which application.

Question 2

Mable:

The rollup route has been proposed for quite some time. Do you think that Arbitrum/Base/OP’s current centralized sequencer is a relatively big challenge for future supervision because it cannot truly resist censorship?Do you think they will move towards a decentralized sequencer solution?If your answer to the previous question is yes, then what do you think of MegaETH’s centralized sequencer solution?

Vitalik:

A centralized sequencer actually has many advantages:

• Centralized sequencers can ensure that users’ money will not be stealed by snatching and so on.

• Instant pre-confirmations

• It is easy to turn a traditional application into a blockchain application because the server directly becomes a sequencer

The decentralized features of blockchain can be used to avoid the risk of centralized sequencers: the forced inclusion mechanism does not allow the sequencer to centrally review users, and the optimistic or zk proof mechanism does not allow the sequencer to change or violate the rules used for reactions (For example, suddenly issue one token or NFT collection).

However, centralized sequencers still have risks, so we cannot completely rely on centralized sequencers to solve problems. It is also important to have the ability to trade based rollup or directly on L1.So I support the two parts of the ecosystem that pushes these two methods at the same time, and then we can see which method is more suitable for which application.

It is of course crucial to maintain the ability of ordinary users to issue transactions that resist censorship.

Mable (supplementary comment): Actually, my starting point is that the US regulatory authorities may go after them. Of course, the probability may not be very high.

Vitalik: If this happens, there are two possibilities:

1. DAO will select the sequencer and the backup sequencer, and will continue to move to the new sequencer.

2. We use based rollups

I think the first one is worth studying. I know some L2 teams think about this past direction.

The second is an alternative option, and there may be other reasons why we think based rollups are better, so we can start using based rollups more directly.

The advantage of Ethereum is that we can try several directions at the same time.

Question 3

Mable:

What is the difference between the technical route of ETH 3.0 and the goals that I hope to achieve and the goals that I hope to achieve in the rollup era?Did the 3.0 design plan released by Devcon in November last year take into account that rollup does not really provide actual value to the Ethereum main network at this stage?

Vitalik:

There is nothing called ETH 3.0 now

Some people would say that justin drake’s 5-year plan is, but that plan is just a consensus layer, not an execution layer, so it is just a part of the future of Ethereum blockchain.

The relationship and balance between L1 and L2 is an execution layer problem.Here is another roadmap: strengthening L1’s capabilities (improving gaslimit, adding stateless verification (stateless proof, such as verkle) and other functions, etc.), improving interoperability across L2, improving blobs, etc.

I also think that the question of whether L2 pays enough transaction fees for L1 cannot be viewed too from a short-term perspective.for example:

• Before 4844, everyone’s complaints were the opposite: Does L1 suck the blood of L2?

• Now, the blob fee for the last 30 days is 500 ETH

• If the blob target increases from 3 to 128, according to our plan, if the blob gaprice is the same, it will burn 21333 ETH per month and 256000 ETH per year.

So the narrative here is easy to change quickly. Now we need to strengthen L1 so that what should happen in L1 can happen in L1, increase blobs, and then maintain the adaptability of our community.

Question 4

Mable:

In the current state of “a hundred flowers blooming”, do you think Ethereum needs to strengthen interoperability (not just asset bridging) to connect various ecology and actively connect to external ecology through standardized cross-chain protocols (such as ERC-7281)?

Vitalik:

I think our first priority should be to improve interoperability between Ethereum L2, because there are not many stakeholders and everyone has many common interests, so the process will be much simpler.It can then be expanded to do more interoperability between cryptocurrencies and even involve interoperability between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies.

Ethereum organizational issues

Question 1

Mable:

You decided to step up to lead EF again. I believe that after a lot of considerations, this is a very difficult decision. It is a courage to leap in love and stare into the abyss, which is very admirable.Do you mind sharing your entire thinking process with us today?

At the same time, I am curious whether you agree with socialism with Chinese characteristics?My starting point for this question is to address the “proper board” mentioned in your discussion with Ameen: Do you think the organization needs strong leaders to guide and correct the direction before stepping on the right path?

Vitalik:

I think the blockchain community and the entire world are in a relatively dangerous state.There are many things that have no long-term value or even maliciousness that are happening, and these feelings and the people behind them have received a lot of attention.

But we can’t just shout against these things and then not mention better alternatives.So our goal should be to make this alternative and demonstrate that a stable, brighter future is possible.

Here I also talk about the blockchain circle (if memecoin, which has a 97% drop in one day, is not our future, then what is it?), and a macro-social aspect: many people now think that democratic methods are impossible, they can only rely onThe leader of strong man does things.But a political scientist at devcon told me that one of the reasons why he respects Ethereum very much is that we are a truly open and decentralized ecosystem. We have succeeded at this scale so far, which gives him hope.So if we can succeed in this way, the positive impact on the world may be great, and it will give many people a bright example of success that they can follow.

But “decentralization” does not mean “doing nothing”.The Ethereum Foundation’s philosophy of subtraction does not mean “reduce the foundation to 0”, but a way to maintain ecological balance.If there is an imbalance in a place of ecology (e.g., part of the ecology is too centralized, or there is an important public item that others do not do), we can help counterbalance.Once this problem is solved, the foundation can retreat from that area.If there is an imbalance in a new place, we can move resources there, etc.

In Chinese culture, the way we pursue may be the most similar to the ideas of the Tao Te Ching, but taking this path requires cleverness and the foundation’s ability needs to be improved in some places. It is not a problem of “success if you do nothing”.Therefore, in the short term, we need to put more efforts to do some important pivots.

Question 2

Mable:

I am not a core Ethereum circle, so I am not very clear about some more detailed political issues.From your own perspective, what are the main reasons why some of the 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 zeroed before it can be rebuilt (half-joking).At this stage, do you think Ethereum is indeed facing a major reshuffle of existing holders and community members in order to find its own path?

Vitalik:

There are many different people who have different stories.

For example, many people in the blockchain circle would say 10 years ago that the goal of blockchain is to build a global neutral system to protect personal 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 happens on other chains, if we can be a little more friendly to those politicians, it will happen on our chain next time!I personally think that this kind of person has gone astray.Of course they would say, I’m too purely idealistic, unrealistic, etc.Each side has its own story.

Some people will also say that the Ethereum ecosystem is too OG-controlled and there is not enough space for new people to come in.But this criticism direction is another direction, and there are different groups that issue these arguments.

I think there is only one suitable way to get out of these dilemmas: we need to have some updated stories to explain why Ethereum is, what does ETH do, what does L1 and L2 do, etc.Now is no longer the era of infra, but applications, so these stories cannot be abstract “free, open, anti-censored, sun-punk public goods, etc.”, and require some clear application layer (the answer to the application layer.I plan to support more info finance (“Information Finance” is also the direction of AI + crypto), protecting privacy, high-quality financing methods for public goods, and continuing to do a good job in the world’s open financial platform. Of course, this must beIncludes real world assets.There are many things here that are valuable to many users and conform to the values ​​we have always had. We need to re-support this direction, and we can also give new people more opportunities to come in.

Question 3

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 goals?What are the goals to achieve?

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.Building a company is the role of the company.

In fact, there are many big companies in the Ethereum ecosystem: Consensys, various client teams (Nethermind, Nimbus, etc.), Coinbase, and L2 teams (including Aztec and Intmax, their privacy technology is very interesting and underestimated by many people).

The best way is to find ways to give these companies more opportunities to realize the advantages of the company, and the foundation serves as a coordination role.

Question 4

Community Questions:

Does all employees of the Ethereum Foundation, including the leadership team, have KPI/OKR and other assessment mechanisms?Non-profit organizations generally have inefficiency problems. Do you think there is such a problem with EF?If so, how to solve it?

Vitalik:

The Ethereum Foundation has started a lot of internal reforms in recent months, so any answer I can give now will be outdated soon (outdated)

This may be better and ask again after 6 months.

Decentralized social, privacy and governance

Question 1

Mable:

You have always been paying attention to the application of ZK (zero knowledge proof) technology in the Web3 field. In addition to the ZK application in asset trading scenarios, in social media networks, what scenarios do you think can be introduced to ZK to achieve privacy protection?

Vitalik:

I’m very interested in many non-financial ZK use cases, such as:

• Anti-witch attack verification.Many services require you to log in with kyc not because they are very much like knowing who you are, they just want to know that you are not a bot, or if you are blocked, you can’t reopen an account 100,000 times.To implement this use case, only ZK proof of personhood, or proof of reputation, is required. In fact, sometimes proof of tokens is sufficient, such as anonworld.

• Use cryptography to protect privacy AI applications.Here zk is not necessarily the most suitable technology. FHE may be, and FHE has also made a lot of progress recently. If we can reduce FHE’s overhead, there may be a chance.

• Pack any Web2 account with zk-snark and use it in web3.zk-email, anon aadhaar, zkpassport, zktls, etc are good examples

I feel this technology has many opportunities to solve many social and other areas of security, governance and other issues by protecting personal freedom and privacy.

Question 2

Mable:

You should know the “This Art is Always on Sale” Hamberg tax experiment (sponge as an asset class) done by @simondlrSimon de la Rouviere, which you think can be used in the futureIs there any new progress on centralized social networks?Is there any mechanism you expect to see to be used to experiment on decentralized social networking?

Vitalik:

Yes, I think decentralized social media is a great opportunity to try a lot of new mechanisms.

The harberger tax is an example, and some other examples are:

• Mechanisms 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 foundation, deep foundation, quadratic foundation, etc.

• Governance in combination with social media and DAO

Question 3

Mable:

This question comes from Tako founder@EEEEdison1992: 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, their development is still in line with your expectations?What advice do you have for the teams exploring and building in this field?

Vitalik:

This is also a question I am very concerned about.I have personally been working hard to move most of my conversations from telegram to signal in the past two years. However, signal is also imperfect. Although it is confidential, it is still centralized and has no interoperability. You need to log in with a mobile phone number and watch the server.To your many metadata, etc.

But it is difficult to make a higher quality instant messaging software.I try Status every year and they try to do it completely decentralized, they do it well, but they still have some reliability issues.In fact, there are various small teams that make their own instant messaging software now, but they are not united, so it is easy for each one to be not good enough.

I recently started using fileverse to do various documents for me, and I found that the user experience of this is good enough, and now there are many people who use it.If there are decentralized, encryption and other instant messaging software that can achieve this quality, I will definitely work hard to help the community move to this instant messaging software.

Question 4

@Anon_tako:

You have warned about the complexity of “crypto politics” (such as The DAO incident, miner voting disputes), and today the Ethereum Foundation, core developers, L2 teams and giant whale holders have formed an implicit power structure.Do you think “protocol-level minimization governance” is enough to deal with the game of interest in future hard forks?When the governance needs of social levels (such as ENS and Gitcoin) conflict with the protocol level, are there “constitutional” coordination principles?

Vitalik:

Is “protocol-level minimization governance” enough to deal with the game of interest in future hard forks? I don’t think there will be any serious problems here.This is because almost all decisions of L1 protocols are relatively complex technical decisions, and there are few characteristics of “good for application A and bad for application B”.Sometimes there is a point, for example, if there is EIP plus a new EVM function, some projects will be used, and some will not be used, but these problems are not serious, and we have solved them many times.

Question 5

@Anon_tako:

Web3 should be a space where everyone is equal, however Warpcast introduces ranking and automatic comment/private message folding mechanisms that create a clear hierarchical structure.It has actually become an exclusive social circle for a few influencers, and ordinary users like me, no matter how valuable their contributions are, cannot get the attention they deserve.How do you view this growing concentration of attention in Web3 social platforms?Shouldn’t we pursue a system driven by thought rather than social status?

Vitalik:

It is difficult to do social media algorithms while being fair and avoiding spam attacks.The advantage of Farcaster is that there is a network with different clients all on the same network.So if a client is not doing well, anyone can be their own client and chat with the entire Farcaster web from the first day.So I’m happy with Tako, Firefly, and other clients in the Farcaster ecosystem. It would be better if they could solve some problems that Warpcast didn’t solve.

Some of Vitalik’s worldviews

Question 1

@Anon_tako:

Are you a communist?

Vitalik:

no.I’m not a capitalist either.Both are ideologies of the 20th century.(These words have been extended 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 support freedom, global equality of opportunity, kindness and cooperation, human well-being and progress.These are eternal principles.The question is how to use our existing tools to realize these values ​​in the context of the 21st century.I’ve written in detail about the various mechanisms I personally support, but I definitely don’t think I’m the only source of good ideas, I think finding the best way is a common project that requires both thinking and becoming more realistic.world experiment.

Question 2

Mable:

Today, when AI accelerates the evolution and development of technology, you mentioned the concept of d/acc before. Now it seems that whether the effective acceleration process of decentralized/decentralized technology rights meets your expectations?Do you have any hidden dangers in this regard?I actually feel a little powerless, that is, I know that “Beijing Fold” may be a future. From a humanistic perspective, I don’t want it to happen, but I think it is getting closer and closer to us.

Vitalik:

Here we need to make an important statement: d/acc is not de-acceleration, but decentralized defensive acceleration.

This is important because there are indeed people in this world who support deceleration and degrowth, etc., but I think this direction is wrong, and in a peaceful world, it will delay important medical and infrastructure.Improvements hurt more people. In the more dangerous world today, if they do not accelerate, they will be eaten by people willing to accelerate.

Decentralized and defensive technologies need to compete with other technologies.If the sword progresses rapidly but the shield does not progress, the world will become more and more dangerous.If centralized technology advances rapidly but decentralized technology does not advance, the world will become increasingly centralized.So we need counterbalance these trends.Blockchain is part of this story, but it is only part of it, there is also decentralization outside of blockchain (such as p2p network), software and hardware security (the “shield” of the digital world), and biologicalMany things in the field, etc.

Question 3

Mable:

This question comes from @LeotheHorseman: How do you understand the role of Crypto as an anti-establishment infrastructure in implementing Degen Communism?Do you think the current Memecoin (I mean more of the fast launch above Solana) is a “helpful confusion” for realizing Degencomeism?(This word comes from your blog) If you don’t find anonymous function, just post it directly. At the same time, you are highly recommended to play “Disco Elysium”, I believe you will like it.

Vitalik:

Chaos is not necessarily beneficial or bad, it depends on the situation here.The interesting question is, how can we do “the rules of the game” and lead to good results in the chaos of natural production in the community?

For example, a national civil war has a bad effect unless it is to get rid of malicious tyranny.But market chaos often has good results, eliminating old and inefficient companies and giving new companies opportunities recently, but sometimes the market can also lead to problems we see in the blockchain circle.So this is actually very complicated.

So how can we make better rules?

I think memecoin is far away from ideals now.I wrote this article last year to see if there is any better direction:

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/03/29/memecoins.html

Question 4

Mable:

Have you ever been frustrated and disappointed with EF, community, and industry in the past year?Looking back on what happened this year that disappointed you or even frustrated?Have you ever thought about taking a break?

Vitalik:

Of course.Perhaps the most disappointing thing I recently was that some people say that Ethereum is not good and intolerant because we do not respect the “casino” on the blockchain enough, and other chains are willing to accept any application, so they are better.If the blockchain community has such moral inversion, I will have no interest in participating in blockchain.

But I found an interesting point: on the Internet, many people can say those things, but when I personally chat with the community, everyone’s values ​​are still the same as before, so I think I have a responsibility to this community and cannot abandon it.They, 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 level and needs to support some things specifically, but this project is worth doing.

Question 5

Mable:

I have heard from people in the Milady community say why you chose Milady for why, but I am still curious how you will explain your sense of identity with Milady?

Vitalik:

I think milady can attract many people because this Internet community does two things at the same time:

1. Not boring

2. Not malicious

If you look at the circles in the mainstream world now, you will find that it is difficult to achieve these two conditions at the same time. Milady is one of the most successful examples.

Question 6

@Anon_tako:

When I first entered the circle, I read a book you wrote, “Ideal: Ethereum’s Blockchain Genesis”, which was written by his father David. You were only 25 years old at that time, and you could feel that you and your father were with each other from the lines.Very good.It has been fourteen years since you started to get involved in Bitcoin. How have the drastic volatility in the cryptocurrency industry and the pressure on work affected your relationship with your family?

Vitalik:

My dad and my mom bought ETH from the beginning and they have been following and supporting me.Before Ethereum was born, I bought a lot of information for me to learn more code.My dad’s second wife also supported me a lot.I have always admired them.

Question 7

@Anon_tako:

I have seen the word “Bronze Age mindset” many times. As a Chinese reader of Vitalik, I am not able to get the meaning of this word.I’m curious about 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 thought, feeling kindness is fragile, and promoting an extreme male perception.You can read the book yourself (or copy the content into a robot and let it summarize):

https://kyl.neocities.org/books/[SOC BRO] bronze age mindset.pdf

I think this book represents a relatively strong value in the Western world recently, but I object to this value because in my eyes, the worst things that humans have done are created by people with this value.So I see that many people in the US Bitcoin community, technology industry, etc. have begun to come up with this idea, and have been worried recently.