Vitalik Tako Community Text AMA Interview Full Text

Source: Twitter @TakoProtocol

Thank you for your attention to the Chinese text interview with @VitalikButerin that just ended on the Tako client! Vitalik answered questions from Mable and the community very attentively throughout the AMA event. We have categorized and organized all the AMA content according to the topics discussed.

Topics include:

• The past and future of Ethereum

• About the second-layer network

• Organizational issues of Ethereum

• Decentralized social, privacy and governance

• Some of Vitalik’s worldviews

Also, thanks again to @Mable_Jiang and @BlockBeatsAsia for their strong support for this AMA throughout!

The Past and Future of Ethereum

Question 1

Mable: I want to ask a commonplace question, but I think it is very meaningful to ask it again in February 2025.

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

You mentioned in your previous X post that many people who hold a negative view of ETH are actually short-term speculators, and their frustration can hardly bring any constructive help to the ETH community. However, in the OG ETH-Maxi camp, there are also many people who 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 distinguish which blockchains are "truly decentralized", you can use a relatively simple test: If his foundation disappears, can the chain survive? I feel that only Bitcoin and Ethereum can give a clear answer: Of course. Most of the development of Ethereum 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.

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

It is a big mistake to give up these advantages in pursuit of TPS (throughput), because there will always be new chains coming out, and suddenly there will be higher TPS than you. But decentralization and resilience are precious, and few blockchains have them.

These characteristics are conducive to making a digital currency with long-term value, and also conducive to having a good world computer. But the world computer also needs to solve the expansion problem. "World computer" does not mean "a computer that can support every application in the world at the same time", but "a place where the world's applications can interoperate with each other". High-performance computing can be placed in L2, which is no problem. But this role still requires L1 to be large enough, and the specific details can be found in an article I wrote recently:

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

ETH is a digital asset suitable for use between world applications (including finance, and other things, such as 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 L1 at least occasionally.

So these two directions are also compatible here: the characteristics that help Ethereum become a better world computer are also the characteristics that make ETH a better digital currency.

Question 2

Mable:

Is it the current priority to encourage more developers to join Ethereum, motivate and retain existing developers (compared to some new L1 or even L2 with relatively generous developer incentives, Ethereum is definitely in a more complicated situation)?

Accelerate network decentralization, improve scalability, and explore 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 more open source, secure, compliant with public standards, have long-term value, etc.

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

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 the problem of L1, but the problem of L2 or wallet or application. 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 achieve this:

Education, so that developers can more easily understand why blockchain is, what should be on the chain, what should not be on the chain, what to care about in the field of blockchain, etc.

If some blockchain-specific technical parts are too difficult for application developers, the foundation can do it itself, so that developers can more easily integrate. For example, zk programming language, and a16z's 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 doing L2, there are l2beat stage 1, stage 2 and other frameworks. This should also be given to zk applications, wallets, etc.

Question 3

@Anon_tako:

What do you think should ultimately be used to measure the success of Ethereum - is it the technological breakthrough, the breadth of user adoption, or its impact on social equality and power distribution?

Vitalik:

The breadth of user adoption is the most important right now. The technological breakthroughs have been there: zero-knowledge proofs, consensus algorithms, virtual machines, etc. User adoption has been there, but the adoption that has received the most attention is the memecoin that fell 97% in one day (I am not against all memecoins here, I was an early buyer of DOGE anyway, but this one is a completely different type).

I think we need apps that pass three 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 actually works

Can it make money? If it doesn’t make money, it’s hard to make the app the highest quality

If you’re 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

It’s hard to pass all three at the same time, probably only payment and value storage applications, which may predict the market, have passed now. We need 10 more successful examples.

Question 4

@Anon_tako:

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 Ethereum's history. 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 decision on Beacon Chain made? Was it in 2018?

What was the situation at that time? Was it a unanimous decision, or was there controversy?

Was there any serious consideration at that time to upgrade eth1 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 the move to PoS, and everyone thought that this was already decided. At the beginning, there were more people who were very opposed to PoS, 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 did not hear any core developer suggest that we should cancel and make a permanent PoW chain.

The decision to make the Beacon chain is because we believe that before we move to a brand new consensus algorithm, Ethereum 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 in the summer of 2018. We had also considered other roadmaps, such as PoW -> hybrid PoS -> PoS. In the end, we decided to open an independent Beacon chain first, which is simpler and safer.

Question 5

@Anon_tako:

Today, Vitalik has grown golden claws and silver scales, and has turned from a dragon slayer into a dragon. During the Ethereum mining period, it was still a democratic consensus, but now V's management system is a dictatorial and authoritarian management model. After switching to POS, it has become a people's congress system. I suspect he secretly joined the party behind everyone's back?

Vitalik:

PoW can only be democratic in the short term. Because there are always economies of scale, and larger miners are more efficient, 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 that we planned to move to PoS, so no one made ASICs. If we declared from the first day that we would always use PoW, it is likely that ASICs would come out between 2016 and 2019, unless we kept forking and changing the algorithm every year, but this would also be centralized.

So I think our method, 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 in the next fork, etc. If we use PoS to make such a decision, it would indeed be too plutocratic.

Question 6

Community Question:

Can you systematically explain in detail how to accelerate the development of Ethereum from all aspects? Eth has been around for ten years, and it is updated once a year. 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, increase blob target from 3 to 6

fusaka, add peerdas, increase blob target again

Continue to optimize peerdas in 2026 and 2027

Add 2D data availability sampling, increase blob target again

There is also a roadmap to increase the L1 gas limit, but this is more complicated, such as delayed execution, statelessness, etc.

Question 7

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 the inflation of the Ethereum network 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 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 was 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 will 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 have dropped significantly, usually less than a thousand people. This discrepancy is worrisome: how many users are actually participating, rather than just joining for incentives? At the same time, it may also lead to misleading conclusions in statistics. Given your emphasis on decentralization and real community building, what do you think of this approach? Do you think that simply pursuing a large number of users - regardless of whether these users are truly active - is in line with the essence of Web3? Or should projects focus more on cultivating a relatively small but highly active user base to ensure sustainable growth and real adoption?

Vitalik:

I think this 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 using the community to attract developers can sponsor some specific areas when needed. But it is best not to rely too much on this.

About the second layer network

Question 1

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 was expected at the time;

Are rollups generally good for Ethereum or are they bloodsuckers (I saw you calling on these L2s to give back to Ethereum a few days ago)?

Does ETH really need these L2s?

Vitalik:

Up to now, our expansion method can be roughly understood as hybrid L1 + L2, but I think no one has clearly defined which transactions should be in L1 and which transactions should be in L2.

The answer of "everything is in L2" is difficult to accept because:

• This will easily lose ETH's position as a medium of exchange, store of value, etc. If you are worried about L2 stealing L1 users and not giving L1 anything in return, this problem will be more serious in a situation where "L1 does almost nothing". Cross-L2 operations still require L1. If an L2 has a problem, users still need to be able to move to another L2. So there are some use cases where it is difficult to avoid L1. I wrote an article on this topic here: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/02/14/l1scaling.html The answer "everything is on L1" is also difficult to accept because: If L1 supports many transactions, it is easy to become centralized, even if technologies such as ZK-EVM are used. The world's demand for on-chain transactions is unlimited. 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 does capacity expansion, but L2 can also provide faster confirmation speeds through preconfirmations, and can also avoid 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.), and 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 cross-L2 interoperability, and then the market will decide which expansion method is suitable for which application.

Question 2

Mable:

The rollup route has been proposed for quite some time. Do you think the current decentralized sequencer of Arbitrum/Base/OP is a relatively large 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 MegaETH's centralized sequencer solution?

Vitalik:

Centralized sequencers actually have many advantages:

• Centralized sequencers can ensure that they will not steal users' money by means of 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 characteristics of blockchain can be used to avoid the risks of centralized sequencers: the forced inclusion mechanism prevents the sequencer from centrally reviewing 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 entirely 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 having two parts of the ecosystem to promote both methods at the same time, and then we can see which method is more suitable for which application.

Maintaining the ability of ordinary users to issue censorship-resistant transactions is of course critical.

Mable (additional comment): Actually, my starting point is that US regulators may go after them. Of course, the probability of this is not very high.

Vitalik: If this happens, there are two possibilities:

1. DAO will choose a sequencer and a backup sequencer, and will always move to the new sequencer

2. We use based rollups

I think the first one is worth studying. I know that 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 directly.

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

Question 3

Mable:

What are the differences between the technical route of ETH 3.0 and the goals it hopes to achieve and the goals it hopes to achieve in the rollup era? In the 3.0 design plan announced at Devcon last November, did it take into account that rollup does not really provide actual value to the Ethereum mainnet at this stage?

Vitalik:

There is no such thing as ETH 3.0 now

Some people 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. Here is another roadmap: strengthen the capabilities of L1 (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:

• Before 4844, everyone's complaints were the opposite: Is L1 sucking the blood of L2?

• Now, the blob fee in 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, it will burn 21333 ETH per month, 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" 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 many 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.

Organizational issues of Ethereum

Question 1

Mable:

You decided to step up and lead EF again. I believe that you have considered a lot. This is not an easy decision. It is a courage to take a leap and stare into the abyss. It is very admirable. Do you mind sharing your entire thinking process with us today?

At the same time, I am curious whether you recognize 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 whole world, is in a relatively dangerous state. There are many things that have no long-term value, or even malicious, happening, and these things and the people behind them have received a lot of attention.

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

Here I’m talking about both the blockchain community (if memecoin, which fell 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 rely on the leadership of a strong man to do things. 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 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 philosophy of subtraction of the Ethereum Foundation 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, 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 there is an imbalance 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 the Tao Te Ching, but taking this path requires intelligence and the ability of the foundation to be improved in some places. It is not a matter of "success by doing nothing". So in the short term, we need to put more effort into making some important pivots.

Question 2

Mable:

I am not in the core Ethereum circle, so I am not very clear about some of the more detailed political issues. From your own perspective, what do you think is the main reason why some ETH Maxis OG left the Ethereum community? When Shuyao and I recorded the 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 circle would say 10 years ago that the goal of blockchain is to be a global neutral system, protect personal freedom, and counterbalance government hegemony. Now, if a president launches a memecoin, they will 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, and so on. Each side has its own story.

Some people will also say that the Ethereum ecosystem is too controlled by OGs and there is not enough space for new people 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 predicaments: we need to have some updated stories to explain why Ethereum is, what ETH does, what L1 and L2 do, and so on? This is no longer the era of infra, but the era of applications, so these stories cannot be abstract "freedom, openness, anti-censorship, solarpunk public goods, etc.", and some clear application layer answers are needed. I plan to support more in the near future: 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 world's open financial platform, which of course must include real world assets. There are many things that are valuable to many users at the same time and in line with our values. We need to support this direction again, and there will be more opportunities for new people 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 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 team (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 plays a coordinating role.

Question 4

Community Question:

Do all employees of the Ethereum Foundation, including the leadership team, have an assessment mechanism such as KPI/OKR? Non-profit organizations generally have problems with inefficiency. Do you think EF has such a problem? 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 soon be outdated

It might be better to ask again in 6 months.

Decentralized Social, Privacy and Governance

Question 1

Mable:

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

Vitalik:

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

• Anti-sybil attack 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 if you are blocked, you can't 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 enough, such as anonworld.

• Use cryptography to make privacy-protected AI applications. Zk may not be the most suitable technology here, FHE may be, and FHE has made a lot of progress recently. If we can reduce the overhead of FHE, there may be opportunities

• 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.

Question 2

Mable:

You should know @simondlrSimon de la Rouviere's "This Art is Always on Sale" Harberger tax experiment (patronage as an asset class). Do you think this kind of experiment can make new progress in the future of decentralized social networks? Are there any mechanisms you expect to see used for decentralized social experiments?

Vitalik:

Yes, I think decentralized social media is a good opportunity to try many new mechanisms.

Harberger tax is one example, and some other examples 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 fairer and more transparent. You can try retro funding, deep funding, quadratic funding, etc.

• Combining social media and DAO governance

Question 3

Mable:

This question comes from Tako founder @EEEEdison1992: What do you think about the fact that as a group of people in the crypto world, we 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, has their development met your expectations? What advice 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 also imperfect. Although it is confidential, it is still centralized and has no interoperability. It requires a mobile phone number to log in, 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 strive 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 make my various documents. I found that the user experience of this is good enough. 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.

Question 4

@Anon_tako:

You have warned of the complexity of "cryptopolitics" (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 don't 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 bit, for example, if there is an EIP plus 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.

Problem 5

@Anon_tako:

Web3 is supposed to be an equal space for everyone, but Warpcast introduces ranking and automatic comment/private message collapse mechanisms, which create obvious hierarchical structures. 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. What do you think of this growing concentration of attention in Web3 social platforms? Shouldn't we pursue a system driven by ideas rather than social status?

Vitalik:

Doing social media algorithms while being fair and avoiding spam attacks is a difficult problem. The advantage of Farcaster is that there is one network and different clients are all on one network. So if a client doesn't do well, anyone can make their own client and talk to the entire Farcaster network from day one. So I'm happy that there is Tako, Firefly, and other clients in the Farcaster ecosystem, and it would be better if they can solve some of the problems that Warpcast didn't solve.

Vitalik's worldview

Question 1

@Anon_tako:

Are you a communist?

Vitalik:

No. I'm 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 support freedom, global equal opportunity, benevolence and cooperation, human well-being and progress. These are timeless principles. The question is how to implement these values ​​in the context of the 21st century using the tools we have available. I have written in detail about the various mechanisms I personally support, but I definitely do not think I am the only source of good ideas. I think figuring out the best approach is a shared project that requires both thinking and increasingly real-world experiments. Question 2 Mable: Today, you mentioned the concept of d/acc before, and now it seems that the effective acceleration of the decentralization of technological power is in line with your expectations? Are there any hidden dangers you are worried about in this regard? I actually feel a little powerless, because I know that Folding Beijing 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:

I need to make an important statement here: d/acc is not de-acceleration, but decentralized defensive acceleration

This is important because there are people in this world who support de-acceleration 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 the more dangerous world now, if we don't 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 advance, 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 ("shield" in the digital world), and many things in the biological field, etc.

Question 3

Mable:

This question comes from @LeotheHorseman: How do you understand the role of Crypto as an anti-establishment infrastructure in realizing Degen Communism? Do you think that the current Memecoin (I am referring more to the rapid launch on Solana) is a kind of "beneficial chaos" for realizing Degen Communism? (This term comes from your blog) I didn't find the anonymous function, so I just posted 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, nor is it necessarily 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 good effects?

For example, civil wars in countries have bad effects, unless they are to get rid of malicious tyranny. But market chaos often has good effects, eliminating old and inefficient companies and giving new companies opportunities recently, but sometimes the market can also lead to the problems we see in the blockchain circle. 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

Question 4

Mable:

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

Vitalik：

Of course. Perhaps the most disappointing thing for me recently is that some people say that Ethereum is not good and intolerant because we do not respect the "casinos" on the blockchain enough. Other chains are happy to accept any application, so they are better. If the blockchain community has this kind of moral reversal, I will 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, everyone's 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 it needs to specifically support some things, but this project is worth doing.

Question 5

Mable：

I have heard from people in the Milady community that you may have chosen Milady for some reason, but I am still very curious about how you would explain your identification 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: The Blockchain Genesis of Ethereum". The preface was written by your father David. You were only 25 years old at the time. From the words, I can feel that you get along well with your father. It has been fourteen years since you started to get involved in Bitcoin. How do the drastic fluctuations in the cryptocurrency industry and the pressure of work affect 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 information so that I could learn more about code. My father's second wife also supported me a lot. I have always admired them.

Question 7

@Anon_tako:

I have seen the term "Bronze Age mindset" many times. As a Chinese reader of Vitalik, I can't quite get the connotation of this term. I'm curious 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 summarize it): https://kyl.neocities.org/books/[SOC BRO] bronze age mindset.pdf I think this book represents a value that has become stronger in the Western world recently, but I am very opposed to this value, because in my eyes, the worst things humans have done are made 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.