Vitalik answers everything: personal interests, AI technology and RWA, Layer2, and other cryptographic narratives.
Source: Vitalik Twitter Reply
Translation by: GaryMa and Wu's Blockchain
Q: What is your favorite book/game/movie?
A: 1. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fanfiction of Harry Potter series;
2. "Unsong", a fantasy/sci-fi novel by Scott Alexander, set in a world based on mysterious Kabbalah.
Q: Have you ever had any supernatural experiences or encountered things that you couldn't explain?
A: Seeing many of our worst enemies self-destruct or at least make themselves very stupid.
Q: Are you concerned that Ethereum culture might follow a path too similar to Bitcoin's where the loudest voices are non-technical?
A: I'm not sure if non-technical is the issue per se; more important are (i) non-technical, (ii) overconfidence, (iii) combative tendencies. I think the latter two are more important. In any case, we should be careful!
Q: What excites you or interests you in the realm of regenerative/public goods funding right now?
A: Better traceability in retroactive funding, making it possible to identify and reward the entire path that leads to a particular selective work. Some related work has already started in this area and it would be great to see more developments.
Q: Please answer the following questions, skipping the less quick, simple, or interesting ones!
ps: Zuzalu is a pop-up city experiment initiated by Vitalik in Montenegro from March to May 2023.
● What are some aspects of Zuzalu that surprised you compared to your expectations?
● Who are some leaders, present or historical, that you admire?
● What are some daily habits you have developed in the past few years that you particularly enjoy?
● Who do you guess is the author you have read the most by 2023?
● If you had to choose one country right now and live there for the rest of your life, which country would you choose?
● What do you estimate the probability of yourself living to 123 or beyond?
● What is something you measure or keep track of that most people don’t pay attention to?
A:
I think Zuzalu has been successful as an experiment! Many core assumptions have been validated:
● It can organize everything
● People are willing to stay
● Successful idea communication
● Integration of zero-knowledge technology works
● Successfully established a positive and healthy culture
The biggest unresolved problem I see is how to balance quality and inclusiveness at scale. Multi-tiered "community networks" currently seem to be the approach I (including myself) tend to lean towards when discussing with others. The actual implementation depends on the specific details...
The biggest unresolved problem I see is how to balance quality and inclusiveness at scale. Multi-tiered "community networks" currently seem to be the approach I (including myself) tend to lean towards when discussing with others. The actual implementation depends on the specific details...
There is an important disagreement on the issue of "jurisdiction": what are your expectations for the government you are under?
Possible answers include:
● Actually none, just want to maintain unity
● Visa-friendly
● Provide more meaningful freedom for specific industries (biotechnology? drones? other industries?)
Zuzalu itself is just a temporary experiment, but the community within it consists of people who care about these three aspects.
But the latter is essentially more difficult than the former; therefore, these three aspects seem to tend towards different types of countries.
Q: (Continuing from the previous question) If my understanding is correct, then what you said makes sense. You delegate the responsibility of filtering quality to each community, making scalability more feasible, while maintaining a certain level of quality control through careful selection of the communities themselves.
A: Maintaining a certain level of quality control is achieved through careful selection of communities.
I don't think this setting is accurate even so! On the contrary, anyone can create a community, and there is a concept of relationship between communities, which becomes closer if they trust each other.
Q: This is about Zuzalu: what is the biggest achievement? What improvements will there be next time? When will the next time be?
A: This is just one of more than 10 ideas, but:
● I hope to see the coordinated adoption of free/open/decentralized/privacy-focused technologies that goes deeper than just having Zupass and Zupoll.
● Use ETH for payments on L2, abandon Telegram, use @ethstatus or @skiffprivacy or other alternatives.
It's the same for health. Make it easier for people to access their metrics and personalized recommendations, and provide them with suitable diets and exercises, etc. Make the community a comprehensive health resource.
Q: What do you think about the final state of L2 governance? Will we always stay in mechanisms like token voting, "security councils," multi-signature, etc.? This seems far from the ideal of cryptocurrency governance (for me, the ideal is: "voting based on the node software I run," plus immutable smart contracts).
The same problem can also be considered from another perspective: Is it worth fixing a single L2 (Rollup) as part of the core client code, constrained by the governance mechanism on the Ethereum chain, rather than being governed by individual L2 projects?
Because if we can't integrate scaling solutions into the same governance mechanism, people like me who are cautious about mechanisms such as token voting may be attracted to single L1 projects.
Governance is the only thing that should not be delegated from the underlying base chain for core functionality.
A:
Implementing ZK-EVM verification within Ethereum is definitely an idea worth exploring!
I lean towards achieving our goals with minimal L1 fixedness. You could enshrine the entire L2, but if you fix the ZK-EVM verification and let people use it in any way, you may get 90% of the benefits and triple the flexibility.
Specifically, I expect the non-ZK-EVM part of L2 to be small enough to formally verify.
Hopefully, in the next few years, we can move into the second phase where security councils only arbitrate in cases of divergence between two different proof systems.
ps: In response to concerns about the centralization of security councils, Vitalik believes that a security council with cross-institutional participation and a (significant) 75% threshold is a fairly high decentralization standard to trust the code before reaching that threshold.
Q: What is your longest record for running? And for walking?
A: Running: 44 km in 4 hours, with a pace of 5:26 min/km.
Walking: 113 km in 23 hr 12 min.
Q: Do you listen to music/podcasts while walking?
A: Dan Carlin's Hardcore History series, especially the first four episodes about World War I.
Q: Will you continue donating to Ukraine?
A: Yes, I have made donations in several places this year.
Q: What are your top five to ten rankings for the most likely catastrophic scenarios for humanity in the next century? Does global coordination make you optimistic?
A:
● Artificial Intelligence (AI)
● Engineered super pandemic
When it comes to near-extinction level disasters, nuclear war is one of them. Unbeatable AI-enhanced authoritarianism is also a concern.
Climate issues may rank fifth or close to fifth. It is important to promote progress in areas such as solar energy and nuclear energy.
As for issues like "resource depletion," I'm not too worried; as resources approach depletion, goods will become more expensive, and we will find alternatives.
Q: What do you think of the current situation of Bitcoin Cash?
I remember you mentioned in your recent public comments that Bitcoin Cash failed largely due to excessive focus on split rebellion. However, has the stability over the past 2.5 years and the current unity of the community made you reconsider?
A: I do see some improvements in culture! Good luck to you.
Q: What do you think is the latest research direction for P2P networks related to Ethereum that is worth the time of emerging researchers/engineers?
A: Making the existing Ethereum P2P layer more robust (including protection against intentional censorship, firewalls, etc.) may not be exciting, but it is very important.
Q: What are your thoughts on the idea of DAI moving fully off-chain (supporting more real-world assets) without sticking to decentralization?
A: I think there is some rationale in this design space, but care must be taken in engineering design to ensure widespread distribution of supported assets and stable governance.
Q: In your opinion, which country is most likely to become the most crypto-friendly country and a long-term livable cryptocurrency center?
A: I'm more optimistic about small countries compared to large ones.
Q: Besides cryptocurrency and longevity, what is the field you are most interested in?
A: Homelessness?
Q: It is worrisome that the "Artificial Intelligence Bill" excludes military domains when regulating AI in various fields. It is naive for the drafters of this bill to believe that the military will act according to their knowledge and beliefs. If there is an opportunity to utilize a technology that can bring significant advantages, someone will eventually misuse it for personal gain. What is even more unsettling is that intelligence agencies are excluded under regulated interests and seemingly given complete freedom. This is not only morally questionable but also extremely dangerous.
A: Yes, I strongly oppose AI regulation programs that assume the military is more trustworthy than others.
Q: Will quantum computing destroy or make blockchain more secure?
A: Blockchain will have to adapt to quantum computing, but we'll be fine.
Q: Does public-key encryption exist unconditionally?
A: By "unconditionally," you mean the security of public-key encryption does not rely on any specific assumptions or conditions. The security of public-key encryption relies on the intractability of certain complex mathematical problems. These problems include integer factorization, discrete logarithm computation, etc., which are considered difficult to solve efficiently in computation. However, there are some mathematical structures, such as elliptic curves and lattices, that are believed to provide the necessary conditions for public-key encryption security, while hash algorithms do not meet this requirement.
Q: How do you view the advantages and disadvantages between MPC-based EOA wallets and smart contract wallets?
A: MPC-based externally owned accounts (EOAs) have fundamental flaws because they cannot revoke keys (re-sharing keys does not count as revoking, as the original holder can still recover the key), and smart contract wallets are the only viable option as they can solve this issue.
Q: Disadvantages of smart wallets:
1. Only supports ETH/EVM, not networks like Bitcoin
2. Expensive L1 setup and recovery costs (recovery costs $40)
3. Smart contracts can also be revoked (not always)
A:
1. Yes, Bitcoin needs to upgrade its technology. We have known about this issue for over 5 years now.
2. This is because the cost of the entire L1 is high. That's why L2 and smart contract wallets are needed to obtain more on-chain support.
3. I'm not quite sure what you mean here?
Q: What is your favorite dinosaur?
A: I like ducks.
Q: What aspects of socialism do you find interesting?
A: I believe the focus on the harm caused by private monopolies and resource inequality is important, and I appreciate the willingness to address these issues in a principled manner. Additionally, the spirit of internationalism, especially in early socialism, is very positive and valuable.
Q: What is the timetable and p(doom) for AGI?
ps: AGI refers to Artificial General Intelligence, also known as superintelligence, which refers to artificial intelligence systems that can perform at or surpass human intelligence levels in multiple domains.
p(doom) refers to the probability of doom, which is an estimate of the likelihood of a severe catastrophe or cataclysmic event. In this context, it refers to the probability of a severe catastrophe related to artificial intelligence.
A: For the timetable, it is very broad in scope. I have 95% confidence that ASI will occur between 2029 and 2200 (I believe AGI may stay roughly at human-level intelligence for some time).
p(doom) is approximately 0.1. This certainly underscores the need to take the risks of artificial intelligence seriously.
Q: What do you think would be the warning signs? Or, what things do you think might cause you to raise or lower p(doom) to >10% or <10 years on the timetable?
A: People have asked this question, and it's difficult for me to accurately express the important things that AI still cannot do. It can be roughly understood as "interacting with other intelligent agents in complex environments, formulating and executing plans involving novel behaviors." If AI starts to do this, then I would say we are very close to superintelligence.
I think one reason why my p(doom) is not very high is that I am not completely convinced of the argument for fast takeoff and the "absence of AGI fire alarm" (I know fast takeoff is not a prerequisite for catastrophe, but it plays an important role in that direction!).
If I were persuaded by these arguments, my p(doom) would increase.
Q: If we assume AGI is achieved at some point, what do you think the path to human well-being would be like afterwards?
A: Personally, I would like to see a path that preserves human agency. Of course, this would mean higher bandwidth and more frequent communication between technologically supported computations and human volition...
Q: The term "bandwidth" gets me excited :)
In your model, does "human agency" mean based on biology?
If it is based on biology, the non-biological side will dominate, and we may face risks from AI.
If it is non-biological, this outcome may not be so pleasant for most people.
Dilemma. Do you see other options?
A: The ultimate form is non-biological (unless synthetic biology manages to compete with metal computers, which would be cool). I expect that over time, as this technology becomes more normalized and the risks are mitigated, it will become more accepted, like all radical technologies.
Q: What aspect do you least like about the crypto world, and what drains your energy and motivation the most?
A: As always, what I least like is people who think the main innovation of crypto is introducing tokens into everything. Secondly, I find the following points:
● Large-scale misallocation of capital
● People who are easily swayed from principles (ahem, fake libertarians...)
● On the other hand, unrealistic and purist beliefs ("12-word mnemonic phrases are good enough for anyone!")
● Unnecessary conflicts
Q: What are your thoughts on the latest developments in proof systems, especially proof aggregation, recursion, and composition?
A: Aggregation, recursion, and other techniques are crucial for efficiently proving complex statements. For example, we eventually need to validate Ethereum blocks in less than 4 seconds; this can only be achieved through some form of parallelization and composition.
Q: Do you think governance systems with insignificant power can indefinitely resist capture? What are the parameters for the "time_to_capture" function?
A: @SamoBurja says this is an unsolved problem. I tend to agree. You can approach a solution, but you have to accept some trade-offs. Having very specific and limited goals (like maintaining a price oracle) can be helpful, although even in that case, there would be issues in extreme scenarios.
Q: What is your imagination of the scale and complexity of a human Mars city? If by 2050, one million people are settled on Mars and the ticket to Mars costs only $50,000, and Ethereum's transaction volume reaches 60 million per second, would you permanently move to Mars?
A: It depends on the quality of life! (And also the ultimate legal jurisdiction, culture, etc. of the Mars city.)
Q: Do you think it is worth promoting a close relationship between the Ethereum community and the Bitcoin community? If yes, how can we achieve this?
A: I think a potential area for collaboration is to collectively support non-blockchain technologies for privacy and freedom. End-to-end encrypted messaging (without phone numbers), internet anonymity, end-to-end collaboration tools, secure operating systems (like Graphene, Qubes?), open hardware, open virtual reality, and so on.
Q: What are the disadvantages of introducing EIP 1559, which allocates a portion of destroyed tokens to individual independent validators, and can increase the allocation based on a sliding scale for those running fewer clients?
A: The protocol cannot differentiate who the individual independent validators are within a family.
Q: The safest cold wallet?
A: Safe Wallet.
