Vitalik's first open-source sci-fi novel "Snowmoon" (雪月) full version

Odaily资深作者

2026-09-28 16:32 (UTC+8)

This article is about 377 words, reading the full article takes about 1 minutes

A hefty debut, self-created language, crypto espionage, socialized child-rearing... Is a Nebula Award next year a given?

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Core Viewpoint: Vitalik Buterin has released his first original open-source sci-fi novel "Snowmoon," embedding his thinking on decentralized governance, privacy technology, and mechanism design into the narrative framework, exploring themes of digital sovereignty and ideological confrontation.
Key Elements:
1. The novel has 32 chapters, with a Chinese translation exceeding 170,000 words. The plot is 100% handcrafted, with AI only involved in polishing and proofreading.
2. The story is set in a future world, centered on the digital sovereignty confrontation between two social forms: Veridia and Arctic Empire.
3. The work integrates mechanism designs from academic papers into its plot and is open-sourced under the GPL v3 license.
4. An AI usage statement is written into the main text, which the author says redefines the concept of "open source."
5. Odaily provides a complete Chinese translation via a cloud drive link.

In May of this year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted that he would no longer write regular blog posts and had decided to try his hand at science fiction on the theme of decentralized governance.

With the plot 100% hand-crafted and AI involved only in polishing and proofreading, his first original novel, Snowmoon—32 chapters in total and over 170,000 Chinese characters in translation—was officially released last night.

This long-form open-source science fiction work combines his years of thinking on Ethereum, mechanism design, privacy technology, pluralistic governance, and other fields, embedding them in a narrative framework for exploration.

Plot summary in one sentence: In a future world highly dependent on cryptography and decentralized governance, two social forms—Veridia and the Arctic Empire—engage in ideological confrontation over digital sovereignty.

Highlights also include the story introducing mechanisms from his papers, the novel being open-sourced under GPL v3, an AI usage statement written into the main text, and a casual redefinition of "open source."