Vitalik Chinese AMA: Technology, Ecology and Future of Ethereum

Vitalik disagrees with a culture of short-term speculation (such as memecoin’s over-hype) and over-pandering to political needs, advocating creating long-term value and attracting long-term developers.

author| Jiawei @IOSG

Recently, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and FSL CRO Mable Jiang conducted a flash interview with AMA in Tako App. This is also the first Chinese AMA conducted by Vitalik in recent years. It aims to let more people in the community understand the current state of Ethereum from the perspectives of technology, ecology, and future direction. We have sorted out the core views given by Vitalik on some specific issues that everyone is concerned about, hoping to give readers some inspiration.

summary

1. Vitalik defines a “world computer” as “a place where the world’s applications can interact with each other” rather than “a computer that can simultaneously support every world’s application.” Ethereum is not only a digital asset with long-term value storage capabilities (such as Bitcoin), but also an underlying platform that supports global application interoperability. The two are not contradictory. “World Computer” is collaboratively implemented through a highly decentralized and trustworthy L1 (underlying chain) and L2 (expansion layer) with expansion capabilities and dedicated features. Relying entirely on either L1 or L2 is not feasible.

L1 ‘s core mission is to ensure security and network resilience-even if the foundation no longer exists, developers around the world can still maintain the ecosystem based on open clients and protocols. L2 carries the mission of performance expansion and scenario innovation, such as high throughput, privacy or AI model collaboration.

The relationship between the two is like the foundation and architecture of a city: L1 ensures geological stability, and L2 allows for free design of form. However, the premise of this architecture is that L1 must maintain sufficient throughput so that any user or application can directly interact with the main network when necessary, while ensuring interoperability and preventing L2 from becoming a closed island.

To sum up, the end of Ethereum does not require an either-or choice between “digital gold” and “world computer”. The compatibility of the two is precisely its unique value: Ethereum needs to become a decentralized, censory-resistant, long-term trustworthy value store like Bitcoin, and must also serve as the underlying infrastructure to support interoperability of global applications.

Compared with the formulation a few years ago that “L1 serves as the basic layer to fully support L2”, Vitalik proposed “hybrid L1 + L2” in this AMA, that is, L1 also needs to play a certain role, adding blobs to give L2 more space, and promoting interoperability across L2. Based on actual demand, the market will figure out which transactions should be in L1 and which transactions should be in L2.

2. In the past three years, the development of the Rollup route has shown certain polarization. On the one hand, L2, represented by OP Stack, achieves second-level transaction confirmation and MEV control through a centralized Sequencer; on the other hand, the architecture that relies too much on a single team operation has also raised questions about censorship resistance and long-term credibility.

Vitalik believes that at the technical level, it is necessary to ensure anti-censorship through forced transaction chains. On the ecological level, Vitalik encourages the exploration of “dedicated L2”. For example, Aztec implements private transactions through fully homomorphic encryption, Gensyn focuses on distributed AI training, and MegaETH uses a centralized Sequencer to implement high-performance scenarios of 100,000 TPS-these experiments are essentially answering the question “What degree of decentralization adapts to what application?”

3. Vitalik had contacts and face-to-face conversations with many community members and believed that in the future, the Ethereum Foundation needs to focus on supporting public goods, setting technical standards and maintaining ecological balance, rather than pursuing corporate governance. Corporate governance means pursuing profit. Ethereum is a decentralized ecosystem, not a company. If Ethereum becomes a company, it will lose most of Ethereum’s long-term significance.

Vitalik disagrees with a culture of short-term speculation (such as memecoin’s over-hype) and over-pandering to political needs, advocating creating long-term value and attracting long-term developers. Of course, Vitalik is not completely opposed to memecoin. As early as March last year, he wrote “What else could memecoins be?” The article raises the possible practical uses of memecoin.

4. In Vitalik’s eyes, good applications should meet the real needs of users, have the ability to achieve sustainable profits, and have social value. The problem with many projects is that they fabricate requirements that do not exist or are difficult to verify, and do not require blockchain’s censory-resistant, verifiable, and collaborative features. Some successful products often start with the “minimum necessary scenario.” A healthy profit model needs to be rooted in real value exchanges, such as Uniswap fee collection on the financial side, and annual fees for ENS domain names and scarce domain names on the non-financial side.

Compilation of core views on some specific issues

I think these two ways of thinking are compatible.

If you need to distinguish which blockchains are “truly decentralized,” you can use a relatively simple test: If his foundation disappears, will the chain survive? I have a feeling that only Bitcoin and Ethereum can answer clearly: of course. Most of Ethereum’s development is outside the foundation, and the client team has independent business models. Nowadays, many researchers are not in the foundation, and almost all activities except devcon are independent.

Reaching this stage is difficult. Five years ago, Ethereum did not have this.

Giving up these advantages in order to pursue TPS is a big mistake, because there is always a new chain coming out, and suddenly there is a higher TPS than you. But decentralization and resilience are valuable, 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’s computers also need to solve the problem of capacity expansion. “World computer” does not mean “a computer that can simultaneously support every application of the world”, but “a place where the world’s applications can operate with each other.” High-performance computing can be placed in L2, no problem. But this role still requires L1 to have enough scale. The specific details can be seen in an article I wrote recently.

ETH is a digital asset suitable for use among the world’s applications (including finance, but also other applications, such as ENS, etc.). ETH also doesn’t need every transaction to be placed in L1, but it needs to have enough throughput so that anyone who wants to use L1 can use L1 at least occasionally.

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

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 in L2” is more difficult to accept because:

• This will easily lose the position of ETH as medium of exchange, store of value, etc.
• If you are worried that L2 will steal L1 users and not give L1 anything back, this problem will be even more serious in a situation where “L1 does almost nothing.”
• Operations across L2 still require L1. If something goes wrong with one L2, users still need to have a way to move to another L2 themselves. So there are some L1 use cases that are difficult to avoid. I wrote an article on this topic here.

The answer “everything is in L1” is also more difficult to accept because:

• If L1 supports many transactions, it is easy to become centralized, even using technologies such as ZK-EVM.
• The world’s demand for transactions on the chain is unlimited. No matter how high the TPS of L1 is, you can always find an application that requires 10 times more TPS (e.g., artificial intelligence, micropayments, micromarket prediction, etc.).
• L2 not only does capacity expansion, L2 can also provide faster confirmation speed through preconfirmations and 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 L2s (aztec, intmax, etc.), there may be more application-specific L2s (if an app wants to control its own MEV situation, here are benefits, etc.)

So in the short term, I think we should continue to improve L1 ‘s capabilities at the same time, add blobs to give L2 more space, promote cross-L2 interoperability, and then the market will decide which expansion method is suitable for which application.

Centralized sequencer actually has many advantages:

• Centralized sequencer can ensure that it will not steal users ‘money through methods such as frontrunning.
• Instant preconfirmations can easily 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 risks of centralized sequencers: the forced inclusion mechanism prevents the sequencer censor user, and the optimistic or zk proof mechanism prevents the sequencer from changing or violating application rules (for example, suddenly infusing a 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 have based rollup or directly trade on L1. So I support an ecosystem that promotes 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 make censorship-resistant transactions is of course critical.

There is nothing called ETH 3.0 right now. Some people will say that Justin Drake’s five-year plan is, but that plan is only a consensus layer, not an 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’s another roadmap: strengthening L1 capabilities (increasing gaslimit, adding stateless verification (such as verkle) and other features, etc.), improving interoperability across L2, improving blobs, etc.

I also think the question of whether L2 pays enough transaction fees to L1 cannot be viewed from a short-term perspective. For example: Before 4844, everyone’s complaints were the opposite: Did L1 suck blood from L2?

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

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

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

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

Here I also say that in the blockchain circle (if memecoin, which drops 97% in one day, is not our future, then what is?), And a macro social aspect: Many people now feel that a democratic approach is impossible and can only rely on the leadership of a strong man to do things. But a political scientist at devcon told me that one of the reasons why he respected Ethereum very much is that we are a truly open and decentralized ecosystem. We have been successful at this scale, which gives him hope. So if we can succeed in this way, the positive impact on the world could be huge, giving many people bright examples of success that they can follow.

But “decentralization” does not mean “doing nothing.” The Ethereum Foundation’s philosophy of subtraction does not mean “reducing the foundation to 0”, but a way to maintain ecological balance. If there is an ecological imbalance in one place (for example, a part of the ecology is too centralized, or there is an important public good that no one else does), 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, etc.

In China culture, the way we pursue may be most similar to the thoughts of Tao Te Ching, but walking this path requires intelligence and the ability of the foundation to be improved in some places. It is not a question of “success without doing anything.” So in the short term, we need to put more effort into doing some important pivots.

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

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

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

There are several ways we can help achieve this:

• Education makes it easier for developers to understand why blockchain is, what should be on the chain and what should not be on the chain, what needs to be cared about in the field of blockchain, and so on.
• If parts of some blockchain-specific technologies are too difficult for application developers, the foundation can do it themselves, making it easier for developers to combine. For example, zk’s programming language, a16z’s helios, and so on.
• Give developers clear standards. For example, if you make an Ethereum client, there are many tests, you can run the tests yourself and see if your client can pass. If you do L2, there are frameworks for L2beat stage1, stage2, etc. This should also be given to zk apps, wallets, etc.

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

• anti-sybil verification. Many services require you to sign in with kyc not because they like to know who you are, they just want to know that you are not a robot, or that if you are banned, you cannot reopen your account 100000 times. Implementing this use case only requires zk proof of personality, or proof of reputation. In fact, sometimes proof of tokens is enough, such as anonworld.
• Use cryptography to make AI applications that protect privacy. Zk may not be the most suitable technology here. FHE may be. FHE has also made a lot of progress recently. If we can reduce the overhead of FHE, there may be a chance.
• Wrap any web2 account with zk-snark and use it on web3. Zkemail, anon aadhaar, zkpassport, zktls, etc. are good examples.

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

An important correction needs to be made here first: d/acc is not a de-acceleration, but a decentralized defensive acceleration.

This is important because there are indeed people in this world who support decentralization, degrowth, etc., but I think this direction is the wrong one. In a peaceful world, important medical and infrastructure improvements will be delayed and more people will be injured. In today’s more dangerous world, if we don’t accelerate, we will be eaten by those who are willing to accelerate.

Decentralized and defensive technology need to compete with other technologies. If the sword improves 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 the story, but only part, as well as decentralization beyond blockchain (e.g., p2p networks), software and hardware security (the “shield” of the digital world), and a lot of things in the biological field, and so on.

The latter is the most important now. Technological breakthroughs already exist: zero-knowledge proof, consensus algorithms, virtual machines, etc. There are already user adoptions, but the ones that receive the most attention are memecoin that drops 97% in one day (I don’t object to all memecoin here, I am an early buyer of DOGE anyway, but the current one is a completely different type). I think the application we need should pass 3 tests:

• Can you imagine yourself or someone you know actually willing to use it? That is to say, it’s interesting in theory (decentralized uber! Great!) and what it actually works.
• Can you make money? If you can’t make money, it will be difficult to achieve the highest standard of quality for your application.
• If you were not a user or an investor, would you be happy to know that this thing exists? That is to say, whether there is real value to the world.

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

Perhaps the most disappointing moment for me recently was that some people said that Ethereum is not good and intolerant because we don’t respect the “casinos” on the blockchain enough, and other chains are willing to accept any application, so they are better. If there is such a moral reversal in the blockchain community, I have no interest in participating in blockchain. But I found something interesting: on the Internet, many people can say those things, but when I chat with the community in person, 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 at Ethereum need to work together to create the world we want to see. This will require some changes. For example, the foundation may not be too neutral at the application level and needs to specifically support some things, but this project is worth doing.

This is also an issue that I am very concerned about. I personally have been trying to move most of my conversations from telegram to signal in the past two years. But the signal is also imperfect. Although it is confidential, it is still centralized and has no interoperability. You need to have a mobile phone number to log in, the server sees a lot of your metadata, and so on

But it is difficult to make a higher-quality messenger. I try status every year, and they try to be completely decentralized. They do a good job, but they still have some reliability issues. In fact, there are various small teams to be their own messengers now, but they are not united, so it’s easy that each one is not good enough.

I recently started using fileverse to do various of my documents, and I found that the user experience of this is good enough, and now it is used by many people in the foundation. If there is a decentralized, encrypted, etc. messenger that can achieve this quality, I will definitely work hard to help the community move to this messenger.

I think Ethereum is a decentralized ecosystem, not a company. If Ethereum becomes a company, we will lose most of the meaning of Ethereum. Being a company is the role of the company. In fact, there are many large companies in the Ethereum ecosystem: consensys, various client teams (nethermind, nimbus, etc.), coinbase, and L2 teams (including e.g. aztec and intmax, whose privacy technologies are very interesting and underestimated by many people)

The best way is to find ways to give these companies more opportunities to realize their strengths, with the foundation acting as a coordinating role.

There are many different people with different stories.

For example, there are many people in the blockchain circle who would say 10 years ago that the goal of blockchain is to be a globally neutral system that protects individual freedoms and counterbalance the hegemony of the government. Now, if a president issues memecoin, they will say, Wow, this is a real world adoption, so good, but why does it happen on other chains? If we can be more friendly to those politicians, it will happen on our chain next time! I personally feel that this kind of person has gone astray. Of course they will say, I am too purely idealistic, unrealistic, etc. Each party has its own story.

There are also some people who will say that Ethereum’s ecology is too OG controlled and there is not enough room for new people to come in. But this criticism is in another direction, and there are different groups issuing these arguments.

I think there is only one suitable way out of these dilemmas: We need to have some updated stories explaining why Ethereum is, what ETH does, what L1 and L2 do, etc. This is not the era of infra, it is the era of applications, so these stories cannot be abstract “free, open, censory-resistant, sunpunk public goods, etc.” and require some clear application layer answers. I plan to support more in the near future: info finance (which is also the direction of AI + crypto), privacy protection, high-quality public goods financing methods, and continuing to do a good job in the world’s open financial platform. Of course, this must include real world assets. There are many things here that are valuable to many users at the same time and are in line with the values we have always had. We need to re-support this direction, and it can also give new people more opportunities to come in.