A Conversation with Vitalik: The World Should Not Fall into an AI-Dominated Kingdom of Power
Original Article: www.chaincatcher.com
Behind these two technological forces are two clashing technological philosophies.
Author: Zhang Xiaojun, Tencent News "Submarine"
Our world is being impacted by several new technological forces.
The first is the power of artificial intelligence represented by OpenAI, which is evolving into the mainstream of global technological thought. The second is Web3, crypto technology, and blockchain. Over the past two years, these two forces have become disparate.
In November 2024, we met with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who stood on the opposite shore of crypto technology, looking towards artificial intelligence. In his eyes, AI is intervening in human emotions, thoughts, and even the subconscious in a seemingly equal, intimate, and harmless way, and through this, it may build an unprecedentedly powerful power center. A technological revolution will drive a "power game" concerning the fate of all humanity.
Vitalik is a spiritual leader of Web3, and the Ethereum he founded is second only to Bitcoin in the industry. Since Bitcoin's founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, has never appeared, Vitalik has become the spokesperson for this field. His experiences have also added to his legendary status.
Vitalik was born in 1994. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he immigrated from Russia to Canada. He dropped out of college at the age of 19 to found Ethereum, and in his 20s became the youngest crypto billionaire. In China, people call him "V God." He just turned 30 this year.
Vitalik is always trying to articulate a technological philosophy. In his cognition, AI and Crypto represent two underlying philosophies. AI technology is more centralized and powerful, intending to make human civilization and technology stronger; while Crypto is the opposite, advocating a decentralized and egalitarian survivalist philosophy. Unlike AI, which occupies a place in a few fortresses around the world, Crypto's strongholds are scattered globally, and are even more suitable for marginalized areas. In the words of Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel: "Crypto is libertarian and AI is communist."
"Now everyone uses ChatGPT, it's like chatting with a friend. But in 10 years, everyone will tell all their thoughts to ChatGPT. If your AI has no privacy, you have absolutely no privacy, including no privacy of thought," Vitalik said. "If it is centralized, it means a big company can read your mind -- that is very dangerous."
Vitalik's lifestyle seems to coincide with the technical ideas he advocates. Our meeting took place in a simple office space, and the scheduled time was 8 am. He arrived at 7:40 am. He was alone, carrying a khaki canvas bag with a cat pattern under his arm. Inside was a Dell computer that he bought for distributed AI. He also wore a plastic watch with a small cat pattern on his wrist. He always travels between disparate Web3 communities in this attire.
Vitalik speaks six languages, the best being English, Russian, and Chinese. This conversation was conducted in Chinese.
He still looked a bit immature and nerdy, earnestly searching his mind for suitable Chinese characters to express difficult technical terms. The staff poured him a cup of tea, and he repeatedly rubbed the small tag on the teabag with his hand, folded it up and put it down, then picked it up and unfolded it, then folded it up again...
If one day the ultimate power of artificial intelligence or "Big Brother" wants to destroy humanity, will the Crypto kingdom you represent come to save humanity?
"This question is quite complex," Vitalik said.
The following is the full text of the conversation. (For ease of reading, the author has done some text optimization)
Author's photo from the scene, showing Vitalik Buterin.
"LLMs Are Very Powerful"
Submarine: In your blog post commemorating your 30th birthday, “The end of my childhood,” you said, “One of the things that fascinates me about modern AI is that it makes us engage in different ways, mathematically and philosophically, with the hidden variables guiding human interaction: AI can make ‘resonance’ legible.” Can you talk about AI in your mind?
Vitalik:
Philosophers particularly like to describe what a human is through the latest technological analogies. 100-200 years ago, we had industrial civilization and early robots, they had no brains and possessed the first step of automation. They said that a human is a machine. Recently, people have been interested in quantum technology, and many people say, is the human brain also quantum? I don't think so. How do people think? Sometimes it’s nonsense. But people think in this way: what do humans and computers have in common? What do humans and factories have in common? What do humans and animals have in common? To understand humans.
Now, the latest technology is a new generation of AI technology: LLMs (Large Language Models). We look at the concept of LLMs, it is very complex, but it is very powerful – it can do many things, and we do not know how it does them – it is a black box.
The difference between LLMs and ordinary programs is: for ordinary programs, if you randomly delete a line of code, the entire code may crash, it is very fragile; for LLMs, if you make some small changes, it will not affect the basic function. If you change just a little bit, the output will also change just a little bit.
So, LLMs are very much like humans and animals, they are biological life.
Anthropic is doing research with the goal of looking at what concepts each parameter in a relatively small LLM represents. They have found that in LLMs you can see – for example, this parameter represents red, this parameter represents the letter A, and that parameter represents capitalism. Including some very advanced concepts, all can be seen.
I posted two pictures, where I told ChatGPT: draw an extreme Bitcoin person, and draw a similar extreme Ethereum person. On the left, Bitcoin showed an exaggerated nouveau riche, and on the right, Ethereum was a computer-playing geek. Through AI, we can see that Bitcoin and Ethereum have cultural differences. Through AI, we can think about many concepts of people and society, so as to understand ourselves more.
Submarine: Over the past two years, artificial intelligence and large language models have replaced Web3, crypto technology, and blockchain as the mainstream of global technology thought. Standing on the crypto technology wave, watching the AI revolution surging on the other side, what are you thinking?
Vitalik:
Blockchain and AI have completely different roles. In the short term, AI is a tool, everyone can use it to improve efficiency. For example, when I write code or articles, especially when I do things I'm not good at, ChatGPT is most helpful to me. But in the long term, will AI be smarter than humans? It definitely will, but I don't know if it will be 5 years or 50 years later.
Blockchain is to solve trust issues. If you want to make applications, these applications need many people to participate, operate and communicate with each other. They have no trust center, and blockchain applications can solve this problem. There are many trust issues in our world, and these issues are more prominent than they were 10 years ago.
But in the crypto field, one problem in the last 5 years is: everyone's dreams and hopes are very high, but technology cannot achieve most of the dreams. In 2020 and 2021, there was this problem: the transaction fees for Ethereum, Bitcoin, and all chains were very high. To send a simple transaction, you had to pay a transaction fee of $1 or $3. Most of the applications that people wanted to make, except for finance, were not possible. But this year, with Ethereum expansion projects, the transaction fees on Layer2 have dropped from $0.5 to sometimes $0.005. Many applications that were previously impossible are now becoming possible.
This kind of thing has happened many times in the computer field: for a long time, everyone has an idea, but it needs the upgrade of computer technology, CPU speed, and Internet traffic to a certain level, and these things finally become possible. This trend will also occur in Web3 in the next 1, 2, or 3 years.
Submarine: In the crypto field, will a Super App appear in the next 3 years?
Vitalik:
I sometimes think about a longer-term question: will the concept of App change a lot in 10 years?
Now, an app is that you have a computer or a mobile phone, and the mobile phone has an interface. You do some things through the buttons on the interface. But due to AI, our methods of interacting with computers and the internet have changed a lot.
In the AI field, startup companies say, now there is AI technology, let's make AI applications. Some (projects) have succeeded. But most will find that: actually, people don't need any applications. If they want to do something, they can directly tell ChatGPT, and ChatGPT will give them an answer. So I am thinking, will the Super App of the future be this? You can directly communicate with a computer, mobile phone, or any device in an AI way. The AI will know what you want to do, and it will help you do these things.
Submarine: Will the AI technology revolution exacerbate centralization? Is its development moving further and further away from the world you envision?
Vitalik:
This question is very complex. I recently discovered an interesting point using AI: I do some things that many people have done before, but I am not good at. ChatGPT is very useful to me. But when I do something particularly cutting-edge, such as complex cryptography, which may only have been done by me and 1,000 other people, AI is of no help to me at all.
On the one hand, AI can achieve some equality, allowing some people to do things they are not good at.
On the other hand, ChatGPT is a very centralized application. When you use ChatGPT, you have to fully trust that it will not expose your various data. I think this problem will become particularly obvious in 10 or 20 years.
Now everyone uses ChatGPT as if chatting with a friend. But in 10 years, everyone will tell all their thoughts to ChatGPT. It is possible that we will have something like BCI (brain-computer interface), a deep connection between humans and machines. If your AI has no privacy, you have absolutely no privacy, including no privacy of thought. That's the first issue.
The second issue is that if it is a centralized company, it can shut down at any time, change rules at any time, and change service conditions at any time. Whether you are an individual, a company, or a country, once you start to rely on these things, risks will arise.
So, AI has many advantages, but also these problems.
I know that many people are starting to do open source AI, Decentralized AI. In fact, I myself will use these things. I deliberately bought a computer -- (Vitalik turns around and takes out a computer from his canvas bag to show) -- this computer has a GPU, an NVIDIA 4070, and I can run some LLMs on my own computer.
When I don't need the highest level quality of ChatGPT, I can do it on my own computer. I found that this has an advantage, when I don't have internet, it is fine. Decentralized AI is very important.
"OpenAI First Sacrificed Open Source for Security, and Then Sacrificed Security for Profit"
Submarine: I'm very curious, what do you think of OpenAI? Is it possible that it will become the largest, even the ultimate monopolist?
Vitalik:
The story of OpenAI is very interesting. On one hand, it made a particularly useful tool for everyone.
I can't say everyone, because ChatGPT has two levels: the first level is free; and the second level costs $20 per month. Some countries can use it, and some countries cannot. This tool is particularly useful, especially when I enter fields that I am not good at.
But OpenAI has a problem. In the beginning, Elon Musk saw many large Silicon Valley companies doing AI. He worried that if these companies did the AI, would it become particularly centralized? There are many risks, so he opened OpenAI. And five years later, due to AI security reasons, although they did not say they would not be open source, they modified the definition -- open meant that their services were open.
Submarine: It became CloseAI.
Vitalik:
Yes, they became CloseAI. Today, another problem has emerged: first, they sacrificed their open source for security; then this year, they sacrificed their security for profit.
Last year, there was a conflict between the company and the board of directors. After the conflict, it seems that Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) won. They recently announced that they will change from a non-profit to a for-profit company, and reduce the power of the board of directors -- it can be said that it has been reduced to the level of an advisor. This worries me more.
Submarine: I interviewed Dr. Kai-Fu Lee a few days ago, who is a Chinese AI scientist, investor, and entrepreneur. He made a few points, and I would like to hear if you agree.
He said: "The first one to create AGI that overwhelms its opponents will inevitably be a global commercial monopolist, and it has the ambition to become the ultimate monopolist." "OpenAI is a particularly powerful monopolistic company, and Sam Altman may become the biggest monopolist in history. Although he does not have a monopoly today, his ambition, strategy, and clear planning of the first, second, and third steps are admirable. But from a practitioner's point of view, it is also worrisome."
Vitalik: That's exactly it.
Submarine: Then, what do you think of Sam Altman as a person?
Vitalik:
I have only met him once, so it is difficult to judge him deeply. The only thing I can look at is how he is doing things. There are quite a few things he has done at OpenAI that I disagree with.
He is doing the Worldcoin project. I think the idea is good. I don't think Worldcoin should be the world's only digital identity, but it is solving a problem that really needs to be solved. I have communicated more with the Worldcoin team, and they are more concerned about all the issues I would be concerned about.
But there is still this problem, making the "next global coin" is very difficult. If you want to do this, many people will oppose it. To do this kind of thing, two conditions are needed at the same time -- this is very interesting -- first, the world needs to trust you as a person; and second, everyone needs to know that there is a mechanism that allows them not to have to trust you as a person. They have made more improvements in the past year and hope to continue to develop in a good direction.
Submarine: You just said, on the one hand, you have to trust the person, and on the other hand, you need to know that you don't need to trust the person. Does Sam meet this condition?
Vitalik: I don't think today's OpenAI meets it.
Submarine: Will the departure of key people such as Ilya Sutskever (Chief Scientist of OpenAI) affect the AI landscape?
Vitalik:
This is a red flag, and it needs to be worried about.
Many people leaving does not necessarily mean 100% that the company has a problem. In the beginning, many co-founders left Ethereum. If someone leaves or is fired, it always means there are some conflicts and different values behind it. We need to see the specific details.
Looking at the details of OpenAI, I think this company, first, sacrificed its open source for security, and second, sacrificed its security for profit. This reminds me of a quote from a founding father of the United States: you can't sacrifice freedom for security, and if you do, you will find that you will lose both security and freedom. Looking at OpenAI's behavior, it seems that this kind of thing has happened.
Submarine: Who should humanity trust more, Sam Altman or you?
Vitalik: I don't want to answer this. (Laughs)
"The Merging of Biology and Silicon Is the Only Super Intelligence Humans Can Participate In"
Submarine: How do you understand Peter Thiel's (Founders Fund founding partner) statement: "Crypto is libertarian and AI is communist."
Vitalik:
I think his meaning is: AI is centralized, and Crypto is decentralized. Where does AI's power come from? First is computing power, and second is data.
If you have more computing power, your AI will be stronger; if you have more data, your AI will also be stronger. AI is a particularly powerful thing. The best AI is the biggest AI. If you want to make an AI, the simplest way is to put computing power and data in one place.
Now we can see that AI companies are almost all in 3-4 places in the world: Silicon Valley, London, and China (in a few cities). But the Crypto communities and projects are particularly decentralized. In the Ethereum Foundation, only 25% of the people are in the United States, where are the others? They're everywhere. There are more in Germany, more in the UK, more in Singapore, and there are several developers in China. Every country has them, why is that? What Crypto does is different.
Where is Crypto most useful? It is in some more marginal places that do not have a centralized trust center.
Submarine: In places without centralized power? This means it is not the main player in the world.
Vitalik:
The goal of Crypto is that you can make some applications. In these applications, everyone can see the rules of the application and the contract. Not everyone can read it themselves, but at least many people can review the code, and everyone can participate. The blockchain is a globalized thing. So some of the characteristics of AI and Crypto are really going in different directions.
Submarine: The underlying values are different.
Vitalik:
Yes. Also, why people participate in these fields is also different. The common reason is money. What is different is what everyone wants to do with these fields.
People who participate in AI are particularly concerned about the development of human technology, hoping to accelerate humanity into an inter-planetary civilization, make humanity more powerful, and also make themselves more powerful. People who participate in blockchain are concerned about decentralized trust issues, social equity issues, and so on.
Submarine: Will AI and Crypto go in two different directions, or will they converge? If they converge or go in more extreme two different directions, what will we see that day?
Vitalik:
The role of Crypto is to create a game. There may be many goals in the game you create. Trading can be said to be a game. Another example is the prediction market. This year, Polymarket (a prediction market project) has been more successful.
Crypto can create a game and use smart contracts to implement game rules more securely. AI can participate in this game. If only humans participate, sometimes the efficiency is not high enough. For example, in the prediction market, I played more on Polymarket this year. I found that the quality of their results was not very high 4 years ago, but it is much higher this year than 4 years ago. Why? One of the reasons is that there is more liquidity. Last year, it was probably 1 million or 10 million US dollars, and this year it may be 100 million or 200 million. But I also found that this year, its answers are also better in matters with smaller liquidity.
So, it is now very likely that AI is participating. AI's reaction speed is very fast. If a person does this, they need to be on the computer 24 hours a day, watching all the news every minute and every second. And an LLM, if you let it run, it can do it by itself.
I think there will be more examples in the future, possibly in the social field, possibly in other fields. Crypto is a secure underlying layer, through which you can create a game to ensure that the rules of the game are fair. The role of AI is to participate.
Submarine: So it’s not Crypto participating in the game of AI, but AI participating in the game of Crypto?
Vitalik: Yes.
Submarine: One day, if the ultimate power of artificial intelligence, or "Big Brother," is going to destroy humanity, will the Crypto kingdom you represent come to save humanity?
Vitalik:
This question is quite complex. The role of Crypto is to make the rules of the game, not to solve specific problems.
Humans have many things they want to do -- hope to live longer, live more comfortably, and go to Mars. To achieve these things, it is necessary to solve the problem of coordination between people. If you are on an island and there is only you on the island, and no one else, Crypto is completely useless. The only role of Crypto is to solve the problem between people. But if there is only you on the island, AI is useful. Through this example, you can know that Crypto cannot directly solve your problems, but it indirectly solves your problems. Crypto is making a game, but it still needs people, robots, or other things to participate in these games.
If you want to see how Crypto will save the world, it can't just be Crypto, but Crypto + something else. Then what is Crypto +?
● The first possibility is Crypto + Decentralized AI;
● The second possibility is Crypto + a technology that can replace AI.
What technology can replace AI? The only answer is that humans and computers do deeper interaction. In the past two years, VR, AR, and the metaverse have become more popular. For example, Meta glasses. What are the characteristics of these technologies? The communication between the human brain and machines, the traffic and efficiency, can become higher.
If you put on Meta glasses, the glasses can directly see where you are looking. Now computers can receive some of your conscious awareness; if it is through glasses, they can see your eyes and body, they will directly communicate with your subconscious.
An interesting point is that the traffic of communication between the left and right parts of a person's brain is not particularly high. If we can do a very high efficiency, sufficiently high traffic, and sufficiently fast communication between a person and a machine, the computer will truly become a part of you.
Why am I interested in this direction? Because there will definitely be something smarter than humans, possibly in 10 years, 100 years, or 1000 years. But is this thing that is smarter than humans something independent that will surpass us, or can we become a part of this thing? -- I think the second way is particularly interesting.
Submarine: We become a part of it?
Vitalik:
Yes, or it becomes a part of us. It is the merging -- the technology of biology and silicon will merge together -- this technology is the only way that we humans can participate in a super intelligence.
If we don’t do this, the only possibility is that a separate computer will be smarter than all of us, and they will all control the world, and humans will have no power to influence the world at all.
If we want to do this direction, we have to do it in the right way. Now we have Neuralink (a brain-computer interface company founded by Musk), but this technology has a risk, that there is a computer that can read your mind and read your brain. If it is not open source, if it is centralized, it is sending your information to a server. This means a big company can read your mind, and this thing is very dangerous. So I hope we have open-source, security-respecting things in both the software and hardware parts.
How does Crypto participate? First is the business model. Open-source technology always has a disadvantage, it is difficult to find money. If you do a centralized thing that you control yourself, there are many ways to make a lot of money. For open-source technology, everyone can download it and use it, and they don’t need to have any relationship with you after they use it. Its technology has advantages, but the disadvantage is that it is difficult to make money. And Crypto has many ways to make money that respect open source.
If we support some open-source technologies through Crypto, it is possible that more open-source BCI, more open-source AI, and more open-source everything will appear.
Submarine: It sounds like AI is built on Crypto?
Vitalik:
The business model can be on Crypto, and you can also use some Crypto technologies to create an architecture.
One point I haven't mentioned is that recently there are some interesting new Crypto technologies, including PC (Programmable Cryptography) and FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption). The advantage is that you can create an AI that can calculate your private data, but no other people or other computers know your private data. It uses your data for calculations but doesn't see what the data is. It has been known since 1982 that these technologies are possible, but this technology has reached a stage where more applications can use it.
Submarine: In the field of artificial intelligence, who do you admire and admire most, and who do you dislike most?
Vitalik:
Wow, this... There is no obvious example. I respect people who maintain their principles for a long time. There have been many external changes in the past 5 years, and many people will change their minds. It's not necessarily for their own reasons. Most of them are bad reasons -- for example, if a team I don't like has an idea, I need to have an idea to suppress them.
There are not many people who are willing to keep their minds open for a long time and have principles. If they have them, I will respect them.
"If Issuing a Coin and Creating an Exchange Are All We Do, Then This Industry Is a Failure"
Submarine: Given the recent popularity of artificial intelligence and its attractiveness to young talents, what advice would you give to aspiring but hesitant technologists between career choices in blockchain and artificial intelligence?
Vitalik: The most important thing is what you are interested in.
Submarine: Objectively speaking, will the prosperity of artificial intelligence in the past two years cool down the crypto market?
Vitalik:
Definitely. Some people who would have participated in Crypto before have now gone to participate in AI because of the good development of AI.
I found that there are three types of people:
● The first type, their goal may be to do the most significant things, no matter what it is, they just want to do big, influential things and participate in human history. Or make more money.
● The second type is for the specific reasons of Crypto, such as being concerned about currency, open source issues, or being concerned about trust, human freedom, etc. They have always been on the blockchain side and will not go to AI.
● The third type, they want to make money, but the quality of what they do is lower.
I have a concern: If particularly intelligent people do not do Crypto, and the people who stay in the Crypto field may not have any interesting ideas, the only application will be the financial applications that everyone has been doing for many years. This will become a situation -- issue a coin, create an exchange; issue another coin, create another exchange; and then issue another coin, with a cute dog on this coin -- these things are fun, but if they are the only things our industry does, then this industry is a failure.
The challenge facing our industry is to create an application that is both meaningful and that many people like to participate in.
I recently found that there are now more people who want to do this. 2022 and 2023 were very dangerous times. AI succeeded, but Crypto did not succeed yet. Everyone knew that AI's LLM was particularly powerful and what you could do with ChatGPT. But Layer2 was not yet out, or it was in a very early stage and transaction fees were very high. So, 2022 and 2023 were the largest difference in what AI and Crypto could do.
But this year, the power of Crypto has increased a lot, and many developers are beginning to want to create applications that are both meaningful and that many users like to participate in. If the crypto field continues to succeed, many people will still choose to participate in Crypto.
Submarine: I told people in the Chinese venture capital industry around me that I was going to meet you today, and many people asked me the same question: What do you think of the fact that there are still no practical applications of the Ethereum ecosystem or the entire Web3 ecosystem after so many years?
Vitalik:
My answer is what I just said. Before this year, transaction fees were too high, some important technologies were not yet mature, account security issues had not been resolved, privacy issues had not been resolved, and many problems had not been resolved. So, before this year, our industry did not have enough technology to create applications that ordinary people could participate in. The only successful application was DeFi, and the reason was that DeFi could earn more money.
If there is an opportunity to increase your money by 10 times, you will still be willing even if there are technical difficulties. If there is a 30% chance that your account will be stolen, and if you encounter a problem, your money will be gone, but if you win, your money will increase by 10 times, you will most likely still participate.
But if what you want to do is more common, and the goal is not to increase your money by 10 times, but to protect your money, protect your identity, or participate in some other applications. If the technical difficulties and security problems are not resolved, you will not participate.
This year, we are finally starting to solve these problems. This year is the best time to create meaningful applications.
Submarine: Is always speculating on coins and hoarding coins not what you want?
Vitalik: No.
Submarine: What do you want? What do you want to push this world towards?
Vitalik:
I hope this world is fairer and more open, and to create applications that can solve important trust issues. If you want to build a fair and open world, solving trust issues is a necessary first step. Why are many things not very good? Because people don't know who to trust.
You can look at the application examples of Crypto. In countries facing many financial problems, such as Argentina, they are particularly interested in Crypto.
● First, this is a reliable financial system, they can put their money in it, and the money will not be gone one day.
● Second, they can connect with mainstream finance. Many people use Crypto and work in companies in the United States or Europe, and they can earn US and European level wages, send money to their own countries, to themselves or their families, and participate in fairer global matters.
● Third, there are other applications. For example, everyone likes to say words like identity or credit system, but they all hope to solve a problem, which is the trust problem, and hope to know who you can trust. There is a topic now: knowing who is a person and who is a robot.
If we solve it in a decentralized way, we can more easily create secure applications that people all over the world can use. This can avoid a risk: the division of the world.
Submarine: It sounds like Crypto is more suitable for places that lack trust and equity; AI is more suitable for places that want to pursue stronger human power -- these are two completely different human ideals. Will Crypto ignite countries like Argentina, and AI ignite countries like China and the United States? From a global perspective, will the ignited territories be different?
Vitalik:
In the long run, we all need to improve our abilities. If we have a perfect, fair, and decentralized system, and the abilities of the people who do things do not improve, they will still fall behind after a period of time.
Technologies other than Crypto, including AI and biological sciences, need to be participated in by the whole world. But there are different ways to do these technologies. If we want to use a decentralized and more open way, Crypto may participate in part. In the short term, different countries will have completely different adoptions of Crypto.
For example, Argentina has basic financial problems. For example, the United States does not have these problems most of the time. The most useful thing about Crypto for me is to donate money to some international charities. It is difficult through bank machines, but very easy through Crypto. In developed countries, the most people who use this technology are those who particularly want to participate in the international market and society. In smaller countries, there is more adoption of Appchains.
I don’t know how these things will change in the long term.
Submarine: I have a very basic misunderstanding. For ordinary people, what is the difference between a centralized application and a decentralized application?
Vitalik:
I can give you a specific example. We recently had some decentralized SocialFi applications that succeeded on Ethereum. Lens and Farcaster are two of the easiest to understand examples. What is the difference between Farcaster and Twitter?
On Twitter, first, its algorithm is completely opaque; and second, if you think Twitter is not good, you don't like what it is doing, and you want to move to another application, your network will be gone. Anyone who is dissatisfied with Twitter and wants to start a new one needs to start with a user base of 0. The problem of the network effect is particularly difficult to solve.
In Farcaster, the architecture is like this -- the first layer is a decentralized network, and the second layer is the interface. Users can send messages and see the messages sent by other people. One client that is most widely used is called Warpcast. Warpcast is a decentralized app. You can download it yourself and it is very easy to use. A user who has never participated in Crypto can use Warpcast. But if you don't like Warpcast, and you don't like what they are doing, Farcaster also has many other clients, such as Firefly. If you don’t like Warpcast, you can move to Firefly, and you can participate in the Farcaster network through Firefly. The messages you send can be seen on Warpcast, and the messages sent by Warpcast users can also be seen by you.
The decentralized underlying layer ensures that different clients can interoperate and can solve the situation of Warpcast becoming a monopoly.
This is a public machine where anyone can create a client. In the Farcaster ecosystem, the public architecture has already given some users some important advantages.
Submarine: What do you think of speculators in the crypto industry? Why are there so many people like this in this industry?
Vitalik:
Speculators exist in many fields, such as the stock market and the sports gambling industry. Many people have this habit.
What should our industry do? First, if some people like to do some more gamified finance, I hope to make alignments, so that the results of their participation in these things are useful for their country and society.
Second, we need to have some ways for them to expand their wealth in the long term. In most societies around the world, before it was real estate, everyone bought houses, but the real estate market is very unfair to many people. Everyone doesn't know if they are making money or losing money. If we can create some financial products in the crypto field that can make money in the long term but are also connected to the real economy, that is also particularly good.
Why was it not successful before? First, the regulation was not clear enough, but recently, the regulation in many countries has become clearer. Second, the technology needs to be safe enough.
If you can increase your assets by 10 times, you will be willing to face various risks. But the real economy is not like this. It may be less than 3%, 8%, or 10%. If your return is reasonable, you need to be concerned about security issues. We have solved it a little bit now. I hope to give everyone some better financial choices.
“I Have No Nanny, Driver, or Bodyguard”
Submarine: You are a billionaire at a very young age. What is your current lifestyle like?
Vitalik:
It's not much different from 5 years ago. I go to different countries and participate in different events.
More changes are that more people are asking me to take photos.
Submarine: Do you have a nanny, a driver, or a bodyguard?
Vitalik: I have none of them. Maybe when I participate in some big events, there will be. But most of the time, I don’t.
Submarine: I see on social media, including social media in China, you are often photographed taking the subway in Singapore. Why do you always take the subway?
Vitalik: Because Singapore's subway is so good.
Submarine: What about in other countries?
Vitalik: Other countries are different. Some don't have a subway or the subway is annoying, so I will take a taxi. If I can walk, I will also choose to walk. I like walking.
Submarine: Why do your bag and watch have cats on them?
Vitalik: Because cats are cute.
Author's photo from the scene, Vitalik showing his watch.
Submarine: Did you buy it in Thailand?
Vitalik: No. The watch was given to me by a friend, and the compass was something I found on Amazon myself. The cat bag was a gift from my Thai friend.
Submarine: In an interview, you said: As a child, I always heard stories of people who were very rich, but spent their money on private jets, helicopters, luxury sports cars, or other stupid things, and in the end they had nothing. I remember thinking to myself, this is too stupid. So when you became rich, did you ever have any stupid ideas? Did you succumb to them, or did you resist them?
Vitalik: Emm, I don't know how to answer that.
Submarine: In other words, has wealth ever made you lose your way?
Vitalik: I don't think I would think that way.
Submarine: Do you often check the balance in your bank account?
Vitalik: Not really.
Submarine: I'm surprised you speak Chinese (without having lived in China for a long time). How did you learn and master this language?
Vitalik:
I started learning in 2013. At that time, I had just dropped out of college and was writing articles for Bitcoin Magazine. I decided to travel and see the Bitcoin world in China, the United States, and Europe. At that time, I saw some articles about China, talking about the Chinese Bitcoin community and projects. It was particularly interesting.
Many people told me that Chinese is the most difficult language to learn. It was a particularly interesting challenge, so I started learning. In the beginning, I used language software. In 2014, I came to China for the first time and started chatting with many Chinese friends. I just continued to learn in this way.
Submarine: You speak many languages, like six? Does speaking many languages help with doing Crypto?
Vitalik:
The best languages for me are English, Russian, and Chinese. After that, French was something I learned in a Canadian school from 2014 to 2019. I also learned a little German and Spanish myself. About six languages. I only know a little bit of other languages.
Actually, it does. One interesting point is that European languages are easier to learn. They are close to English and come from Latin. Europeans all speak English, and sometimes they can speak English better on technical topics. But for people who are not in Europe, it is not like this. It is particularly helpful to interact with other communities, those who speak Russian, those who speak Chinese, and those who speak a little Spanish in South America.
Submarine: Now, what are the three most important things you are thinking about?
Vitalik:
First, the development of the Ethereum ecosystem, what we need to do now to make the Ethereum ecosystem, applications, and community develop better.
Second, some of the macro human issues we talked about, including AI.
Third, many smaller technical matters, like what I need to do today, what my next article should be, a lot of small problems.
Submarine: What do you think about the US election and the current two candidates? The results will be out soon. (Our conversation took place one day before the US election results were announced.)
Vitalik:
Who will win today may not have a big impact 20 or 30 years from now. There are some trends that will still happen no matter what happens today. Even if they don't happen today, they may happen in 2028. If they don't happen in the United States, they may happen in other countries. So, I mainly look at some long-term and global trends. Within 10 years, the world's culture, technology, race, and economy will definitely change a lot.
Submarine: As a cosmopolitan or a builder of some kind of utopian community, you are always trying to break the old order and establish a new order. Then how do you view the human institution of marriage? Do humans still need marriage?
Vitalik:
This topic may change a lot in 50 years. In the past, everyone's goals were, first, economic security, and second, children. But now, people, at least in developed countries, do not have urgent economic problems and can think more about their lives and what they like. Also, many people do not want or are not willing to have children.
The Internet has changed our social relationships a lot. If you moved from one city to another 30 years ago, it meant that you lost all of your friends. But this is not the case now. If the situation changes, our lives will also change a lot.
Submarine: Are you a free person now?
Vitalik: Sometimes I am free, and sometimes I am not free.
Submarine: What makes you unfree?
Vitalik: There are so many people in the Ethereum community. I am always thinking about what they are thinking and what they want to do.
Submarine: Do you have any fears?
Vitalik: I have a fear of bugs.
——————End——————
(After the conversation, Vitalik left the tag from the teabag on the table.)
Author's photo from the scene.
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