Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Ethereum at a Crossroads - Vitalik Buterin (Live from EthCC 7)

Episode Date: July 14, 2024

We couldn’t miss EthCC 7, nor the chance to chat with Vitalik Buterin about Ethereum’s status quo as an L1 amidst the plethora of L2s competing for market share, and what challenges will most likely arise along the way (e.g. staking decentralisation).Tune in for a captivating discussion on the importance of decentralisation as a last stand of human empowerment in the current geopolitical context and how it could positively impact AI's trajectory. Topics covered in this episode:Types of Ethereum ‘hardnesses’ (sic)The L1 status quoStaking decentralisation & block buildingNon-financial crypto applicationsAccount abstraction & interoperabilitySolana & Bitcoin ecosystemsDeSci, biotech & longevityGeopoliticsEthereum nation state?The impact of AIDo not go gentle into that good nightEpisode links:Vitalik Buterin on TwitterEthCC on TwitterEthereum on TwitterSponsors:Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.ioChorus One: Chorus One is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.oneThis episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Brian Fabian Crain.

Ethereum is primarily a platform for layer 2s. Sending coins around between different L2s should just feel to the user like sending coins between different Ethereum L1 addresses. Users live on layer 2's, layer 2's live on layer 1. And layer 1 basically focuses on being this like fairly secure and fairly minimal base layer for that. Don't try to like page it home blockchains and coins into stuff. Like blockchain and coins continue to be valuable and continue to have their use, but they're only one part of the world. There's like entire other aspects of

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Startsaking today at chorus.1. Why do you want to make Ethereum so hard? Why do I want to make Ethereum so hard? I mean, you know, we do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy. Making Ethereum hard would be easy. I don't know I mean in that case I meant to fear of itself

But you know Like at the beginning I literally thought that we just like Get the whole thing done in a couple of months And then Like I just do it during my yeah Third um off term from Waterloo And then I just like go right back to university

And be a college student Yeah and then you know Instead it ended up taking like Like 20 years to watch the first version And then you know like another seven years to get to proof of stake Yeah Didn't work out so well Yeah

I think it's been fine. Yeah, how's your ECC been? You know, it's definitely one of the more fun and busy ones. You know, just a whole bunch of different events. Like, I feel like this one has become, you know, even more side eventy than, you know, the ones in the past, which is like, you know, on the one hand, it's like, yay, decentralization. and, you know, permission, less innovation, and all of those things. And on the other hand, you know, you have different events that are like, you know, like 2.8 kilometers away from each other. Sometimes, you know, even more.

And the ones that are 2.8 kilometers from each other are, like, separated through by a space that it takes even longer to get through by car than it does on foot. It's just like blockchain. Yeah, yeah. The L1, and, like, the L1's expensive, and nobody wants to do. Wait, wait, sorry. In this case, oh, oh, that, okay, I thought, I'm sorry. I thought you meant, like, L1. I was trying to figure out if my L1 you meant, like, going on foot or by car.

I guess, no, because, like, cars here are, like, super slow. I'm trying to find, you know, the right crypto analogy to them. Yeah. Yes. So what does it mean for theorem to be hard? Yeah, I mean, different kinds of hardness. I mean, the kind of hardness we ultimately want is hard. to attack, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I think I mean, what other kinds of hardness are there? You know, hard to use. I think that's obviously been one of the topics, right? And, you know, I've been

like basically, you know, yelling at people for the whole week and for the past while on Twitter and like getting them to adopt, you know, like stuff like ERC 3770 and like basically try to make the cross L2 ecosystem feel smoother

and so like sending coins around between different altures to just feel to the user like sending coins around like on between different Ethereum ML1 addresses. So a lot of things to fix there. Obviously

you know hard in terms of fees being expensive though that's I mean we actually got we got the blobs out you know since we got the blobs out later 2s have been reliably cheaper than 0.01 cents a transaction.

And even during some of the crazy spikes, right? Even then, I think, I only got to like 10 cents or somewhere in the tens of cents, like, very briefly, right? So, yeah, I think, you know, we've made a lot of progress there and then obviously we'll make even more progress with, you know, peer dust. that's hopefully coming quite soon and then even more data availability sampling

and so we'll be able to have even more blobs. So let's, I was watching, I watched the video of your talk. I didn't make it your talk, but can you walk through, like, in your talk, you discussed the different outcomes for Ethereum and like one of those outcomes was for Ethereum to be very simple

to just like do proof verification. Yeah. And then there's like the opposite side of that. So could you like walk us through the spectrum of what that looks like? Yeah. So like I think on that particular slide I had basically like four different options, right? So the I guess kind of status quo option so far is like the one that's the second from the left, right? Which is basically that Ethereum is, you know, primarily a platform for layer two's.

And users as individuals would mainly, yeah, you know, like use layer one for basically, like, moving assets and, like, especially non-fungible assets between layer two is possibly, like, exiting in the case of, you know, like some kind of fraud-proof emergency or whatever. But otherwise, you know, users live on layer two's. Layer two's live on layer one. And layer one basically, yeah, focuses on being this, like, fairly secure and, like, fairly minimal base layer for that. that. And I mean, a big theme of my talk, right, is basically that, like, we could actually do a lot more in optimizing Ethereum for that kind of goal, right? And, like, I talked about things like improving our ability to recover from 51% attack, improving our censorship resistance, improving our quantum resistance. And, like, these are goals that actually don't detract from, like, any of the other vision, right? I think they're even, a lot of them are compatible with the other visions, right? But there are differences around the edges, right? So, like, for example, I think if you want to really optimize for being focused on L2s as they are today, then you do single-swatt finality, but then you possibly just like accept a slower block time, like maybe, you know, like 16 or 32 seconds for a round of finality,

and then you just let L2 pre-confirmations do anything else. Then on that diagram, if you go like all the way to the left, that's like radically simplifying the L1 to make it L2 focused. And the idea I had there is like you basically kick the EVM out of Ethereum, right? Basically, like if you think about it, Ethereum already has pretty strong separation between the execution and the consensus layer. And so what you do is you basically define a new, like much more restricted form of execution where that execution is basically just proving like one type of zero knowledge proof. Right. And then the only thing that exists would basically be, you know, like layer two is that would have to be roll-ups or volatiums that would.

that would then be defined by a zero knowledge proof verification key, right? And that kind of future, like basically, even the existing EVM would basically just like turn into being one of these roll-ups, right? So that's like ultra-minimal L1, right? Like, so the EVM is not even part of L1 anymore. So that's also a possible future. Then number three would be, so this is. as third from the left or second from the right is if you take Ethereum

and then you add somewhat more functionality to provide somewhat more value to L2 so that L2s have to do less. And the specific idea I had is basically that on L1 you could try to reduce the confirmation time down to four seconds. And

maybe you could do two seconds for us the more conservative one, right? And the argument is for why you should be able to do it without too many assumptions is because like we are already relying on roughly that level of network latency already

and like if you just optimise for providing confirmations you don't need that many validators right like you could provide a basic confirmation which is like a sample of a smaller number of validators so you don't have to wait for the aggregation step for example right and then you have like for example like swats every four seconds

finality every 16 and then if you do that then you have like then the number of roll-ups that can be based roll-ups ends up increasing a lot, right? Basically, there's a lot of roll-ups

that would just be able to become simpler and just say, we're not doing our own sequencing, we're basically just going to accept whoever provides things on layer one. So that's, you know, the kind of, you know, third from the left. And then fourth from the left is basically, yeah, you know, radical departure from L2-centric

Ethereum, where we basically say, L1 is refocusing on being a platform for Mniluk Defi and other applications, and realistically, that requires even faster block times, and then there might be some things that require linear twos, but that's more in the space of like

high performance, gaming stuff, enterprise blockchain, you know, like non-financial, blah, blah, blah, right? And like, primary activity,

like just that continues being on Ethereum ML1. So, like, those are, you know, like, the possibilities that I see. Yeah. So, like,

on one end of that spectrum, we have sort of going back towards, like, monolithic. Yeah. And then on the other end, so it's towards very modular and, like,

very sensitive. simple, a series simpler one that does verification and everything else on top is riding. Using Ethereum for security. Like, what do you think is the optimal path forward looking at the sort of landscape of other blockchains out there, whether it's like Solana with one approach or like the Cosmos approach? What you think is the right for Ethereum? Yeah, I mean, I think like basically, yeah, you know, out of, of the ones that I mentioned, right? Like, the one on the right is, you know, the more

Salano-like, and the ones on the left are, like, more cosmos-like, plus, I mean, a stronger idea of shared security. So, I mean, I'm currently still leaning, like, somewhere between the second and the third, right? So, uh, keep things all too focused and, like, don't try to do too much.

Because if you try to do too much, then, like, that does make it harder to be decentralized. Then, like, I mean, that not just in a technical sense, but also in, like, an ongoing development sense, like if a protocol needs to rapidly iterate in order to keep satisfying the needs of applications, and like it's actually harder for like decentralization to be genuine there, right? Because like there's just more need for like a common strategy to do that kind of iteration. The, yeah, but then, you know, on the other side, like there's definitely, yeah,

you know, a risk of like having an all two ecosystem that's kind of too uncoordinated and like you don't actually get a lot of the benefits of like shared interoperability or even shared security and like that's something that I also don't want. So I think this idea of like being this common layer that provides shared security, some level of shared interoperability because, you know, the nice thing about an altu is that it doesn't have to verify a consensus of other L2 is if it could just verify on chain state routes.

and like you know you have the like you can always have a common Merkel pass right and then I mean like possibly

yeah a couple of other things but like don't really try to go too far beyond that like that just feels like it makes the most sense but you know

there's obviously still a long time for the ecosystem to like really fully evolve so you people talk a lot about like sort of validators stake decentralization. Like on the block bills inside, right?

You have like three entities that basically make like almost all the blocks. Yeah. What do you think about that? Do you think it's a problem? Yeah. And so there's basically two paths out of that, right? So like these are, you know, what I call, I mean, like minimization

in quarantine, right? Basically, yeah. So the first path basically says like we actually do a hard pivot relative to, you know, like 20-1 era Ethereum, thought and we basically go back to try to kill the beast of proposer centralization. And one of the ideas that's been floating around is like the multi-proposer concept, right? Like you elect multiple proposers in a slot and then they each provide a list of transactions

and then the actual block gets forms by taking the union of those transactions and then like ordering them by fee. Right. The Solano, that's right. I mean it's like like Mistiketti is like the one. one of the protocols that's doing that. Yeah, so that's one of the ideas. And, like, if you can do that

successfully, and if that works, then, obviously, you know, in some way the problem is solved, right? But, you know, there's obviously a lot of ifs on, like, does that work? The other approach, which is, I know, quarantining is basically, yeah, you know, essentially, you take this concept of inclusion lists,

and then you keep on, like, beefing up that concept until inclusion lists start to take up, like, basically almost, the whole block, right? And then the thing that you're auctioning off is basically just like basically just essentially, you know, like top of block rights, right? And

you auction off top of block rights with a different mechanism and the idea would be that like even if, like you know, whoever you consider the most evil actor in the world, like gets the control top of block for every slot, there's like still a limit

to how much bad stuff they can do and they can't actually like censor anyone for more than, I mean, theoretically, even, like, for more than one swat or even for more than zero swats, right? So that's also, like, in a nice outcome. I mean, it definitely feels a lot less satisfying than just, like, getting rid of the problem in its entirety, but it's, you know, also an option. Do you think PBS was a mistake? Um, I mean, I think, uh, PBS, like, firmly, yeah, you know, I would call PBS, like, firmly, yeah, like in the quarantining camp, I think, you know, given what we knew at the time, like,

it felt like a reasonable approach and like, you know, like, you always, like, like, it's hard to guess counterfactuals, right? And like, there are counterfactuals that are, like, very dystopian, right? Like, you could imagine a counterfactual where if people, like, if there's common knowledge of the idea that, like, MEV is big and the only way to get MEV is to join a big staking pool that can use these sophisticated strategies to get it, then like, you know, instead of talking about Lido at 29% and Coinbase at like 11% and like Cracken at 9 or whatever it is, we'd be talking about like, you know, Lido at like, you know, like 35 and then Coinbase at like 28 and Cracken at like 20, right? And then people would be, yeah, you know, like even more upset, right?

So, yeah, like you always have to ask the question of like, what is the counterfactual, right? And I think at this point it's still like somewhat hard to say. And so at the moment this pre-confirmation topic is very popular. What do you think are the main benefits of pre-confirmation? Or maybe you can explain also what are peak confirmations? So pre-confirmations are basically a way to give users assurance that a transaction will be included or possibly even that a transaction will be included in what effect, like what post-state a transaction will have before that transaction actually gets

confirmed. And so today we have L2s already giving pre-confirmations on their own, right? Like when you use optimism, like you get a pre-confirmation all list immediately, right? And there's like a bunch of layer-toos that do this. There are ideas around like shared sequencers that give shared pre-confirations between

sets of layer-tos. And then there's Justin Drake's idea of having an L-1-wide mechanism that does that, like, for both L-1 and for any L-2s that are based role-ups. And Justin's idea is basically to do that at like this, like, basically at the level of, like, if you have

sophisticated proposers, then those sophisticated proposers would be the ones that give those pre-confirmations. I think the biggest challenge of that, of those kinds of ideas is, like, it really piggybacks on this idea of, like, these fat proposers, right? And so, like, for example, you know, if you have, you have. if you want to go in this direction of really buffing up the inclusion list, right? And like saying the inclusion list is going to be 90% of the block.

Then like what that also means is like the fat proposal link is 10% of the block. And so only 10% of the block would be able to benefit from pre-go information. So like you have this like, you know, it could hear a tradeoff, right? Of like, well, benefits from pre-information like can't necessarily benefit from the inclusion list, right?

And so that's and so that like I think those are the reasons why I think like a more sort of L1 native approach to having faster swat times that doesn't depend on like pre-gon proposers doing custom things would be healthier but then obviously there's like a limit to how far it can go right

because like you can do four seconds maybe you can do two seconds maybe you can't but with proposer based like the proposal it can obviously give you pre-cons like every 42 millis seconds or whatever. What do we achieve with pre-coms? Is it just like better censorship persistent? No. I mean, kind of the opposite, right? Because like if the proposer wants to censor you, you'd still have to wait the full 12 seconds to get in with the world inclusion list. Well, we achieve as like better confirmation times experienced by average users. Like if it's like today, if you make a payment, right, then like you have to wait for like one or just wants for

to get accepted. And it's like not too bad, right? Like the waiting time is comparable to like what we experienced with credit card payments, but at the same time, it's much slower than what we could be, and much slower than what we're used to in a lot of other contexts, right? And so instead, if you had, like, payments on O1 or on O'Toos that just confirm in 42 milliseconds, then, like, that would actually be a much better experience for users, and then, like, that benefit increases even more

once you get into things like non-financial applications. Right. To more than still, like, right, crypto is basically mainly used for, like, trading financial. applications. Do you hope that's going to change? Yeah, absolutely. So I've been very impressed by

polymarkets growth recently. Like that feels like that's the one not purely financial application where it's like getting attention from huge masses of non-crypto people, right? And like this is not even just like trading value. It's like direct use value.

Like people wants to know what the probabilities are and the different things they're going to happen. And then the decentralized social space I feel like it's also kind of like breaking out somewhat right like there's a lot of people on places like Farcaster that are not sort of natural

crypto people so there's just people who like Farcaster for what Farcaster is and it's what those are both things that would not have been possible five years ago because five years ago it was not possible to give to make a crypto application without you know like the

crypto standard of annoyingness which like, you know, which was then, you know, not something that anyone who's not a crypto person would have been willing to go through it, right? But now we're at the point where like it's, it's much better than that. Yeah. Account abstraction is also like a very popular topic right now. Like a lot of projects are wanting to integrate and build account abstraction. Where do you think we're at in terms of having that be widely adopted? And also like how does it? How does interoperability sort of fit into the background interaction idea as well? Yeah, so smart contract wallets have become way more mainstream over the last five years, right? Like, if you ask at least at a crypto conference, how many people have a safe, like it's like almost half the audience, right?

Especially if it's a technical group. So the challenge is like with account abstraction is like we want like accounts that are like safes to have like to feel as native as EOAs do, right? Like, we want contract laws to have EOA level nativeness. And that's something that is, like,

we're getting towards slowly. Like, I think one of the other, you know, like one of these, like, 2020-era like pivots that's being, like, pivoted back now, right? Is like, with EEC 4337, we made this big pivot from trying to do things on L1 to try to do, like, that whole thing as a, as an

ERC. You know, I think that really helped get the ecosystem kick started, but at the same time, there's just like a lot of weaknesses of 4337 as an ERC that look things like security concerns, overhead, like lots of stuff. And also

that 4337 cannot benefit from inclusion lists or like any kind of protocol level censorship resistance technology. And so if we can like bring it back to being like a protocol level standard,

then it actually does get those benefits. So that's something that I think people are increasingly, like, rallying around. And I think EAP 7702 was really a big win. And to me, the reason why is because, like, it brought these two very disparate crowds, like the crowd that cares about smart contract wallets for, like, the longer term security and, like, authorization-related reasons. And the crowd that cares about, you know, like, what they call account abstraction for reasons of like paymasters and like various convenience features.

Like you brought those two crowds together in a way that they benefit from the same roadmap, right? Because before, like especially with the 3,074 path, they were going in very different directions. And that could have, I think, introduced a lot of technical debt, right? So now, like what 7702 does, it basically gives people what they want out of 3d74, but in a form factor that lets you basically take an ELA and, make that EOA simultaneously be a contract. And so if you have that, then you actually start getting smart contract-like features and you have a smart contract wallet ecosystem

that actually serves both of those use cases in parallel. So I think that's been really amazing to see. And I'm really hoping that it's going to be a much smoother path forward for the account of attraction ecosystem from here. Do you feel like blockchain architecture overall, do you feel like it's converging more across ecosystem or do you feel like

it's sort of diverging in different directions? Some of both. Like I think points of convergence, you know, using ZK synarchs. I mean, layer two is, you know, there's like this

starting to be this like more active Bitcoin layer two space now like a lot of understanding on I mean, like things, like how to understand, like, M-E-V, and how to, like, build, you know, financial applications and, like, deal with timing games and all of that stuff. Like, there's a lot of questions around which there's, like, working for Chilean clear answers.

I mean, at the same time, there's clearly also, like, different communities that just have different focuses. So, like, Bitcoin clearly, yeah, you know, continues to have. have a different focus from Ethereum in a lot of ways, for example. And I mean, even like Solana, right? Like, if you ask a lot of people, like, which category

of application they're excited about, like, from what I can tell, they're very, you know, like, all in on deep end right now, right? And, you know, Ethereum has deep end, but it's definitely, like, much less of a primary focus. And so it's, like, yeah, there's definitely, I think, like, ongoing

like, differences in just, like, what kinds of things people wants to see even happen out of the crypto space. Are you excited about the recent rejuvenation of the Bitcoin ecosystem and this revival of activity? I mean, it's definitely interesting, right?

I mean, we'll see how it goes. We'll see if Opcat actually gets in. Aside from crypto, what are you most excited about? Lots of fascinating stuff in biotech recently. I mean, obviously there's longevity that I've Minowek talked about a bunch.

And I know you have like Brian Johnson kind of like taking like actually doing the thing that I wanted someone to do a year ago which is like making a version of like his package for the every man

right, like something that you can do if you don't have like 15 hours a day and 20 million dollars to spare. So So that's, like, that's been interesting. What are you doing to live forever? Yeah, I mean, I'm like, you know, like, I'm definitely, yeah, I've actually started. I'm going to like taking some of the Brian Johnson pills.

I mean, I continue to do normy stuff, like, you know, exercise. I'm like, you know, not eat sugar and, like, you know, the basic stuff. And then otherwise, I'm just like staying and observing the space. I think, like, from a funding perspective, the situation definitely looks much better than it did 10 years ago. I think the space just has, like, much more legitimacy now. Outside of the longevity space, another space that, like, continues to be important is, I think, the, like, anti-pandemic and, like, anti-earborn disease space, right? That's something that since COVID, I mean, obviously, like, the mainstream has just totally forgotten about it, which I think is actually kind of shameful because, you know, like, one,

like one COVID actually does continue to be a pretty significant risk. And two, because if you think about, like, artificial plagues as, you know, like one of the big, like threats to human life in the 21st century, like in Toby Ords, I mean, like a book on existential risks, like, bio risk is like number two right after AI, right? And so there's, like, a huge amount of value in caring about it. but at the same time, like, there is this subculture that can be used to care about it, and, like, it's actually going stronger. And, like, if you think about things like our ability to just, like, test for the disease is, right? Like, we have PCR quality tests that are, that can be done in machines that can, like, almost fit in your pocket, right?

So a lot of improvements on tests and improvements on vaccines, improvements on, like, masks and, like, improvements on air filtering. like basically if you like take even existing air filtering technology and we just like put it in every room then like you can basically make humanity airborne disease proof right and like I think people haven't like quit into this but I know that tech is still moving forward

so that's also something I you know follow and I think it's still really valuable to keep working hard on you think DCI is going to be absolutely I think yeah

so DISA I think like it's been a meme for a while right and like at some point every meme has to turn into like specific concrete pathways to do things right

and like the top two seem to be like coordinating funding and this concept of like doing decentralized trials right like basically like actually getting this like a large group of people to actually be willing to like basically you know like a B test particular

or like whether it's substances to take or like or lifestyle changes to make. And I think there's definitely value in like using like dows and large scale groups to try to coordinate some of both. So that's been interesting. I mean, it's good to see, you know, things like Vitalea happening. And I hope more of that happens. What's your outlook for like state of the geopolitical landscape right now? That's a fun one. I mean, it's like, yeah, I mean, it's, like, it does, like, it, like, it feels like there have been, like, so many different changes over the last, you know, like, 10 years.

I mean, just, like, the level of, like, like, friendliness and, you know, like, assumption of, you know, like, peace and cooperativeness and good faith has obviously just, like, gone, you know, like, down a lot, even, like, basically gone down to zero in a lot of different cases. I think I mean the question of I mean like what you should even do if you like care about I mean like things like freedom

and human rights for example has like changed a lot right that's like I mean that's like one of those questions where I think like at the same time as it's or even like because people

in politics have like definitely started caring about those things less it's like also become more nonpartisan and so it's become like even like I even think easier to care about in some sense but you know like at the same time there's like this is happening at the same time like as there's just like more and more big problems happening in all in all of those areas do you think Ethereum is going to compete with nation states that's uh that's what you mean by compete right like I think Ethereum is like not

on the same level as nation states in some sense, right? Because, you know, it's not like a player that's like dogging it out with like the U.S. or China or India in the same way that those countries are like dogging it out with each other, right? It's like it's something that intersects with all of them and is like also not any part of all of them or not a part of any of them. Right. So I think the exact role that the crypto space is playing is like still figuring itself out. I mean, I think just like, creating and maintaining these very multinational communities that we're people from very different places,

I still feel like they're part of the same thing and they're part of the same team. Like that alone, I think, is a contribution to world peace that's being, I think, not appreciated or kind of priced in enough by a lot of people. So I think the things that will make the 21st century great are things that will, you know, like, happen over the internet and that will, you know, form and maintain themselves internationally. And I think it'll be, you know, like some combination of the internet, crypto, other technology, is other channelists that make that happen. At the same time, like either near term or in for a lot of challenges, right? And, you know, there's all, I mean, obviously, yeah, you know, wars continuing to be. ongoing, there's obviously all of the discussions around

you know, AI and like, and the politics of that. There's obviously, you know, the while we're trying to like build better forms of social media, there's like info war happening

on existing social media. So, you know, it feels like community notes kind of came in, you know, like just in time. And like we'll see if we can, like, we get on. even stronger and even better versions of things like that.

There's like obviously natural resource issues and like energy. And like that's obviously, you know, a very major geopolitical issue at the same time as it feels like solar is like finally starting to actually get to the point where it's really making big impacts. Right. And, you know, if oil actually becomes irrelevant, like 20 or 30 years from now, then like that's going to reshuffle things a lot. And then, you know, climate change also is going to reshovel things a lot, right? Because of, like, it's, like, I'm definitely not, you know, a climate dumer in the sense of, like, believing it's going to, like, literally cause human extinction or anything like that. But, like, it is going, like, it's already causing, you know, like very serious problems, like, exacerbating heat strokes that are, like, killing people and making life pretty bad for people and, like, places like India and Pakistan especially, right? And so, like, there's big parts of the world that probably are going to become less livable.

And then, you know, at the same time for like a lot of more northern climates, it's like kind of almost neutral. And like, I mean, you could say slightly positive, but then you have to remember that like actually this stuff is going to exacerbate conflict. And conflict is bad for everyone, right? So that's Yeah Also another one of the But there's just all of these I mean like different trends

I mean even climate change itself Right It's like a technological trend in multiple ways Right Because it's something that is entirely caused by Previous waves of human technology And then it looks like it's going to be solved by You know the next wave of human technology

But like is that actually even going to come fast enough Right So I think ethereum is going to become a nation state someday. I think the game of trying to become a nation state is the wrong game, right? And

like I think the thing that people are after with becoming a nation state is like, you know, you have like this ideal of like internationally recognized sovereignty and there's like this theme that like oh, you know, if you have internationally recognized sovereignty and then like you're going to be safe right? And like what we see it is like in reality

you're like very unfortunately like no you know, even having international recognize sovereignty is like not any kind of curiosity that you're going to be safe, right? Like I, you know, I wish it was, but, like, that's definitely not the world that we live in, right? And, like, I feel like the right frame to think about is, like, we think about blockchains as being a new kind of actor, right? And you think about, like, internet native communities, internet native structures as being a new kind of actor, right? and like we're seeing the, you know, the edges between those actors and the traditional world, like, you know, like being contested and being, you know, like, negotiated over in real time, right?

Like, like, whether or not, you know, cryptocurrencies have, you know, like, ETFs as, like, in some ways, the equivalent of, I mean, like, whether or not, like, you know, like, one nation state and another have, you know, like a certain type of trade agreements, right? It's like what kind of walls are we going to see between like internet native structures

and the existing world like these are things that are being figured out in real time and yeah I mean there's like

a lot of challenges there what do you think the impact of AI is going to be on Ethereum I mean the impact of AI is going to be

a crazy massive on the entire world in this century right, the challenge is like, we have no idea what the direction is going to be, right? It's like either it makes the world a total utopia or it literally kills everyone, or

we get some kind of, you know, totalitarian centralization dystopia, or we get something that's like pretty, yeah, pleasant, but it's still basically, you know, like, it's like only pleasant if you want to be a sheep and otherwise it's like a global government and then maybe 500 years later, it slides off the rail anyway. And then, like, even if you go into, like, very near term, I mean, like, present day stuff, right?

It's, like, you know, like, people are saying, like, you know, like, what's going to happen, you know, when is there going to be the first disaster when something about AI, like, really kills people? It's like, no, like, that's, like, that's, like, reality, you know, like, in, you know, like, Ukraine and Gaza and, like, and other places, like, every week, right? And that's, yeah, yeah, that's like, that's like, that's like, like it's heavy stuff now. It's going to become heavier, right? And it's going to become, you know, like super important. And I think within the crypto space, you know, like, it's almost like it's easier to answer the near term stuff. Because, you know, the near term stuff just kind of feels more pleasant and happy and we at least kind of know what's going to happen. Right. Like with near term stuff, you know, we have, like, we've had AIs being market makers for like five years already. And, like, we've had, like, we've had AI's being market makers for like five years already. And, like that's, like people talk about, oh, when we'll see AI crypto interconnections and like that's been an AI crypto intersection that's existed for like over five years.

Then, you know, AI's participating on prediction markets. I mean, we're going to start to see more and more of that start to happen. Then we're going to see AI's participating in other kinds of crypto applications, you know, like, starting to go beyond the financial. You know, we're going to see, yeah, AI applications, uh, what other things. People are going to try to, you know, like, do the whole, like, AI judges on chain thing. And there's, like, versions of that that can work.

There's versions of that that are totally horrible. And, like, people are inevitably going to try to do both, probably including, including some of the horrible stuff first and, like, something's in a break at some point. Do you hope you're going to merge with AI someday and become even smarter? So the whole human AI, you know, like, collaborative intersection thing, like, to me, that's the best case scenario, right? Like, to me, the kind of AI tools that I want to see is, like, not AI that just goes off on its own, right? And just, like, becomes a more and more autonomous agent and does crazy stuff. It's, like, AI that I, where, you know, you have this, like, constant ongoing interaction,

where basically the AI actually helps you every step of the process, right? And like, it continues functioning as a tool. And then with things like brain computer interfaces, we can have like more and like something closer to real time communication. And then like eventually we end up merging with AIs

at some point, whatever that means. Like that seems like the only path that actually is realistic in the long term, right? because in the long term, eventually something super intelligent is going to come out and like it is going to win over non-super intelligent things. And like either that thing contains humans or that thing doesn't contain humans and humans are permanently disempowered, right? And like this idea that, you know, 100 to 130 IQ humans can like permanently, you know,

remain in control of, you know, like these, like 50,000 IQ super intelligent to like things is like totally unrealistic, right? It's like, you know, imagine if, you know, like, you give a six-year-old, you know, like, a legal control over, like, an adult company. It's like, well, no. You know, like, the adults are going to figure out how to make the six-year-old order, like, whatever they actually want it in the first place, right? And so, like, I don't, like, to me, like, a big part of the reason I'm in the space is, like, I don't want human disempowerments, right? Like, that's, you know, like, centralization is human disempowerments, right? And if you have like super intelligent AIs that are totally separate from humans, then like that's kind of the natural outcome.

And so like, yeah, I mean, some kind of, you know, like AI human, you know, like short term collaboration and longer term merge like outcome. You know, like that is the thing that I want to see. And like there is a lot of really amazing stuff that could come from that, right? Like that can solve longevity. It can solve like basically every field of science. They can help, you know, humanity explore the stars. and we can get an amazing world

and like you know people don't basically yeah you know don't have to suffer anymore and I think that's like really beautiful and that's great but you know

there's definitely like challenges in actually getting there I mean there's this you know the question of like you know can crypto help

which is like you know I think the question that a lot of people want answers to and like I think I mean you don't want to do artificial pigeonholing

you don't want to say oh you know hey I believe in decentralized AI and therefore we're going to do AI on the blockchain it's like you know like there is one form of decentralized AI that's practical today

and that form of AI is writing models locally on your laptop right? And like basically if you're going to do some like fancy thing that involves tokens and that involves distributed computer networks

like you have to be at least better than that right And so I think to me, like, the other short-term use case is potentially you could have Dow's that can, like, help train open models. Like, that feels, like, valuable. And, like, I think in general, if you're the goal is to, like, train better open models that can run, like, locally on people's hardware, then, like, that feels very good from an openness perspective.

And, like, that sort of stuff, like, from what I can tell, it feels very unlikely that it will actually contribute to, like, any of the destroying the world outcomes. So I think that stuff is, I mean, like, really good to think about. But then, you know, going beyond that, yeah, I mean, I think, like, we'll see it, right? I think it's, like, yeah, I think, like, my main message there is to, like, basically don't try to, like, page at whole blockchains and coins into stuff. Like, blockchains and coins continue to be valuable and continue to have their use,

but they're only one part of the world. there's like entire other aspects of openness and decentralization that are super valuable, right? Like I would love to see, yeah, you know, like if we can, it's like if instead of having like 20 layer twos and like five shared sequencers, we could have like 15 layer twos, four shared sequeners and like four forks of like better versions of GraphenOS. Like that would be so much better, right? is like graphita less is like such a it's a version of Android that's basically been a hardened to try to be like as security focused as possible

but like at the same time still have very good UX so on my phone I'm like I'm actually running it right now right and it's just like you know you open it up right and like it just feels like regular Android but it has like extra hardened security features and so actually there's a project

called I forget if it's ethOS or ethereumOS so it's like what or like eth phone it's like one of those right they're basically actually using a fork of graphino s and then they're adding like a couple of extra Ethereum focused

features into it so like basically yeah you know like doing and then with graphino us suddenly runs on Google Pixel phones because they're like for security they're trying to be like very specific on the hardware and they're also based on Google pixels and like that's the most secure

Android phone anyway, unless you're going to go full on and, like, to build your own fully open source thing. So if we do that, then, like, you basically have, like, a, you know, like, a non-cringe and, like, actually interesting version of, like, the crypto phone concept, right? Like, basically, if you want to build a crypto phone, it should not be about, you know, like, shoehorning, like, NFTs and crypto applications into things. It should be about, like, taking the underlying values of crypto and, like, really, yeah, which are, I think, you know, like, lot of ways the same as the underlying values of open source and just like really applying them and making them a reality for people. So that's what I want to see in personal computing. That's what I want to see in AI. That's, you know, like want to see in all of these spaces. Final question. You hope to get out of this place and live on another planet someday? So eventually I would love to.

I mean, people have asked the question of, like, do you want to be the first to go to Mars or whatever? I think realistically, yeah, you know, not the first. I think the challenge question for me is like, it just feels like, you know, the costs of going to space are so high and you can get like 90% of the benefits like 100 times cheaper. And it is at 3K right now, so. Yeah, you know, you just start.

like you just go to Antarctica, right? Like you have, like Antarctica, international waters, undersea international waters. There's like so many venues that have like most of the benefits of space and like way fewer drawbacks. And like I think like I would rather, I mean like start there first.

And then for a space, I mean, I think it's absolutely valuable from just like a civilization or resilience perspective. Right. Like the way that I see this is like you always have to have like you know, like a private good and a public good and like good like good things happen when you can like make the two match with each other. Right. So like for crypto, you know, the private good is like at the very beginning, it's like a number go up.

And then I think over time it needs to switch to use value and that's starting to happen. And like the public good is like actually, you know, making these kinds of, you like more open and like democratic technology is actually built out and accessible. And like for space, it's like, you know, the private good is like basically, you know, you get to be in these, you know, you know, like international zones and you get to be like completely independent from people. And then the public good is like civilizational resilience, right? Like basically, yeah, you know, humanity continues to survive even if, like, something happens to the earth itself, right? And so, at some point our capabilities in terms of like not just going to space, but like actually having an enjoyable life in space are going to increase. Right. Like, that's, I think, the important thing, right? Like, I think a lot of, like, for it to be, like, for it to be. become really acceptable to a critical mass of people. Like, it can't just be this kind of, like, very, you know, like, minimal, you know, like, survival

focused lifestyle. Like, you know, like, people want to be able to, like, go and eat sushi on Mars, right? And, like, you know, at some point, you know, we're going to be able to have, like, 3D food printers. And, like, once you have that, then, like, you basically have, like, access to any cuisine. And you have, like, if you can have, like, access to any cuisine and you can have that from a, yeah, you know, like refrigerator sized box. And then at this, you know, obviously you have the infrastructure to, like, do all the various, I mean, like, food recycling and, like, all the chemistry to make that actually work.

And then you make that work. And you have, you know, like some kind of life in space that's, like, actually comfortable. I mean, maybe, you know, like, make the things spin at, like, whatever, you know, like the RPM is. So that, like, when you do the, yeah, you know, like a v squared over R math, you get, like, you know, like one G. in the cylinder so that actually feels like normal gravity and like you'll a bunch of other stuff than maybe

one of the things that Zuzaloo was kind of testing out for me right is basically like it was one of the things right is I was like kind of like a hacker house but bigger than a hacker house kind of like a conference longer duration than a conference and it was like more isolated than a lot of things right and so the question is like

what's the scale of people with which a normal person would be comfortable, like, if they just, like, got cut off from the rest of a civilization, they just had to live with that group of people forever, right? And, you know, especially if you're all going to be living forever, right? You've got to not get bored. And I feel like that 200 size, like, actually is the right size, right? I mean, tribes that are of Dunbar's number size basically is what we evolved to live with, right? And, like, Zuzaloo with its size of, like, about 200, like, it felt like that was the right size that, you know, with, like, you're not going to get board and like you're not going to like start feeling feeling lonely like it it was actually at that

size where it started to like actually have like subgroups that you had to start it to have structure right so if we basically i think for a colony to be interesting to live like you know you want to have a size 200 colony and so you know you need to get like a size 200 group of people that's like actually willing to you know like move to the moon or uh mars or wherever else um so like it's definitely a tougher challenge to just like getting one chip over right but you know we'll see when that happens cool thanks for hanging out well yeah yep thank you