Vitalik Chinese Interview: A grand vision of the digital society 100 years later; Ethereum is more fun than World of Warcraft

24-10-24 12:28
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Original translation: Wu said blockchain


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In this in-depth interview, Bruce, the host of ETHPanda Talk, and Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, discussed the various possibilities of digital society 100 years later. ETHPanda is a non-profit organization composed of a group of Chinese builders who focus on Ethereum and is committed to building a public network for Chinese builders of Ethereum. The interview covers a wide range of future topics, including the future of decentralized identity (DID), the evolution of the credit system, the changes in global identity, the division of labor between AI and humans, the idea of Ethereum nodes on Mars, the future development of encryption technology, and the funding mechanism of open source projects. This article is organized by Wu said blockchain and authorized by ETHPanda.


Vitalik also shared his attention and support for longevity technology, explaining how his diet and exercise habits help him stay healthy. In addition, the interview explored in depth the "civil war" in Bitcoin's history and its similarities to the phenomenon of nationalization in the real world.


Vitalik emphasized the unlimited potential of the future digital society in blockchain technology, decentralized collaboration, and AI assistance, and encouraged more people to join in and jointly promote technological development and social progress. The interview ended in a relaxed atmosphere. Vitalik humorously described Ethereum as "a more fun game", encouraging everyone to continue to pay attention to and support the construction of the Ethereum ecosystem.


Listen to the full podcast:


Xiaoyuzhou: https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/episodes/670f8e7d0d2f24f28991abf9


YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z1x0d24Ajbo


Here is the full conversation:


Opening Introduction


Bruce:Hello everyone, welcome to ETHPanda Talk, I am Bruce. Today I am very happy to invite Vitalik to discuss with us a very interesting topic - what will the digital society look like in the next 100 years. First, please let Vitalik say hello to everyone and give a brief introduction.


Vitalik:Hi everyone, I'm Vitalik, and I'm also a Dogecoin holder. I'm glad to chat with you all.


Bruce:Today we're going to talk about "What will the digital society look like in 100 years?" In fact, this topic was inspired in part by Vitalik's sharing at EDCON Tokyo some time ago, talking about the 10th anniversary of Ethereum and the outlook for the next decade. We can see that the next decade may focus more on application-level exploration, based on the solid foundation laid in the past decade.


This time we want to start from the perspective of 100 years later, break through some limitations, imagine an ideal future society, and then look back at the current development direction. I hope this discussion can bring some new inspiration to everyone.


In addition, 100 years is neither long nor short. Perhaps by then, longevity technology or consciousness uploading will have been realized. At that time, we can arrange another podcast and review today's discussion.


Vitalik:Okay, I hope both of us are still alive in 100 years, haha.


Bruce:Yes, yes, I hope we are all alive, or we have continued this discussion in the virtual consciousness world.


Will there still be ID cards in a hundred years? Or are all identities based on DID? How to protect privacy?


Bruce:When we talk about the digital society, we may think about many aspects, such as social governance, such as Network State, DAO, Community, etc. The first question is about identity. Now we all have ID cards, passports, driver's licenses, etc. So, will these things still exist in 100 years? Or will everyone use DID (decentralized identity) and can create unlimited digital avatars? There is also the issue of privacy protection. For example, if you put your physical ID in your pocket, no one can see it. So how can digital identity protect privacy?


Vitalik: I think there are two problems here. The first question is where the identity data exists. For example, we now have physical ID cards and passports, but many people have begun to think about how to turn these entities into digital ones, such as putting passports or government IDs on mobile phones. This is not just an exploration in the decentralized world, many traditional companies are also thinking about this issue. So, the first is the conversion between physical and digital identities.


The second question is related to the centralization or decentralization of identity and privacy protection. There are many options here, such as having a system based on zero-knowledge proof or other cryptographic techniques that follows the principle of minimizing data distribution. In addition, we can also start from the goals of the ID system and think about whether only government-based ID can solve the problem. The goals of the identity system may include proving that you are a person, not a person controlled by AI or multiple accounts, or proving that you are a trustworthy person.


For example, countries now determine who can enter the country through passports and visas. Some countries' passports are visa-free to more places, while people from other countries need visas. This approach is unfair in some ways because it judges whether a person is trustworthy based on the country. In the future, we can think about whether there are better ways to prove a person's trustworthiness rather than just their nationality. Trustworthiness can be based on a person's interactions, relationships, and experiences throughout their life, rather than just a single piece of information.


If we adopt a more decentralized approach, the structure of identity will be more complex because a person may be connected to many people, companies, communities, and networks. This will no longer be a single path like a tree, but a graph structure. We need to combine these diverse paths to create a more complete and fair identity system.


The advantages of this approach are higher efficiency, more data, and the ability to reduce the power of a single node. If a node goes wrong or is attacked, the individual will not lose his identity due to the problem of this node, but can still prove himself through other means.


Based on unlimited digital avatars and DIDs, how will the credit system work in the future? How should people build their own credit?


Bruce:In the future, everyone may have many different digital avatars, so what changes will happen to the credit system?


Vitalik:Human identity and credit are actually very close concepts, because the core of both is to prove whether a person is trustworthy. There are several problems with the current credit system. First, it is completely centralized, and certain organizations decide which data is valuable, which in turn affects your credit score. Secondly, credit scores usually have only a single number, such as someone's credit score is 700, and this score may mean different things to different people or scenarios.


In a centralized system, things that have nothing to do with credit may be mixed in, such as political factors, or even some unfair standards. In a decentralized system, we can reduce these problems, but the complexity will also increase. One of the reasons why everyone likes the existing credit scoring system is that it is simple and clear, and you only need to look at one number to make a judgment.


But in a decentralized system, credit may become multidimensional. Different people may have different views on the credit of the same person based on different data sources. For example, your credit score is 0.5 in someone's scoring system, but it may be 0.7 in another system. Although this increases the complexity, we should not be afraid of these complexities, because this can bring a more fair and diverse credit assessment system.


Will the mainstream sense of identity in the future society be more internationalism? Will it conflict, oppose or even war with nationalism?


Bruce:Regarding the issue of identity, many people are now international freelancers, flying around, and even living abroad. Do you think that internationalism will become mainstream in 100 years? Will people no longer emphasize the country or nationalism? If there is still a country or nationalism, will it conflict fiercely with internationalism?


Vitalik:In the past, people's identities and loyalties were often closely tied to their countries, because it was difficult to go to different places and maintain relationships in different places. Most people might only stay in one place for their entire lives, such as being born in a rural area, growing up in a rural area, and eventually ending their lives in a rural area. It is very difficult to be an "international person".


But now the situation is different. With the Internet, it has become easy to go anywhere, and being an "international person" is much simpler than in the past. However, this does not mean that conflicts between tribes or groups will disappear. Even in the Internet age, we still see conflicts between many new communities, such as the debates between cryptocurrency communities such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. These communities have their own beliefs and cultures, similar to new "countries", and we can regard these as new nationalism.


Even with the Internet and globalization, the future world will not completely become a single internationalist society. Everyone's identity will still intersect with different groups, countries, and cultures. This diversity and intersection of identities may bring both conflict and peace.


I believe that the future will not be a completely peaceful, monocultural world, but a more cross-cultural one. Everyone will have different identities, backgrounds, and loyalties, and these intertwined identities may reduce extreme polarization and the risk of war. At the same time, this complexity of society may lead to more understanding and communication, thus avoiding outright confrontation and conflict.


How can humans and AI be distributed fairly and justly (not limited to the distribution of funds, but also a sense of accomplishment, meaning, and existence)?


Bruce:In the future, we may see humans and AI working together. If we want to coexist harmoniously, it will inevitably involve the issue of distribution, and this distribution is not limited to money, but also includes a sense of achievement, meaning, and existence. After all, if AI can do all the work, what else can humans do? What do you think about this?


Vitalik:It is indeed very difficult to predict the future of AI. For example, five years ago, we had AlphaGo and AlphaZero, whose AI architecture was very simple and had a clear goal - to win the game. They were like a rational actor in economics, with clear goals and strategies. Today's AI, such as language models, do not have a clear goal, they are just making text predictions. Despite this, they are much smarter than the AI of five years ago, and they still show higher intelligence despite the misaligned goals.


We don't know what AI will look like in five years or even 50 years. I hope we can develop more tool-like AI, rather than the kind of AI that is completely independent and powerful enough to make its own plans. My ideal AI is a tool that can communicate and collaborate with humans in large quantities. In the future, this interaction may be achieved through VR, AR glasses or brain-computer interfaces. In this way, humans can maintain autonomy and a sense of meaning in this future world.


However, this path may not necessarily succeed. Perhaps it will be difficult to get humans and AI to cooperate, and it will be easier to create a very powerful AI. We cannot be sure of the answer, and the future AI architecture may be difficult for humans to imagine.


Another question is, will we have many AIs, or only one AI? This is also difficult to predict. The communication bandwidth between humans is limited, but there may not be such a limitation between AIs. They may share computing power between different processors to form a distributed intelligent system that is difficult for us to imagine.


Bruce:After listening to what you said, I am a little worried that the future will be like "The Matrix". I hope AI will be better to us humans. However, regarding the issue of distribution, I recently thought of an example. For example, the collaborative distribution problem of open source projects, especially with Optimism's Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGF), how can we fairly distribute it to contributors?


Vitalik:The problem that Optimism wants to solve is very complex. The goal of RPGF is to reward those who contribute to the project, but it is very difficult to measure the size of each person's contribution. Even if everyone is honest, it is not easy to determine who has contributed the most. And when everyone understands how this mechanism works, they may start to optimize their behavior to maximize their personal benefits, just like some people in academia will cite each other's papers to manipulate the evaluation system.


If we expand this model to the funding of all public goods, the problem may be hundreds or thousands of times more complicated. Optimism is currently conducting experiments on a small scale to see where it succeeds and where it fails. This is very important. I think solving these problems requires more experiments rather than theoretical deductions. We can only do it through actual experiments, observe the results, and then make adjustments and improvements.


Will new social systems be needed when billions of people and robots collaborate in the future? Will there be new changes compared to the current socialism, capitalism, or hybridism?


Bruce:This topic has given me a lot of inspiration. The last question about social systems is: We all know that a small group of people can collaborate through tools like Notion or group rules. But when billions of people, even including AI and robots, collaborate together in the digital future, will a new social system be needed? Will this system be new compared to the socialism, capitalism, or hybridism we have now?


Vitalik:This is a very complex question. In fact, I think that capitalism is no longer real capitalism in many cases. According to the principles of capitalism, there should be competition between products, good products should stand out, and bad products and companies should be eliminated. But now the concept of competition has changed. If companies want to bypass competition, they can actually do it.


For example, I remember that at the Bitcoin miners' meeting in Hong Kong in 2016, 90% of the miners sat together and discussed how to cooperate. This shows that in many industries, competitors can actually easily cooperate and bypass competition. Many phenomena are not driven by economics, but more by communication and social interaction between people. We may have entered a new model, which can be called a "hybrid system."


This hybrid system not only appears at the company and enterprise level, but also at the government level. In the past, companies were capitalist and governments were socialist. Now, companies have become more social attributes, and there is more competition between governments. With globalization and technology, people have more choices. 30 years ago, if you wanted to move to another country, it was very expensive; now, you can just take a 12-hour flight, turn on your computer, and your life can remain basically the same. This allows countries to compete like a market.


The arrival of AI may change this situation further, but it is difficult to predict how it will change. This is undoubtedly a very complex issue.


In addition to Gitcoin (QF), Protocol Guild, etc., what new funding methods will there be in the future? Will there be a new open source protocol? Achieve automation and eliminate the gap with commercial companies?


Bruce:We talked about the digital society and the future, and it seems that many things will be based on open source or public goods. And its sustainability, especially how to fund these projects in the long term, may be a big problem. It's not just a matter of funding, but also about the sustainability of collaboration. Now we have Gitcoin and the quadratic funding mechanism (QF), projects like Protocol Guild and Optimism. Will we continue to use these methods 100 years later? Or will there be some completely new ideas and ideas?


Vitalik:Public goods funding has always faced two core problems: one is the source of funds, and the other is how to distribute funds fairly. Traditionally, the funding of public goods is usually supported by governments through taxation, and governments have a lot of funds to allocate to projects they consider to be public goods. In the world of cryptocurrencies, things like the issuance of digital currencies offer new possibilities for funding public goods.


Digital currencies are not the only example, we now have other forms of digital assets, such as domain names. Domain names like "privatejet.com" once sold for more than a real private jet. In the future, the metaverse and other digital assets may further expand this trend. For example, certain props or items in the virtual world may cost more than high-value items in the real world. For another example, in the next 50 years, we may build cities in space or on Mars, or conduct mining activities in the asteroid belt. By then, we may need to rethink the issue of property rights in space, and I hope that the initial owners of these resources will no longer be individuals or countries, but decentralized organizations (DAOs), which can avoid over-consumption of resources while providing continuous funding support for public goods.


Another challenge is how to determine which projects are most important and how to measure everyone's contribution to the project. There are already some platforms exploring this issue, such as Juan Benet of IPFS and projects like Tea.xyz, who are developing Contribution Graphs to evaluate the value of contributors. However, this process is prone to conflicts of interest, and it is critical to design a fair mechanism.


As for open source protocols, existing protocols such as MIT and GPL focus on the distribution of code, but lack commercial incentives. I think new protocols may emerge in the future that force or encourage commercial companies to give part of their profits back to the open source ecosystem. However, this path is not easy, because we need to balance the relationship between open source and private software while avoiding people's concerns about the return of open source software to privatization. Zcash's Business Source License is an example, but this approach has encountered some opposition when it was implemented, and adjustments and improvements may need to be made in the future.


In short, future funding mechanisms and open source protocols will require more experimentation and exploration to solve these complex problems.


How will the future world determine the ownership of digital commons or open source projects? How to determine the ownership of a piece of code? Or is it still necessary to confirm?


Bruce:This question reminds me of the future world, where all codes are open source and a lot of content is on the chain. Do we still need to confirm the ownership of these digital commons or open source projects? If so, how to confirm it?


Vitalik:To answer this question, we first need to understand the goal of the concept of "ownership". Generally speaking, ownership has two core goals:


1. Power confirmation:Ownership determines who has the right to make changes to a system or project. For example, who has the right to modify or control the code.


2. Incentive mechanism:Ownership also determines the ownership of benefits. If something belongs to you, you can sell it or rent it to others to earn benefits.


However, there is a significant difference between software and other owned resources. Software is "non-rivalrous", that is, software can be copied infinitely without affecting the original right of use. If you own a copy of the software and I copy it to you, then the copy still belongs to you without reducing my rights. This is different from physical resources or other limited digital resources.


Therefore, when we discuss the ownership of open source software, we must take a step back and rethink from the goal of the concept of ownership. Regarding the issue of power, in the field of open source software, this issue is actually not very obvious, because anyone can create their own version based on the open source code, and others can choose to accept or reject it.


The biggest exception is the issue of standardization. In some cases, the entire ecosystem requires compatibility and continuous improvement of standards. This requires a consensus mechanism or some form of coordination, which is already being discussed in decentralized ecosystems such as Ethereum. For example, Layer 2 standardization issues, Account Abstraction, etc. are becoming more and more complex because more and more entities are involved and it is no longer as small and easy to reach consensus as before.


We face a trade-off when setting standards: if we let more people participate in the development of standards, the whole process may become slower. Moxie Marlinspike (founder of Signal) once mentioned that he did not want Signal to become a federal system, in part because he wanted to iterate and add new features faster. However, I think he underestimated the feasibility of a decentralized approach. Ethereum is a good example. Despite having multiple clients, everyone can still agree on issues such as hard forks, but this may become more difficult if the system becomes too complex.


As for incentive mechanisms, I don't think there will be a one-size-fits-all approach to all problems. Different projects have different needs. Some software may rely on a company to make most of the revenue, and this company can choose to support the project. However, in more complex cases, more diverse funding models are needed, such as the open source licenses we discussed, cryptocurrency-based public goods funding mechanisms (such as Retro Funding), etc.


In general, future ownership confirmation and incentive mechanisms will vary depending on the specific circumstances of the project, and we need to constantly adjust and optimize according to these needs.


How will scientific research be conducted in the future? Will there be any changes in personnel organization, funding acquisition, etc.?


Bruce:How will scientific research be conducted in the future? Will it still be like now, requiring a Ph.D. and relying on government and school funding? Or will there be new and more efficient ways?


Vitalik:In fact, I think the Ethereum community has demonstrated a new and more efficient way of scientific research and collaboration. For example, in the field of cryptographic research, many new technologies, such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZK Proofs) and cryptographic algorithms, are the result of cross-team and cross-organizational collaboration. A project may be completed by researchers from the Ethereum Foundation, the Aztec team, and certain universities. This kind of collaboration is now very common.


In addition, scientific research results are often built on the basis of previous work. For example, StarkWare may have developed a technology, and other teams continue to innovate on this basis. Now the collaboration is no longer limited to physical offices. Communication across countries and organizations can be carried out through various online channels, such as Telegram, Signal groups, or discussions in forums like the Ethereum Research Forum.


Conference culture is also an important part of today's scientific research, especially in the Ethereum community. Although some people criticize this culture, its benefits are obvious. Conferences give multinational and remote teams the opportunity to communicate and share ideas face to face. Even if most of the time they collaborate online, they still meet several times a year in conferences to quickly synchronize progress.


More importantly, this conference culture allows everyone to not only be limited to their own company, but to think that the entire Ethereum community is their team, which promotes cooperation and innovation between companies.


At the Ethereum Foundation, we recently organized a protocol development workshop, inviting about 100 researchers and developers to jointly promote the progress of the Ethereum client. Such collective cooperation, combining online and offline, has greatly improved the efficiency of scientific research.


However, this model is not necessarily suitable for all fields. For example, in the field of history, although this collaborative approach is also feasible, the academic community is relatively conservative and it may take longer to adapt to this new model. In fields such as biology, the situation is more complicated. First, biological research requires a lot of laboratory resources, and these laboratories are not simple desks and chairs like the ones we use, but very expensive and complex scientific laboratories. Secondly, the incentive mechanism is also a problem. In the field of encryption, openness and transparency are necessary, but in some traditional fields, scientific research results are often not made public, and it is not easy to change this practice.


Different fields have different challenges. Although decentralization and open source approaches may develop faster in some fields, in other fields, they may encounter more resistance and complex incentive issues.


I think that in the next 10 to 20 years, there will be much more cross-company, cross-organization, and even cross-country scientific research collaboration than there is now. However, the speed of transformation will vary in different fields, and some fields may adapt to this change faster than others.


Will Ethereum nodes be built on Mars? How to solve the delay of interstellar communication? How to achieve interstellar anti-censorship?


Bruce: Just now, when I mentioned Mars, I thought of an interesting question: Can we deploy Ethereum nodes on Mars in the future? If so, how to solve the delay of interstellar communication? In addition, how to achieve interstellar anti-censorship?


Vitalik: This is a very interesting question. On Earth, the speed of light is very fast, and the signal transmission time between the two ends of the Earth is negligible. Even between the two farthest points on Earth, the signal delay is only a few hundred milliseconds. In the modern Internet, delays within 200 milliseconds are usually acceptable.


But between Earth and Mars, the situation is different. The distance between Mars and Earth is about 50 to 70 million kilometers at the closest, and the farthest distance can reach 400 million kilometers. This means that it takes several minutes to 20 minutes to transmit signals at the speed of light, which is a huge challenge for systems like blockchain.


The current Ethereum architecture and Bitcoin architecture cannot directly cope with such a large delay. For example, if you generate a block on Mars, when it is transmitted to Earth, miners on Earth may have generated several new blocks. This will make it difficult for the Martian block to be accepted, or even impossible to compete at all. Therefore, from an economic and efficiency perspective, it is not feasible to run interstellar blockchain nodes under the current architecture.


However, a solution to this problem may be to run an independent Layer 2 solution on Mars, designed specifically for an environment like Mars. This Layer 2 network can quickly confirm transactions on Mars and then synchronize with the Ethereum mainnet on Earth in batches when appropriate. This will greatly reduce the reliance on real-time communication and allow Mars and Earth to have their own network rhythms.


As for interstellar anti-censorship, the problem is more complicated. If we want to achieve true interstellar anti-censorship, we may need multiple decentralized networks to connect to each other between different planets and space stations to prevent any one entity from having complete control over a certain network area. Of course, this also means that we need to develop completely new protocols to adapt to this interstellar environment.


Although Ethereum nodes on Mars and interstellar anti-censorship face huge technical challenges, through new architectural designs, such as Mars' Layer 2 solutions, it may be gradually realized in the future.


What encryption algorithms are missing from the cypherpunks of the future digital society? Will there be new things like PGP, SSL, and cryptocurrency? What role will ZK play in it?


Bruce:We just talked about some social mechanisms and open source issues. Now I want to talk about cypherpunks. The cypherpunk movement has a profound impact on today's encryption technology. PGP, SSL, and cryptocurrency are all important achievements. If we look back at today from the perspective of 100 years later, are there some encryption algorithms that we have not yet implemented but may become new technologies in the future? What role will ZK (zero-knowledge proof) play in this process?


Vitalik:The new technology of this era must be based on ZK. We can also see now that ZK brings us many new possibilities. You can prove many things at the same time without exposing all the information. Ten years ago, people did not have this concept. At that time, the discussion usually revolved around two extremes: either you provide all the information to prove your identity (but sacrifice privacy), or remain anonymous (but credibility decreases). With ZK, we can now enjoy the advantages of both.


The Ethereum community has also started some applications in this area. For example, in the Zuzalu group, we have started to use this technology a little bit. I think ZK has a lot of application scenarios.


In addition, there are some other technologies, such as MPC (multi-party computation) and FHE (fully homomorphic encryption), which have been around for 30 years, but now their efficiency has finally improved to the point where they can be used in practice. Their application scenarios are different from ZK, but they are also very interesting. Another technology that I think is very promising is Obfuscation.


Obfuscation means that you can encrypt a program, and the encrypted program can run, with the same input and the same output, but the logic inside the program is completely invisible. This is a very powerful technology. For example, I can create a program that contains my private key, but you can't get my private key through this encrypted program. With Obfuscation, many other cryptographic problems can be solved.


The only problem that cannot be solved by Obfuscation is to prevent the program from being copied. To solve this problem, we can use quantum technology. Justin Drake likes a technology called One-Time Signatures very much. After signing once, you can no longer sign other data. This is very useful in the consensus mechanism of the blockchain because it can completely prevent double-spending attacks.


With existing classical technology, we can't achieve this because data can always be copied. But if quantum technology is introduced, data cannot be copied. There is a very famous theory behind this - the No-cloning Theorem, which shows that quantum data cannot be completely copied.


If we have obfuscation and quantum technology, there will be many possibilities in the future. Perhaps these technologies will be difficult to popularize in ten years, but in 100 years, they are very likely to become a reality.


Bruce:ZK has also been very popular recently. Many friends are very interested in it and even start to learn it, but many people find it very difficult to learn. Are there any good learning methods or resources recommended?


Vitalik:If you really want to understand ZK technology in depth, the best way is to try to write a ZK algorithm yourself. Write a Prover and Verifier by yourself from beginning to end. Through this process, you will understand the key points behind the technology, such as why to do this, how to prove and verify, etc.


I have written a lot of articles about ZK in the past ten years. My idea is that if only a few people understand ZK technology, it is not truly decentralized because everyone must trust those few people. So, it is very important that more people understand this technology and why it is trustworthy.


Of course, not everyone needs to understand all the details of ZK, just like most developers today do not fully understand the internal mechanisms of cryptographic algorithms. They just know the input and output of the algorithm, and what it can and cannot do. I believe that most people will eventually understand ZK in a similar way.


Mental Health: How to avoid EMO and self-doubt in the process of long-term idealistic construction? Do you have similar situations? How to overcome them?


Bruce:I think mental health is very important when promoting idealistic projects in the long term. For example, developers like Peter sometimes have emotional breakdowns and doubt whether their contributions are really valuable. I have had similar moments myself, especially when I see someone getting rich overnight because of meme coins, I will doubt whether what I insist on is worth it. Vitalik, have you ever had this situation? How do you deal with it?


Vitalik:Yes, I have had similar feelings. Such emotional fluctuations are bound to happen, especially when you are committed to a long-term idealistic project like Ethereum. One of the most effective ways for me to overcome it is to participate in offline communication activities. Face-to-face interaction makes me feel the power and positive influence of the community again.


When you look at Crypto Twitter or other social media, you are often drowned by negative voices. Many people will say, "Ethereum has no practical use, the biggest application is gambling," or suggest that we admit that we are just making "the best casino." It is really tiring and frustrating to hear this.


However, every time I go to conferences or communicate with people who are really involved in the Ethereum ecosystem, I realize that there are many people who still have very positive visions and they are working hard to implement these visions. On the Internet, this effort and hope are not always visible, so face-to-face communication is particularly important.


We humans have millions of years of face-to-face communication history, and our psychology is not ready for a completely online life. Maybe in 20 or 30 years, the metaverse will solve these problems, but it is not yet at that level. So, I think offline interaction is very important for mental health.


Physical health: What are your eating habits? Do you exercise? What advice do you have for programmers' health?


Bruce:For physical health, especially programmers, we all know that physical health is very important. What are your eating habits? Do you exercise? Do you have any health advice for programmers?


Vitalik: For me, physical health is indeed very important, especially because of my special lifestyle. I often need to go to different places and move almost every week, so it is difficult for me to maintain a fixed fitness or eating habits. Those health influencers often mention that they have a good gym and a fixed diet plan every day, but for me, such an arrangement is almost impossible.


Nevertheless, I still try to stay active, especially with simple exercises like walking and running. These exercises don’t require any equipment and can be done anywhere. For example, when I arrived in Georgia, I ran a 21-kilometer lap in my backyard. I find running a very convenient way to exercise, not only can I move my body, but I can also listen to audiobooks or podcasts while running, which makes good use of my time.


As for diet, I try to keep it simple: eat more vegetables, eat more fish, and try to avoid too much sugar. This approach allows me to maintain healthy eating habits in different environments.


Bruce: You mentioned the topic of longevity, which I know you are very interested in. Why are you so interested in longevity? Is it related to the future technology you imagine, such as uploading consciousness to the Internet?


Vitalik:My interest in longevity dates back to when I first read Aubrey de Grey’s book Ending Aging when I was 13 years old. I was very much in tune with his vision of extending life, and life itself is good, and a few more years is naturally even better. Aubrey’s book explains in detail how we can extend life through science, especially those extreme ways of extending life—not just adding 5 years to life, but adding 50 years or more.


Many people have a misconception that extending life means getting older and more frail, but this is not the case. Aubrey’s approach is to avoid the problems of aging by preventing them in advance, rather than waiting until problems arise and then treating them. In this way, the time extended is not only an extension of life, but also an extension of health. In this way, the quality of life we extend will be closer to the current state of life, rather than the frail and weak life that people imagine at 90 years old.


When the price of Ethereum first rose, I began to think about how to use this wealth to do something truly meaningful, rather than buying a big house or a private jet. So I started donating to Aubrey's organization, and as the price of Ethereum continued to rise, I donated more and more, and now I am considered a funder in the field of longevity.


Please recommend a book to Vitalik


Bruce:We are about to end the main interview questions today. Vitalik, can you recommend a recent book or a book that you think is better to everyone?


Vitalik: I read two interesting books recently. I did a book review on my blog about two books on the history of Bitcoin. One of them is "The Blocksize War" by Jonathan Bier, which supports the view of small blocks, and the other is "Hijacking Bitcoin" by Roger Ver and Steve Patterson, which supports the view of large blocks. They each discussed their views on the recent Bitcoin block size civil war from their own perspectives, and I think both books are quite interesting.


People actually like to read history books. There is also a joke on the Internet now that many people like to study two topics in particular: one is World War II, and the other is the Roman Empire. I find that the interesting thing about learning about history is that you can think about which are caused by cultural and technological factors of specific events and times, and which are caused by human nature. This helps us solve some problems and think about what people would do if they were in completely different situations.


The history of the Internet in the past 30 years is also worth paying attention to. Especially between 1990 and 2010, the development of the Internet was relatively slow, and most of the time it was just a "game". However, the emergence of Bitcoin was the first truly valuable thing in the history of the Internet that was completely native to the Internet, and attracted a lot of people to participate. You can compare this phenomenon to the rise of a digital country.


And there will be internal disputes and civil wars within digital countries, which will eventually lead to divisions. For example, now some famous "Bitcoin cult" figures in the Bitcoin community have begun to praise Solana. I think they may do this because they want to fight against the Ethereum ecosystem by uniting emerging platforms like Solana. This reminds me of the alliance between Germany and Japan during World War II, and the formation of the alliance was based on the consideration of fighting against the enemy together.


I think it is very interesting to study these phenomena, not only the history of the real world, but also the evolution of the digital world. You will find that some patterns and ideas are exactly the same. This is also why I think it is interesting to understand the history of the Internet.


Epilogue: Looking forward to continued exploration and construction in the future


Bruce:This concludes today’s formal interview. Thanks again to Vitalik for taking the time to accept our interview and share so many in-depth ideas. Thank you, Vitalik!


Vitalik:Thank you!


Bruce:I have some light questions, such as do you still play World of Warcraft?


Vitalik:Haha, during the epidemic, I tried to play the private server, and it felt quite fun. But later I found that Ethereum itself is actually a more fun game.


Bruce:Haha, okay.


Vitalik:I hope everyone can support ETHPanda Talk and participate in the construction of Ethereum together! Thank you everyone!


Bruce:Thank you.


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