Vitalik answers everything: personal interests, AI technology and RWA, Layer2 and other encrypted narratives

Original source: Vitalik Twitter reply

Original compilation: GaryMa, Wu said blockchain

**Q: What is your favorite book\game\movie? **

A: 1. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (translated as "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality");

2. "Unsong", a fantasy science fiction novel by Scott Alexander, tells a world set in the mysterious Kabbalah (the mystical school of Judaism).

**Q: Have you ever had a paranormal experience or encountered something that you cannot explain? **

A: Seeing many of our worst enemies self-destruct, or at least make themselves downright stupid.

**Q: Are you concerned that Ethereum culture might follow a path that is too similar to Bitcoin culture, where the loudest voices are non-technical? **

A: I'm not sure if the non-technical itself is the problem; what's more important is the combination of (i) non-technical, (ii) overconfident, (iii) aggressive. I think the latter two qualities are more important. In any case, we should treat it with caution!

**Q: Are you interested in what is exciting you right now in the regeneration/public goods funding space? **

A: Better provenance tracking in retroactive funding, making it possible to identify and reward the entire path to an elective effort. There is already some related work starting to emerge in this area, and it would be great to see more related developments.

**Q: Please answer a few questions below, ignoring the ones that aren't quick, easy or fun! **

ps: Zuzalu is a pop-up city experiment initiated by Vitalik in Montenegro from March to May 2023.

● What surprised you about Zuzalu compared to your expectations?

● Which leaders do you admire now or in history?

● Of the daily habits you have developed over the past few years, what are your favorites?

● Who do you guess will be the author you have read the most in 2023?

● If you had to choose a country now and live there for the rest of your life, which country would you choose?

● What is your estimated probability of living to be 123 or more?

● Is there anything you measure or track that most people don't pay attention to?

A：

I feel that as an experiment, Zuzalu succeeded! A number of core assumptions were validated:

● can organize the whole thing

● People want to stay

● Successful exchange of ideas

● Integration of zero-knowledge technologies works

● Successfully built a positive and healthy culture

The biggest unanswered question I see is how to balance quality and inclusivity at scale. A multi-level "social network" seems to be the approach I tend to have when discussing it with others (including myself) at the moment. How this is actually implemented depends on the specifics...

The biggest unanswered question I see is how to balance quality and inclusivity at scale. A multi-level "social network" seems to be the approach I tend to have when discussing it with others (including myself) at the moment. How this is actually implemented depends on the specifics...

There is an important divide on the question of "jurisdiction": what do you expect from your government?

Possible answers are:

● Nothing really, just trying to stay together

● Visa-friendly

● More meaningful freedom for specific industries (biotech? drones? other industries?)

Zuzalu itself is a temporary experiment, but the community includes people who care about all three aspects.

But the latter is inherently more difficult than the former; thus, the three dimensions seem to tend towards different types of states.

**Q: (Continuing the above question) If my understanding is correct, then you have a point. You delegate the responsibility for filtering quality to each community to make scaling more feasible, while maintaining some degree of quality control through the careful selection of the communities themselves. **

A: Retaining a degree of quality control is achieved through careful selection of communities.

I think even this setting is not very accurate! Instead, anyone can create a community, and there is a notion of a relationship between communities that becomes stronger if they trust each other.

**Q: Here's a question about Zuzalu: What's the biggest win? What will be improved next time? When is the next time? **

A: This is just one of 10+ ideas, but:

● I would like to see the coordinated adoption of free/open/decentralized/privacy-focused technologies go deeper than just Zupass and Zupoll.

● Pay with ETH on L2, ditch Telegram, use @ethstatus or @skiffprivacy or other alternatives.

The same is true for health. Make it easier for people to get their metrics and personalized advice on what to eat, how to exercise, and more. Make the community a comprehensive health resource.

**Q: What is your opinion on the end state of L2 governance? Are we stuck forever in token voting, "safety committees", multi-signatures, etc.? This seems to be a far cry from the ideal of cryptocurrency governance (to me, the ideal means: "vote based on the node software I run", coupled with immutable smart contracts). **

**The same question can also be considered from another angle: is it worth (eventually) pinning down a single L2 (Rollup) as part of the core client code, subject to governance mechanisms on the Ethereum chain, rather than Governance by individual L2 projects? **

**Because people like me who are wary of mechanisms such as token voting may be attracted to monolithic L1 projects if we cannot incorporate scaling solutions under the same governance mechanism. **

** For core functionality, governance is the only thing that should not be delegated from the underlying base chain. **

A：

Implementing ZK-EVM verification inside Ethereum is definitely an idea worth exploring!

I'm leaning towards a minimum level of L1 fixation to achieve what we need. You could enshrine the whole L2, but you might get 90% gain and 3x the flexibility by enshrine the ZK-EVM verification and let people use it anyway.

In particular, I expect that the non-ZK-EVM part of L2 should be small enough to be formally verifiable.

Hopefully we will move to phase 2 in the next few years, where security councils will only adjudicate if there is a disagreement between two different proof systems.

ps: In the face of doubts about the centralization of the security committee, Vitalik believes that a security committee with cross-agency participation and a (important) 75% threshold, trusting the code before reaching this threshold, is a fairly high standard of decentralization.

**Q: What is the longest record you have run? What is the longest record for walking? **

**A:**Running: 44 km, 4 hours, pace 5: 26 min/km.

Walking: 113 km, 23 hr 12 min.

**Q: Do you listen to music/podcasts on your walks? **

A: Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History" series by Dan Carlin, specifically the first four episodes of World War I.

**Q: Will you continue to donate to Ukraine? **

A: Yes, I have donated to several places this year.

**Q: What's your top five to ten ranking of the most likely catastrophic scenarios for humanity in the next century? **

**I guess this question has to do with whether humanity will face further climate and planetary resources related issues. Are you optimistic about global coordination? **

A：

● Artificial intelligence (AI)

● Engineered super-pandemics

When it comes to sub-extinction level disasters, nuclear war is one of them. Invincible AI-augmented totalitarianism is also worrying.

Climate issues are probably fifth or close to fifth. It's important to push forward with solar energy, nuclear energy, etc.

As for the "resources will run out" kind of problem, I'm not too worried; as resources get closer to being exhausted, items will become more expensive and we'll find replacements.

**Q: What is your opinion on the current situation of Bitcoin Cash? **

**I recall your recent public comments mentioning that Bitcoin Cash failed in large part by focusing too much on secessionist rebellion. But has the stability of the past 2.5 years and the current state of community solidarity made you reconsider? **

A: I do see an improvement in culture! Wish ya'll good luck.

**Q: What do you think are the latest research directions for P2P networks that are relevant to Ethereum and worth the time of emerging researchers/research engineers? **

**A:**Making the existing Ethereum P2P layer more robust (including protection against deliberate censorship, firewalls, etc.) may not be exciting, but it is very important.

**Q: What is your opinion on the idea of DAI going completely off-chain (more support for RWA physical assets) instead of insisting on decentralization? **

A: I think there is some plausibility in this design space, but careful engineering is required to ensure broad distribution and stable governance of supporting assets.

**Q: In your opinion, which country is most likely to become the most cryptocurrency-friendly country and become a livable cryptocurrency center in the long run? **

**A: **I am more optimistic about small countries than big ones.

**Q: Besides cryptocurrency and longevity, what are you most interested in? **

A: Wandering?

**Q: It is concerning that the AI Act excludes the military field when it regulates various fields of artificial intelligence. It would be naive for those who wrote this bill to believe that the military would act on its own knowledge and beliefs. If there is an opportunity to exploit a technology that offers clear advantages, sooner or later someone will misuse it for personal gain. Even more troubling is the exclusion of intelligence agencies in the interest of norms and seemingly giving them complete freedom. This is not only morally questionable, but extremely dangerous. **

A: Yes, I am absolutely opposed to AI regulatory programs that assume the military is more trustworthy than anyone else.

**Q: Will quantum computing destroy the blockchain or make it more secure? **

A: Blockchain will have to adapt to QC, but we'll be fine.

**Q: Does public key encryption exist unconditionally? **

A: What you mean by "unconditional" is that the security of public key cryptography does not depend on any particular assumption or condition. The security of public-key cryptography relies on the intractability of some complex mathematical problems. These problems include factorization of large numbers, computation of discrete logarithms, etc., which are considered computationally difficult to solve efficiently. However, there are some mathematical structures, such as curves and lattices, that are believed to provide the conditions needed to satisfy the security of public-key cryptography, while hashing algorithms do not.

**Q: What do you think of the advantages and disadvantages between the MPC-based EOA wallet and the smart contract wallet? **

A: MPC-based External Accounts (EOAs) are fundamentally flawed in that they cannot revoke keys (re-sharing keys does not count, original holders can still recover keys), pointing out that smart contracts Wallets are the only option as they are able to solve this problem.

Q: Defects of smart wallets:

1. Only ETH/EVM, Bitcoin and other networks do not support

2. L1 setup and recovery is expensive ($40 for recovery)

3. Smart contracts can also be revoked (not always)

A：

1. Yes, Bitcoin needs to upgrade its technology. We've known about this issue for over 5 years.

2. This is because the cost of the entire L1 is higher. This is why there is a need for more in-protocol support for L2 and smart contract wallets.

3. I don't quite understand what you mean here?

**Q: What is your favorite dinosaur? **

A: I like ducks.

**Q: What aspects of socialism do you find interesting? **

A: I think attention to the harms caused by private monopolies and resource inequalities is important, and I appreciate the willingness to address these issues in a principled manner. Also, especially the spirit of internationalism in early socialism is very good and valuable.

**Q: What is the schedule and p(doom) of AGI? **

**ps: AGI refers to artificial general intelligence (Artificial General Intelligence), also known as superintelligence, which refers to an artificial intelligence system that can perform comparable or even surpass human intelligence in many fields. **

**p(doom) refers to the Probability of Doom, which is an estimate of the likelihood of a severe disaster or disaster-level event. In this context, it refers to the probability of a serious AI-related catastrophe. **

A: For timelines, the scope is very broad. My timeline for ASI is between 2029 and 2200 with 95% confidence (I think AGI will likely remain roughly human-level for a while).

p(doom) is about 0.1. This of course makes us need to take the risks of artificial intelligence seriously.

**Q: What do you think are the warning signs? Or, what do you think will be the things that might allow you to increase pdoom to >10% or <10 year timeline? **

A: People have asked this question, and it's hard for me to articulate the important things that AI still can't do. It can be roughly understood as "interacting with other agents in a complex environment, formulating and executing plans involving novel behaviors". If AI starts to do this, then I would say we are very close to superintelligence.

A big reason I don't think my p(doom) is very high is that I'm not entirely convinced by the fast boot and "fire alarm without AGI" argument (I know fast boot isn't a prerequisite for disaster, but it's in played an important role in this direction!)

If I am persuaded by these points, my p(doom) will go up.

**Q: If we assume that AGI is achieved at a certain point in time, what do you think the path to human happiness looks like after that? **

**A:**Personally, I would like to see a path that preserves human subjectivity. Of course, this necessarily means higher bandwidth and more frequent exchanges between technology-enabled computing and human will...

Q: The word "bandwidth" gets me :)

**In your model, does "human subjectivity" mean biologically based? **

**If it was biotic based, the non-biological side would dominate and we could be at risk for the AI. **

**If it is non-biological, this result is not so pleasant for most people. **

**dilemma. Do you see other options? **

A: The ultimate form of non-biology (unless the synthetic biology guys can compete with metal computers, that would be cool). I expect that over time, as this technology becomes more normalized and risk-reduced, it will become more acceptable, like all radical technologies.

**Q: What is your least favorite aspect of being in the crypto world, and what drains you the most of energy and motivation? **

A: As always, my least favorites are those who think that the main innovation in crypto is the introduction of tokens into all kinds of things. Secondly, I think the following points:

● Massive capital misallocation

● Those who tend to stray from their principles (ahem, fake liberals...)

● On the other hand, completely unrealistic purist beliefs ("a 12-word mnemonic is good enough for anyone!")

● Unnecessary conflict

**Q: What are your thoughts on recent developments in proof systems (especially proof aggregation, recursion, and composition)? **

A: Techniques such as aggregation, recursion, etc. are crucial for quickly proving very complex statements. For example, we ultimately need to prove the validity of an Ethereum block in less than 4 seconds; you just have to somehow parallelize and combine to make that happen.

**Q: Do you think a governance system with non-trivial power can remain uncaptured indefinitely? What are the parameters of the "time_to_capture" function? **

A: @SamoBurja would say this is an open issue. I tend to agree. You can get close to solving it, but have to accept some trade-offs. Having very specific and limited goals (such as maintaining a price oracle) can help, although even in this case you will face problems in extreme cases.

**Q: What is your imagination of the scale and complexity of the human city on Mars? If, by 2050, 1 million people had settled on Mars, a ticket to Mars was only $50,000, and Ethereum had 60 million transactions per second, would you move to Mars permanently? **

A: It depends on the quality of life! (There are also factors such as the final legal jurisdiction attributes and culture of the Martian city.)

**Q: Do you think it is worthwhile to promote a close relationship between the Ethereum community and the Bitcoin community, and if so, in what ways can we achieve this goal? **

A: I think one potential area of collaboration is to work harder together to support non-blockchain freedom and privacy tools. End-to-end encrypted messaging (no phone number needed), Internet anonymity, end-to-end collaboration tools, secure operating systems (like Graphene, Qubes?), open hardware, open virtual reality, and more.

Q**: Is there any downside to introducing EIP 1559 b, i.e. allocating a portion of burned tokens to families of independent validators? For those running a small number of clients, allocations can be increased on a sliding scale. **

A: It is impossible to distinguish who is the independent verifier of a family individual within the protocol.

**Q: The safest cold wallet? **

**A：**Safe Wallet。