Vitalik's latest AMA: quantum computing threats, Ethereum and AI convergence, personal hobbies

Compile | GaryMa Wu said blockchain

On October 18, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin conducted an open AMA on the Farcaster-based social media platform Warpcast, which Wu said was compiled as follows, with some references to Deep Tide and Daily Planet:

1. Quantum computing may come faster than expected, what sense of urgency and mitigation ideas does Ethereum have in the face of quantum supremacy?

Vitalik: User accounts under the account abstraction (ERC 4337) architecture already have the ability to combat quantum computing. For existing accounts, if quantum computing suddenly appears, we may need to do a hard fork to restore the user's EOA by ZK-STARK proving the user's 12 mnemonics (the mnemonic phrase is already quantum-resistant and should be the account mode of most users at present).

At the consensus layer, STARK-based alternatives are actively being explored, including (i) BLS aggregation, (ii) Verkle trees, and (iii) KZG-based DAS.

Are you interested in Lattice-based SNARK alternatives? After all, lattice-based encryption systems have become one of the main candidates for the NIST PQC standard and are compatible with fully homomorphic encryption systems (FHE).

PS: Lattice-based cryptography is attracting attention for its resistance to quantum computer attacks

Vitalik: For fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), the lattice-based approach makes sense, and seems to be the only option. For most on-chain operations, ZK-STARKs combined with hashing may be sufficient.

3. Which city (or place) do you like to walk in the most? Do you like to change after becoming a public figure?

Vitalik: I've obviously become less like cities lately. Even though I'm in Singapore, I prefer to stay farther away from the city centre, close to the large reservoir park. In terms of cities, I prefer Singapore, Taipei, Vienna, Toronto, and Ithaca, New York.

4. What did you eat this morning?

Vitalik: About 16 grams of Lindt 85% pure dark chocolate. I used up my regular 90% pure dark chocolate, which is my favorite.

4.1 Don't you agree with the principle of one meal a day, advocated by many in the lifespan science community, to prolong life?

Vitalik: I usually eat two meals a day, brunch and lunch, about 6 hours apart.

5. What do you think of a16z Marc Andreessen's recent article "The Manifesto of Technical Optimism"?

Vitalik: I agree with a lot of them – in particular, recession is bad, and a lot of stagnation disguised as caution and humility is actually a very anti-human force. But I also think it misses a lot; Specifically, the direction and sequence of technological development is important.

For example, I think brain computer interfaces are great and will be very important in the future, but they also have risks: we're actually talking about reading + writing our minds. It's critical to me that these things are as open source as possible for local computing. What is A16z doing to achieve this result?

And, I think cryptocurrency is a technological field to some extent, and it has to consider not only the utility of consumers, but also these major techno-political issues, maintaining freedom, openness, and the ability of ordinary people around the world to participate and not just consume.

I think there is another very valuable area that can be intentionally accelerated, and that is defense technology. For example, in the biological field, create a process where, once a new pandemic emerges, whether natural or artificial, we can: (i) detect it quickly, (ii) rapidly develop vaccines and/or antibodies, and (iii) produce them locally so that people across the globe can start vaccinating quickly.

The new pandemic – > countermeasures process, preferably completed in less than a month.

In all areas, when the offensive/defensive balance is more conducive to defense, the world will face fewer dark choices between stagnation, centralized control, and disaster.

5.1 To that end, how do we design systems to help Web3 scale in the common interest of serving the common good, rather than just focusing on market share and shareholder profits? What incentive structure does Web3 provide to enable the idea of "Regen" to spread rapidly on a social/civilizational level?

ps: Regen refers to the construction of work in the regenerative crypto economy, focusing more on long-term ideas about how Web3 can benefit the world, not just in a financial sense. Regen believes that the financial system can be designed as a channel for greater human prosperity, serving the needs of all humanity.

Vitalik: I think more original capital is needed for Regen. Optimism's RPGF (Retroactive Public Goods Funding) is good, but we need more to do.

6. What is your opinion on climate change?

Vitalik: Anything that could have such an impact on the world is something to worry about. The mere halving of GDP is already terrible for the poorest countries in the world, not to mention the direct impact on humanity. That said, ideas like "this is going to make the world so bad that I shouldn't have children" are also wrong and harmful.

I invested in a solar cell company and was open to more things. We need to consciously invest resources while moving along many technological paths to properly solve this problem.

! [Vitalik's latest AMA: Quantum computing threats, Ethereum and AI convergence, personal interests] (https://cdn-img.panewslab.com//panews/2022/10/19/images/cdb01c34f011911442f43454607d1983.png)

7. What music are you listening to these days?

Vitalik: Some high-energy Mandarin songs are very suitable for listening to in the 15-20 km of long-distance running, and can significantly increase the running speed. For example, Zhang Shaohan's "Aurora" and "Breaking the Cocoon" can almost increase my speed by 10%. Recently, I also listen to some Japanese songs.

! [Vitalik's latest AMA: Quantum computing threats, Ethereum and AI convergence, personal interests] (https://cdn-img.panewslab.com//panews/2022/10/19/images/749077c6508f3c40daf626b2c8a0fb19.png)

8. Scroll recently launched the mainnet of its zkEVM chain; However, since it needs to mimic the classic EVM on Ethereum, we are unlikely to see innovative design concepts and experiments, such as privacy features, on the execution layer. What are your thoughts on these restrictions?

Vitalik: I don't think we need privacy at the executive layer, we can build it up at other layers.

9. With the existence of Ethereum, do you think Bitcoin still has value?

Vitalik: This article by Starknet developer abdel.stark, "Ethereum Alignment," explains this problem well. Bitcoin employs a variety of different technical trade-offs and therefore covers a different hypothetical space than Ethereum.

10. What prevents light clients (such as portal network clients) from reaching production-ready state?

ps: Portal Network is designed to allow devices with limited resources to access the protocol in a lightweight way. The Portal Network will consist of one or more decentralized peer-to-peer networks that collectively provide the data and functionality required by standard JSON-RPC APIs. These networks are designed to ensure that clients can participate using minimal bandwidth, CPU, RAM, and hard disk resources.

Vitalik: It's going to happen right away. I think the next step is to (i) integrate into the wallet by default, and (ii) extend it to cover L2s, not just L1. However, (ii) it only makes sense if L2 takes off or at least reduces reliance on accessibility so that the underlying system is decentralized in the first place.

11. In your opinion, why hasn't the cryptocurrency-based prediction market gained much attention? Do you still think they have potential? What more do they need to do to "take off"?

Vitalik: They're slowly getting closer to their goal. Polymarket has made considerable progress recently, and it seems to be a better blend of crypto properties and business development than any previous attempt.

12. Is your 8.5 BTC t-shirt still there?

Vitalik: Not anymore. Unfortunately, I lost my bag when I forgot it on a train in England many years ago.

13. In your opinion, what are the biggest threats to traditional finance and late capitalism?

Vitalik: The army and late authoritarianism.

14. What were the biggest takeaways and lessons from the Zuzalu project? Could it be a replicable model of real-world cyber nations, or is it more of an experiment in the search for that model?

ps: Zuzalu is a pop-up city experiment launched by Vitalik in Montenegro in March~May 2023.

Vitalik: I think it's still a replicable model even today! From the point of view of political autonomy, you will not get a "network state", but the form of "200 people gathered anywhere for months" is very useful in itself. We've seen similar spin-offs.

15. What's the best article you've read lately?

Vitalik：

16. Given the recent debate about whether the underlying layer of the protocol encapsulates more functionality, are you in favor of providing everyone with a minimal on-chain governance tool to express their preference? Like a reliable and neutral 'sentiment' signaling tool, sent to the Ethereum Foundation and client teams (despite the Sybil attack)?

Vitalik: yes, I definitely think more non-binding emotional voting tools would be great. Hope is not just based on tokens; Things like carbonvote were really cool in the past, but the biggest downside is obviously that they're very driven by big players.

17. As an intellectual, erudite, eloquent, and representative of the new Internet thinking, how would you communicate to the general public the future on which Ethereum's ideological system is based? The current world generally views cryptocurrencies as scams, which is a serious communication problem.

Vitalik: In my opinion, we have done too much communication and we need more demonstration actions!

18. I don't know what you think about "ticketing". Ticketing is often considered a beneficial use case for cryptocurrencies as a whole, and for millions of people, ticketing will be their first interaction with distributed ledger technology.

Vitalik: Yes, I think it's valuable. Especially if we can (i) integrate it into a ZK system like zupass, and (ii) make it actually possible to buy tickets directly on-chain, so that the whole process is completely independent of any centralized interface.

19. What are your non-technology-related hobbies?

Vitalik: Last week I was working on toki pona, and next week I'll see how it evolves.

PS: Toki Pona is an extremely concise, elegant artificial language with only 123 words.

20, you said that the goal of Ethereum protocol design is to minimize the complexity of the L1 protocol and maximize robustness and elasticity, let's compare the situation of sharding and rollup, obviously sharding is much more complex for L1 protocol. But for developers and users, it's simpler because it abstracts proof of failure/proof-of-validity, eliminates exogenous cross-chain bridges, guarantees ETH interchangeability (arbETH vs opETH), and so on. Why is it better for developers and users to minimize L1 complexity rather than push it on?

Vitalik: I think if we had chosen L1 sharding, that very strong ecosystem that we had that was responsible for actually developing all kinds of L2s and scaling infrastructure might not exist to the same extent. L1 teams are limited in resources and focused on PoS.

That is to say, the "L1 core team" is stronger now, and I think there is a reverse movement towards more standardization between L2. This includes:

● Account abstraction (ERC4337)

● L2EVM efforts

● Standardized cross-chain wallet experience, including recovery

●L1-enshrined ZK-EVM that may be adopted in the future.

Of course, the ongoing work on DAS (Data Availability Sampling), starting with 4844, then scaling to larger and larger block sizes. So I think the Ethereum ecosystem is very capable of evolving and correcting mistakes, and we end up with something that balances standardization and independent innovation well.

20.1 Therefore, will ETH give up market cap to various L2 infrastructures? How do you see the TAM (Overall Addressable Market) opportunity for ETH?

Vitalik: Definitely gave up some, but not all. I think it's healthy. The reason is that we need to have some tokens that can be used to pay for expensive ecosystem public goods, and ETH itself is difficult to play this role, so making room for L2 tokens is a good solution. You can be part of Ethereum and have a token that is more directly tied to your project, which I think is a huge incentive.

21. From a Farcaster product perspective, what would you prioritize doing that we are not currently doing?

Vitalik: Whatever your strategy for fighting Sybil attacks, make sure it's ZK encapsulation, protect privacy, provide alternative paths for people who don't want to provide government identification or proxy identification (e.g., phone number), etc.

22. You often discuss on-chain security on mobile devices, but after experiments like Zuzalu, what unsolved offline mobile security challenges have you found? Do you plan to take further action on the state of your network? Is there a way for others to coordinate shared secure Schelling points?

Vitalik: We do need more investment to improve device security, open source operating systems, etc. Since I got in touch earlier this year, I've introduced GrapheneOS to at least a few people.

Our devices are now an extension of our thinking, so their security is paramount.

23. What keeps you motivated?

Vitalik: I know our community and the technology it's building is in a very unique position to do something truly valuable in an increasingly complex world. Positive outcomes don't happen unexpectedly, and we have a responsibility to think carefully and achieve them.

24 Which book helps you best understand how Western culture came to this point (broad liberalism, democracy, and capitalism)?

Vitalik: I think books are somewhat overrated in this regard, and underestimated in terms of practical experience in understanding culture. I'm not just referring to going to different places and living in different cultures, I'm also referring to the crypto community. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. also have values and are under pressure to shape those values but sometimes compromise them.

By watching existing communities respond to pressures and threats of all sizes, we can better understand under what conditions liberalism, capitalism, and so on are most conducive to prosperity.

25. What do you spend most of your time thinking about?

Vitalik: For the past week or two, I've been thinking about my thoughts on various AI-related issues and how/if the Ethereum community can effectively participate in them.

26. In a future full of built-in wallets, do you think people will:

1. Provide a new address for each new application,

2. In many applications, one address is mainly used, or

3. In between?

Vitalik: Right now we're at (2). I wish we could get closer to (1) because it's more privacy-friendly. Sometimes it makes sense for different apps to share wallets, but this shouldn't be the default. We also need to continue to improve ZK transfers so that the privacy gains from different activities truly become a reality.

26.1 Follow-up question on this issue – do you mean should there be these different wallets in every app, or a single-brand wallet management like Metamask? That is, do you log in with Metamask and generate an address for each website, or do you use email/social login and generate a wallet for each website?

Vitalik: I do want it to be a wallet and generate an address for each website. If every app had a custom wallet, it would be a disaster in my opinion.

27.As I learned more about the limitations of SNARKs in mechanisms with a mix of private and public data, I have a question: What is your opinion on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE)? Do you think the progress of the last two years will lead to Moore's Law in terms of actual code, like we saw after Groth16?

Vitalik: FHE still has practical limitations that make it not a "universal black box", specifically, you have to protect the final decryption step to some extent, and in practice it tends to have similar limitations to MPC. So I do expect it, but it's not a panacea. Of course, a better FHE will almost certainly translate into better witness encryption and/or obfuscation, if we can make it feasible in practice.

28. What are your biggest concerns or concerns about the future of Ethereum?

Vitalik: The risk of stagnant crypto, privacy, and open internet infrastructure will all be reasons for failure, and the major techno-political issues of the 21st century will be determined by whatever happens in AI over the next decade.

29.What are the traits you observe that make crypto industry founders/leaders successful?

Vitalik: It depends on how you define "success"!

I personally respect people who have clear personal values and a deep understanding of their goals in the cryptocurrency space. This understanding clearly goes beyond the clichés they might inherit from cryptocurrency conferences.

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