Source: BlockBeats

On the evening of February 19, invited by FSL’s Chief Revenue Officer Mable Jiang, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin held a special flash text AMA in the “Flash Interview Circle” within the Tako App. The interview had previously solicited anonymous questions from the community, aiming to address concerns and confusion regarding the future development of Ethereum.

The interview covered topics such as the future adoption and ultimate narrative of ETH, views on the relationship between L2 and the Ethereum main chain, and the centralized sequencer solution of MegaETH. Vitalik even answered a community user’s question about whether he is a “communist.” Notably, this was also the first time in recent years that Vitalik conducted an AMA in Chinese.

Here is a summary of the AMA content:

Q1: In your opinion, should Ethereum today be closer to Bitcoin or be considered a world computer? In your previous X post, you mentioned that many people who hold negative views about ETH are actually short-term speculators, and their frustration does not bring any constructive help to the ETH community. However, there are also many in the OG ETH-Maxi camp who loudly promote the idea that “ETH is money” (for example, Bankless, the largest ETH Maxi media), comparing ETH with BTC and considering it another competitive form of digital currency (possibly even a better form of currency). What is the ultimate narrative you envision for the future adoption of ETH?

Vitalik: Is Ethereum a world computer or currency? I believe these two ways of thinking are compatible.

If you need to distinguish which blockchains are “truly decentralized,” you can use a relatively simple test: if its foundation disappears, can the chain survive? I feel that only Bitcoin and Ethereum can clearly answer: of course, they can. Most of Ethereum’s development is outside the foundation; the client teams have independent business models, and many researchers are not in the foundation. Almost all activities, except for Devcon, are independent. Reaching this stage is difficult; Ethereum didn’t have this five years ago.

Giving up these advantages in pursuit of TPS is a significant mistake because new chains can always emerge with even higher TPS than yours. However, decentralization and resilience are valuable, and few blockchains possess them.

These characteristics are conducive to creating a digital currency with long-term value and also beneficial for a good world computer. However, the world computer also needs to solve scalability issues. The term “world computer” does not mean “a computer that can support every application in the world simultaneously,” but rather “a place where the world’s applications can interact with each other.” High-performance computing can be placed on L2, which is fine. But this still requires L1 to have sufficient scale; specific details can be found in a recent article I wrote: “Vitalik’s New Article: Significantly Scaling L1 Still Has Value and Will Make Application Development Simpler and Safer.”

ETH is a digital asset suitable for use between the world’s applications (including finance and others, such as ENS, etc.). ETH does not need every transaction to be on L1, but it needs sufficient throughput to allow anyone wanting to use L1 to do so at least occasionally. So these two directions are also compatible: helping Ethereum become a better world computer also enhances ETH as a better digital currency.

Q2: Many L2 solutions have emerged today, mainly based on the OP stack, with some attempts at zkrollup. I would love to hear your evaluation of the rollups route over the past few years, hoping for an objective review: what do you think has been done well, and what differs from what was envisioned back then? Are rollups overall a good thing for Ethereum or a drain (I saw you recently calling for these L2s to give back to Ethereum)? Does ETH really need these L2s?

Vitalik: Ethereum needs hybrid L1 + L2. So far, our scaling approach can be understood as hybrid L1 + L2, but I feel that no one has clearly defined which transactions should be on L1 and which should be on L2.

The answer of “everything on L2” is hard to accept because:

• This risks losing ETH’s position as a medium of exchange, store of value, etc. If you worry that L2 is stealing users from L1 without giving anything back, this issue becomes more severe in a situation where “L1 does almost nothing.”

• Cross-L2 operations still require L1. If an L2 has issues, users need a way to move to another L2. Therefore, there are some unavoidable use cases for L1. I wrote an article on this topic: “Vitalik’s New Article: Significantly Scaling L1 Still Has Value and Will Make Application Development Simpler and Safer.”

The answer of “everything on L1” is also hard to accept because:

• If L1 supports many transactions, it risks becoming centralized, even with technologies like ZK-EVM.

• The demand for on-chain transactions is infinite; no matter how high L1’s TPS is, there will always be an application that needs 10 times more TPS (e.g., artificial intelligence, micropayments, small prediction markets, etc.).

• L2 not only scales but can also provide faster confirmation speeds through preconfirmations and avoid MEV issues through sequencers.

So we need hybrid L1 + L2. I believe the role of L2 will continue to change. For example, it seems that EVM-equivalent L2s are already sufficient; we may see more privacy-focused L2s (like Aztec, Intmax, etc.) and possibly more application-specific L2s (if an application wants to control its MEV situation, there are benefits, etc.). So in the short term, I think we should continue to enhance L1’s capabilities, increase blobs to give L2 more space, and promote cross-L2 interoperability, and then the market will decide which scaling method suits which application.

Q3: The rollup route has been proposed for quite some time. Do you think that the centralized sequencers of Arbitrum/Base/OP pose a significant regulatory challenge for the future because they cannot truly resist censorship? Do you think they will move towards decentralized sequencer solutions? If your answer to the previous question is affirmative, what do you think of the centralized sequencer solution of MegaETH?

Vitalik: Regarding centralized sequencers, centralized sequencers actually have many advantages:

• Centralized sequencers can ensure that they do not steal users’ money through frontrunning, etc.
• Instant preconfirmations.
• It is very easy to turn a traditional application into a blockchain application because the server directly becomes the sequencer.

We can use the decentralized characteristics of blockchain to mitigate the risks of centralized sequencers: a forced inclusion mechanism prevents sequencers from censoring users, and optimistic or zk proof mechanisms prevent sequencers from changing or violating application rules (e.g., suddenly inflating a token or NFT collection).

However, centralized sequencers still carry risks, so we cannot rely entirely on them to solve problems. Having based rollups or the ability to transact directly on L1 is also important. Therefore, I support having two parts of the ecosystem to promote both methods, and then we can see which method is more suitable for which application. Maintaining the ability for ordinary users to send censorship-resistant transactions is, of course, crucial.

Vitalik replies to the comment “My starting point is that U.S. regulators may go after them, though the probability may not be high”: A single sequencer’s anti-censorship solutions and attempts. If this happens, there are two possibilities:

1. DAOs will choose sequencers and backup sequencers and will keep moving to new sequencers.
2. We use based rollups.

I think the first option is worth exploring; I know some L2 teams have considered this direction. The second is a backup, and there may be other reasons we find based rollups better, leading to more use of based rollups. The advantage of Ethereum is that we can try several directions simultaneously.

Q4: What are the differences between the technical roadmap of ETH 3.0 and the goals hoped to be achieved in the rollup era? In the 3.0 design plan announced at Devcon last November, was the fact that rollups have not truly provided actual value to the Ethereum mainnet considered?

Vitalik: The relationship of value capture between L2 and L1. There is currently no such thing as ETH 3.0. Some might say Justin Drake’s five-year plan is it, but that plan only covers the consensus layer, not the execution layer, so it is only part of the future of the Ethereum blockchain.

The relationship and balance between L1 and L2 is an execution layer issue. There is another roadmap: strengthening L1’s capabilities (increasing gas limits, adding stateless verification (like Verkle), and other functions, etc.), improving cross-L2 interoperability, increasing blobs, etc. I also believe that the question of whether L2 pays enough transaction fees to L1 should not be viewed too short-term. For example:

• Before 4844, the complaints were the opposite: Is L1 sucking the blood of L2?
• Now, in the last 30 days, blob fees are 500 ETH.
• If the blob target increases from 3 to 128, according to our plan, if the blob gas price remains the same, it will burn 21,333 ETH per month, or 256,000 ETH per year.

So the narrative can change quickly; now we need to strengthen L1 to ensure that things that should happen on L1 can happen there, increase blobs, and maintain our community’s adaptability.

Q5: You decided to step up leadership at the Ethereum Foundation. I believe this was a very difficult decision after much consideration, a leap of faith, and a gaze into the abyss, which I greatly admire. Would you mind sharing your entire thought process with us today? Meanwhile, I am curious if you recognize socialism with Chinese characteristics? My question stems from the discussion you had with Ameen about the “proper board”: before stepping onto the right development path, do you think organizations need strong leaders to guide and correct the direction?

Vitalik: “Decentralization” does not equal “doing nothing.”

I feel that the blockchain community and the world are in a relatively dangerous state now. Many things without long-term value, even malicious ones, are happening. These things and the people behind them receive a lot of attention. However, we cannot just oppose these things without proposing better alternatives. Therefore, our goal should be to create a good alternative and demonstrate that a stable, brighter future is possible.

Here, I refer to the blockchain circle (if a memecoin drops 97% in a day, what is our future?) and a macro social aspect: many people now feel that democratic methods are impossible and that things can only be done through strongman leadership. However, at Devcon, a political scientist told me that one reason he respects Ethereum is that we are a truly open and decentralized ecosystem, and we have succeeded at this scale, which gives him hope. So if we can succeed in this way, the positive impact on the world could be significant and provide many people with a bright, successful example to follow.

However, “decentralization” does not mean “doing nothing.” The philosophy of subtraction of the Ethereum Foundation does not mean “reducing the foundation to zero,” but rather a way to maintain ecological balance. If there is an imbalance in one area (for example, if part of the ecosystem is too centralized, or there is an important public good that others are not addressing), we can help counterbalance. Once this issue is resolved, the foundation can withdraw from that area. If a new imbalance arises, we can shift resources there, and so on.

In Chinese culture, the way we pursue may resemble the thoughts of the Dao De Jing, but walking this path requires wisdom and the foundation’s ability to enhance in some areas; it is not a matter of “doing nothing to succeed.” Therefore, in the short term, we need to put more effort into making some important pivots.

Q6: I am not part of the core Ethereum circle, so I am not very clear about some detailed political issues. From your perspective, what do you think are the main reasons some ETH Maxis OG have left the Ethereum community? When I recorded a podcast with Shuyao, she mentioned an interesting point: Ethereum needs to hit rock bottom before it can rebuild (half-jokingly). At this stage, do you think Ethereum indeed faces a major reshuffling of existing holders and community members to find its own path?

Vitalik: Ethereum needs new stories and new users.

Many different people have different stories. For example, many people in the blockchain circle ten years ago would say that the goal of blockchain is to create a globally neutral system that protects individual freedom and counterbalances government hegemony. Now, if a president launches a memecoin, they would say, “Wow, this is real-world adoption,” which is good, but why does it happen on other chains? If we could be a bit friendlier to those politicians, it might happen on our chain next time! Personally, I feel that these people have gone astray. Of course, they would say I am too purely idealistic and unrealistic, etc. Each side has its own story.

Some people would say that the Ethereum ecosystem is too controlled by OGs and does not provide enough space for newcomers. However, this criticism comes from another direction, with different groups expressing these arguments.

I believe there is only one suitable path to help us emerge from these dilemmas: we need some updated stories to explain why Ethereum exists, what ETH is for, what L1 and L2 are for, etc. We are no longer in the infrastructure era; we are in the applications era, so these stories cannot be abstract “freedom, openness, anti-censorship, sunpunk public goods, etc.” We need clear answers at the application layer. I plan to support more in the near future: info finance (this also aligns with the direction of AI + crypto), protecting privacy, high-quality public goods funding methods, and continuing to build the world’s open financial platform, which must also include real-world assets. There are many things that are valuable to many users and align with our long-held values; we need to re-support this direction, which can also provide more opportunities for newcomers.

Q7: Do you think Ethereum needs more commercial-type management? Do you believe that the current differences between ETH and SOL are essentially differences in the efficiency of different “organizational forms,” as well as differences in achieving goals? What are the respective goals?

Vitalik: If Ethereum becomes a company, it will lose most of its meaning.

I believe Ethereum is a decentralized ecosystem, not a company. If Ethereum becomes a company, we will lose most of the meaning of Ethereum’s existence. The role of a company is to be a company. In fact, there are many large companies in the Ethereum ecosystem: ConsenSys, various client teams (Nethermind, Nimbus, etc.), Coinbase, L2 teams (including Aztec and Intmax, whose privacy technologies are very interesting and often underestimated).

The best approach is to find ways to give these companies more opportunities to realize the advantages of being a company, with the foundation playing a coordinating role.

Q8: You have always been concerned about the application of ZK technology in the web3 field. Besides ZK applications in asset trading scenarios, what other scenarios in social media networks do you think can introduce ZK for privacy protection?

Vitalik: I am very interested in many non-financial zk use cases, such as:

• Anti-sybil verification. Many services require you to log in with KYC not because they want to know who you are, but because they want to ensure you are not a bot or that if you get banned, you cannot create 100,000 new accounts. This use case can be achieved with zk proof of personhood or proof of reputation; sometimes proof of tokens is sufficient, like anonworld.

• Using cryptographic methods to protect privacy in AI applications. Here, zk may not be the most suitable technology; FHE might be, and FHE has made significant progress recently. If we can further reduce the overhead of FHE, there may be opportunities.

• Using zk-snark to wrap any web2 account for use in web3. zkemail, anon aadhaar, zkpassport, zktls, etc., are good examples.

I believe this technology has many opportunities to solve various social and other security, governance, and other issues by protecting individual freedom and privacy.

Q9: Encouraging more developers to join Ethereum and incentivizing and retaining existing developers (compared to some new L1s and even L2s with more generous developer incentives, Ethereum certainly has a more complex situation) is currently a priority, right? Among accelerating network decentralization, improving scalability, and exploring more application scenarios, which do you think is currently the highest priority for Ethereum?

Vitalik: The alignment of the Ethereum community is not a social game but a technical game. Here, we actually need to find ways to solve three problems simultaneously:

1. Attract more developers.

2. Encourage developers to create applications that are more open-source, secure, compliant with public standards, and have long-term value, etc.

3. In solving (2), avoid the ecosystem becoming a closed circle (the phenomenon of “we are aligned because we are good friends with developers”).

So I recently said that Ethereum alignment should be a technical game, not a social game. I want to emphasize this issue because I feel that in terms of decentralization, the most pressing centralization issues are often not L1’s problems but those of L2, wallets, or applications. Therefore, the entire ecosystem needs to work together to expand and attract new developers while making progress in these decentralized and trustless aspects.

We can help achieve this situation in several ways:

1. Education, making it easier for developers to understand why blockchain exists, what should be on-chain, what should not be on-chain, what to care about in the blockchain field, etc.

2. If some blockchain-specific technical aspects are too difficult for application developers, the foundation can do it itself, making it easier for developers to integrate. For example, zk programming languages and a16z’s Helios, etc.

3. Provide developers with clear standards. For example, if you are building an Ethereum client, there are many tests; you can run the tests yourself to see if your client can pass. If you are building L2, there are frameworks like l2beat’s stage 1, stage 2, etc. This should also apply to zk applications, wallets, etc.

Q10: In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape accelerated by AI, you previously mentioned the concept of d/acc (decelerationism or defensive acceleration against accelerationism). Do you think the effective acceleration of technological decentralization aligns with your expectations? Do you have any concerns about potential pitfalls in this area? Personally, I feel a bit powerless; I know “Beijing Folding” might be a future scenario, and from a humanistic perspective, I hope it doesn’t happen, but I feel it’s getting closer.

Vitalik: Here, I need to make an important correction: d/acc is not de-acceleration; it is decentralized defensive acceleration. This is important because there are indeed people in this world who support deceleration, degrowth, etc., but I believe this direction is wrong. In a peaceful world, it would delay important medical and infrastructure improvements, causing more harm. In today’s more dangerous world, if we do not accelerate, we will be eaten by those who are willing to accelerate.

Decentralized and defensive technology needs to compete with other technologies. If the sword advances quickly but the shield does not, the world will become increasingly dangerous. If centralized technology advances quickly but decentralized technology does not, the world will become more centralized. Therefore, we need to counterbalance these trends. Blockchain is part of this story, but only part of it; there is also decentralization outside of blockchain (like P2P networks), as well as software and hardware security (the “shield” of the digital world), and many things in the biological field, etc.

Q11: Do all employees of the Ethereum Foundation, including the leadership team, have KPI/OKR or similar assessment mechanisms? Non-profit organizations generally face efficiency issues; do you think the EF has such problems? If so, how can they be resolved? Can you systematically detail how to accelerate Ethereum’s development? ETH has been around for ten years, with updates once a year, and the development progress feels a bit slow and needs to be greatly accelerated.

Vitalik: The Ethereum Foundation has started many internal reforms in recent months, so any answers I can give now will soon be outdated. It might be better to ask this question in six months.

Q12: How do you understand crypto as a counter-establishment infrastructure in achieving degrowth communism? Do you think the current memecoins (referring more to those quickly launched on Solana) are a form of “beneficial chaos” for achieving degrowth communism? (This term comes from your blog.) I couldn’t find the anonymous feature, so I just posted it directly, and I strongly recommend you play “Disco Elysium”; I believe you will enjoy it.

Vitalik: The core of degrowth communism is to create better “rules of the game.” Chaos is not necessarily beneficial, nor is it necessarily bad; it depends on the situation. An interesting question is how to create “rules of the game” that lead to naturally produced chaos in the community having positive effects.

For example, civil wars in countries have negative effects unless they are aimed at escaping malicious tyranny. However, market chaos often has positive effects, eliminating old, inefficient companies and giving new companies opportunities. But sometimes, the market can also lead to problems we see in the blockchain circle. So this is quite complex.

So how can we create better rules? I feel that the current memecoins are far from ideal. I wrote this article last year to see if there are better directions: “Vitalik Talks Again About Memes: What Imagination Space Is Left for Memecoins?”

Q13: You should know about Simon de la Rouviere’s “This Art is Always on Sale” Harberger tax experiment (patronage as an asset class). Do you think such experiments can lead to new developments in future decentralized social networks? Are there any mechanisms you look forward to seeing used for experimentation in decentralized social?

Vitalik: Yes, I think decentralized social media is a great opportunity to try many new mechanisms. The Harberger tax is one example, and there are other examples such as:

• Mechanisms similar to community notes https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/08/16/communitynotes.html

• Creator payouts, similar to Twitter and YouTube but fairer and more transparent. We can try retro funding, deep funding, quadratic funding, etc.

• Combining social media with DAO governance.

Q14: What do you think about the fact that we, as a group of people in the crypto world, still rely heavily on centralized social applications like Telegram and Twitter for communication and collaboration? Building decentralized social media and truly encrypted communication tools does not seem to receive much attention or recognition. So far, has their development met your expectations? What advice do you have for teams exploring construction in this field?

Vitalik: This is also a concern of mine. Personally, I have been trying to move most of my conversations from Telegram to Signal over the past two years. However, Signal is also not perfect; although it is confidential, it is still centralized, lacks interoperability, requires a phone number to log in, and the server sees a lot of your metadata, etc.

However, creating a higher-quality messenger is challenging. I try Status every year; they are working hard to be fully decentralized, and they are doing well, but they still have some reliability issues. In fact, there are various small teams creating their own messengers, but they are not united, so each one tends to be insufficiently good.

I recently started using Fileverse for my various documents, and I found that the user experience is already good enough; many people in the foundation are using it. If a decentralized, encrypted messenger can achieve this quality, I will definitely work hard to help the community transition to that messenger.

Q15: I have heard from people in the Milady community that you might have chosen Milady for certain reasons, but I am still curious how you would explain your sense of identification with Milady?

Vitalik: I think Milady attracts many people because this internet community achieves two things simultaneously:

1. It is not boring.
2. It is not malicious.

If you look at the circles of the mainstream world today, you will find that achieving both conditions simultaneously is quite difficult; Milady is one of the most successful examples.

Q16: Are you a communist?

Vitalik: No, I am not a capitalist either. Both are ideologies of the 20th century. (These terms have been extended and abused to the point of meaninglessness: remember that in the 1990s, Microsoft referred to Linux as “communism”: https://www.theregister.com/2000/07/31/msballmerlinuxiscommunism/)

I support freedom, equal opportunities globally, kindness and cooperation, and human welfare and progress. These are eternal principles. The question is how to leverage our existing tools to realize these values in the context of the 21st century. I have written in detail about various mechanisms I personally support, but I absolutely do not think I am the only source of good ideas; I believe that figuring out the best methods is a collective project that requires both thought and increasingly realistic world experiments.

Q17: Can you systematically detail how to accelerate Ethereum’s development from various aspects? ETH has been around for ten years, with updates once a year, and the development progress feels a bit slow and needs to be greatly accelerated.

Vitalik: The core focus of Ethereum development right now is to increase the number of blobs. The main goal now is to increase the number of blobs, which includes:

• Pectra, increasing the blob target from 3 to 6.
• Fusaka, adding Peerdas, further increasing the blob target.
• Continuing to optimize Peerdas in 2026 and 2027.
• Adding 2D data availability sampling to further increase the blob target.

There is also a roadmap to increase the L1 gas limit, but this is more complex, involving delayed execution, statelessness, etc.

Q18: The current Vitalik has grown golden claws and silver scales, transforming from a dragon-slaying youth into a dragon. During the Ethereum mining era, it was still democratic consensus, but now, in your management system, it seems to be a dictatorial management model. After transitioning to PoS, it has further shifted from a democratic system to a people’s congress system. Are you suspected of secretly joining the party behind everyone’s back?

Vitalik: PoS in Ethereum is not a governance method. PoW can only be democratic in the short term. There are always economies of scale; larger miners are more efficient, so over time, it will become increasingly centralized.

I think we likely did not have ASICs before PoS because everyone knew we planned to move to PoS, so no one made ASICs. If we had declared from day one that we would always be PoW, ASICs would likely have emerged between 2016 and 2019 unless we had continuously changed the algorithm every year, but that would also centralize.

So I believe our approach of spending seven years using PoW for distribution and then moving to PoS is the best. PoS has its own fairness: if you have ten times more money, you can produce ten times more blocks. In ASIC PoW, there are economies of scale, where ten times more money might equal eleven times more blocks. One more point is that PoS in Ethereum is not a governance method. Ether holders do not have the right to choose which EIPs are included in the next fork, etc. If we used PoS to make such decisions, it would indeed be too oligarchic.