Vitalik Buterin: Privacy, Memecoins & Staying True to Ethereum | Meetup 0x17 #23 (17.06.2025)

Thanks so much. Uh you know if we're so I've um I've seen all of you at our meetups. I'm very happy that you're here. Um um but I want to tell you something about um our plans going forward. So when doing E4so, we've noticed that while the conference is great, the meetups are great, we only get to see each other once a year, maybe once every two, three months depending on the frequency of the meetups.

The meetups have a fixed structure. um we have um uh we have a presentation then we network a little bit but that's all. Some of you tend to get together to work from coffee shops, restaurants, whatever um or some different co-working spaces and we wanted to uh provide you a place where you can do this in an in in a space where it's only focused on blockchain. And this is something that we want to this is something that we want to do. So besides hosting the conference, the hackathon, besides the meetups, we also want to get into something a bit more more uh tangible here.

So I actually want to set up the space in here. The space is going to be called collective free. It's a a it's a slight hint that it's going to be more than just blockchain. We want to add different technologies um to to the mix. We want to make sure that um all of the new tech um companies have a place to work from uh from here.

This is done in partnership with uh with ramp and if you can see the the space here part of that will be allocated to e forso um co-working space um you will have your own allocated desk you will have your monitors but besides that we're also going to be hosting different sorts of meetups we're going to be hosting boot camps um there's going to be a social part to the to the whole component there's going to be a technical part to this if you want to build your team you can start from here if you want to recruit people to your to your company, you can use us as um a broadcast to your community. So, basically, we want to help um get those projects started besides just the co-working space. Um we want to get into um something like an acceleration. We're not going to take 15% cut off your of your equity. So, don't don't fear that.

But we want to help you connect you to the right the right people. We want to build help you build connections. We want to help you hire um your early team members. Um but we also want to um be a part of what you're building. Um we want to be exposed to that.

We want to know what's happening in the in the space and we want to become this one central hub for everything that's happening in crypto in uh not just Warso but also uh but just in Poland. Um, if you want to check out more or sign up, you can uh you can go go to the QR code. Um, we're going to be starting in July. Um, we already have signups um, open and I would love to see you here. I'm going to be working here.

My dog's going to be working here as well. Pets are welcome. Uh we're hoping to host many more meetups um and different events here. If you want to host your own meetup, if you want to set your company here, let me know. Would love to help you help you get that uh get that done.

And this is everything that I wanted to set. I'm running out of breath because I was really really trying to make it make it fast. And right now we're going to move to the fireside chat with uh with Vitalics. So uh let's do a warm applause for Vitalik here. and um PHM's uh going to be running the um running the fireside.

Tremik is a um CEO of RAMP and um started building product and strategy there and I'm really really out of breath right now. So I'm going to hand this over to uh to you first to you. Thank you. Here you go. Thank you.

So, ah, it's so good to see everyone, all those faces. Hello, Vitalik. It's it's very nice to see you here in Warso, uh, at our place. Um, it's very special for me. Um, and I'm grateful that, uh, for this for this opportunity.

Um, so, um, you know, like the Ethereum is a longterm project. uh you started building this um more than 10 years ago. Um and um uh naturally um uh you know like it's like a ton ton of story behind it and I still remember the days of the DA hack. Uh uh it uh killed my first crypto project uh back then uh and um I uh before it even started and um when you look back at all those years um there are there there are many decisions that you've made back then uh but one of those the most meaningful was to actually start the foundation uh and foundation funded by the initial uh initial funds uh from the ICO. uh and uh I'm curious how you view the impact of the foundation over the all those years and what's the material impact of having the foundation uh especially compared to uh bitcoin uh where there is no foundation uh and you know from one side you someone could say that they're doing great as well.

Yeah, I think um you know for a new project like Ethereum of course uh you know if there wasn't a source of funding for developers I just don't think the project would have been able to get off the ground at all right the amount of software that we had to write to just get Ethereum out there at the level of quality that it had is like very significant right and uh like if had, you know, theoretically a much smaller team and it was only volunteers, like probably it would have taken longer. It would have been worse quality. It would have uh broken more. It would have had more problems. Um like I personally would not have have been optimistic about trying to start Ethereum in like that kind of like pure volunteer way, right?

And I mean even Bitcoin itself, right? I think it benefited a lot from having these uh early holders that uh were just like motivated to start you know all kinds of uh businesses a lot of which funded Bitcoin developments early on. So I think at the beginning the problem was just uh like Ethereum existing at all. And in one of the choices that I remember we had was making a foundation versus making a company. And near the beginning, I made the choice that it needs to be a foundation because I thought that like for a project like Ethereum, if it was launched by a com a for-profit company that had shareholders like this is something that people would just uh not be willing to accept and the project would just not be able to succeed.

Um then uh so so I'm very glad that I did that. Uh I think uh at some point later like Ethereum definitely you know moves to the point where like theoretically if the foundation did not exist like development could have continued right and I mean bitcoin as well right and I think at some point uh the other concern that becomes uh like a bigger problem as uh the funding problem becomes a little bit smaller is the concern of uh the incentives of uh who is doing the development and like whether or not the protocol gets captured right because in bitcoin you There have been a lot of controversies like Blockstream is paying a lot of the developers like what does Blockstream want? I mean like is the whole small block thing like done by them because they want L2s and like people make like arguments about all kinds of different companies, right? And having some kind of counterbalance to the commercial pressure is something that is uh I mean I think continues to be really valuable for Ethereum. And I mean I think what's interesting about this year and like the especially these last few months right is like the rest of the ecosystem has grown to the point where the foundation isn't uh like by far the biggest player right it's one of the players and so that means I mean that actually creates more opportunity for the foundation to be kind of more clear about it focusing on and expressing kind of like particular perspectives and even the perspectives that uh like other kinds of actors don't have the incentive to build on their own.

Yeah. So um exactly. So I think the main like the the question that I would be interested to hear about uh is um what do you feel do what do you view the role of the foundation coming forward in this new ecosystem where the it's not the biggest player but it's actually one the small cog in the machine. Yeah. I think the role of the foundation needs to be to do those things that are core to the mission that Ethereum has had since the beginning.

um but which uh where there isn't an incentive for PE profitm actors to uh just build it on their own um and I can give a few examples right so one of them is uh just preserving the decentralization of the protocol right so things like open source um open standards uh also what I call the walk away test which is basically that like your ability to do things on Ethereum should not depend on some company where if the company disappears like suddenly you lose all your coins or you can't do anything or you have a security issue. Um and projects that are built by companies like often do not really think about these things in the same way, right? And like there are incentives for you know like pursuing vendor lock in um and uh like creating open uh version uh versions of things or at least like helping to coordinate that and encourage that to exist as one of its uh roles. We've also been recently starting to focus on privacy much more and privacy is also it's like one of those things which is uh I mean often difficult to kind of like market as a product right I mean there have been successes like signal has been very successful and I think we can all learn from the successes that signal has uh had right but like actually building out some of that uh core infrastructure to make it easier to interact with Ethereum privately. It's it's one of those things that we're starting to really look into.

Um so protecting the protocol from like centralized capture, ensuring its decentralization, ensuring privacy, ensuring censorship resistance and doing the kinds of L1 protocol work that like benefit the whole ecosystem without really like concentrating the benefit on one central actor like a lot of those kinds of things. Do you think do you think like regulatory lobbying and legal actions are the part of it of the story? I mean this is one of those areas where I think uh you know we have to be careful right because uh like when you interact with uh a politician like the uh the politician is uh willing to come and have that interaction because they're they also think that they're getting something from you and uh and so you have to be careful I mean like which like what kinds of people are you empowering in that way right um so I think you know there's always that you know, the risk that if you get close to the wrong kinds of people and in the wrong ways, you know, politics can be a very chaotic thing and you know, like a choice that you thought was uh kind of reasonable and mild like suddenly turns out to have like much more uh significant consequences. uh but at the same time like uh there definitely is I think an important uh perspective uh in like crypto politics and uh and regulation that we're like there's value in organizations like the EF supporting right because uh I mean obviously you know our interest is uh not the same as the interest of like anti-crypto people who think crypto is bad and crypto should be banned but also our interest is not exactly the same as um like the interest of centralized exchanges for example right and uh so I mean the way that like we as a foundation have been uh taking that balance so far is like we've we have had some uh conversations with governments around the world usually on a fairly informal basis but the bulk of uh our involvement is uh supporting uh local organizations uh around the world that are like focused on a particular region and have uh kind of missions and like approaches that generally align with kind of what the F is doing. Speaking about local communities and local organizations, um you invest a lot also into making sure that they exist and uh they they were always very passionate.

So I'm curious what's you on the why they are so passionate but also uh how you view their their role in the ecosystem uh overall. Yeah, in a few answers, right? So first of all it's uh you having more having developers is good having more um having more users is good having uh more people involved in just every single part of Ethereum also the non-technical parts um is good and uh like people are everywhere right and uh one of the advantages of I think crypto is that compared to like any other industry like it really discriminates much less based on based on your location, right? And so like if you think of something like AI, it becomes just like 10 times easier to build something and uh get a lot of users and make a lot of money and find partners if you're based in San Francisco, right? But uh here like in crypto, I don't think there is anything like that effect to anything nearly the same extent, right?

And so people are everywhere and I think we wants to um you know support people uh who wants to be part of Ethereum wherever they are. Um another thing is uh that uh actually like I personally view geographic decentralization as being part of capture resistance right so you know there's like there definitely have been a lot of other like blockchains in all of history that have been you know like saying you know like oh you know we are the blockchain of Korea we are the blockchain of China I mean recently even like people saying like we are you know the blockchain of America and uh like if you're overly concentrated on uh one region to that extent then like obviously it becomes harder to be censorship resistant. it becomes harder just to try to claim that your platform is fair between people like in that place and outside of it and uh having uh like strong communities uh around the world both that are able to be part of the social layer and even that are able to like run nodes and uh like participate in proof of stake like that's all I think a very important aspect of that too. Yep that makes sense. Um so uh moving going back to the decisions and looking looking over over time um so uh in crypto when we look back many of those initial ideas narratives uh look quite naive uh from time perspective at some point we uh strongly believed that the um and and still many people do that the code is low and like we should just fully accept the what smart contra contract are doing and um how how this influences the the word um or um that they I don't know that instit in institutional adoption is going to come uh soon like tomorrow uh and it's going to change everything and from the time perspective um we see that some of those decisions or ideas were maybe a bit naive or um but also we had others that were very much visionary and long-term.

How when you when you look at the current ecosystem and the current market, what do you think that the current ideas narratives are going to be viewed in the same way in the in the in the coming years? Yeah, I mean I think uh right now we're like on the tail um end of uh like basically the memecoin era, right? And you know in 2024 we saw lots of people making meme coins. We saw lots of animal coins, you know, we saw political coins. Uh like we saw all kinds of different meme coins and uh I mean I definitely think uh like I'm not an opponent of all meme coins like especially when Doge came out at the beginning.

Like I you know I thought Doge was great. I bought some. Uh but like what was happening is that it like it's kind of the equivalent of you know like it's like at the beginning they were selling strawberries and then at the end they were selling heroin, right? it's, you know, like you go go toward things that are kind of more and more like very shortterm um oriented and that are like more uh about this kind of very momentary buzz instead of like any kind of long-term meaning. Um and uh I mean like these those things are unhealthy, right?

Like in pumpf fun I think like over 99% of participants lost money, right? And then like you know you had these narratives that basically said like oh you know like the those uh like people are elitist and uh like they don't they don't understand that you know like the common people need things like memecoins because we're desperate to make money and then actually like most people who participate lose money right and so like I'm actually you know like I'm happy that like it feels like that's kind of uh subsided now but then there's the question of like what is the thing that comes next And uh to me the thing that uh comes next uh is uh and a lot a lot of it is just like applications that are actually useful and that actually just provide a lot of a lot of value to people in like very boring ways, right? So a simple one is that we've actually seen like DeFi is very mature at this point, right? And you know like with DeFi you can go get US dollars and euros and like other currencies and uh like on a get interest rates of like 3 to 4%. Right now from a lot of people's point of view like what's the point of this right?

Because you can get the same interest rates in a bank accounts right but uh like one there's lots of ways the bank accounts are not convenient especially if you're trying to make more international transactions and two there's big parts of the world that don't have access to bank accounts. A lot of people don't have access to traditional finance and a lot of people like there's a very big middle that does have access but they have access to things that don't pay them interest right and like crypto actually does right so this is u one of those uh things that like I actually think the space is like very uniquely suited to pro to provide at the moment. Um so a lot of it I think is uh in like that and then I also think that uh the more experimental um and and interesting end of crypto is something that uh needs to continue and uh the way that I'm seeing the more experimental and interesting end of crypto is uh and one like a big part of it is privacy right and uh and and think like ZK technology is mature enough that like we can really incorporate it into applications by default now both from the perspective of UX and from a perspective of uh like security and uh trust um and so and like privacy is an area where crypto in general has been like actually far behind right it's like actually kind of funny right because the like spiritual grandfather of Bitcoin right is ecash from David Chum and ecash was actually uh it was centralized but it was private Right? And then we flipped and we went to Bitcoin and then Bitcoin is decentralized but it's not private. Right?

And now we have ZK Snarks and then with ZK Snarks like we actually have both, right? And now if you look out into like wider technology and then we see like the rise of surveillance cameras. We see the rise of like AI based data analysis. You also see just like people having more interactions with AIS and those AI sitting in servers that are somewhere in you know Silicon Valley or maybe Beijing or somewhere else right and uh like I think privacy is a topic that people will uh become more and more concerned about. So there's a lot of just really interesting things uh in the crypto space happening there.

Um I mean also like I think that uh there's value in like being more experimental with Dows, right? Because this is one of these uh like very idealistic early ideas, but then people like I think converged too early on a very boring version of them where like you just have coins and you vote and like actually if you just have coins and you vote there's like 10 reasons it doesn't work very well, right? And so like I actually think reopening that idea and then uh actually like privacy is important in governance too, right? like uh you know there's a reason why votes in a regular democracy are private and if you make like everything in a DAO public it just turns into a social game and I think experimenting with like the right way to involve AI is also going to be important so I don't know um a lot of uh interesting things like at the experimental end of crypto and I think like both of these ends are important yeah so which of those are going to be when we look from the future we look back which one of those are going to be naive Well, this is uh the challenge, right? We don't know yet.

Yeah, I think well I mean generally right the uh ideas that get called well it actually depends right because uh like if you look at for example like crypto consumer payments right like one of the big dreams of uh the early days was like crypto would actually just like replace things like credit cards right um I don't know if if anyone back in the early days visited Kwitzburg in Berlin there was this one guy who convinced like like more than 10 restaurants and stores in like one very small part of Berlin to just all accept Bitcoin and uh it turned into this sort of exciting like small community. Uh but then that ended up dying out. I think uh I mean I think two reasons, right? One is transaction fees on Bitcoin went up and then the other is that like I think actually crypto helped but like the fees on traditional finance got better, right? Because 15 years ago like PayPal charged 3% uh like and then like 6% for anything international like it was terrible right and then now you know there's like all I mean sea and then in the US like Venmo and like just a lot of different things right and so traditional finance is like somewhat improved in some places but yeah like like so today yeah you know a consumer payments uh on crypto kind of feels naive in the same way but uh but at the same time like there are places around the world where the funny like Argentina is one a lot of like part like Nigeria places like Turkey a lot in Southeast Asia where like crypto actually just does uh get used quite a bit.

So I think uh you know like often it's like we don't know what's naive and what's not and the successes appear in the most unexpected places. I'm I'm laughing because you are kind of like uh so we are doing exactly this you know we're working with the in the payment itself. uh you kind of roasted the our project on stage uh which is you know funny itself. Uh but you know like the um uh going back to the uh like exactly to the payments and the stable coins because the stable coins are like the the new big thing on the in the block and um I have actually the question about the when you look at the stable coins like right now why they are why they are so like where there's people talking about them like I think one of those is that they become regulated uh in Europe and this is also coming to e other countries. Um uh but the question is like if the future of crypto is the ma mostly to be just a transactional layer for the um payments in stable coins that are regulated.

Do we have the gateways that are also regulated? So you have the like ramp itself like you have the centralized exchanges as well. Um so and you know we have to like as as because we are forced by regulators to track the transaction and screen the users like so if we have this world where we have the regulated ecosystem regulated pay regulated stable coins via regulated gateways uh did we won or lost yeah it depends right and I think like there's the regulatory dimension uh to this and then there's also the like monetary policy dimension to this right where like if you listen to crypto lobbying in the US like they often argue that you know crypto is good because it like basically makes it easier to like for the US dollar to spread across the world and so like the like crypto is good for uh like American dollar dominance. Um and if you compare this to the vision of Bitcoin, it's of course, you know, a very pretty significantly different type of thing, right? Um and so it's uh like this is already one of these like s kind of surprises, right?

Uh but the way that I think about this is that uh it's not just about the the like the kinds of applications and the kinds of workflows that people are using today. It's about what barriers become reduced and like what things become like what kinds of switching become easier, right? Because uh like if you imagine someone makes a uh like a stable coin and then payments start happening with stable coins and it's an ERC20 but then at some point they say like hey um like we're going to start like like massively blacklisting a lot of people right then what actually happens is that the consumers and the merchants they have access they now have access to wallets on Ethereum that can handle the ERC20 standard and so it actually becomes very easy for them to collect effectively switch over to like anything else, right? If USDT goes crazy or USDC goes crazy, they can switch to USDT. Um they can uh switch to potentially all kinds of other different things, right?

Um and then uh and so I think that's uh like true both on this like monetary level of like different currencies and assets. And so I think it's good to have like different types of assets be available on chain, right? So it's good uh support stable coins based on euros, stable coins based on like different kinds of like local national currencies and uh like ways to make tools to make it easier to work with. Like basically I think uh if someone accepts payment in ERC20, you should be able to pay in any other ERC20 and uh like the exchange process should feel automatic, right? Uh so but then for yeah any of these things right like once things are happening on Ethereum ML1 like uh it does actually yeah become harder for pe for like the people in the companies to abuse users in a lot of different ways right because uh you if you look at even like something like uh social media like sometimes like people can get shadowbanned and like you don't even know whether someone got shadowbanned right and then on on the blockchain like if there's a blacklist like the blacklist is on chain, right?

And like you know you can publicly challenge it. You can say hey what like what happened? Why why did they do this to me? Right. So it's uh like the the transparency is greater.

The uh and then the transparency of the rules is greater. The uh people's ability to switch to better things is greater. So I think uh it's really important for us to make sure that all of the underlying standards that we're using are as open as possible. But uh like if we have that then I think like many kinds of adoption are very positive. Mhm.

Yeah. So you mentioned privacy and decentralization as you know one of those um concepts that are important for the also for the payments and for the what um is going to be looked after in the future. Uh but when when we look at the the perspective of the user uh or regulator the the needs are sometimes different. So for example, they required good UX and uh lack of like transparent transaction in the sense that that someone someone else can screen them uh and the money flows. Um on the other hand, you I'm not saying that you're supporting this, but you you you supported um Roman storm um lawsuit and uh financially to defend him.

He's the torn tornado cash funer. Um so I'm like I'm curious about your views. um in general about how to balance those two forces like the one of the uh for the need of privacy another from the actual need of transparency and transaction being screened uh and um uh you know like as as you mentioned earlier that the you what you want from the from the foundation foundation to do is to um uh to to enable those programmed um interactions without any interference from the third party. M so yeah and so I think I mean with privacy protocols it's interesting right because uh like we've uh there's this like newer wave of them like things like privacy pools things like a rail gun where they like have these mechanisms that basically like let you as a user prove uh that uh like if like some bad actor made a deposit then like basically every other user can prove that they're not one of the bad actors right and uh I I mean this to me is actually one of the big advantages of programmability, right? Which is that it's uh not just about kind of zero or one like basically either you're completely anonymous or like everything is uh revealed like you have the uh ability to reveal um like statements about yourself or statements about your assets or transactions in a very fine grained way.

And uh like often that gives us the ability to solve uh a lot of uh problems in a uh way that gives us the best of both worlds in a way that was not even possible to uh people 15 years ago, right? And so I think uh like things like privacy pools and railway are good examples of that. I mean things like ZK passport are also good examples of that. Like you can build applications where like you solve the anti-able problem. you know you prevent like bad actors from making like many thousands of accounts very easily but and you know you can even like target particular countries but do this at the way at a way that uh like within those boundaries still completely preserves privacy uh so I think uh programmability is a really powerful thing that opens a lot of possibilities there that did not exist before great um so uh going away from the tough tough topics.

Um, and I'm I'm I'm curious maybe this is tough but in the other way. Um, I'm curious what's your view on the questions like very broad one how to change the world. M so um you know we you worked on crypto and Ethereum for the last 10 10 13 years and um uh on one hand you changed the world itself. Um uh but also someone could say that a revolution that takes 15 years is not a revolution. Um uh so it's it's a hard it's a it's a hard job.

Um so how to enable the change globally? Yeah. And I think uh you know one of the challenges right is that the world is a chaotic place right I think uh one of the really interesting cautionary tales for me is open AI right because uh like if you remember the beginnings of open AI it was this uh very idealistic project where the philosophy basically said look by default it looks like AI is going to be dominated by all of these corporations and people like deep mind which is part of Google and uh it's going to be very centralized it's going to spy on people and then let's make a uh a free and open-source alternative, right? And then that's where open AI started from. And then of course famously about and then also know they said well this is going this is going to benefit humanity.

This will be a nonprofit project. And so then what happened after that is you know step one it stopped being a nonprofit project. Um and it became a hybrid forprofit. Then step two they gave up openness because they decided that's what they had to do for safety. And then step three is they gave up safety because they decided that's what they needed to scale faster.

And then, you know, step four is uh like they gave up uh on like basically like the board and like the nonprofit part and kind of neutered it. I mean, not quite to zero, but like pretty close, right? And uh but then on the other hand you could say yeah you know like well at least that whole process took 10 years and at least like still because of those uh of like nonprofit legal bits uh like open AI is having trouble raising money and so they're able to like only get like some like maybe 20 or 30 billion instead of like a hundred and maybe other companies have a chance to catch up right um but uh it just shows how uh you know the world can be uh I mean chaotic in a lot of ways. is right like both the intentions of uh individuals. I mean sometimes uh and like even actions in in politics can be chaotic, right?

And then you know you can say like hey like maybe like you know like free speech is something we needs to move away from because like there's people that are saying things that are like false or hateful. And then it turns out that four years later the people who are in charge of deciding what is false and what is hateful turn out to be a completely different group of people from what you expected. And then uh you know maybe if you look back you think you had a negative impact right and so I think uh you know the world is full of like these kinds of uh complexities and uh contradictions in uh a lot of uh a lot of different directions and so like you can't uh expect uh to have uh like you can only expect uh or how should I put it it's like you don't want to overestimate your ability to steer right like uh and so if we think or even like the internet itself is one of those examples, right? Where people a lot of the things that we talk about as being goals of crypto. Those are they're things that people assumed that the internet would do automatically, right?

Like the internet would automatically create a decentralized world. It would automatically create this like democratic global utopia where all of the bad governments would fall away. And of course, these things did not happen. And actually the internet ended up becoming super centralized, right? And uh and so like the lessons that like I think I learned from that are that uh like you know this does not mean that we should be nihilistic right and we should say like okay you know we have no idea what's going to happen and then let's uh like just uh you know like focus on like pursuing profit right like we I think we should say let's uh be like if you like if you have a goal then like we should aim like you should aim for that goal.

Um and uh look we like a big part of the reason why crypto is able to stay like decentralized and uh stay censorship resistant is just because like we actually tried hard to and we said like these are the core principles that uh like we're not willing to give up on, right? And like these are principles that were repeated again and again. Um and uh the decentralized social structure itself also meant uh that uh like these uh like the chains have to coordinate around something right and uh like the idea of decentralization means that it's going to be harder for them to coordinate around one leader who suddenly says let's like do something completely opposite right and uh like the principle is the thing that they rally around so I think there have been like some successes right so if you look back to like 2014 and you basically ask from the perspective of someone in 2014 like has the space at least uh improved the world from the perspective of the values of one of us in 2014 then uh no I think the answer is like there are parts of it that have and there are parts of it that definitely have kind of like completely gone off the rails right there are parts where like the pressure of incentives is very strong and they basically at the beginning people said like yeah you know this is the people's revolution we're moving we're in um replace the banking system and then later on people are quietly saying like oh actually no we're trying to improve the banking system and then it turns out that you know you get very close to the banking system you become friends with them and then well actually yeah it's like the banking system influences you more than you influence the banking system right it's uh and well like be not being corrupted is one of these you know like very challenging things right Yeah. Like I I get reminded like like there's you know like people in Russia I know right who sometimes you know like say yo you know we're going like they decide to stay and they decide to even stay in like places you know close to the regime and they say like oh like I in the like in this position like maybe I'll be better than the next guy and like I can make things better but then like actually you know the influence flows in the other direction right and like three years later you know right so it's uh like this is uh one of those things that I think I did not realize 10 years ago, right? Basically the like do not overestimate your ability to kind of not be taken over by you know whatever currents uh you put yourself in, right?

Um and uh yeah like you uh basically try um like and like I actually think this is where crypto like a lot of the ideas were successful right because it's not just about a person saying I will be the agent of change I will be the agent of making the world great and like you should trust me right which is like realistically you know like as much as uh you know like people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have done amazing things technologically basically like that is their model, right? And uh a lot of the downsides of their approach come from that being their model, right? And like crypto actually like there's an aspect of it that tries to like actually set up the institutions and like actually set it up so that like your your incentive continues to be aligned with uh doing the right thing. Yeah. So probably like if I had like summarize I guess like what we've learned over the last you know like 20 years to a tech founder I mean a big part of it I think is that you know you are not you are not going to be immune to the pressures of the environment that you create and uh like make sure you create a good one.

Nice one. No that was a long answer. No no that that was that was very good. Um okay. Um do you feel how how you dealing with the feeling of responsibility?

U do you feel responsible for the the goods and the bads that happen on Ethereum? I mean it's uh definitely something that I often think about. Um, I mean, it's, uh, you know, a lot of the time there's, uh, you the crypto world is, you know, a world where all kinds of different, uh, crazy things happen, right? And, uh, I mean, by uh, like sometimes you hear about things like, oh no, there's like the 1.5 billion dollar by bit hack and then, uh, if you think about about this uh, by the standards of like when we all started in back in like 2013, right?

like a $ 1.5 billion dollar hack would have been used that dominated like news media cycles for like a month, right? And it would have discredited an entire industry. Uh but uh here now it's like the total craziness level of the world has just gone up by so much, right? And I mean this is like a I mean there's times when it's an exciting thing, but it's like also an incredibly worrying thing.

And uh now of course I know a $ 1.5 billion hack just like happens regularly. I mean all kinds of uh completely insane things happen regularly. And so I mean being mindful of like what kinds of things you're encouraging in any ecosystem is something that I think is uh super important, right? And uh well like for example like I'm ve one thing I'm very proud of is how basically no one in Ethereum took Terra Luna seriously, right?

Like when Terala Luna collapsed like a lot of people had massive eggs on their faces, right? And but actually basically no one in Ethereum, right? And I mean we got criticized for this, right? We basically, you know, people often call us, you know, ivory tower elitists who, you know, I do not understand, you know, the common people, but the common people want 19% APR on the dollar, right? But of course, in reality though, you know, that particular project ended up giving a lot of a lot of common people a minus 100% APR on the dollar.

And then actually FTX was kind of similar, right? I think uh and I remember uh a reason why uh I never was like took FDX like super seriously was uh I had some conversations with SPF and uh I remember uh I uh at one point I asked them like hey you know you should write up something that uh basically describes like what are your visions for uh crypto right like what what excites you about the space and then he uh he It took two months for him to like answer and then eventually he gave that Twitter thread and if you read the Twitter thread like honestly it just looks like you know like random like crappy like crypto conference boilerplate right it's like imagine someone attends a like blockchain mega summit and then they like listen to five pres presentations by some sponsors and then you know like ask GPT to summarize it and like like that's it right um So the like I think I I think it is important to like really have a feel for those kinds of things. I mean and then if we asked if you asked me yeah you know like where some of uh Ethereum's failures are. I mean I think uh I mean like so first of all you know the algorithm of uh like rejecting everything obviously is wrong right and like even having a very high bar leads to failures in the other direction which is uh like I do think that uh like the value of uh like just like very boring forms of DeFi was something that like I undervalued um and like underestimated the extent to which the space actually had kind of stabilized and matured especially after the earlier earlier crazier era, right? So like these are the two sides, right?

Where on the one hand like if you talk sometimes uh if you think about responsibility like uh if you think about it from a kind of like don't make the New York Times upset kind of approach then like the downside is that uh like basically the world passes you by and like the events of the world get run by people who care about those kinds of things much much less than you do, right? And so like things become even worse, right? So I think it's uh like it's okay to make some mistakes, right? And uh but at the same time it's uh like also just importance to remember like what are the principles that brought you into the space and uh like be uh mindful of of those principles and like at the same time as you like observe the world and like the new situation that the world is bringing. Thank you.

Um okay, the last one. Um when Defcono next year next Yeah. I mean I think it's a it's it's a good idea. You guys have a great venue over there. Um it's um you know I guess you know from Justin Timberlake to Justin Drake.

Um maybe and then the year after you could have the other Drake. Um the Yeah, I uh what do I think? Uh it's uh I've I mean I've personally Yeah. would would love for that to happen. I mean, I think generally every time we do a Devcon, you know, there's like a form that you can fill um like and there's like to suggest new locations, right?

And then last year like a lot of community groups, I mean, like fought really hard for you like Thailand and Vietnam and a couple of other venues. So, uh no, you know, like make your voice heard and like those forums do get read and they get read by and argued over many times. So, maybe easier easier question, which continent is next? Yeah, good question. I mean, obviously for this year, it's Bonosirus, right?

I mean, next year, I mean, I think different options are open. I mean, I've heard uh I mean I mean generally, yeah, you know, our algorithm is of course, you know, I cannot do the same continent like one year after the other, right? But uh I mean there's been interest in uh like some kind of central Asian type of loca type of location. Um I mean Africa has been explored though. I mean one of the challenges there of course is like just venues especially at the the kind of large scale that defcon attracts.

Um some uh in a lot of a lot of ideas have been explored. I mean I think Europe has been brought up, Canada's been uh brought up a lot of uh like I think the the kinds of things that we generally look for in a in a devcon location right or one is uh um obviously uh just ability to hold like more than 10,000 people um affordability um visa accessibility um so Thailand was like actually excellent um in that in that regard um then presence of a strong existing community. Um, and I mean Europe has a great existing community. Warsaw has a great community. Um, so no, I mean I think you guys should, you know, like fill in the form and make your case.

Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. [Applause] Thank you again uh so much for for coming. It's such a pleasure to have you here and um I see a lot of things happening that are going to put Poland more centerfold in the in how Ethereum is shaping up.

I love the fact that Tomic is joining as the um um as director at um at Ethereum and I love the kind of support that we're getting from him and it's awesome that you're finally here. I'm really happy about that. Thank you so much. Round of applause. Uh pizza is back there.

Sushi is going to be back there. And that's it. Thank you so much for coming. [Music]