Steps to the Digital State & Open Mic AMA - Vitalik Buterin

Okay. Legal. Okay, great. So, apparently I should be talking about digital states. Hmm, so to begin with, the way I tend to think about these things is that new institutions will never be exact copies of old ones, right?

They'll never be exact, like a better version of something that fits exactly in the same box, right? So, you know, when you have cars, they don't perfectly replace horses. There are things horses can do that cars can't. There are things that cars do that horses don't. You know, there are many differences between them You know, there are many differences between them .

Hmm, and what about when we talk about the Internet replacing telephones or the Internet replacing some aspects of inertial communication, right? It's not about creating something new that's exactly like something old, except that it's better because, like, you add this kind of magic pixie dust and, like, a specific aspect of it becomes 37% better for some reason. Like, it often ends up changing, like, how we actually relate to, like, what fundamental problems we're trying to solve, right? So, when we talk about, like, the digital state, I think it's even less interesting to ask the question, like, "What can municipal governments do to become more digital?" Or what can national governments do to become more digital?

Or, like, how can we coordinate 10,000 people to go to the same location in the middle of a desert in Nevada and hopefully actually create a new city with sophisticated quadratic blockchain things that actually work well? Hmm, I like that all these questions are interesting. Hmm, but I prefer to take a step back and think about this from the perspective of what we're trying to achieve. And you know, that's why we're having this conversation about what tools we have and how we start to close the gap between the tools and the results. Right?

So, I think the most fascinating thing about this particular Ethereum community is that it has this lovely combination of a lot of very positive cultures that I like. Okay. So, the first very positive cultural aspect that I like is the fact that this is a culture very interested in ideas such as creating new institutions, creating new ways for people to cooperate new ways for people to cooperate , creating new governance structures, and even creating new communication structures; To think about the relationship between communication and governance; And, like, actually, you know, using things like blockchains and cryptography and incentives and tools and putting them together in these different, like, arrangements where, you know, hopefully we can build something that allows us to work, allows us to work together on something better in some way. Hmm, so that's the first thing I like. The second thing I like is that there are, I think, very cooperative aspects to the community.

Hmm, like, everyone here is working together. Everyone here is kind of aligned on this, like, there are several different views, but still pretty much aligned views on how to actually transform all of this into some kind of better world. Hmm, and we even see a lot of very positive interactions between the crypto community and institutions, right? Like, Governor Jared Polus spoke here. There are many other people, like, you know many other people, like, you know , from the local government, from many other institutions that are here.

What was that? Wyoming, home. Wyoming. Wyoming. Yay!

Wyoming. Wyoming is legal. Yes . Yes. No, I mean, I was actually being serious, I was going to mention, I mean, I think the Wyoming Dow Act is really great, and it's like one of the, like, in my opinion, the Wyoming Dow Act is really one of the best, um, examples so far of, like, governments doing something, like something that, like, goes beyond, like, just, um, not, like, breaking the industry, which is really, like, very helpful, helpful for the, uh, ability of the crypto space to thrive, right?

Because, basically, it's like the government passed a law and essentially gave Dows this new superpower, right? Like, they can incorporate and they can, and now they can legally own property and they can, like, actually do things legally and act like legal entities. Like, this is probably one of the most powerful bridges between the crypto world and the traditional world that we have, right? And so, because of that, things like City Down can exist. Because of this, many other projects can exist, right?

That's amazing. Hmm, so I think in Colorado and Wyoming there seems to be this lovely spirit of collaboration between the crypto community and, you know, the government and many other types of institutions. So, that 's good, right? And the question is: well, okay 's good, right? And the question is: well, okay , so there are people in the crypto community and there are people in existing institutions who are interested in these goals of using these new technologies to help people cooperate better, to create more open, freer, fairer, and more transparent forms of cooperation.

And how do we actually harness that energy, and what specific things can we work on to really start getting closer to those kinds of results? Now, the reason I kind of say things this way is that it doesn't really matter who does it, right? For example who does it, right? For example , if the state of Colorado does something that allows some kind of cryptographic support statewide, no matter what, then that's one way to do it. But what if, instead, the state of Colorado created some kind of law that made it easier for independent groups, whether it was Dows, local governments, or anything else local governments, or anything else , to basically work together to achieve the same result and end up with the same outcome, right?

So sometimes I think there's this solution of taking existing institutions and pushing them in that direction, and sometimes there's this more bottom-up approach, right? Where you start with a small scale, but something that is purely cryptographic and purely digital, and you do some experiments, and some of those experiments fail, some work, and you scale up from there. And these two paths aren't opposites, right? Sometimes, people think that these two paths are not opposites. Actually, I don't think they are opposites.

Actually, I think that, you know, they can often complement each other they can often complement each other . Often, as you know, the Wyoming DAW is a prime example, right? Institutions can do something that, once done, the institution doesn't need to do anything else, and that creates space for the community from the bottom up to do all that work and really make all the incredible progress happen, right? So, I think that's a great way to go. Other paths to follow would obviously be to start with the institution and then add the pieces.

Right? So, at the end of last year, I wrote this article about city currencies; And you know, city currencies are this kind of concept that people have started thinking about, and like, there's this idea of, you know, can we create currencies that are linked to cities in some way? Could the introduction of city currencies actually fix incentives and improve local governance? And there are some interesting things you can do there, right? So how can you create economic alignments between the people of a city and the entire city?

I think the traditional way of doing this tends to be basically to encourage homeownership and land ownership, and you know, everyone should have a house, and if you don't have a house and you love your avocado toast, you're a bad person. I know I love my avocado toast. But the reality is that houses are not changeable. Either you are a tenant and are negatively exposed to your community, or you are a buyer and are extremely overexposed to your community. And the reality is that both are irresponsible.

So, you know that houses don't create economic alignment with the entire city. They create economic alignment with a very small part of the city and, often, in ways that create conflict with the rest of the city. Right? So, you know, people often say, "Hey, hey, we want more development. We want more good things, but not in my backyard, right?"

So, the idea is my backyard, right?" So, the idea is , like, can we create cities that have more economic alignment within them? And can we create other techniques besides individuals possessing specific properties? I think it's a very good idea, but it's one that we don't know exactly the right way to implement. But he knows there's room for many good experiments.

I think this category of city currencies would be one of the things we call experiments. So, one thing is certain, city coins are just one example of something that can be done. But then comes the question of who does this, right? And here again, there could be many different answers, right? So, like, the Miami currency, for example, is like an interesting project at one end of the spectrum where they basically say, like, okay, this is basically a community project, um, and it starts as a community project, and it doesn't have any kind of direct connection to the city government, like, you don't have, like, defined legal rights from the city as a result of it, but, you know, it received some support from the government, um it received some support from the government, um , and, you know, maybe over time the role of the currency might change.

Who knows? Hmm, so that's one way to do it. Another way to do this would be for the city itself to create the currency. So you know which of these approaches you take, could you adopt an intermediate approach? Well, you know, it depends on the situation.

Hmm, but generally, if you're a municipal government and you want something like that to exist, then both routes exist, right? One of the things you can do is do it yourself, and one of the things you can do is create an environment that allows other people in the community to basically do all the work for you, right? Because there are many people in the community, and many people who are very willing and excited to do this kind of interesting thing and really empower people. But for that to happen, you need to somehow create a structure to support them. There are structures that support people.

There are structures that are, like, actively anti-supportive, right? So, you know, legal structures that, for example, make it easier to launch a token, the less that token promises people, in a way that's actively anti-supporter, right? And how do you create better structures and , like, ways for people to launch tokens that are more project-friendly, more aligned with their incentives? This is the kind of thing where we need a lot of people working together to really make it happen. It's the kind of thing that's great, it's great that we have so many different types of people in a room, and where people have all these different interests and perspectives and can really start working together.

This is just one example, right? There are many other examples as well. So, if we take, say, the concept of blockchain, as DAO governance, in general, right? So DAO governance, in general, right? So , there's this question of how do we actually create these Dow-based structures that actually do something fundamentally, somewhere, right?

I think , obviously, a lot of people here are working at Dows, and I feel that a lot of people here are working on Dows governance. There are many ways to improve Dow's governance . So, the way many Dows are governed today, the currency voting system, I've written about this many times. The coin toss voting system is simply terrible. Hmm, now, okay, wait, wait, wait.

I get attacked just for saying that the coin toss voting system is terrible. Hmm, the coin toss voting is good. Okay, good. Okay. Let's see if...

Right , maybe I should just make a list of things and make a list of judgments and shuffle them randomly and see what the answer is randomly and see what the answer is . Hmm, but okay, if you know if . Hmm, but okay, if you know if ... let's see, should we start? Yes.

So, I think you know, there are many things we can do to improve the blockchain. For example, if we really want to scale the blockchain, I think sometimes we have to make some agreements for decentralization and do some data center scaling. Kudos to the data center's sizing. No, no, you shouldn't applaud data center scaling. Okay.

So, exactly that: decentralization, without data centers. Unless, okay, the data centers are generating zk snares and I can check the zk snares on my phone, then that's fine. So, speaking of ZK Snarks, you know we talk about this kind of blockchain voting concept, and that's one of those topics that I find very interesting, and I think it's actually one of the natural synergies between, like, cryptographic technology in general and many of the governance ambitions that people have. But in a way, that 's one of the most challenging things to do well, right? And basically, the reason is that, like, on one hand, I think that, in general, we need to have, like, there's a great opportunity, I think, to add much more, like, what I would call, like, good high-bandwidth democracy.

And today we have a lot of low-bandwidth democracy , right? As you know, you vote once every four years. Hmm, so, such low bandwidth, you know, one bit of information every four years. We have many high-bandwidth things that are not democracy. We have many high-bandwidth markets, for example.

We also have a lot of high- bandwidth, low-security democracy. Voting on social media, right? You know, someone tweets something, and it gets You know, someone tweets something, and it gets , you know, 50,000 likes, 50,000 retweets in two minutes. Well, maybe it's actually a guy controlling them all and it's a bot and you have no idea, right? So, the challenge is that there is, like, clearly there is this great need for a kind of high-bandwidth democracy in general.

Hmm, and there are already many of these applications that are providing high-bandwidth democracy, but they tend to have very poor security. Hmm, so the question is how can we have a kind of high-bandwidth, high- security democracy? Hmm, and that's one of those things I like. Actually, I think that potentially some kind of combination of cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs and cryptography could really provide it, right? Like you, I think you need all the technologies.

So, you need to encrypt it to ensure that no one can see the votes. You need zero-knowledge evidence to ensure that the votes are being counted correctly. Hmm, you need blockchains to ensure that whoever is counting the votes isn't censoring anyone. So, you really need all the pieces to fit together, right? And you can actually create something with some pretty strong properties.

And there are even projects, you know, being kind of developed internally within the Ethereum space that are trying to make things like that possible. But for this to really work, it has to be done very well, right? You know, you have to be efficient. It has to be really safe. It's essential to really preserve privacy.

Hmm, and in terms of where to actually do this, I think I actually feel that focusing on national-level voting is almost the wrong place to start. It's like it's the last thing you should do instead of the first, right should do instead of the first, right ? I think that, in general, adding encryption capabilities to existing governments can sometimes be the best way to make it work; it 's not really about adding encryption modifications to things that already exist. It's about building completely new things that have better properties that people will appreciate because they make it possible to do things that aren't possible today. Okay.

Yes. Hmm, so you know what that means ? That's a big part of why , for example, I'm a big fan of quadratic finance, right? And I think quadratic financing is something that can be easily applied at the government level, right? Like, you know, at the state level, municipal level, at many kinds of political levels.

There are many types of local public goods, and as you know, people have all sorts of widely distributed information about what types of public goods they actually consider valuable. So, if we want to gather this type of information, we want something with high bandwidth. We want something that people can participate in with reasonable frequency, and we also want something that is safe, right? So, if we create some kind of fully decent, decentralized, blockchain-based quadratic financing platform that provides all the security and privacy guarantees that a governance system needs to withstand things like, say, bribery attacks, that could be something really valuable, right? If something like this is built, then it could potentially be adopted.

Hmm, so in a way, you don't need to, like, a lot of these things don't even need to wait for, you know, big, uh, large institutions, right? In a way, that's one of the ways in which the blockchain space itself is powerful, right? And the blockchain space itself, you know, can build things, and the blockchain space itself can do demonstrations. And, you know, even Gitcoin Grants by itself, I think, has been an incredible demonstration, you know, it's had like 12 rounds of quadratic funding supporting important public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem. We've had many chances to see Ethereum ecosystem.

We've had many chances to see , like, what it looks like, tens of thousands of participants, what kinds of things it's great at, what kinds of things it falls short at, and actually, in my opinion, it's become a very significant and important tool behind how the Ethereum ecosystem funds things that people in the ecosystem consider important. Hmm ecosystem consider important. Hmm , so, like, the more experiments and demonstrations, like, demonstrations like this that you can do, like, theoretically, you know, we could, like, go and say, "Let's have a round of Gigwin grants for, like, companies in Boulder, for example," right? Like, this is something that, like, the community in Boulder can do. Hmm, and I think it's interesting, like, this kind of, like, trying, like, starting to materialize, like, like, the benefits of online, like like, like, the benefits of online, like , you know, the online community and the offline world.

I think it's something we can really start doing more of can really start doing more of . That's something the crypto space has kind of tried to do repeatedly on various occasions, right? So, for example, in 2013, when we had Bitcoin and when we had Bitcoin payments and when cryptocurrency transaction fees were still so low that being cheaper than PayPal was part of the selling point, this will happen again. Hmm, but, you know, that's... I should have made up some quote from some famous military leader who had to leave a country and promised to return.

But, you know, Ethereum with 5-cent transaction fees, we'll be back. And yes, rollups are already making great progress. You know, sharding is already making great progress. So, you know, it's not just talk So, you know, it's not just talk , you know, the soldiers are already in development. Um, so, but anyway, development.

Um, so, but anyway, like, back then, when we were doing, uh, like, when people were really trying to, like, find specific cities and convince, like, specific districts, and convince people in those very large districts to just accept cryptocurrencies or, I think in this case, accept Bitcoin, right? Because back then, you know, realistically, the Bitcoin maximalism was kind of correct, and all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin weren't that interesting in 2013. But, you know, anyway, in my opinion, it was interesting. You know, it's something that can create a local community. Hmm, so now that scaling technology is really on the horizon, it might actually make sense to go back and start doing more of this sort of thing, right?

But when we do that, it doesn't have to be limited to things like convincing stores to accept ETH as payment, right? As if that could mean things like, actually, you know, if we do quadratic funding rounds, basically saying, like, hey, you know, we as a community are going to organize, say, a $2 million matching fund and, like, people can go and actually vote and kind of participate in, in, in quadratic matching, and we can actually see how that works as an experiment, right? Like, we can actually start doing these things, and if these things are successful, then I think you know they 'll be accepted, right? So, quadratic funding is, in my opinion, one of those examples of what I would call high-bandwidth democracy that high-bandwidth democracy that , while definitely not perfect for everything, has been good at capturing some important niches that existing forms of funding are missing. And then the other question is, like, where do you go from where you go from there, right?

You know there are all these different types of infrastructure pieces that need to happen, like payments. There is this kind of concept of identity and reputation, and the concept of identity and reputation has been making a lot of progress, right? Like, I think people think about identity, like Ethereum identity, in the wrong way, or they think about the type of blockchain ID in the wrong way, right? What I mean by that is that I believe in blockchain ID, but I don't believe in blockchain ID platforms. Hmm, so what I mean by that is that I think the version of the Ethereum-based identity that will succeed is the version that's being implemented as we speak, which has been happening for the last few years without anyone really calling it that.

And the people who are trying to build an entire stack on their own are basically just creating isolated silos within the ecosystem that are going to fail. So, what do I mean by the Ethereum identity that we already have? So we have ENS, right? Ethereum, the Ethereum naming system. So, if you have an Ethereum address, you know you can register an ENS name and already have something that people can use, like you basically have a decentralized username for the Ethereum world.

Hmm, if we have to log in with Ethereum. So you can use your E account, your Ethereum account, whether or not you have an ENS name, to log in to services, including centralized web services . Hmm, so these two complement each other. So, for example, if you go to chat.blockscan.

com. So, Etherscan made this lovely chat app that actually accepts Ethereum login, and you know, if you have an Ethereum address, you can log in, but everyone will see your name as 0x blah blah blah, 40 wavy characters. Now, if instead you have an ENS name, people will see your account with your ENS name as your username. Right? So, we can already see synergies between these two things.

Hmm, so we have certificates. Therefore, there are certificates of proof of humanity. It only matters whether or not your account sent a transaction. It's like the simplest form of blockchain-based anti-PAM you can have. It exists, you know, potentially have.

It exists, you know, potentially , in the future, whether you're running a validator or not. It exists whether you have a pope or not. Like, what kind of pope do you have? So, you know, there's this growing ecosystem of attestations regarding accounts that are happening, right? And this is the type of Ethereum identity layer that already exists, that is already growing, and that is open, and it is this type of growing ecosystem that anyone can take advantage of and anyone can benefit from.

So, going back to building the digital state, one of the questions to ask would be: "Don't think of it in terms of the state creating its own system of closed silos." Consider the question, "Can we design this more digital government infrastructure in a way that is more open and that speaks to, or at least is able to speak to, some of the things that the Ethereum community is building?" Right? So, I think the conclusions from all of this are important. One of them is that I think this idea is very important: don't think in terms of "what this specific institution can do".

Think in terms of "what problem is being solved" and "who are the different groups of people who can work together to actually do this," right? And often you'll need different groups of people from different parts of the room to really work together. This is actually one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen about cryptocurrencies. We have a huge amount of collaboration between institutions that nobody acknowledges. For example, zero-knowledge proof protocols.

Zero-knowledge proof protocols that are often designed and sort of collaborated on in things like Telegram chats and all sorts of other informal media that contain some combination of, you know, you have university scientific researchers, Ethereum Foundation researchers, Aztec people, Zcash people, and it's just that kind of diverse group of people; And if something needs to be done, they simply get together and do it, right? So, we have this for technology, you know, we've had this for many zero-knowledge proof algorithms. We're seeing this more and more for all sorts of things in the Ethereum ecosystem, like ERC4337 account abstraction. You know, it started with a Telegram chat, and there are people from at least four different organizations coming in and working together and striving to make it happen, right? So, like, this kind of approach, and basically seeing, like, what is the function you're trying to accomplish and, like, you know, who are the people who need to work together and make this happen, and, like, can we actually make this happen?

Like, can we actually get people to work together and make this happen? Hmm, there are many things where I think we can really innovate. Hmm, so I think that, in a way, decentralized governance is like one of the great challenges of the 21st century, and I think it's a big or important challenge, even going far beyond the crypto space itself, right? I think it's about creating forms of governance or even large-scale social systems in general that satisfy many of the properties, including many of the properties that the crypto space really seeks, as if it were something very important to many types of people, right? So, how can we actually do this?

Like, you know, what kinds of people need to come together to make this happen? What kind of, like, how do we actually make this collaboration happen? Like, what's a specific example of the problem that we can actually start to solve? Like, you know, acting like you're really committed to pushing quadratic funding and promoting it as something that more and more people in all kinds of ecosystems are doing. That could be one answer.

Like, you know, there might be other types of local governance applications? Like local governance applications? Like , could there be some kind of microvoting, you know, happening like, street by street, street zoning or something like that? I don't know. Like, potentially, if we want something that the community can do on its own, like, you could even do on its own, like, you could even , like, we don't even need to have binding votes, right?

For example, you could start with signaling votes. Like, I think the Ethereum ecosystem, actually, back in the day, way back in the day, when we had more controversies than we have today. There was this interesting custom where people would do this kind of communal, non- binding voting. Sometimes the votes were coin-operated, sometimes there were votes with both positive and negative votes on GitHub. Sometimes, there were votes from known community members, and people would simply cast those votes, and the result wasn't binding, but they were internal signals that people could still hear and determine if something specific they wanted to do would actually have consensus, right?

So, we can do something like signaling votes versus votes, which could be another type of application that the community here could start doing. Hmm, and then, over time, this could end up growing, and something that started as something purely advisory and signaling could potentially be adopted by existing institutions and, if it works well, could naturally begin to receive more and more importance. Right? So, you can build something that does something now, but does something useful enough now that , if it's successful enough , if it's successful enough , it's in a good position for existing institutions to decide to give it more and more power and importance, and then start growing as a new institution from there? Right?

I mean, think about it, Glenn Wild talks a lot about what he calls fork-and-merge governance fork-and-merge governance , and in a way, this is kind of a similar idea, right? It's like you could create this type of institution that starts out completely independent and, you know, if it's successful, the goal is basically for it to become increasingly important. Like, you can't say that it replaces existing things, because I don't think the goal is to replace existing things, but rather to create entirely new things; And perhaps the result of creating entirely new things is that existing things cease to be important. Hmm, but that is, um, yes. So, you know, maybe start by creating these totally new things and then, like, let's see what happens, right?

So, that's another thing. And then the third part is the technology, right? So, like, we have to think about what technology needs to be built to make all these different things possible. I think, uh, you know, scalability is number one because scalability is always, well, it's always number one, besides, of course, the shift to proof-of- stake. The shift to a participation test is important.

Hmm, and you know, I think there are a lot of people who have these deep concerns about the environmental issues of cryptocurrencies these days, and I think those concerns are justified. Hmm, and you know, I think our response to those concerns has never been that those concerns are fake news. I think our response has always been that, you know, hey response has always been that, you know, hey , you know, that's why proof- of-stake has been part of the Ethereum roadmap almost from the beginning, and that's why, finally, after seven years of research and development, proof-of- stake is, you know, finally, literally running on functional test networks and it looks like we're just a few months away from the final launch. Hmm, yes, so actually, on that topic, I mean, I have an interesting suggestion. If you like this, if you're listening to this and you're from an institution and your work is like this, and you're really interested in doing something with Ethereum, but you know you're going to get criticism because people are concerned about environmental issues, then here's what you can do.

You can announce that you're interested in launching this cryptocurrency integration or this Ethereum integration, but you'll do it a week after Ethereum does the merger. If the Ethereum merger is delayed until 2025, you won't do it until 2025. If it happens in June, you'll do it in June, right? Like, just announce it June, right? Like, just announce it .

And so, you know, you're not as if you're not contributing to the environmental challenge. In fact, you are truly contributing to motivating this community to continue the good work and finally finish the project. So, that is, uh, yes, you know project. So, that is, uh, yes, you know , so you know, the scalability of the technology is important, proof of stake is important, and also privacy. Hmm, I think, you know, we don't talk about how, I feel like I try to talk a lot about blockchain privacy, but blockchain privacy is actually very important, and blockchain, so blockchain privacy is important blockchain privacy is important , actually, in many different ways.

I would probably say that one of the biggest misconceptions people have about privacy in general is that privacy is entirely or primarily a tool for resisting bad institutions. Now, to be clear, I think resisting bad institutions is important. You know, there are many—not just governments, but also corporations, but even, you know, public masses, as well as all sorts of actors—who, you know, do things that they really shouldn't be doing. Hmm, and the fact that people can do things in private without disclosing to the world or to the established powers everything they are doing as part of their lives is an important check and balance against that sort of thing. Hmm, but I think that's not the only function of privacy.

Another function of privacy is that it is often a very necessary part of making institutions work of making institutions work . Hmm, probably the biggest example of that is the secret ballot, right? So, everyone knows about the secret ballot, right? Like when you vote, um, the vote, like with a paper ballot, the voting is done in such a way that nobody can say where you voted, nobody can, nobody can say who you voted for, and you can't prove how you voted, even if you wanted to prove how you voted, though, but then there's a guarantee, as the system tries very hard to make it easy to show that the votes were counted correctly, but at the same time preserves that privacy, um, and preserves that kind of inability to prove how you participated. And that's really powerful, right?

It's really powerful because you can't coerce people into voting a specific way. You can't coerce people into not voting. Hmm, you can't buy people's votes. You cannot sell your vote. And all of this is really a very important part of preventing the entire system from being basically captured by concentrated interests that are willing to invest large sums of money to buy everyone's votes.

Now, you know, you can be cynical and think, "Oh, but they do it anyway." This is called lobbying. But like, no, no, no called lobbying. But like, no, no, no , no. Like, if you lobby, that's fine, that's fine.

Like, you can pay people to go there, like, gossip with politicians and throw fancy dinners for them and that's fine, but it's still like there's a much bigger filter. Like, there's a huge difference between that and literally not even having to invent arguments to convince people because your argument is like, "Hey, if you vote for me, I'll give you 15 dollars." Like, by the way, like, like, can I do a quick poll? Everyone close your eyes. Secret ballot.

Who here would vote for whomever a stranger on the street told them to vote for, if they were given 15 dollars? Okay. Look, it's a surprisingly virtuous path here. Hmm, $150 to raise President Peep. Yes.

Right. So, 100 seems like it, so I guess, but you know, when those numbers start to go up. Okay. So, that 's a really good point, right? So, I think if you hold secret ballots, as if you were trying to pull off such blatant bribes, like, "Hey, if you vote for this guy, I'll give you 50 dollars," then often you'll have a lot of people resisting.

But here's what you could have, right? Like, especially in a blockchain context, especially in this kind of digital context where you know that information travels much more freely and much more freely, so what's happening, how can you express your vibes, so I'm not buying it. Look, I'm not buying your vote. I'm acting as a delegate. And as a delegate, I am offering rewards.

As a delegate, I am sharing a portion of the revenue from public assets that I receive back with you, the people who support me. Look, doesn't this sound like something you'd like to contribute to? But, you know, in reality, it's the economic equivalent of bribery, right economic equivalent of bribery, right ? So, you know, this is something that has already happened on many blockchains. Hmm, so this is something like, well, secret ballots are basically privacy in general, it's a very powerful tool to limit the damage that this kind of thing can cause, right?

And privacy in general is a very powerful and very important ingredient in making institutions effective for this reason institutions effective for this reason . Like, I think it's a very powerful ingredient for democracy. It's actually a very powerful ingredient for communication systems, right? Like, I think one of the things someone should build is a platform where people can say things anonymously, and can vote for and against things anonymously, but to get an account, you need zero-knowledge proof that you are a unique human being. So, like, you have zero knowledge proof that you have a specific humanity profile, and only then can you participate, and only then do you get a vote, right?

So you get the privacy benefits of anonymity, but you know that if something has 300 votes, it was supported by 300 unique people and not by some bot that created 300 fake accounts. So bot that created 300 fake accounts. So , that's one of the cool things we can do with this technology. She is powerful. These are powerful tools, right?

It's as if we could achieve very strong privacy and very strong security and authenticity gains at the same time, and you know, a lot of people here in the room are, I think, a big part of making that kind of technology possible. So, technology can make a big difference. Existing institutions, I think things like the Wyoming bill and things like some kind of support for projects like the city coins they gave, I think they can be very helpful and very important. Hmm, and yay! Hmm, okay.

By the way, is there anyone here from somewhere other than Colorado or Wyoming? Okay, cool. Yes. So, is there anyone here who is part of a DAO from any of these regions? Beautiful, beautiful.

Yes. Look, we need the Texas Downs, right? So, this is Yay Texas Dow. Hmm, look, that's good, right? Like, look, the question isn't how, like, maybe the answer to " how, like, maybe the answer to " How do we encrypt this?"

Like, let's say Texas, it's not "How do we convince the Texas state governments to add more things one by one? Maybe" the solution is, like, let's do Texas Now. And then we, Texas Now, start being this kind of thing that's just a group of volunteers, um, and that just wants to, like volunteers, um, and that just wants to, like , do local community projects, and then more and more people join, and then it becomes more and more powerful organically on its own. Perhaps this is the solution, right? So, basically, both solutions exist.

Basically, you can convince the big thing to improve gradually, or you can gradually do something very small and simple and make it grow over time. Both paths are good, and sometimes these paths even need to work together. Hmm, so basically you know that these are the lessons learned, like trying to think about what the path is to do something with a large- scale impact. Don't just think about how to reform a specific institution. Consider that perhaps the solution involves people from three different groups coming together.

Perhaps the solution involves people from 20 different groups coming together. And I think this kind of work is how we're going to get close to that kind of Dowo-based, solar punk world , where everything is happy and buffers can dance and buffer coins can accept Cardano. So, yes, okay. Yay! Questions?

Yes. Mhm. If you have any questions, you can come and join the queue and we will answer them in about seven minutes. Maybe 10 minutes. 10 minutes, please.

Wait a second. Yes. No, privacy is important, right? I'm talking about the back line, please. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Here it is. Okay. Wow. Yes, everyone.

All good. Okay, that's good. Yes. Hey, how are you? Good.

How are you? I loved the pants, by the way. These pants aren't amazing, right? We're going to get a round of applause. Legal.

Legal. Yes. My name is Tony. I'm from North Carolina. I have a question that I think many people want to ask.

What do you think of Salana? I do n't know. Salana is cool. It looks sunny. Hey, Vitalic.

My name is Breen Hager. Actually, I started the Texas DAO with some lawyers here. It will be legally recognized as the second DAO in the United States next week. My first question is: do you believe in God? What is God?

It depends. It depends. Okay. So the second point is that, throughout history and with decentralization, especially mass decentralization, a great deal of centralization is inevitable. How can Ethereum, and how can you ensure that it doesn't become a world government?

So, I think it's about ensuring that Ethereum doesn't turn into some kind of centralized hub that really controls things, and yes, I mean , I think that's definitely an important issue definitely an important issue . Hmm, I think the best defense we have against that isn't even a technical one. Our greatest defense is the kind of community we have. And I think the greatest virtue that I believe the community has, and that I want to see cultivated even further, is basically the diversity it possesses. And I mean diversity in a very broad sense, right?

Like, you know, we have people interested in technology. We have people in institutions. Hmm, do we have people in Texas? You know, we have people in very remote places around the world who are well outside of the US. We have people interested in Ethereum to accomplish different things.

So, my hope is that, as long as the community maintains the pluralistic spirit it currently has, that in itself can be a defense against the Ethereum blockchain or things that are closely linked to it, preventing them from becoming tools that are used to control people and impose bad outcomes. I mean, speaking specifically, my biggest concern is... When I read the Ethereum white paper in the umpteenth grade, it changed my life. But now, with the spread of data arriving, excuse me, forgive me. Do not disclose information about our religious freedom.

That's all I ask. Thanks. I support it. No, I support Short. Therefore, many community members are now advocating for the full adoption of KYC and AML to promote mass and institutional adoption.

What would your message be for this sector of the community? Hmm, I mean, I think the message is that, on one hand, privacy is important. On the other hand, inclusion is important. Hmm, and I think the biggest kind of inclusion that things like forcing KYC and AML into more layers of the ecosystem actually prevent is basically forcing the system to discriminate much more by nationality. Hmm, okay.

Because you're basically creating systems where, you know, if you're in the US and you have all your infrastructure in the US, then you can easily participate. But then, if you're in some other country, then potentially, you know, your whole country could be labeled as a financial fraud risk, and then suddenly, like, basically, just because of where you were born, you have a lot more difficulty participating. And, like, this kind of thing really goes against what I think are many of the main benefits that the blockchain space is trying to achieve. Um, so I would say that, um, you know, K-type, KYC and AML, like, at the exchange level and at the level of, like, centralized, like, these infrastructure providers that are kind of serving as, you know, crypto bridges to the rest of the space, like, that's good and that's legally, um, unavoidable in any case. But I think, uh, you know, it's very important, especially for things really close to the core of space, um, to, like, still have that kind of, like, that kind of full level of, like, openness, compatibility with people's ability to preserve privacy and all those values.

Because, like, if the base layer doesn't have those things, then nothing built on top of it possibly can. Yes. Um, hi, I'm Alec, my name is Oliver. There's a quote I think about a lot, and I'm not sure if it's true. He says that society is a descendant of technology, and I think you're the only one qualified to give an opinion on that.

Do you see society as being shaped more by technology as an inevitably advancing force, or do you think we can choose areas to innovate in that are more likely to shape society in the way we want? I think society can be shaped by technology, but I also think technology can be shaped by culture. I can even give some very specific examples of this. A very subtle example is, let's take, say, SciHub, right? Like, SciHub, you know, that online site where anyone can go and download scientific articles, and, like, the whole thing totally infringes on copyright, right?

Like, in many cases, like, and like, it allows people to get these things for free, like, despite the fact that the newspaper, like, you know, has this kind of university press infrastructure , and copyright , and copyright , and all that, which really doesn't want you to do that. So, this exists for scientific articles, but it 's very easy to use for scientific articles; But it exists for music, for example, right? And one of the reasons why I think there are, like, fewer, like, the tools to do this for scientific articles are much stronger than the tools to do this for music, is because there's a much, like, even stronger social consensus that, like, scientific articles should really be open access and free, like. And, in reality, you know, there's no solid argument that this should be restricted because scientists need to be paid, because, while realistically we know there are many ways to pay them, often the revenue collected by this type of university system doesn't really end up supporting research very much , right? And, you know, people can use those arguments for, say, music, and people like the Pirate Party have, but I think, in general, people believe the case is significantly stronger regarding scientific articles.

And, as a result of these moral views that people have, the technology for tools that make scientific articles available is basically much easier and much more developed. Okay. So, like, this is a small example of how, like, even the moral views that people have end up influencing, like people have end up influencing, like , what specific types of, like, in this case, basically, copy protection evasion technology; But it can also be censorship resistance technology, it can be technology in general that people spend their time working on, um. And I think that's true in a much broader way. Hmm, so a much broader way.

Hmm, so , you know, the more people value privacy, the more smart people will be working to make zero-knowledge proof and, like, cryptography much better and much easier to use. The more people value, like, doing, the more people value doing things like having a better life on, um, the internet, the more there will be, you know, software developed to try to, you know, create better forms of virtual reality, better ways for us to interact online. Meanwhile, the more people value, like, interacting with, like, improving the physical world, the more we'll see, like, all kinds of new types of advanced means of transportation. The more supersonic jets we see The more supersonic jets we see , the more we'll see better ways to build buildings and everything else, right? And the speed at which these different trajectories can progress, I think, depends on the types of values ​​that people have.

So, I think that the influence of technology definitely has a major impact on society. Technology has a great influence on standards, but I think culture also has a great influence on the technology that is built. And I think that eventually everything will be invented, but I think the order in which things are invented matters, right? Especially if these are technologies that have to do with things like privacy, where we're basically talking about giving the small the ability to resist the big, or basically some kind of defense against the big, the big trying to snoop on everyone and see what everyone is doing, right? In this case, it's not even a question of how quickly everything unfolds.

It's a question of, well, is this side of the technology being developed faster, or is this side of the technology being developed faster? And I think you know that if we have a culture that values privacy, then technology that creates more privacy will actually develop faster than technology that breaks privacy, and in my opinion, that's a good thing. So, you know, the answer is yes, culture matters. Thanks. Yes, culture matters.

Hi, Vitalik. Hi, I had a question. Which blockchain use case do you think is currently overestimated, and which use case do you think is being neglected and should we focus on more? I mean, something that's been neglected and that we should focus on more, which I think is the intersection of blockchains and zero-knowledge proofs . People focus on it a lot, but I still think people don't focus on it enough.

In terms of something that's overrated, I mean , I'll give the boring answer: governance tokens. I think, you know, people still use governance tokens a lot. I think people should use more governance in any form other than a token, just so we can experiment with new models and see what happens. Perfect. Thanks.

And where did you buy those pants? A friend bought them for me as a gift. So, yes. Hi, Vid Alec, my name is Brian. Thank you for existing, by the way.

Earlier today on this stage, a woman from the Ethereum ecosystem was asked what Ethereum can learn from Ethereum. Her response was: look at what they're doing with Kusama instead of having a bunch of test networks, have active production with real value, move things quickly and destroy Coleman things quickly and destroy Coleman . Is this a bad idea? I would definitely support that. I mean, I definitely think that having something that's somewhere between a test network and a main network, with some economic incentives, can definitely be valuable.

I mean, I think overall, we need to be bolder with our test network. So, like, where is the Ethereum proof-of-stake testnet that has a 1-second time interval? Hmm, you know, where is the Ethereum test network that has 140 million GAL images so we can see what's happening? I think we like having more and different types of test networks, and including test networks that have more of that, that have enough realism to test economic properties and not just technical ones. Definitely something I really support.

Thanks. Thank you very much. Hm. We're out of time, man. Unless, I mean, you can stay here and ask questions all night if you want.

Hmm, I'll answer one last one. All good. It depends on him. Ah, um, I like the Walk Me hat, by the way. It's something I just want to say before we answer the final question, because it's going to get spread.

We have the fire chief here, who is concerned about our exodus. So please, do this calmly. We have the gateway to the next stage here, the infinite stage. Actually, it's open to the garage. Therefore, there are two identical outputs.

So, thank you for coming, Vitalic. He can talk. Thank you, sir. So, I'm very interested in what you said about medical certificates. Besides the proof of humanity certificates.

Besides the proof of humanity , what do you think are the main building blocks that are still missing in this space, and how will this space evolve? Okay. One of the things that excites me is this concept of proof of participation or even of learning, of having specific skills. So of having specific skills. So , one of the places where this could be important is in airdrops, right?

I feel like airdrops are the kind of thing that, initially, everyone really loved, right? Like, because you know there was the Unis Swap airdrop that, um, you know, in the middle of the darkest days of the coronavirus, kind of stood up and said, "Hey, everyone who uses Unis Swap got this lovely $1,400 stimulus check, lovely $1,400 stimulus check, " and you know, I think that's amazing. Hmm, but obviously since then, people have started manipulating the airdrops; People started farming addresses, and there are professional venture capital farms that farm addresses and all that stuff. So addresses and all that stuff. So , if you want to improve airdrops, or from that perspective, then we make them protected by proof of humanity, right?

Zero-knowledge layer in the middle to protect privacy. It always should be. Hmm, but that only solves part of the problem, right? The other part of the problem with airdrops is that I think the project teams themselves are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with them. And the reason they're unhappy with them is that you 're basically, you know, dumping huge amounts of tokens into an undifferentiated mass of people without much consideration for how much each of those people actually cares about your project.

What you want to do is distribute tokens to people who care. So here's where I think the ideal would be, you know, if you learn something about a project, you earn a certain number of tokens. If you complete any unit of work for a project, you earn a certain number of tokens. If you help a project translate a page help a project translate a page , you earn a certain number of tokens. Ideally, this would be done to, like, basically give people a kind of ramp where, while earning tokens, they would also be becoming more, like, helping to understand EOS, the project they're participating in, and even be a ramp to even be a ramp to , like, eventually having enough skills to be full-time contributors, right?

So, you 're fulfilling the function of being an airdrop, and that's why you're redistributing the tokens. So, you know, it's okay if you're paying people $45 to do something that people $45 to do something that , like, if you really wanted to, you could do much cheaper. Because, like, the goal is that you 're paying $45 for people to potentially become new users of this project and, like, become project and, like, become much more useful in the future, right? So, if we want things like that to happen, then, like, some version of Pope that proves you did something specific, like, prove you said yes, you know, go through some exercise that involves learning about how a project works, that proves you performed some kind of task within a project, that kind of thing. The more infrastructure like this we have, then, you know, one of the good things we can get as a result is that we can have better airdrops.

And I mean, people have already started doing this before, right? Like, there's Coin, there's Coinbase, and there's rabbithole.gg, and there's this kind of growing list of projects. But, like, I feel like we need, especially for projects that are launching new tokens, it would be, it would be amazing if we could see even more of this kind of thing. Okay, so it's like, "Yay!"

Okay. So? Nanny. What? Oh.

Um, can you turn around? Can you turn around? Here we go. Here we go . All good.

Sorry. We, we, we here, we need a woman here. So, she had something very important to say. One more question, please. Vitalic, from Okay.

Hello, my name is Ireina, and I see very few women here and many men. The question for you is: how can we involve more women, and perhaps in which sectors would you like to see in which sectors would you like to see them? In which areas? Hmm, I mean, the answer to where we'd like to see women is, I think, anywhere they want to be. I think so , but in terms of how to make it happen.

I mean, I even feel like I 'm not the right person to answer these things. Like, I feel like, if you like women who are part of the Ethereum space, and especially those who feel like they're part of the space and entered the space later than they could have, what's your response? I think that, actually, I kind of want to ask the audience this more than I ask myself. Hmm, so... more than I ask myself.

Hmm, so... Oh no. Hm. No. Right.

Hm. Make a handstand. Yes. No. Yes.

I don't.