Question & Answer Session With Vitalik Buterin

if I met you in person I definitely if you want to ask you what's coming up what's on your mind especially for the community for the technology for the ecosystem yeah um so I think in terms in terms of the things that I think are uh but just a really important in ethereum and uh minority ecosystem and to the ecosystems growth over the next few years uh like the biggest uh switch that I think we're going to be seeing between the Aurora ready sea egg between the last decade and the current decade is uh that in the last decade there was a pretty big focus on Theory right there was a big focus on solving theoretical problems on solving um things like scalability uh proof of stake privacy uh like all kinds of uh issues and uh if you watch my presentations from like 2015 2017 2019 I would always just constantly talk about the same three things right I would constantly say we need to have proof of stake we need to have scalability we need to improve security for users we need to improve security for applications we know we need to have privacy it's just always the same problems that I would talk about and the big shift to this decade I think is that a lot of those problems on the technical side are really moving forward to having Technical Solutions right so the merge uh you know finished almost one year ago and that was an effort that took a huge number of researchers developers and Engineers to like really get from start to finish and deploy it took years of research years of developed years of coordination and finally it's done and finally ethereum has become a proof of stake chin and then in addition to proof of stake um you know there's scalability and uh with scalability about a few years ago we made this decision to take this roll-up centered roadmap where we basically focus on growing the layer 2 ecosystem and giving Layer Two is a lot of room to prosper and develop their own scaling and after a few years it really feels like we're on the cusp of the yeah layer 2 transition actually yeah coming out right we you know have arbitrum and arbitrum is uh basically operating at a uh a stage one uh level at this point in the sense that like it actually has a high level of unchain decentralization um polygon is uh you know very close to the same place um you know like optimism uh you know fraud proofs are get are getting nearer and nearer um you know like scroll as uh launching soon there's this like big growth in all of these Slater 2 projects and the layer two projects are really important because they reduce fees right and you know what these are just the biggest bottleneck to people actually being able to do things on chain and like actually here's the uh watching um and uh in addition to fees like user experience that's the other big one right like the stories that I always tell is uh my first trip to Argentina back in December about two years ago and I remember just being so excited to see on just how many people in Argentina were actually using um you know blockchains and uh or I guess cryptocurrency more specifically right like lots of people were actually you know using stable coins eth Bitcoin to like actually save their money for transactions and I thought that was like really amazing right um but there was a big week a big issue right which is that most of these people were not using the blockchain they were using binance accounts right basic you know and the reason why is obvious right binance to binance transfers are instant and minus the minus transfers are free and like at that time when I tried to actually use the blockchain it took like five minutes for the transaction to get confirmed by the way that's something which is fixed now because after EIP 1559 it's basically gone down to 10 seconds right and the deal was like five dollars and I mean local year two is going to potentially solve the problems on the fee side right so and then basically yeah what we're seeing in this the next decade I think is that as the problems start to get solved on the technical side the the bigger problem is really kind of getting closer to the end user and getting closer to what you might call the human half of the problem right and the human half of the problem like basically is like you know it's the last Mile right like uh you know like how do we actually make it easier and practical for like regular people to benefit from the technology and for like lots of like actual use of the blockchain to become possible and that's uh something that you know requires a lot of development from you know the Techno Geeks working on things like Roll-Ups and zero knowledge proofs and uh the big theme for the last few months has been account abstraction and smart contract wallets but it also just like requires all of this work of like figuring out the fine details of what's the version of this that actually will you know like get into people's hands as users right and I think things like that are going to be much more the big theme for the next wow okay um I'm gonna I'm gonna have to stop you there there is a lot of uh wow yeah there's a lot um but just just so that um I'm I'm carrying the conversation I'm hearing that there's a lot of um research and development going um into with regards to um scalability making the uh transactions move faster um Drive adoption and all of that and that's that's wonderful but um so you're speaking to you're speaking to what we would like to call the future of um African development and I think my next question so one of the things we did was we we sort of like sent out the form and um if you got to ask vitalik a question today what would you ask him and we got like I think about 200 different responses unfortunately I can't ask you all of that it would be nice if you nod your head and tell me I could email that to you but uh for this call I'm just gonna limit those questions to about three or four and I think the first question I'm going to ask you is Africa is a very very big continent it has a lot of people and we're looking in the next couple of months and years that population starts to grow and it it becomes to spiral and we have a really really young population how do you see ethereum on boarding the next billion users into the ecosystem into the technology not just as developers but um content creators um Marketing sales research governance what what what does that look like for you it's a a good question and a really important question and I think I mean part of the answer is that uh you know like Africa's uh epic and uh and the diverse place right and there's parts of Africa for example you know like individual countries that have serious uh you know a currency crisis uh situations political instability and those kinds of problems but then there's also I mean like many countries that don't have those issues to anything close to the same extent and that do look like uh you know like basically yeah monologue Rising uh Emerging Market uh countries that even I mean like are increasingly growing as uh as tech centers and sometimes you have uh I mean a lot of countries that have both at the same time right and and so the situation in uh different places as uh I think are going to be uh some uh somewhat different but in terms of the yeah like really big use cases that I've I mean one is just uh like going back going you know like back to the basics right of uh you know like things like uh savings and like moving money yeah and especially moving money between countries uh making it easier for groups of people to manage money that says uh the one thing actually that smart contracts do that a lot of traditional Finance does not do right and like these fairly basic things that can be a bit boring to like computer geeks but that are still really yeah importance to people's needs are I think something that is uh important to always remember and always keep in our heads and always uh continue working on um doing our our best to make easier and part of that is within the crypto space but part of that is also the bridges between the crypto space and the local economies in those countries um but going beyond that from what I've seen the uh there's definitely this uh part of the African nft Community is that I really respect right um like I yeah I think I saw some of the work by uh you know the nft artists in Ethiopia and in Kenya and there's like a lot of uh really high quality yeah cultural stuff and uh like things that honestly like personally impress me quite a lot more than the uh you know three million dollar monkey is you sometimes see coming out of New York uh so I think uh you know there's a lot of uh cultural value that's being made and at the same time clearly a lot of uh opportunities for people to get plugged into uh you know a global economies and uh you know like start out earning salaries at a level that's comparable to uh I mean like what people see it in uh you know like a major rich countries today and and so I think uh that's you know those things are valuable and um those you know in those cases I think uh I mean one uh part of it is just uh you know continuing to work on these platforms continuing to improve them you know continuing to um make sure you know do our best to make sure that the yeah the right kinds of ideas are being experimented with right especially like there's a you know a thin line between like blockchain based whether it's nfts or whether it's games or whether it's you know like Virtual Worlds or other kinds of ecosystems that are super valuable versus parts of those spaces that are uh like basically obfuscated casinos and I think it's always important to just uh you know like in for like everyone everyone in any of these uh you know spaces in the world to just um you know keep doing their parts push sticks toward the value side and away from the you know Casino side that looks impressive in a bull market but then just breaks as soon as prices start going up or it's prices stop going up um but also at the same time you know continuing to make sure that it's uh that like we make things like practical to use for uh just uh regular users and uh and just you know like more mainstream audiences right and like there too I think it's uh important to do that well like there's a difference between bring bringing people in in a way that's maximum speed and bringing people in in a way that's safe and also in a way that creates Pathways for those people to join the uh kind of I guess the more you know like hardcore deep parts of the uh blockchain space if uh later on that's something that they decide that they want to do um so this again it gets into um you know things like account abstraction and uh you know giving people different kinds of options for what was security but it just also means like you know in what order people and ends up hearing uh hearing different things they're just you know like making sure the right messages get out first couple of questions that I did want to ask and um two things that I heard one I'm really happy about and one I want to ask a follow-up question for so I'm really happy to see that there is some sort of visibility to the nft space in Africa and um I'm I'm really excited to to see all the things that are going to come out from that and then my follow-up question is surrounding the issue with um you know trade uh moving you know moving money around and um I do have a question here and I would say if you had uh let's say 30 seconds to answer this question what would you say what's your vision for the role of ethereum in enabling cross-border trade and remittances in Africa and other emerging economies all the answer to that be um I think it's uh um and cryptocurrencies are starting to show value in um you know making cross-border fintech easier in actually all kinds of ways even if users end up not using blockchains directly right like I think this is something that can be done in multiple ways right like there are lots of people where um you know they uh someone in the United States could be a family member could be an employer could be a customer um you know sense of basically just directly sends ease to them converting to or or usdc or Bitcoin and uh you know does that conversion on their side the crypto transfer happens and then I mean like you can uh sell back at all at a local exchange or you know there is also a yeah version where basically yeah you know there are existing local and kind of you know Regional fintech companies and uh a lot of the like I've talked to some of these past companies and some of them themselves excuse cryptocurrency already on the back end to just to uh I'm you know make movements of uh of money easier right and the users of those companies end up you know benefiting from the existence of those networks even if they don't use them directly so I think both of those can and uh will happen um I think a lot of things really depends on like the fine details of the situation right and I think this is where there's a lot of uh value that comes from the facts that like the like ethereum and uh you know Ethan you know usdc and Bitcoin and all of these things like they are sometimes partially and sometimes fully you know decentralized networks right like there is no master plan that says you know like this is how we're going to like tell people to do things and that will um you know make their economy more efficient that's uh much more of a tool where like basically yeah remember like 80 of the creativity has to come from uh communicable on the grounds based on like what's actually convenient for them and what their situations are and so the yeah the the actual solutions that people use often ends up looking quite different depending on the context okay I like that answer and we're gonna go a bit deeper into that so Africans have african-centric problems and when we start to talk about um all the solutions that are being built and I like what you said about not wanting to like create this one master plan that sort of directs everyone to do you know do things this particular way because it probably wouldn't reflect the different experiences so here's here here's an idea if you actually it's not if you're currently addressing developers here in Africa so what would you say uh critical user experience um features and applications that you think need to be developed to attract users because Africa is quite diverse right so what do you do are these um critical user-friendly features and applications that need to be developed you know to you know Drive diverse um adoption and participation and you know attract and retain these people based on you know all the experiences you've had you know across the ecosystem what do you think that looks like okay um so I think uh to start with the uh a kind of Basics that I think are common across uh you know like basically almost all emerging economies right like one is fees need to be lower um another is there needs to be better ways for people to have their own accounts uh that where um you know those accounts are not just like vulnerable to being lost or stolen if people make a mistake um there's uh um you know there needs to be better educa education on you know like what kinds of things make sense to use what kinds of things uh you know like look like really good good ideas but actually or totally not a good ideas what kind of and uh what kinds of things uh don't make sense when you get into more situation uh specific stuff I think one major aspect of that is just uh different categories of applications right so for example like we talk a lot about daos right and you know we talk a lot about this uh you know it's using smart contracts to enable these uh kind of pieces of economies that involve interactions between I mean like many groups of participants in a more complicated way and the thing that I found about Dows is that 20 of a dow is the tech the eighty percent of Adele is the culture around the deck right if he wants to improve the if he wants to write software to make a better Dow you don't even focus on the voting rules you focus on the discussion rules and the uh this is the place where I think there's a lot of things that differ for different contexts because there's uh like there's a lot of existing cultures around doing things in groups that um you know like you can uh leverage right um so like there's I mean like these concepts of I mean like rotating savings and Credit associations there's these uh concepts of uh you know Group insurance and uh that exist in various different forms their um and like that might be yeah you know like implemented by uh smart contracts or it might even be implemented by like some group of people managing things on behalf of a much larger group of people and like that's a setup that might actually make sense especially in a context where there's a large group of people that uh you know I don't yet have the education to either um you know manage all of the crypto stuff by themselves or just milk don't even have access to the internet yet um there's uh you know in some of these decentralized Insurance situations there is a lot of just differences in what kind of insurance people want I mean like what kind of form factors people are used to already um so once you get into application specific things um you know like in the nft markets um as well like I think there's a lot of application specific stuff um especially yeah now that we're trying to um you know it could go beyond sort of just nft as being I mean you know tokens whose price goes up and down that you can speculate on and really trying to make them more interesting like there's a lot of these uh differences and so really uh you know paying attention to the yeah differences between individual applications is probably yeah the thing that differs across context the most so here's here's a very very personal question that I know that as soon as I ask it everybody's going to be listening I'm gonna have to turn off my screen for this one we want to create and contributes and participate and basically create more visibility for Africans both as users developers and everything in between if you were to you know close your eyes and guess what the next thing being built from Africa would be what would you what would you say that would be and I asked this for two reasons the first reason is because I know there are a lot of people here who have um you know they've gone through a three Bridge the cohorts and everything they've gone through irversity and they've you know they've picked up these skills and the question is what is next so if you were to close your eyes and say this is like the next big thing that is going to come out of Africa what would it be hmm I think uh one part of my answer might just be wallets and I think the reason why I say wallets is that like wallets aren't just um you know things for people to hold coins and move coins right like it's uh I mean it's always kind of a misnomer like it's a bad name like basically the uh you know interfaces that people use to interact with the blockchain world to uh you know hold uh their assets whether it's tokens or nfts or something else to participate in applications and all of these things and the reason why I think it's good to focus on that is that like one is that there's a lot of new technology that's coming out right and the ecosystem is changing like we have account abstraction we have layer twos we uh and you know we have uh like you know a Crossway or twos we have like applications uh and whenever there's these new technologies that's kind of a reset right and a reset creates a new opportunity a reset creates a new opportunity because the people that have been here for 10 years do not have a 10-year Head Start in those new things because those new things have not existed now the reason why it's important is because um the or the reason uh why it's important is just that because it's uh you know it is the window between um you know people and the world and it could basically make or break whether a person has a good experience or a bad experience and the other really important aspect of these is that like wallets are very much not a cookie cutter thing right like if a team from uh you know China makes a ckvm and a team from Africa makes us EK AVM there's nothing um that is uh like there's there isn't any kind of anything that like I can predict that would be him you know like fundamentally different about the two that would like really yeah you know like make one more useful for China and one more useful for Africa right because Ezekiel VM is like this really uh you know like backhand yeah tool that's like very much a pure math problem but a wallet is not like that right yeah well it is uh something where I do not believe that there will be one wallet to rules of all I did not even believe that there will be five wallets to roll them all just uh because I think uh different kinds of wallets uh really uh make sense for different kinds of users that are focused on different applications and like you the the best teams that I've seen they like really yeah the most successful teams that I've seen they work really hard on uh you know like thinking through what kinds of things the users care about what kinds of things the users want and uh like plugging that into what kinds of things do I mean like different protocols provide and uh what are the best ways to show that to users right and so it's something that's uh a really dependent on what a user's of particular needs are um but I mean like it is also it is like it is in its own way a technical challenge but it's a technical challenge where the uh like the technical Parts have less to do with uh you know the kinds of uh you know like cryptography that gets uh developed in in academic Labs where you know you really need to have been in the space for five for five years to like really have a chance it's uh the kind of uh stuff uh where you know it gets uh like it's user-facing software it's and user-facing software is something that you know people everywhere like or anywhere there are lots of people that have I mean like many years of experience and working on that and so it basically take that expertise and combine it with some level of understanding of uh what it is that people that a boy like a blockchain was and how you interface with that and what and what it's possible to get out of that and uh you know you have a wallet so I think uh I mean it's definitely not the only place to start but I think it's one place that's particularly promising you had it here first wallets and I I think I can say that you're going to be seeing a lot more wallets Coming Out of Africa yeah that's gonna happen um so with that in context we still do have you know to talk about all the changes that are coming in the future and because those changes are happening one of the well not the biggest challenge but it's still a challenge especially this side of the world is what technologies what skill sets are are kind of meta right now right because you want everyone here is here because they kind of want to see what direction they solve should like align to make sure that they're building in the same direction the community is facing so you have people that are asking questions what do I learn next um what skills do I need to pick up um what technologies do I need to familiarize myself with what don't I need to pay attention to and they're listening and what's going to be your answer to that it's valuable to understand a lot like a a lot of different things from a at least a level of understanding what they provide right like I think it's valuable to really gain a black box understanding of uh lots of different parts of the ecosystem right so if you look at uh ZK Snorks for example right ZK storks are big zika Starks are super important and they're going to get more importance like I have fully said that I believe zika Starks are going to be as important as blockchains through the success of this space but like you can understand ziggas darks at a really deep level of like understanding like this is exactly how you convert a program into a polynomial this is exactly the polynomial equation that you are trying to solve um you know here um you know you got your like sea of of P of X um you know divided by Z of x equals h of X and like knowing what that equation means and uh like what part the witness is but that you can also you know like just understand it at the level of uh you know this is what the technology does right like I have a program and uh I wants to like prove the results of that program computed on some private data that I have and some public data and here are some basic ways to use this technology in order to build particular applications so I actually wrote a blog post on this topic um if you go to uh vitalik.ca um on June 15th 2022 it's called some ways to use ZK Snorks for privacy and like I talk about the value of zks and arcs just like not at any sort of deep math and how they work level but just on a how to use the model right and I think ezekia's darks are not the only example of this um I think okay let's abstraction and that erc4337 is uh something that's very valuable so again that Black Box level of understanding for um Layer Two scaling is another good one the difference between layer 2's and like Roll-Ups and devil idioms um you know layer 3s the um the way that like different kinds of uh privacy Solutions work like basically yeah just uh have all of uh these uh you know let's try to get at least like that black box how do I use it level of understanding for all of the uh you know like different key building blocks of the space and if you have that then like you're not going to literally be able to code up the entire stack from scratch but like you don't need to code the entire stack from scratch right like if you if you decide that you're passionate about one particular area and uh you know you are the a tech geek and you want to get into that then like you can right and uh a lot of people have uh tried hard to um you know like make the information available and more accessible to people but if you do not then that's still enough to build applications like the thing that's possible today that was not possible three years ago is that today you can build an application that uses narcs without having any idea how aziki start works as long as you understand what is the property that a ZK snark provides um and so I think having that blocked Black Box level understanding of uh like basically all of the new technologies you know blockchains themselves you know Ezekiel Starks layer 2's account abstraction privacy Solutions um if you have that then that just uh improves you when just gives you a strong understanding of uh you know like what kinds of things actually are feasible and uh practical to build um so I think that's something that's important another thing that I think is valuable to know is I think it's valuable to understand some of the history of the space like some of the experiments that people have tried over the last 10 years and some of the things that have failed right so if you're interested in governance for example then understands what happens with EOS and you know some of the problems that we saw with EOS as a delegated proof of stake um if uh you know you want to understand like smart contract coding then look at some of the instances where smart contracts have seen bugs if you care about stable coins then like understands why Tara blew up and understands why makerdale and Rye have not blown up but also understand like maybe what some of the problems with makers out have been right like if you if he wants to build new things like basically yeah you know I understand the uh the 10-year history of things that have been tried and uh you know things that have either failed due to lack of Interest or possibly failed in some way that blew up catastrophically and just sort of let the uh you know the wisdom of those experiences uh become part of you so I think yeah like well understanding like the the tech and the like at this sort of Black Box you know like not like everything about how it works but like how does like how can it help me level and uh understanding history are the two voices that I would start that's that's very very insightful makes a lot of sense um understand what came before understand what's currently being talked about and um leverage on all the advantages of all the solutions that have already been created yes okay um so I'm gonna round this up with one last question and it's not it's not really a question is more letting you round this up and saying so we we we're big fans of call to actions right and um if you are going to give us as as as developers as people who want to play in the space of uh governance um security what would that calls action be from you um um again I think I mean one of them I've uh basically I think I've basically yeah you know like said is to like always uh importance to learn um the other one is uh you know build and uh you know like really specifically yeah like really start tuning the building from uh just um you know like doing thing like do like doing things with the mindset of like we're building toys which I think is that like it is the mindset that crypto had for I think uh maybe the first five to eight years of its existence to a mindset of like we're really yeah building for the yeah mainstream but uh you know we're also we're trying to build for the mainstream while still um you know maintaining the the the spirit and uh value some of the space um a really uh you know like think and care about the uh about the problems of the user but at the same time you know don't sacrifice everything in order to satisfy the the wishes of the user in a short-term way um yeah also build things today in mind with the like with not just the other pieces that are being built today in mind but with the other pieces that will become available tomorrow right um like I think uh if you had been building a year ago then um you know you you should have already even a year ago have had the mindset that you will be on layer two is from day one right and I think that's obviously even more true today and I mean the other and and so if you want to add to um you know local your twos today that like what things to keep in mind that are the things of tomorrow account abstraction is one um I think taking privacy seriously is uh also going uh going to be one that's uh growing over the next couple of years taking security seriously um obviously right um sometimes the project that um you know emerges out of the battlefield as the winner is not the project that that makes the most dazzling charge to the front but it's the project that survives when everything else blows up and I think ethereum's own history of success is uh is a history that is definitely not a history of uh beating everyone else to number one it is a history of US surviving while uh lots of other things blow up and so um you know basically yeah build for build for the people uh build with the with the future in mind and build to last and uh you know I think if you uh and uh you know build in a yeah in a way that I mean like stays true to the values of the space which I think is actually kind of the same thing as built outside building to last so I think you know if you do those things then you're in a very good position to be successful very much build for the future build with the values and I think those two particular points are they resonate with me I think the most it's been it's been an honor thank you for giving us the time um guys italic [Applause] thank you