Reconsidering the Goals of Consensus and Incentive Mechanisms
Regarding the issue of power, in the open-source software field, this issue is not very apparent because anyone can create their own version based on the open-source code, and others can choose to accept or reject it.
The biggest exception is standardization. In some cases, the entire ecosystem requires compatibility and continuous improvement of standards. This requires a consensus mechanism or some form of coordination, which is already beginning to be discussed in decentralized ecosystems such as Ethereum. For example, the standardization of Layer 2 and Account Abstraction is becoming increasingly complex due to the increasing number of entities involved, no longer being as small-scale and easy to reach consensus as before.
When formulating standards, we face a trade-off: if we involve more people in the formulation of standards, the whole process may become slower. Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Signal, mentioned that he did not want Signal to become a federated system, partly because he wanted to iterate faster and add new features. However, I think he underestimates the feasibility of a decentralized approach. Ethereum is a good example, as despite having multiple clients, everyone can still reach consensus on issues such as hard forks. However, if the system becomes too complex, this may become more difficult.
As for incentive mechanisms, I don’t believe there is a universal method to solve all problems. Different projects have different requirements. Some software may rely on a company for the majority of its revenue, and that company can choose to support the project. However, in more complex situations, more diverse funding models are needed, such as the open-source license and cryptocurrency-based public goods funding mechanisms we discussed.
In summary, future ownership confirmation and incentive mechanisms will vary depending on the specific circumstances of the project, and we need to continuously adjust and optimize based on these needs.
How will future scientific research be conducted? Will there be any changes in personnel organization and funding?
Bruce: How will future scientific research be conducted? Will it still require a doctoral degree and rely on government and school funding like it does now? Or will there be new, more efficient ways?
Vitalik: Actually, I think the Ethereum community has already demonstrated a new and more efficient way of conducting scientific research and collaboration. For example, in cryptographic research, many new technologies, such as zero-knowledge proofs and cryptographic algorithms, are the result of cross-team and cross-organizational collaboration. A project may be jointly completed by researchers from the Ethereum Foundation, Aztec team, and certain universities. This collaborative approach is now very common.
In addition, scientific research outcomes are usually built on the work of predecessors. For example, StarkWare may develop a technology, and other teams continue to innovate based on it. Collaboration is no longer limited to physical offices, and cross-national and cross-organizational communication can be done through various online channels, such as Telegram, Signal groups, or forums like the Ethereum Research Forum.
Conference culture is also an important part of scientific research today, especially in the Ethereum community. Although some people criticize this culture, its benefits are obvious. Conferences provide an opportunity for multinational and remote teams to communicate face-to-face and share ideas. Even though most of the time is spent on online collaboration, people meet several times a year at conferences to quickly synchronize progress.
More importantly, this conference culture makes everyone feel that the entire Ethereum community is their team, rather than just their own company. This promotes cooperation and innovation between companies.
At the Ethereum Foundation, we recently organized a protocol research and development workshop, inviting about 100 researchers and developers to collectively promote the progress of Ethereum clients. Such collective collaboration, combining online and offline, greatly enhances the efficiency of scientific research.
However, this model may not be applicable to all fields. For example, in the field of history, although this collaborative approach is also feasible, the academic community is relatively conservative and may take longer to adapt to this new model. In fields such as biology, the situation can be more complicated. Firstly, biological research requires a large amount of laboratory resources, which are not simple desk and chair facilities like the ones we use but rather expensive and complex scientific laboratories. Secondly, incentive mechanisms are also a problem. In the cryptographic field, openness and transparency are necessary, but in some traditional fields, research results are often not made public, and changing this practice is not easy.
Different fields have different challenges. Although decentralized and open-source approaches may develop faster in some fields, in other fields, more resistance and complex incentive issues may be encountered.
I believe that in the next 10 to 20 years, there will be much more cross-company, cross-organizational, and even cross-national scientific research collaboration than now. However, the speed of transformation will vary in different fields, and some fields may adapt to this change faster than others.
Will Ethereum nodes be deployed on Mars? How will interstellar communication latency be addressed? How to achieve interstellar censorship resistance?
Bruce: Speaking of Mars, I thought of an interesting question: in the future, can we deploy Ethereum nodes on Mars? If so, how will interstellar communication latency be addressed? Additionally, how can censorship resistance be achieved within the interstellar scope?
Vitalik: This is an interesting question. On Earth, the speed of light is very fast, and the signal transmission time between the two ends of the Earth can be neglected. Even between the farthest points on Earth, the signal delay is only a few hundred milliseconds. In the modern internet, delays within 200 milliseconds are usually acceptable.
However, the situation is different between Earth and Mars. The distance between Mars and Earth can be around 50 to 70 million kilometers at the closest, and up to 400 million kilometers at the farthest. This means that it takes several minutes to 20 minutes for signals to travel at the speed of light, which is a huge challenge for systems like blockchain.
The current architectures of Ethereum and Bitcoin are not directly capable of dealing with such significant delays. For example, if you generate a block on Mars and transmit it to Earth, the miners on Earth may have already generated several new blocks by the time it reaches them. This would make Mars blocks difficult to accept, or even impossible to compete. Therefore, from an economic and efficiency perspective, running interstellar blockchain nodes under the current architecture is not feasible.
However, one possible solution to this problem is to run an independent Layer 2 solution on Mars, specifically designed for environments like Mars. This Layer 2 network can quickly confirm transactions on Mars and then synchronize with the Ethereum mainnet on Earth in batches when appropriate. This would greatly reduce the reliance on real-time communication and allow Mars and Earth to have their own network rhythms.
As for interstellar censorship resistance, this problem is more complex. To achieve true interstellar censorship resistance, it may require multiple decentralized networks to interconnect between different planets and space stations, avoiding any single entity from fully controlling a network area. Of course, this also means that we need to develop new protocols to adapt to this interstellar environment.
Although Ethereum nodes on Mars and interstellar censorship resistance face significant technical challenges, through new architectural designs, such as a Layer 2 solution on Mars, it may gradually be realized in the future.
What encryption algorithms are missing in the future digital society of cypherpunks? Will there be new things like PGP, SSL, and cryptocurrencies? What role will ZK play?
Bruce: We just talked about social mechanisms and open-source issues. Now I want to talk about cypherpunks. The cypherpunk movement has had a profound impact on today’s encryption technology, with important achievements such as PGP, SSL, and cryptocurrencies. Looking back from the perspective of 100 years later, are there any encryption algorithms that we have not yet realized today but may become new technologies in the future? What role will ZK (zero-knowledge proofs) play in this process?
Vitalik: New technologies in this era will definitely be based on ZK. We can already see that ZK has brought us many new possibilities. You can prove many things simultaneously without revealing all the information. Ten years ago, this concept was not yet present, and the discussions usually revolved around two extremes: either you provide all the information to prove identity (but sacrifice privacy), or you remain anonymous (but credibility decreases). Through ZK, we can now enjoy the advantages of both.
The Ethereum community has also started to apply ZK in various ways, such as in the Zuzalu group, where we have begun to use this technology to some extent. I think ZK has many application scenarios.
In addition, there are other technologies, such as MPC (multi-party computation) and FHE (fully homomorphic encryption). Although they have existed for 30 years, their efficiency has finally improved to a level where they can be practically applied. Their application scenarios are different from ZK but equally interesting. Another technology that I find promising is obfuscation.
Obfuscation refers to encrypting a program, and the encrypted program can run with the same input and output, but the internal logic of the program is completely invisible. This is a very powerful technology. For example, I can create a program that contains my private key, but you cannot obtain my private key through this encrypted program. Obfuscation can solve many other cryptographic problems.
The only problem that cannot be solved by obfuscation is preventing programTo solve this problem, we can leverage quantum technology. Justin Drake is very fond of a technology called One-Time Signatures. Once you sign a document, you cannot sign any other data, which is very useful in the consensus mechanism of blockchain because it can completely eliminate double-spending attacks.
With existing classical technology, we cannot achieve this because data can always be copied. But if we introduce quantum technology, data cannot be copied. Behind this is a very famous theory called the No-cloning Theorem, which states that quantum data cannot be completely copied.
If we have obfuscation and quantum technology, there will be many possibilities in the future. Perhaps these technologies will still be difficult to popularize in the next ten years, but after 100 years, it is very likely to become a reality.
Bruce: ZK has recently become very popular and many friends are interested in it and even started learning. However, many people find it very difficult. Do you have any good learning methods or resource recommendations?
Vitalik: If you really want to understand ZK technology, the best way is to try writing a ZK algorithm yourself. From start to finish, write a Prover and a Verifier. Through this process, you will understand the key points behind the technology, such as why we do it this way, how to prove and verify, etc.
I have written many articles about ZK in the past ten years. My idea is that if only a few people understand ZK technology, then it is not truly decentralized because everyone has to trust those few people. So it is very important for more people to understand this technology and understand why it is trustworthy.
Of course, not everyone needs to understand all the details of ZK, just like most developers don’t fully understand the internal mechanisms of encryption algorithms. They only know the input and output of the algorithm and what it can and cannot do. I believe most people will eventually understand ZK in a similar way.
Mental Health: How to avoid EMO and self-doubt when doing long-term idealistic projects? Do you experience similar situations? How do you overcome them?
Bruce: I think mental health is very important when promoting long-term idealistic projects. For example, developers like Peter sometimes have emotional breakdowns and doubt the value of their contributions. I have also had similar moments, especially when I see someone getting rich overnight because of a meme coin, I will doubt whether what I have been persisting in is worth it. Vitalik, have you experienced this? How do you deal with it?
Vitalik: Yes, I have had similar feelings. These emotional fluctuations will definitely occur, especially when you are dedicated to an idealistic project like Ethereum for a long time. For me, one of the most effective ways to overcome this is to participate in offline communication activities. Face-to-face interaction allows me to re-experience the power of the community and its positive influence.
When you look at Crypto Twitter or other social media, you are often overwhelmed by negative voices. Many people say, “Ethereum has no practical use, the biggest application is gambling,” or suggest that we admit that we have only created “the best casino.” Hearing these things can indeed make people feel tired and frustrated.
However, whenever I attend conferences or interact with people who are truly involved in the Ethereum ecosystem, I realize that there are still many people who embrace very positive visions and they are working hard to realize these visions. On the Internet, this effort and hope may not always be visible, so face-to-face communication is particularly important.
We humans have millions of years of history of face-to-face communication, and our minds are not prepared for a completely online life. Perhaps in 20 or 30 years, the metaverse will solve these problems, but we have not reached that level yet. So I think offline interaction is very important for mental health.
Physical Health: What are your dietary habits? Do you exercise? Any health advice for programmers?
Bruce: For physical health, especially for programmers, we all know that physical health is very important. What are your dietary habits? Do you exercise? Do you have any health advice for programmers?
Vitalik: For me, physical health is indeed very important, especially because of my unique lifestyle. I often need to go to different places and I move almost every week, so it is difficult for me to maintain a consistent fitness or diet routine. Those influencers often mention that they have a great gym and a fixed diet plan every day, but for me, such arrangements are almost impossible.
Nevertheless, I still try to exercise, especially simple exercises like walking and running. These exercises do not require any equipment and can be done anywhere. For example, after I arrived in Georgia, I ran 21 kilometers in the backyard. I think running is a very convenient way to exercise because it not only exercises the body but also allows me to listen to audiobooks or podcasts while running, making good use of time.
As for diet, I try to follow simple principles: eat more vegetables, eat more fish, and try to avoid excessive sugar intake. This way, I can maintain a healthy diet in different environments.
Bruce: You mentioned the topic of longevity, and I know you are very interested in this field. Why are you so concerned about longevity? Is it related to your imagination of future technologies, such as uploading consciousness to the network?
Vitalik: My interest in longevity can be traced back to when I was 13 years old and read Aubrey de Grey’s book “Ending Aging”. I agree with his vision of extending life. Life itself is wonderful, and it is naturally better to live a few more years. Aubrey’s book explains in detail how we can extend life through science, especially extreme longevity methods—not just adding 5 years to life, but adding 50 years or more.
Many people have misunderstandings about longevity, thinking that extending life means getting older and weaker. But that’s not the case. Aubrey’s approach is to prevent problems caused by aging in advance, rather than waiting until the problems appear and then treating them. In this way, the extended time is not only an extension of life but also an extension of healthy time. In this way, the quality of life we extend will be closer to the current life state, rather than weak and feeble like people imagine at the age of 90.
When the price of Ether first rose, I started thinking about how to use this wealth to do something meaningful instead of buying a big house or a private jet. So I started donating to Aubrey’s organization, and as the price of Ether continued to rise, I donated more and now I consider myself a sponsor in the field of longevity.
Bruce: Please recommend a book, Vitalik.
Bruce: Our formal interview questions are coming to an end. Vitalik, can you recommend a book that you think is good or recent?
Vitalik: I recently read two interesting books. I wrote a book review on my blog about the history of Bitcoin. One of them is Jonathan Bier’s “The Blocksize War”, which supports the viewpoint of small blocks, and the other is Roger Ver and Steve Patterson’s “Hijacking Bitcoin”, which supports the viewpoint of large blocks. They discuss the recent Bitcoin block size war from their respective perspectives, and I think both books are interesting.
Actually, many people like to read history books. There is now a joke on the Internet that many people are particularly interested in studying two topics: World War II and the Roman Empire. I find that the interesting thing about understanding history is that you can think about what is caused by specific events and the cultural and technological factors of the era, and what is simply human nature. This helps us unravel some questions and think about how people would behave in completely different circumstances.
The history of the Internet in the past 30 years is also worth paying attention to. Especially between 1990 and 2010, the development of the Internet was relatively slow, and most of the time it was just a “game”. However, the emergence of Bitcoin was the first thing in the history of the Internet that was truly valuable and native to the Internet, and it attracted many people to participate. You can compare this phenomenon to the rise of a digital nation.
And within this digital nation, there will also be internal disputes and wars that eventually lead to division. For example, now, some well-known “Bitcoin cult” figures in the Bitcoin community have started praising Solana. I think they may be doing this because they want to counter the Ethereum ecosystem by joining forces with emerging platforms like Solana. This reminds me of the alliance between Germany and Japan during World War II, which was based on the consideration of common enemies.
I think studying these phenomena is very interesting, not only the history of the real world but also the evolution of the digital world. You will find that some patterns and ideas are exactly the same. That’s why I think understanding the history of the Internet is very interesting.
Closing Remarks: Looking forward to continuing exploration and construction in the future
Bruce: Today’s formal interview ends here. Once again, thank you, Vitalik, for taking the time to accept our interview and share so many insightful ideas. Thank you, Vitalik!
Vitalik: Thank you!
Bruce: I have some casual questions, such as do you still play World of Warcraft?
Vitalik: Haha, during the pandemic, I tried playing on a private server and found it quite fun. But later on, I realized that Ethereum itself is a more fun game.
Bruce: Haha, okay.
Vitalik: I hope everyone can support ETHPanda Talk and participate in the construction of Ethereum together! Thank you all!
Bruce: Thank you.
