Vitalik’s Latest AMA Quantum Computing Threats, Ethereum and AI Integration, Personal Interests and Hobbies

Insights from Vitalik's Latest AMA Exploring the Intersection of Quantum Computing, Ethereum, and AI, Plus a Peek into Personal Interests and Hobbies

Translated | GaryMa Wu on Blockchain

On October 18th, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, conducted an open AMA on the social media platform Warpcast based on Farcaster. Wu has summarized it as follows, with reference to Deepchain and Planet Daily:

1. Quantum computing may arrive faster than expected. What sense of urgency and mitigation strategies does Ethereum have in facing quantum supremacy?

Vitalik: User accounts under the account abstraction (ERC 4337) architecture already have the ability to resist quantum computing. For existing accounts, if quantum computing suddenly emerges, we may need to hard fork and recover their EOA by proving the user’s 12 mnemonic words (mnemonic words are already resistant to quantum computing and should be the account pattern for most users) through ZK-STARK.

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At the consensus layer, alternative solutions based on STARK are actively being explored, including (i) BLS aggregation, (ii) Verkle trees, and (iii) DAS based on KZG.

2. Are you interested in lattice-based SNARK alternatives? After all, lattice-based cryptography has become one of the main candidates for the NIST PQC standard and is compatible with fully homomorphic encryption systems (FHE).

PS: Lattice-based cryptography has gained attention due to its resistance to attacks by quantum computers.

Vitalik: For fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), lattice-based methods are reasonable and seem to be the only choice. For most on-chain operations, combining ZK-STARKs with hashes may be sufficient.

3. Which city (or place) do you like to take a walk in the most? Has your preference changed since becoming a public figure?

Vitalik: Recently, I have become less fond of cities. Even in Singapore, I prefer to stay in areas further away from the city center, close to large reservoir parks. As for cities, I like Singapore, Taipei, Vienna, Toronto, and Ithaca, New York.

4. What did you have for breakfast this morning?

Vitalik: I had about 16 grams of Lindt 85% dark chocolate. I finished the 90% dark chocolate that I usually eat, which is my favorite.

4.1 Don’t you agree with the principle advocated by many in the field of life sciences to eat only one meal a day to extend lifespan?

Vitalik: I typically have two meals a day, brunch and linner (lunch and dinner combined), with about 6 hours in between.

5. What are your thoughts on the recent article “The Pessimistic Declaration of Technological Optimism” by a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen?

Vitalik: I agree with many of its points, especially that recessions are not good and that a lot of seemingly cautious and humble stagnationism is actually a very anti-human force. However, I also believe that it missed many things; specifically, the direction and order of technological development are important.

For example, I think brain-computer interfaces are fantastic and will be very important in the future, but they also come with risks: we’re essentially talking about reading + writing our thoughts. To me, it’s crucial that these things be as open-source as possible, to the benefit of local computing. What is a16z doing to achieve this outcome?

Also, I believe cryptocurrency is, to some extent, a technical field that not only considers consumer utility but also addresses significant technical-political issues, such as maintaining freedom, openness, and the ability for ordinary people around the world to participate beyond just consumption.

I think there’s another highly valuable area that could be intentionally accelerated, and that is defense technology. For example, in the field of biology, creating a process where, once a new pandemic (whether natural or artificial) arises, we can: (i) quickly detect it, (ii) rapidly develop vaccines and/or antibodies, and (iii) engage in local production so that people around the globe can quickly start receiving vaccinations.

New pandemic -> Countermeasure process, ideally completed in less than a month.

In every field, as long as the attack/defense balance is more favorable to defense, the world can face less darkness between stagnation, centralized control, and disastrous choices.

5.1 How do we design systems to help Web3 scale with a service-oriented approach to the common good, rather than just focusing on market share and shareholder profits? What incentive structures does Web3 provide to rapidly propagate the idea of “Regen” at the societal/civilizational level?

PS: “Regen” refers to the work of building regenerative economies in the context of Web3, focusing more on long-term ideas of how Web3 can benefit the world beyond just financial terms. Regen believes that the financial system can be designed as a larger avenue for human prosperity, serving the needs of all humanity.

Vitalik: I think more original funding needs to be put into Regen. Optimism’s RPGF (Retroactive Public Goods Funding) is great, but we need more effort.

6. What are your thoughts on climate change?

Vitalik: Anything that can have this kind of impact on the world is worth worrying about. Just the idea of halving global GDP is terrifying enough for the poorest countries, not to mention the direct impact on humanity. However, thoughts like “this will make the world so terrible, I shouldn’t have children” are mistaken and harmful.

I’ve invested in a solar panel company and remain open to more things. We need to consciously allocate resources while progressing along many technological paths to properly address this problem.

7. What music have you been listening to these days?

Vitalik: Some high-energy Chinese songs are very suitable for listening to during the 15-20 km mark of a long run, and they can significantly improve running speed. For example, songs like “Aura” and “Breaking the Cocoon” by Zhang Shaohan can almost increase my speed by 10%. Recently, I have also been listening to some Japanese songs.

8. Scroll recently launched its mainnet for zkEVM. However, since it needs to mimic the classic EVM on Ethereum, we are unlikely to see innovative design concepts and experiments, such as privacy features, at the execution layer. What are your thoughts on these limitations?

Vitalik: I think we don’t need privacy at the execution layer. We can build it on other layers.

9. With the existence of Ethereum, do you think Bitcoin still has value?

Vitalik: Starknet developer abdel.stark’s article “Ethereum Alignment” provides a good explanation for this question. Bitcoin adopts various different technological trade-offs, thus covering a different design space from Ethereum.

https://hackmd.io/@abdelhamid/ethereum-alignment

10. What is preventing lightweight clients (e.g., portal network clients) from being production-ready?

PS: Portal Network aims to enable resource-constrained devices to access protocols in a lightweight manner. Portal Network consists of one or more decentralized peer-to-peer networks that collectively provide the data and functionality required by the standard JSON-RPC API. These networks are specifically designed to ensure that clients can participate with minimal bandwidth, CPU, RAM, and disk resources.

Vitalik: It will be implemented soon. I think the next steps are (i) default integration into wallets, and (ii) extending it to cover L2s, not just L1. However, (ii) only makes sense if L2 takes off or at least reduces its reliance on auxiliary mechanisms to make the underlying system inherently decentralized.

11. In your opinion, why haven’t prediction markets based on cryptocurrencies received much attention? Do you still think they have potential? What do they need to do to “take off”?

Vitalik: They are slowly approaching their goal. Polymarket has recently made significant progress, and it seems to blend crypto attributes and business development better than any previous attempts.

12. Is the T-shirt you bought for 8.5 BTC still around?

Vitalik: No, it’s gone. Unfortunately, many years ago, I lost it on a train in the UK when I forgot my bag.

13. In your opinion, what are the biggest threats facing traditional finance and late-stage capitalism?

Vitalik: Armies and late authoritarianism.

14. What is the biggest achievement and lesson learned from the Zuzalu project? Can it become a replicable model for a real-world network state, or is it more like an experiment in search of that model?

ps: Zuzalu is a pop-up city experiment initiated by Vitalik in Montenegro from March to May 2023.

Vitalik: I think even today, it is still a replicable model! From a perspective of political autonomy, you won’t get a “network state,” but the form of “200 people gathering anywhere for months” itself is very useful. We have already seen similar derivative projects.

15. What is the best article you have read recently?

Vitalik: https://www.gleech.org/culture

16. Given the recent debate about whether more functionalities should be encapsulated in the protocol layer, do you support providing everyone with a minimal on-chain governance tool to express their preferences? For example, a reliable and neutral ’emotional’ signaling tool to be sent to the Ethereum Foundation and client teams (despite the existence of Sybil attacks)?

Vitalik: Yes, I absolutely think more non-binding emotional voting tools would be great. Hopefully not just based on tokens; things like carbonvote in the past were cool, but their biggest downside was obviously that they were very driven by large holders.

17. As a knowledgeable, eloquent intellectual representing the new internet mindset, how would you communicate the future based on Ethereum’s ideological system to the general public? The current world generally views cryptocurrencies as scams, and this is a serious communication problem.

Vitalik: In my opinion, we have done too much communication already, and we need more demonstration actions!

18. I wonder what your thoughts are on “ticketing.” Ticketing is often seen as a valuable use case for the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, and for millions of people, ticketing would be their first interaction with distributed ledger technology.

Vitalik: Yes, I think it is valuable. Especially if we can (i) integrate it into systems like zuLianGuaiss, which are ZK systems, and (ii) actually make it possible to directly purchase tickets on-chain, making the whole process completely independent of any centralized interface.

19. What non-technical interests or hobbies do you have?

Vitalik: Last week, I was studying the constructed language Toki Pona, and next week, I’ll see how it has developed.

ps: Toki Pona is an extremely minimal and elegant constructed language, with only 123 words.

20. You have mentioned that the goal of Ethereum’s protocol design is to minimize L1 protocol complexity and maximize robustness and resilience. Comparing the situation with sharding and rollups, it is clear that sharding is much more complex for the L1 protocol. But for developers and users, it is simpler because it abstracts away the need for fraud/validity proofs, eliminates external cross-chain bridges, ensures ETH fungibility (arbETH and opETH), and so on. Why is it better to minimize L1 complexity for developers and users instead of pushing complexity towards developers and users?

Vitalik: I believe that if we choose L1 sharding, the powerful ecosystem we have, responsible for developing various L2s and extensions, may not exist to the same extent. L1 team’s resources are limited and focused on PoS.

That being said, the current “L1 core team” has become stronger, and I feel that there is a reverse movement towards greater standardization among L2s. This includes:

● Account abstraction (ERC4337)

● Efforts on L2EVM

● Standardized cross-chain wallet experience, including recovery

● Possible adoption of L1-enshrined ZK-EVM in the future.

Of course, the ongoing work on DAS (data availability sampling), starting with 4844, and then extending to larger and larger data block sizes. So I believe the Ethereum ecosystem is very capable of evolving and correcting mistakes, and we will eventually get something that can balance standardization and independent innovation well.

20.1 So, will ETH give up market share to various L2 infrastructures? How do you see the TAM (Total Addressable Market) opportunity for ETH?

Vitalik: Definitely giving up some, but not all. I think this is healthy. The reason is that we need some tokens that can use issuance to pay for expensive public goods in the ecosystem, and ETH itself is not well-suited for that role, so making space for L2 tokens is a good solution. You can be part of Ethereum and have a token that is more directly related to your project, which I think is a great incentive.

21. From the perspective of Farcaster product, what are some things that you would prioritize doing that we haven’t done yet?

Vitalik: No matter what your strategy is against Sybil attacks, ensuring that it uses ZK encapsulation, protects privacy, and provides alternative paths for those who do not want to provide government identity proof or proxy identity proof (such as phone numbers).

22. You often discuss on-chain security on mobile devices, but after experiments like Zuzalu, what unresolved offline mobile security challenges have you discovered? Do you plan to take further action on network status? Is there a way for others to coordinate and share secure Schelling points?

Vitalik: We do need more investment in improving device security, open-source operating systems, etc. Since I got involved earlier this year, I have introduced GrapheneOS to at least a few people.

Our devices are now an extension of our minds, so their security is crucial.

23. What keeps you motivated?

Vitalik: I know that our community and the technology it is building are in a very unique position to make truly valuable contributions in an increasingly complex world. Positive outcomes don’t happen on their own; we have a responsibility to think carefully and make them happen.

24. Which book best helps you understand how Western culture has evolved to this point (broad liberalism, democracy, and capitalism)?

Vitalik: I think books are somewhat overrated in this regard, while practical experience in understanding culture is underestimated. I’m not just talking about going to different places and living in different cultures, I’m also referring to the crypto community. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others also have values and face pressures that shape those values and sometimes compromise them.

By observing how existing communities react to various pressures and threats, we can better understand under what conditions liberalism, capitalism, and other ideals thrive.

25. What do you spend most of your time thinking about?

Vitalik: In the past week or two, I’ve been thinking a lot about my views on various artificial intelligence-related issues and how the Ethereum community can effectively participate in them.

26. In a future full of built-in wallets, do you think people will:

1. Provide a new address for each new application,

2. Primarily use one address across many applications, or

3. Something in between?

Vitalik: Currently, we are in the (2) category. I hope we can move closer to (1) as it is more favorable for privacy. Sometimes it does make sense for different applications to share a wallet, but it shouldn’t be the default setting. We also need to continue improving ZK transfers so that the privacy benefits of different activities become a reality.

26.1 Follow-up question on this topic – Are you suggesting that each application should have its own distinct wallet or a single brand wallet like Metamask? Meaning, should you log in with Metamask and generate an address for each website, or use email/social login and generate a wallet for each website?

Vitalik: I do envision it being a wallet and generating an address for each website. If every app has its own custom wallet, that would be a disaster in my opinion.

27. As I learn more about the limitations of SNARKs in mechanisms that involve mixed private and public data, I have a question: What are your thoughts on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)? Do you think the progress of the past two years will lead to the Moore’s law of actual code, as we saw after Groth16?

Vitalik: FHE still has practical limitations that prevent it from being a “universal black box,” specifically, you have to protect the final decryption step to some extent, and in practice, it often has similar limitations to MPC. So I do expect it, but it’s not a silver bullet. Of course, better FHE would almost certainly translate to better witness encryption and/or obfuscation if we can make it practical in practice.

28. What is your biggest concern or area of focus for the future of Ethereum?

Vitalik: The risks of crypto technology stagnating, privacy, and the failure of an open internet infrastructure will all be reasons for failure, and the major techno-political questions of the 21st century will be determined by whatever happens in the field of artificial intelligence in the next decade.

29. What are the traits that you observe in successful founders/leaders in the cryptocurrency industry?

Vitalik: It depends on how you define “success”!

Personally, I have the utmost respect for those who have clear personal values and a deep understanding of their goals in the cryptocurrency field. This understanding goes beyond the clichés they might inherit from cryptocurrency conferences.

Reference links:

https://www.odaily.news/post/5190397

https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_14240.html

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