Compilation | GaryMa Wu talks about blockchain
Original link:
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/with_replies
Q: What is your favorite book, game, and movie?
- Azuki’s drama, questions about decentralization, and answers from mfers
- What projects will be the winners if BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF is approved?
- Discovering Hidden Holdings and Trading Behavior of NFT Series through On-Chain Data
A:
1. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fanfiction by a foreign author based on Harry Potter;
2. “Unsong”, a fantasy science fiction novel by Scott Alexander, set in a world based on the mystical Kabbalah (a mystical school of Judaism).
Q: Have you ever had a supernatural experience or encountered something you couldn’t explain?
A: Seeing many of our worst enemies self-destruct, or at least make themselves very stupid.
Q: Are you concerned that Ethereum culture may follow a path too similar to Bitcoin culture, where the loudest voices are non-technical?
A: I’m not sure if non-technical itself is the problem; more important are (i) non-technical, (ii) overconfidence, (iii) aggressiveness, these three traits intertwine. I think the latter two traits are more important. In any case, we should be cautious!
Q: What are you excited/interested about in the space of funding for public goods right now?
A: Better traceability in retroactive funding, so it’s possible to identify and reward the entire path leading up to some selectively valuable work. There’s already some related work happening in this area, and it would be great to see more.
Q:
Please answer the following questions, ignoring those that are not as quick, simple, or interesting!
ps: Zuzalu is a pop-up city experiment initiated by Vitalik in Montenegro from March to May 2023.
● What surprised you about Zuzalu compared to your expectations?
● Who are the leaders you admire now or in history?
● What are some daily habits you’ve developed in the past few years that you particularly enjoy?
● Who do you guess will be the author you read the most in 2023?
● If you had to choose a country right now and live there for the rest of your life, which country would you choose?
● What is the probability that you will live to be 123 years old or older?
● What is something you measure or track that most people don’t pay attention to?
A:
I think Zuzalu was successful as an experiment! Many core assumptions were validated:
● Things can be organized
● People are willing to stay
● Successful idea exchange
● Integration of zero-knowledge technology worked
● A positively healthy culture was established
The biggest unresolved issue that I see is how to balance quality and inclusivity at scale. A multi-tiered “community network” currently seems to be the method that I (and others I’ve talked to, including myself) tend towards. How to actually implement it depends on the specifics…
The biggest unresolved issue that I see is how to balance quality and inclusivity at scale. A multi-tiered “community network” currently seems to be the method that I (and others I’ve talked to, including myself) tend towards. How to actually implement it depends on the specifics…
There is an important disagreement on the issue of “jurisdiction”: what expectations do you have of the government you are under?
Possible answers include:
● None really, just want to keep things united
● Visa-friendly
● Provide more meaningful freedom for specific industries (biotech? drones? other?)
Zuzalu itself was just a temporary experiment, but the community within it contains people who care about these three aspects.
But the latter is fundamentally more difficult; therefore, these three aspects seem to tend towards different types of countries.
Q: (continuing from the above question) If I understand correctly, what you’re saying makes sense. You delegate quality filtering responsibility to each community to make scalability more feasible, while maintaining a certain level of quality control by carefully selecting the communities themselves.
A: Retaining a certain level of quality control is achieved by carefully selecting communities.
Even with such a setting, I don’t think it’s very accurate! On the contrary, anyone can create a community, and there is a concept of relationships between communities, which will become even closer if they trust each other.
Q: This is a question about Zuzalu: What is the biggest achievement? What improvements will there be next time? When is the next time?
A: This is just one of more than 10 ideas, but:
● I hope to see the adoption of coordination of free/open/decentralized/privacy-focused technology that can go deeper than just ZuBlockings and Zupoll.
● Use ETH payment on L2, abandon Telegram, and use @ethstatus or @skiffprivacy or other alternatives.
It’s the same for health. Make it easier for people to get their metrics and personalized advice, and provide them with suitable diets and exercises. Make the community a comprehensive health resource.
Q: What is your view on the final state of L2 governance? Will we ever stay in mechanisms such as token voting, “security committees”, and multisignature? This seems far from the ideal of cryptocurrency governance (for me, the ideal is “voting based on the node software I run”, plus immutable smart contracts).
The same question can also be considered from another perspective: Is it worth (ultimately) fixing a single L2 (Rollup) as part of the core client code, so that it is constrained by the governance mechanism on the Ethereum chain rather than the governance of individual L2 projects?
Because if we cannot bring the scaling solution into the same governance mechanism, people like me who are cautious about token voting and other mechanisms may be attracted to single-piece L1 projects.
Governance is the only thing that should not be delegated from the bottom layer of the underlying chain for core functions.
A:
Implementing ZK-EVM verification inside Ethereum is definitely an idea worth exploring!
I tend to achieve our goals with a minimum degree of L1 fixation. You can fix the entire L2, but if you fix the ZK-EVM verification and let people use it in any way, you may get 90% of the benefits and 3 times the flexibility.
In particular, I expect the non-ZK-EVM part of L2 to be small enough to be formally verified.
I hope that we will be able to enter phase 2 in the next few years, where the security council will only make rulings in cases of disagreement between two different proof systems.
PS: Facing the question of centralization of the security council, Vitalik believes that a security council with cross-institutional participation and a (important) 75% threshold is a fairly high decentralization standard for trusting code before reaching that threshold.
Q: What is your longest running record? What is your longest walking record?
A: Running: 44 km, 4 hours, 5:26 min/km.
Walking: 113 km, 23 hr 12 min.
Q: Do you listen to music/podcasts while walking?
A: Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” series, especially the first four episodes about World War I.
Q: Will you continue to donate to Ukraine?
A: Yes, I have donated to several places this year.
Q: What are your top 5 to 10 rankings for the most likely catastrophic scenarios for humans in the next century?
I guess this question is related to whether humans will face further climate and planetary resource issues. Are you optimistic about global coordination?
A:
● Artificial intelligence (AI)
● Engineered super pandemics
When it comes to catastrophes that are close to extinction level, nuclear war is one of them. Unbeatable AI-enhanced authoritarianism is also worrisome.
Climate issues may rank fifth or close to fifth. Progress in solar and nuclear energy is important.
As for issues related to “resource depletion”, I am not too worried; as resources become scarce, items will become more expensive, and we will find substitutes.
Q: What do you think of the current situation of Bitcoin Cash?
I remember you recently commented publicly that Bitcoin Cash failed largely because of too much attention to split rebellion. However, has the stability of the past 2.5 years and the current unity of the community made you reconsider?
A: I have indeed seen cultural improvements! Good luck to you all.
Q: What do you think is the latest research direction for P2P networks related to Ethereum that is worth the time of emerging researchers/research engineers?
A: Making the existing Ethereum P2P layer more robust (including protection against intentional censorship, firewalls, etc.), which may not be exciting but is very important.
Q: What do you think about the idea of DAI going completely off-chain (more support for RWA real asset) instead of insisting on decentralization?
A: I think there is some rationale in this design space, but careful engineering design is needed to ensure wide distribution of supporting assets and stable governance.
Q: In your opinion, which country is most likely to become the most crypto-friendly country and a long-term livable crypto center?
A: I’m more optimistic about small countries than big ones.
Q: Besides cryptocurrency and longevity, what is your most interesting field?
A: Wandering?
Q: Regarding the “Artificial Intelligence Act,” the exclusion of the military from regulating various fields of artificial intelligence is worrying. It is naive for those who drafted the bill to believe that the military will act according to its knowledge and beliefs. If there is an opportunity to use a technology that brings obvious advantages, someone will eventually abuse it for personal gain. Even more worrying is the exclusion of intelligence agencies under regulated interests, and it seems to give them complete freedom. This is not only morally questionable, but also extremely dangerous.
A: Yes, I absolutely oppose artificial intelligence regulation plans that assume the military is more trustworthy than others.
Q: Will quantum computing destroy blockchain or make it more secure?
A: Blockchain will have to adapt to QC, but we’ll be okay.
Q: Does public key encryption exist unconditionally?
A: When you say “unconditionally,” you mean that the security of public key encryption does not depend on any specific assumptions or conditions. The security of public key encryption is based on the difficulty of some complex mathematical problems. These problems include large number factorization, discrete logarithm computation, etc., which are considered difficult to solve effectively in computation. However, there are some mathematical structures, such as curves and lattices, that are considered to be able to provide the conditions required to meet the security of public key encryption, while hash algorithms do not meet this requirement.
Q: How do you think about the advantages and disadvantages of MPC-based EOA wallets and smart contract wallets?
A: MPC-based external accounts (EOAs) are fundamentally flawed because they cannot revoke keys (re-sharing keys doesn’t count, the original holder can still recover the keys), and smart contract wallets are the only choice because they can solve this problem.
Q: What are the shortcomings of smart wallets?
1. Only ETH/EVM, Bitcoin and other networks are not supported
2. L1 setup and recovery costs are expensive (recovery requires $40)
3. Smart contracts can also be revoked (not always)
A:
1. Yes, Bitcoin needs to upgrade its technology. We have known this problem for over 5 years.
2. This is because the cost of the entire L1 is high. That’s why L2 and smart contract wallets are needed to get more in-protocol support.
3. I’m not sure what you mean here.
Q: What’s your favorite dinosaur?
A: I like ducks.
Q: What aspects of socialism do you find interesting?
A: I think the focus on the harms of private monopolies and resource inequality is important, and I appreciate the willingness to address these issues in principled ways. Additionally, the internationalist spirit, particularly in early socialism, is very good and valuable.
Q: What is the timeline of AGI and p(doom)?
PS: AGI refers to Artificial General Intelligence, also known as superintelligence, which refers to artificial intelligence systems that can perform at or beyond human levels in multiple domains.
p(doom) refers to the probability of doom, an estimate of the likelihood of a severe disaster or catastrophic event. In this context, it refers to the probability of a serious disaster related to artificial intelligence.
A: For the timeline, it’s very wide-ranging. I’m 95% confident in the timeline for ASI being between 2029 and 2200 (I think AGI may stay roughly on par with humans for a while).
The probability of doom (p(doom)) is roughly 0.1. This certainly gives us reason to take the risks of artificial intelligence seriously.
Q: What do you think would be the warning signs? Or, what do you think might happen to raise your pdoom above >10% or within a timeline of less than 10 years?
A: People have asked this question, and it’s hard for me to express accurately the important things that AI still can’t do. It can roughly be understood as “interacting with other agents in complex environments and formulating and executing plans involving novel behavior.” If AI starts to do this, then I would say we are very close to superintelligence.
One important reason why my p(doom) is not very high is that I am not entirely convinced by the arguments for fast takeoff and the “fire alarm without AGI” (I know fast takeoff is not a prerequisite for disaster, but it has played an important push in this direction!).
If I were convinced by these views, my p(doom) would go up.
Q: If we assume that AGI is achieved at some point, what do you think the path to human happiness would be after that?
A: Personally, I would like to see a path that preserves human agency. Of course, this would inevitably mean that there needs to be higher bandwidth and more frequent communication between the computation supported by technology and human intentions…
Q: The word “bandwidth” catches my attention 
In your model, does “human agency” mean based on biology?
If it is based on biology, the non-biological side will dominate, and we may face the risk of AI.
If it is non-biological, the result may not be so pleasing for most people.
It is a dilemma. Do you see any other options?
A: The ultimate form of non-biological (unless synthetic biology can compete with metal computers, which would be cool). I expect that as this technology becomes more normalized and the risks are reduced over time, it will become more acceptable to people, just like all radical technologies.
Q: What do you dislike most about the crypto world and what drains you the most?
A: As usual, my biggest pet peeve is people who think the primary innovation of crypto is introducing tokens to everything. Beyond that, I’d say:
- Large-scale capital misallocation
- People who are easy to co-opt (cough, fake libertarians…)
- On the other hand, completely unworkable purest beliefs (“12-word mnemonics are good enough for anyone!”)
- Needless conflict
Q: What are your thoughts on the latest developments in proof systems, especially proof aggregation, recursion, and composition?
A: Aggregation, recursion, and so on are crucial for proving complex statements quickly. For example, we need to be able to prove the validity of an Ethereum block in under 4 seconds; you can only do that through some sort of parallelization and composition.
Q: Do you think governance systems with nontrivial power can remain uncaptured indefinitely? What are the arguments to the “time_to_capture” function?
A: @SamoBurja would say this is an unsolved problem. I’m inclined to agree. You can get close, but you have to accept some tradeoffs. Having very specific and limited goals (such as maintaining a price oracle) can help, although even in that case you run into problems once extreme circumstances arise.
Q: What do you imagine the scale and complexity of a human Mars city to be? If by 2050 there are 1 million people living on Mars, a ticket to go there costs only $50k and Ethereum is processing 60M transactions per second, would you permanently move to Mars?
A: It would depend on quality of life! (And also the eventual legal jurisdiction, culture, etc. of the Mars city.)
Q: Do you think it’s worthwhile to foster closer relationships between the Ethereum and Bitcoin communities, and if so, how can we do that?
A: I think one potential area for cooperation is to work harder on jointly supporting non-blockchain freedom and privacy tools. End-to-end encrypted messaging (without phone numbers), internet anonymity, end-to-end collaborative tools, secure operating systems (like Graphene, Qubes?), open hardware, open VR, and so on.
Q: Are there any downsides to introducing EIP1559b, which distributes some of the tokens that are going to be destroyed to household independent validators? For those who run a small number of clients, the allocation can be increased based on the sliding ratio.
A: The protocol cannot distinguish who is a household individual independent validator.
Q: Safest cold wallet?
A: Safe Wallet.
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