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Vitalik's latest AMA: Thoughts on personal motivation, Layer 2 design mechanism, and upper-layer applications

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What ideas that failed to materialize in the early days of Ethereum do you hope people will try to build again?

Original title: "Vitalik's latest AMA: I love listening to Angela Chang; I want to play table tennis; I worry about climate change..."

Original source: Odaily Planet Daily

On October 18, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin conducted an open AMA on the Farcaster-based social media platform Warpcast.

During the hours-long interaction, the community asked Vitalik many interesting questions, involving the development of Ethereum and Crypto, his views on real society, his personal hobbies and experiences, etc. Vitalik also selected some of the questions and answered them seriously.

The following are some of the more meaningful (or interesting) Q&A content selected by Odaily Planet Daily.

Question 1: About personal motivation

Q: What is your source of motivation?

Vitalik: My motivation comes from knowing that the Ethereum community and what we are building have a very unique meaning in this increasingly complex world, and we can do something truly valuable. In this process, positive results will not come naturally, so it is our responsibility to think carefully and make it a reality.

Question 2: About quantum threats

Q: I would like to know your views on quantum computers and their solutions, because I think it will be realized earlier than people expect.

Vitalik: Account abstraction (ERC-4337) provides us with a clear idea to make users' accounts quantum-resistant. For existing accounts, if the quantum computer era suddenly arrives, we may have to do a hard fork, and you will be able to prove your 12-word mnemonic through ZK-STARK and then restore your EOA address.

For the consensus layer, alternatives to STARK-based "BLS aggregation", "Verkle tree", and "KZG-based DAS" are being actively explored.

Question 3: About Bitcoin

Q: When Ethereum exists, do you think Bitcoin will still have value?

Vitalik: This article by Starknet developer abdel.stark on Ethereum Alignment explains this question very well. Bitcoin makes a different set of technical trade-offs and therefore covers a very different hypothesis space than Ethereum.

Question 4: Design limitations of Layer 2

Q: Scroll recently launched its zkEVM mainnet. However, since Layer 2 needs to closely mimic the classic EVM on Ethereum, it is unlikely that we will see innovative design concepts and experiments, such as privacy features, on the execution layer.

Vitalik: I don't think the execution layer needs privacy, which can be built on top.

Question 5: About upper-layer applications

Q: In your opinion, why haven't cryptocurrency-based prediction markets received much attention? Do you still think they have potential? What else do they need to do to "take off"?

Vitalik: They are slowly getting closer to their goal. Polymarket has made considerable progress recently, and it seems to blend Crypto attributes with business development better than any previous attempt.

Question 6: About traditional finance and capitalism

Q: In your opinion, what are the biggest threats to traditional finance and late capitalism?

Vitalik: Traditional military, late authoritarianism.

Question 7: About climate change

Q: What do you think about climate change?

Odaily Planet Daily Note: Potential impact of climate change on GDP of different economies

Vitalik: Anything that could have this kind of impact on the world is worth worrying about. Just halving GDP is terrible for the world's poorest countries, not to mention the direct impact on humans. But having said that, ideas like "this is going to make the world so bad, I shouldn't have an eco-friendly child" are also wrong and harmful.

I have invested in a solar cell company and am open to more. We need to consciously invest resources and move along many technological paths at the same time to properly solve this problem.

Question 8: About "sky-high" consumption

Q: Do you still have the T-shirt you bought with 8.5 BTC?

Vitalik: No. Unfortunately, I lost it when I forgot to bring my bag on a British train many years ago.

Question 9: About favorite music

Q: What music are you listening to these days?

Vitalik: Some high-energy Chinese songs are very suitable for listening to the 15-20 kilometers of long-distance running, and can significantly increase running speed. For example, Angela Chang's "Aurora" and "Breaking the Cocoon" can almost increase my speed by 10%.

Recently, I also listen to some Japanese songs.

Question 10: About Favorite Cities

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

Vitalik: Recently, I have indeed become less of a "city dweller". Even if I am in Singapore, I tend to live far away from the city center, such as near a reservoir park.

In terms of cities, I prefer Singapore, Taipei, Vienna, Toronto, and Ithaca, New York.

Question 11: About Sports

Q: Do you want to play tennis together?

Vitalik: Are you talking about "track and field table tennis"? Hahaha I'm just making fun of the fact that this sport is always mistakenly called table tennis. I haven't played these two sports for a long time and I really want to play them sometime.

Question 12: About diet

Q: What did you eat this morning?

Vitalik: About 16 grams of Lindt 85% dark chocolate, my favorite 90% dark chocolate is out. I usually only eat two meals a day, brunch and dinner, about 6 hours apart.

Summary

In addition to the above questions, community users have also raised some other very valuable questions, such as "What ideas do you want people to try to build again that were not realized in the early stages of Ethereum" asked by former Scalar Capital partner Linda Xie, etc., but perhaps because he was busy with other matters, Vitalik has not answered again in the past 8 hours.

Since Farcaster has lifted the registration restrictions earlier this month, interested iOS users (Android is not yet supported) can try to register and experience Warpcast, and perhaps get a reply from Vitalik himself.