Original Article Title: "When ETH Surpasses $4400, What Is 31-Year-Old Vitalik Doing?"

Original Article Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

With the ETH price repeatedly hitting new highs and briefly surpassing $4400 (Rhythm BlockBeats Note: On the morning of August 13, Ethereum had surpassed $4600, only 5.14% away from the all-time high of $4868), Ethereum's founder Vitalik has shifted from his highly active state of frequent public engagement last year to a more behind-the-scenes role, occasionally speaking out. His personal focus has also expanded from cryptocurrency and the Ethereum ecosystem to the recent hot topics of ETH reserve strategies, AI models, and even the differences between Chinese and American cultures.

Amid the ongoing Ethereum Foundation reforms and the fervent promotion of the ETH reserve strategy, Vitalik finally seems to have temporarily set aside the heavy burden of being a founder, showing a somewhat detached and determined attitude. In this article, Odaily Planet Daily will summarize Vitalik's recent public statements to glimpse into his current thoughts and concerns.

A Brief Analysis of Vitalik's Recent Situation: Beyond the Ethereum Ecosystem, Still Concerned about Culture and AI

On May 21st of this year, Vitalik updated his status on Farcaster, mentioning that he purchased a standard drink (an oversized cup of hot green tea) at Starbucks in Switzerland for 6.2 Swiss Francs; compared to the price of 5.6 Swiss Francs in 2014, the local annual inflation rate is only 1%, with his words filled with amazement. (Odaily Planet Daily Note: In comparison, the expected annual inflation rate in the United States from 2013 to 2025 is 3.35%.)

Subsequently, after proposing the "ZK Verification Multi-Worker Allocation Conjecture" and a "German Homophonic Pun," Vitalik remained quiet for a while.

It wasn't until a month later that he posted again on Farcaster, along with an image. The post was made in the Berlin channel, with the text saying "Fuk bitcoins. Das ist unser Krieg." The image was a photo of a graffiti wall with the words "Fuk bitcoins. Das ist unser Krieg" (meaning "Fuk bitcoins. This is our war") written on it. It is understood that the graffiti appears to be a slogan opposing support for Ukraine, originally intended to say "This is not our war" with the negation word blurred out, turning it into a call for peace and support for Ukraine.

At that time, Vitalik might have been strolling through the streets of Berlin, Germany, where he stumbled upon Bitcoin-related graffiti, using it to express his call for peace and his confidence in the ETH and Ethereum ecosystem. Later, he once again shifted his focus back to the Ethereum ecosystem.

He Just Can't Let Go of His Beloved Ethereum Ecosystem

As the product of Vitalik's hard work, the Ethereum ecosystem is undoubtedly the most difficult and impossible to part with technical crystallization for him.

Over the past three months, he has continued to make his own judgments and closely follow the development of the Ethereum ecosystem, its technical roadmap, and governance. In summary, his key talking points include:

1. Emphasizing Ethereum's strengths and advocating for decentralized development. For example, he expressed his views on the dual governance structure, the risk of zero-knowledge proof identity, the decentralized user protection system, and initiating proposals to enhance Ethereum's network's resistance to DoS attacks. He stated: "Institutions choose Ethereum not because of speed, but because of its 'stability, reliability, and uptime.'" As mentioned in a tweet analyzing Ethereum's 10th anniversary, "Ethereum has been online for 10 years without pause or maintenance," which also reflects this point. Furthermore, he unsurprisingly believes that "Ethereum's success has exceeded everyone's expectations."

2. Focusing on the Ethereum ecosystem and L2 network development. Recently, Vitalik has repeatedly emphasized the focus on L2 development, believing that "the best way to build L2 is to rely more on L1 functionality and suggest that L2 simplify its logic into sequencers and attestors to minimize trust dependencies and avoid hard fork requirements"; "Ethereum will ultimately enable nearly real-time transfer of native assets across L2 through L1"; "L2 should aim to achieve fast withdrawals through a ZK system as the next phase goal." Undoubtedly, as the proposer of the L2 solution, Vitalik fundamentally remains an "L1 purist."

3. Enhancing Ethereum L1 performance and cost-effectiveness. On the one hand, Vitalik supports raising the Ethereum L1 Gas limit to 45 million through community voting; on the other hand, together with Anders Elowsson, he initiated the EIP-0000 proposal, hoping to introduce a unified multidimensional fee market for Ethereum transactions through community voting. This would allow users to set a total `max_fee` cap for multiple resources (such as gas, blobs, etc.), improving capital efficiency and simplifying the user experience.

“Drinking the ice for ten years, it’s hard to cool the hot blood” — This phrase is used to describe Vitalik’s passion for Ethereum. However, after experiencing last year’s ETH price low, Vitalik is no longer entangled in arguing with the market and users about who’s right or wrong, but is more focused on technical discussions and development, caring about the overall growth of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Vitalik’s 2 Major Focuses Under the Decentralization Ideal: Privacy and Copyleft Open Source

Recently, the two main focus points under Vitalik’s decentralization ideal include privacy and open source.

Previously, the Ethereum Foundation had donated an additional $500,000 to support Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s legal defense. Vitalik also emphasized in a post that “privacy tools without backdoors have been widely accepted, and the U.S. should set an example in supporting developers."

In addition, he had also written: “I've always supported permissive licenses because I want to maximize the adoption and dissemination of the work. Releasing under permissive licenses helps achieve this because it clearly signals that if anyone wants to build on my work, they should have no concerns. Furthermore, I don’t like copyright from a philosophical perspective, and I appreciate the copyright-left philosophy of ‘using copyright against itself.’ However, this idea has now changed, and I am starting to focus more on Copyleft because open source has become mainstream. Corporations like Google, Microsoft, and Huawei are embracing open source. Secondly, competition in the cryptocurrency space is becoming more intense, motivated by profit. (Note: Copyleft is a concept and licensing approach that is opposite to traditional Copyright. Copyleft licenses require that derivative works based on the original work must also be open-sourced under the same license, ensuring that the work maintains open and shared characteristics during its dissemination and development process.)

Perhaps, in Vitalik’s view today, enjoying the convenience of privacy and open source should come with a similar attitude of supporting it, rather than just benefiting without taking responsibility.

For AI, His Focus Is Far Greater Than Imagined

Compared to cryptocurrency, many may think that Vitalik’s attitude towards AI is more negative, but based on his recent statements, as a tech geek, he still maintains a high level of interest and extreme vigilance towards AI.

Last month, he wrote: “Regular reminder that AI is fully capable of snatching the crazy crown of cryptocurrency within weeks.” Yesterday, he wrote again, “Instead of pursuing AI that is as ‘autonomous’ as possible, it is better to input more pathways for humanity, which can not only improve output quality over a longer period but also enhance security. Compared to a model generated from scratch, I am more interested in open-source AI models with good editing capabilities. In the mid-term, I hope to see advanced brain–computer interface technology that can dynamically adjust in real-time during the content generation process and perceive user emotions.” In addition, he has also published a long article specifically addressing the “Vision of AI 2027.”

It has to be said that, in a time when countless people are still superstitious about AI models or critical of content generated by AI models, Vitalik's speculation about the potential of AI is much greater than that of the average person.

Is the cultural difference between China and the US also his research subject?

In a July 21st Farcaster post, Vitalik mentioned his favorite "century boundary periods," including the years 1643-1648 (transition from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, end of the Thirty Years' War, signing of the Peace of Westphalia, Galileo's death, Newton's birth), 1789 (French Revolution, Lavoisier driving the formalization of chemistry), 1911-1917 (Xinhai Revolution, World War I, Russian Revolution, theory of relativity), and 2020-2023 (COVID-19 pandemic, end of US hegemony, AI passing the Turing Test). It is clear that Vitalik has done considerable research on domestic and foreign history.

In a recent post, he bluntly stated: "The cultural difference between China and the US is still about 4 times greater than the intergenerational (30-year) cultural difference. But I predict that as technological progress accelerates and global interconnectedness deepens, intergenerational differences in the future will surpass national cultural differences and may bring about many unexpected impacts, such as using longevity technology as a cultural preservation tool."

In other words, as people's lifespans increase, national boundaries may become blurred, and generational differences will result in people of different ages having different memories, allowing different cultures to be preserved in the memories of different generations.

Vitalik also discusses ETH reserve strategy: one of the diversification investment means, but beware of "overleveraged games"

In addition to speaking out through personal channels, Vitalik recently appeared in an interview with the Ethereum ecosystem's flagship media—Bankless Podcast.

Regarding the impact of "ETH reserves on Ethereum," Vitalik also openly stated, "ETH as an asset that a company can hold is good and valuable, providing more options is good."

But he also issued a warning: "If you wake me up in three years and tell me that sovereign debt led to the collapse of ETH. My guess is they became an overleveraged game."

Of course, this statement is also seen as one of Vitalik's testimonies in support of the ETH reserve strategy, which has attracted some criticism.

A busybody dug up Vitalik's past criticism of Strategy founder Michael Saylor's establishment of a BTC reserve, suggesting that "his butt decided his head."

Vitalik's "dual nature"?

However, in the author's view, circumstances change, and at that time, Vitalik's criticism of Saylor was more focused on Strategy as a regulated public company, suggesting that its coin hoarding strategy might have a negative impact on the decentralization of the cryptocurrency industry.

Looking at it a year later, with the almost certain establishment of a Bitcoin spot ETF and an Ethereum spot ETF, the substantial rebound of ETH in the past three months, and even the possibility of breaking to new highs, largely stem from the efforts of ETH reserve-listed companies.

The course of history is not subject to individual will. Many times, for Vitalik, perhaps the direction of Ethereum and even the cryptocurrency industry is also the same.

In March of this year, Vitalik changed his X platform account avatar from his previous Milady NFT to a Druid Tauren bear form from World of Warcraft, and his Twitter bio was changed to "I choose balance. First-level balance. mi pinxe lo crino tcati," accompanied by a post titled "In Balance" published on September 12, 2018, on the Slate Star Codex forum.

After passing the milestone of his life, after experiencing a full decade of the Ethereum network's operation, and as ETH's price returned to new highs since the end of 2021, Vitalik, born in 1994, may also be slowly treading his own path of enlightenment, seeking his own destiny in various forms of balance.

Original Article Link

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia