What is 30-year-old Vitalik doing when ETH breaks through 4400 dollars?

Question

Author｜Wenser (@wenser 2010)

As the price of ETH surged, once breaking above $4400, Ethereum founder Vitalik has shifted from being extremely active last year to retreating behind the scenes, occasionally speaking out. His personal focus has also expanded from cryptocurrencies and the Ethereum ecosystem to the recent hot topics of ETH reserve strategies, AI models, and even the cultural differences between China and the U.S.

As the Ethereum Foundation's reforms gradually advance and the ETH reserve strategy is in full swing, Vitalik seems to have temporarily laid down the burdens of a founder, embodying a sense of detachment and clarity of purpose. Odaily Planet Daily will summarize Vitalik's recent public statements in this article, providing a glimpse into his current thoughts and ideas.

An overview of Vitalik's recent situation: Besides the Ethereum ecosystem, he is also concerned about culture and AI.

On May 21 of this year, Vitalik updated his status on Farcaster, stating that he bought a standard drink (a venti 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%, filled with exclamations between the words. (Odaily Planet Daily Note: In comparison, the expected annual inflation rate in the U.S. from 2013 to 2025 is 3.35%)

Later, after proposing the "ZK verification multi-worker allocation conjecture" and a "German homophonic pun," Vitalik was quite quiet for a while.

A month later, he posted again on Farcaster with an image. The post was published in the Berlin channel, with the caption "Fuk bitcoins. Das ist unser Krieg." The image was a photo of a graffiti wall that read "Fuk bitcoins. Das ist unser Krieg" (meaning "Fuk bitcoins. This is our war"). It is reported that the graffiti is suspected to be a slogan opposing support for Ukraine, originally meaning "This is not our war," with the negation in the latter part being obscured, turning it into a call for peace and support for Ukraine.

At that time, Vitalik may have wandered the streets of Berlin, where he discovered slogans related to Bitcoin, expressing his call for peace and confidence in ETH and the Ethereum ecosystem. Subsequently, he shifted his focus back to the Ethereum ecosystem.

He still can't let go of his favorite Ethereum ecosystem.

As a product of Vitalik's dedication, the Ethereum ecosystem is undoubtedly a technological gem that he finds most difficult to part with.

In the past three months, it has continued to make its own judgments and pay close attention to the development of the Ethereum ecosystem, technical roadmap, and governance situation. In summary, the main points of its speeches include:

Emphasize the advantages of Ethereum and insist on decentralized development. For example, it has presented its views on the dual governance structure, zero-knowledge proof identity risk, decentralized user protection system, and the proposal to enhance Ethereum network's resilience against DoS attacks. It stated: "Institutions choose Ethereum not for its speed, but for its 'stability, reliability, and no downtime'." This is also reflected in the tweet mentioned in the analysis of Ethereum's 10th anniversary, stating "Ethereum has been online for 10 years with zero downtime and zero maintenance." Additionally, it unexpectedly believes that "the success of Ethereum has exceeded anyone's expectations."
Focus on the development of the Ethereum ecosystem and L2 networks. Vitalik has recently emphasized the key points of L2 development, believing that "the best way to build L2 is to rely more on the functions of L1 and suggest that L2 simplify its logic to sorters and provers, thereby minimizing trust dependence and avoiding the need for hard forks"; "Ethereum will ultimately achieve 'almost real-time' transfers of cross-L2 native assets via L1"; "L2 should aim for quick withdrawals through ZK systems as the next phase goal." Undoubtedly, as the proponent of L2 solutions, Vitalik is fundamentally a "L1 purist."
Enhance Ethereum L1 performance and reduce costs while increasing efficiency. On one hand, Vitalik supports raising the Ethereum L1 Gas limit to 45 million through community voting; on the other hand, he, together with Anders Elowsson, initiated the EIP-0000 proposal, hoping to introduce a unified multidimensional fee market for Ethereum transactions, allowing users to set an overall max_fee cap for various resources (such as gas, blobs, etc.), improving capital utilization efficiency and simplifying the operational experience.

"Drinking ice for ten years, hard to cool hot blood" - this saying is perfect to describe Vitalik's love for Ethereum. However, after experiencing the price trough of ETH last year, Vitalik no longer gets caught up in debating with the market and users about who is right or wrong, but instead focuses more on discussions and developments at the technical level, paying attention to the overall growth of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Vitalik's two main focuses under the ideal of decentralization: privacy and Copyleft open source.

Recently, Vitalik's two major focuses under the decentralized ideal banner include privacy and open source.

Previously, the Ethereum Foundation awarded $500,000 to support the legal defense of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. Vitalik also emphasized in a post that "backdoor-free privacy messaging tools have been widely accepted, and the United States should lead by example in supporting developers."

In addition, it has also stated: "I have always supported permissive licenses because I hope to maximize the adoption and dissemination of works, and releasing them under permissive licenses helps achieve this, as permissive licenses clearly state that if anyone wants to develop based on my work, they do not need to worry about any issues. Additionally, from a philosophical perspective, I do not like copyright, but rather appreciate the leftist idea of 'using copyright against itself'. However, this idea has now shifted to focus more on Copyleft, as open source has become mainstream, making it more feasible for companies to move towards open source. Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Huawei are embracing open source, and the competition in the cryptocurrency field is becoming increasingly fierce, driven solely by profit. (Note: Copyleft is a concept and licensing method that contrasts with traditional copyright. Copyleft licenses require that derivative works based on the original work must also be open-sourced under the same licensing terms, ensuring that the work remains open and shared during its dissemination and development.)

Perhaps, in today's view of Vitalik, enjoying the convenience of privacy and open source also requires supporting it with the same attitude, rather than just enjoying the benefits without taking responsibility as in the past.

He is much more concerned about AI than one might think.

Compared to cryptocurrencies, many people may think that Vitalik has a relatively negative attitude toward AI, but based on his recent statements, as a tech geek, he still maintains a high level of attention and vigilance toward AI.

Last month, he posted stating: regularly reminding people that artificial intelligence has the capability to take away the crazy crown of cryptocurrency within weeks. Yesterday, he posted again saying: "Rather than pursuing the most 'autonomous' AI possible, it is better to create more pathways for human input, which not only improves output quality over a longer period but is also more beneficial for safety. Compared to models generated from scratch, I am more interested in open-source AI models that have good editing capabilities. In the medium term, I hope to see advanced brain-computer interface technology that can display content in real-time during the generation process and perceive user emotions to adjust dynamically." In addition, he also published a lengthy article specifically responding to the vision of "AI in 2027."

It must be said that, while countless people are still either overly trusting of AI models or criticizing the content generated by AI models, Vitalik has a much larger imagination regarding the potential of AI.

Is the cultural differences between China and the United States also his research subject?

In a Farcaster post on July 21, Vitalik mentioned his favorite "century demarcation periods," including 1643-1648 (the transition from the Ming to the Qing dynasty, the end of the Thirty Years' War, the signing of the Peace of Westphalia, the death of Galileo, and the birth of Newton), 1789 (the French Revolution and Lavoisier's push for the formalization of chemistry), 1911-1917 (the Xinhai Revolution, World War I, the Russian Revolution, and relativity), and 2020-2023 (the COVID-19 pandemic, the end of American governance, and AI passing the Turing test). It is clear that Vitalik has a deep understanding of both domestic and foreign history.

In a recent post, he stated: "The cultural differences between China and the United States are still about four times greater than the cultural differences between generations (30 years). However, I predict that as technological advancements accelerate and global interconnectedness deepens, future generational differences will surpass national cultural differences and may bring about many unexpected effects, such as using longevity technology as a means of cultural preservation, etc."

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

Vitalik also discusses ETH reserve strategies: one of the diversified investment methods, but beware of "over-leveraged games".

Aside from voicing through personal channels, Vitalik recently appeared in an interview on the Bankless podcast, a benchmark media outlet in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Regarding the "impact of ETH reserves on Ethereum," Vitalik did not shy away from stating, "ETH as an asset that companies can hold is good and valuable, and providing more options is beneficial."

But he also issued a warning: "If you wake me up in three years and tell me that sovereign debt caused the collapse of ETH, my guess is that it has turned into an excessively leveraged game."

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

Some good-hearted individuals have dug up Vitalik's previous criticism of Strategy founder Michael Saylor's comments when establishing BTC reserves, implying that "the ass decides the brain."

Vitalik's "double-faced approach"?

However, in my opinion, there is a time for everything, and at that time, Vitalik's criticism of Saylor was more focused on the fact that Strategy, as a regulated publicly traded company, may have a negative impact on the degree of decentralization in the cryptocurrency industry due to its coin hoarding strategy.

Looking at today, a year later, this point has almost become a fait accompli after the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs and Ethereum spot ETFs; the significant recovery of ETH in the past three months and the possibility of breaking new highs are precisely driven by the leading companies holding ETH reserves.

The course of history is not subject to individual will; many times, for Vitalik, the direction of Ethereum and even the cryptocurrency industry may be the same.

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

After surpassing his thirties, after experiencing the operation of the Ethereum network for a full 10 years, and as the price of ETH returns to new highs since the end of 2021, Vitalik, born in 1994, may also be slowly moving along his own path of clarity, seeking his own destiny amidst various balances.