Vitalik: The world should not fall into the power kingdom dominated by AI

Source: Tencent News

Our world is being impacted by multiple new technological forces.

The first is the artificial intelligence force represented by OpenAI, which is becoming the mainstream that dominates the world's technological thought. The second is Web3, encryption technology and blockchain. In the past two years, these two forces have become very different.

In November 2024, we met Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who stood on the other side of encryption technology and looked at artificial intelligence. In his eyes, artificial intelligence is intervening in human emotions, thoughts and even subconsciousness in a seemingly equal, intimate and harmless manner, and it may build an unprecedentedly powerful power center through this. A technological revolution will promote the "Game of Thrones" that concerns the fate of all mankind.

Buterin is the spiritual leader of Web3. The Ethereum he founded ranks second in the industry, second only to Bitcoin. Since the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, has never appeared, Buterin has become the spokesperson in this field. His experience has also added to his legendary color.

Buterin was born in 1994. His parents divorced when he was a child and he immigrated to Canada from Russia. He dropped out of college at the age of 19 to found Ethereum, and became the youngest crypto billionaire in his 20s. In China, people call him "V God". He just turned 30 this year.

Buterin always tries to elaborate a philosophy of technology. In his cognition, AI and Crypto represent two underlying philosophies. AI technology is more centralized and powerful, and it intends to make human civilization and technology stronger; on the contrary, Crypto advocates a decentralized and egalitarian philosophy of survivalism. Unlike AI, which occupies a place in a few strongholds around the world, Crypto's strongholds are scattered around the world, and are even more suitable for marginal areas. In the words of Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel: "Crypto is libertarian and AI is communist." "Now everyone uses ChatGPT, just like chatting with a friend. But 10 years later, everyone will tell ChatGPT all their thoughts. If your artificial intelligence has no privacy, you as a person will have no privacy at all, including the privacy of your thoughts. " Buterin said, " "If it is centralized, it means that a large company can read your thoughts - This is very dangerous. ”

Buterin’s lifestyle seems to be consistent with the technical ideas he advocates. Our meeting was held in a simple office space. The agreed time was 8 in the morning, and he arrived at 740. He was alone, with a khaki canvas bag with a cat pattern under his arm. In the bag was a Dell computer that he bought to do distributed artificial intelligence. On his wrist was a plastic watch with a cat pattern. He always traveled between discrete Web3 communities in this outfit.

Buterin knows 6 languages, and he speaks English, Russian and Chinese best. This conversation was conducted in Chinese.

He still looks a little green and nerd, trying hard to search for the right Chinese characters to express the difficult technical vocabulary. The staff poured him a cup of tea, and he repeatedly rubbed the small label on the tea bag with his hands, folded it up and put it down, picked it up and unfolded it, and folded it up again……

If one day, the ultimate power of artificial intelligence or "Big Brother" wants to destroy mankind, will the Crypto Kingdom you represent come to save mankind?

"This question is quite complicated. ” Buterin said.

The following is the full text of the conversation. (For ease of reading, the author has done some text optimization)

Photo taken by the author at the scene, the picture shows Vitalik Buterin

1. “LLM is very powerful”

Periscope: In the blog post "The end of my childhood" (The End of My Childhood) in commemoration of your 30, you said:“One of the things that fascinates me about modern AI is that it allows us to engage mathematically and philosophically with the hidden variables that guide human interaction in different ways: AI can make ‘empathy’ legible. ”Can you tell us about your idea of ​​AI? Buterin: Philosophers like to use the latest technology to describe what humans are. 100-200 years ago, we had industrial civilization and early robots. They had no brains but the first step of automation. They said that humans are machines. Recently, everyone is interested in quantum technology. Many people ask whether the human brain is also quantum. I don’t think so. How do humans think? Sometimes it’s nonsense. But people think in this way: What do humans have in common with computers? What do humans have in common with factories? What do humans have in common with animals? This is how we understand humans. Now, the latest technology is a new generation of artificial intelligence technology: LLM (Large Matrix Machine Learning). Large Language Model). Let's look at the concept of LLM. It is very complex, but it is very powerful - it can do many things, and we don't know how it does them - it is a black box. The difference between LLM and ordinary programs is that if you randomly delete a line of code in an ordinary program, the entire code may collapse, which is very fragile; with LLM, if you make some small changes, it will not affect the basic functions. If you only change a little bit, the output will also change a little bit. Therefore, LLM is very similar to humans and animals. It is biological.

Anthropic research aims to see what concepts each parameter represents in a relatively small LLM. They found that in LLM, you can see - for example, this parameter represents the color red, this parameter represents the letter A, and that parameter represents capitalism. You can see some very advanced concepts.

I posted two pictures. I told ChatGPT: draw an extreme Bitcoin person, and draw a similar extreme Ethereum person. On the left, there is an exaggerated local tyrant in Bitcoin, and on the right, there is a computer-playing geek in Ethereum. It can be seen through AI that there are cultural differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum. Through AI, we can think about the concepts of many people and society, and thus understand ourselves more.

《Periscope》: In the past two years, artificial intelligence and large language models have replaced Web3, encryption technology and blockchain, and have become the mainstream of global technological thought. Standing on the other side of the Crypto technology wave, watching the AI ​​revolution on the other side, what are you thinking? Buterin: Blockchain and AI have completely different functions. In the short term, AI is a tool that everyone can use to improve efficiency. For example, when I write code or articles, especially when I am not good at something, ChatGPT is the most helpful to me. But in the long run, will AI be smarter than humans? It will definitely be, but I don’t know if it will be in 5 or 50 years. Blockchain solves the trust problem. If you want to make applications, these applications require many people to participate, operate and communicate with each other. They don’t have a trust center, and blockchain applications can solve this problem. There are many trust problems in our world, and these problems are more prominent than 10 years ago.

But in the Crypto field, there has been a problem in the past 5 years: everyone’s dreams and hopes are high, but the technology cannot achieve most of the dreams. 2020 and 2021 have this problem: the transaction fees of Ethereum, Bitcoin and all chains are very high. It costs 1 or 3 dollars to send a very simple transaction. Most of the applications that people want to do, except for finance, are not possible. But this year, the Ethereum expansion project, Layer2 transaction fees have been reduced from 0.5 dollars to sometimes 0.005 dollars. Many applications that were impossible before are now possible.

This has happened many times in the computer field: for a long time, everyone has an idea, but it takes computer technology, CPU speed and Internet traffic to upgrade to a certain level before these things are finally possible. In the next 1, 2 or 3 years, this trend will also happen in Web3.

《Periscope》: In the field of Crypto, will Super App appear in the next 3 years?

Buterin: I sometimes think about a longer-term question: Will the concept of App change a lot in 10 years?

Now App means you have a computer or a mobile phone, the mobile phone has an interface, and you do something on the interface through buttons. But because of artificial intelligence, the way we interact with computers and the Internet has changed a lot.

In the field of artificial intelligence, startups say, now there is AI technology, we make AI applications. Some (projects) succeed. But most will find that: in fact, people don’t need any applications. Whatever they want to do, they can directly tell ChatGPT, and ChatGPT will give them an answer. So I wonder, will the Super App of the future be this? You can use AI to communicate directly with computers, mobile phones or any devices, and AI will know what you want to do and will help you do it.

"Periscope": The revolution of artificial intelligence technology will intensify centralization, so is its development getting further and further away from the world you envision?

Buterin: This question is very complicated. I recently used AI and found an interesting point: I do something that many people have done before, but I am not good at it. ChatGPT is very useful to me; but I do some very cutting-edge things, such as complex cryptography, which may only be done by me and 1000 other people, and AI is of no help to me at all. On the one hand, AI can get some equal results and let some people do things they are not good at. On the other hand, ChatGPT is a very centralized application. When you use ChatGPT, you must fully trust that it will not expose your various data. I think this problem will become particularly obvious in 10 and 20 years.

Now everyone uses ChatGPT, just like chatting with a friend. But 10 years later, everyone will tell ChatGPT all their thoughts. It is possible that we will have some things like BCI (brain-computer interface), where people and robots will have a deep connection. If your artificial intelligence has no privacy, you as a person have no privacy at all, including the privacy of your thoughts. This is the first problem.

The second problem is that if it is a centralized company, it can be shut down at any time, change the rules at any time, and change the service conditions at any time. Whether you are a person, a company, or a country, once you start to rely on these, risks will appear.

So, AI has a lot of advantages, but also these problems.

I know a lot of people are starting to do open source AI, Decentralized AI. In fact, I use these things myself. I deliberately bought a computer —— (Buterin turned and took out a computer from a canvas bag to show it) —— This computer has a GPU, Nvidia's 4070, and I can run some LLM on my own computer.

When I don't need the highest level of quality for ChatGPT, I can do it on my own computer. I found that this has an advantage, when I don't have the Internet, it's no problem. Decentralize AI is very important. Second, "OpenAI sacrificed open source for security in the first step, and sacrificed security for profit in the second step" Periscope: I'm curious, what do you think of OpenAI? Is it possible to become the largest, or even the final monopoly? Buterin: The story of OpenAI is very interesting. On the one hand, it has made a very useful tool for everyone. I can't say everyone. Because ChatGPT has two levels: the first level is free; the second level costs 20 dollars per month, which is available in some countries and not in some countries. This tool is very useful, especially when I enter a field I am not good at.

But OpenAI has a problem. At the beginning, Elon Musk saw many big Silicon Valley companies working on artificial intelligence. He was worried that if artificial intelligence was done by them, would it become very centralized? There are many risks, so he started OpenAI. And 5 years later, for AI security reasons, although they did not say that they would not open source, they changed the definition -open means that their services are open.

《Periscope》: It became CloseAI.

Buterin: Yes, they became CloseAI. Today, another problem arises: first, they sacrificed their open source for security; then this year, they sacrificed their security for profit.

Last year, the company clashed with the board of directors, and after the conflict, it seemed that Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) won. Recently they announced that they would change from a non-profit to a for-profit company, and reduce the power of the board of directors to the level of advisor. This makes me quite worried.

《Perspective》: I interviewed Dr. Kai-Fu Lee a few days ago. He is a Chinese artificial intelligence scientist, investor, and entrepreneur. He made a few statements, and I would like to hear whether you agree with him.

He said: “The first one to make AGIand crush its opponents must be a global business monopolist, and it has the ambition to become the ultimate monopolist.” “OpenAIis a particularly powerful monopolistic company,Sam Altmanmay become the biggest monopolist in history. Although he does not have a monopoly today, his ambition, strategy, and one, two, and three moves are all very clear. I admire him for these. But from the perspective of a practitioner, I am also worried.”

Buterin:That's it.

《Periscope》: So, what do you think of Sam Altman?

Buterin: I have only met him once, so it is difficult to judge him in depth. The only thing I can see is how he does things. There are many things he does in OpenAI that I disagree with.

He is doing the Worldcoin project. I think the idea is good. I don’t think Worldcoin should be the only way for the world to have digital identity, but it is solving a problem that really needs to be solved. I communicate more with the Worldcoin team, and they care more about all the issues I care about.

But there is still this problem. It is very difficult to make the "next global currency". If you want to do this, many people will oppose it. To do this kind of thing, two conditions are required at the same time - this is very interesting - first, the world needs to trust you as a person; second, everyone needs to know that there is a mechanism that allows them not to trust you as a person. They have made more improvements in the past year, and I hope they can continue to develop in a good direction.

《Periscope》: You just said that on the one hand, you need to trust this person, and on the other hand, you need to know that you don't need to trust this person. SamDoes this condition meet?

Buterin:I am not satisfied with the current OpenAI.

The Periscope:Ilya Sutskever(Chief Scientist ofOpenAI) and other key people leavingOpenAI, will it have an impact on the landscape of artificial intelligence?

Buterin:This is a red flag (danger signal), and it is something to worry about.

The departure of many people does not necessarily 100% mean that there is a problem with the company. At the beginning of Ethereum, many co-founders left. If someone leaves or is forced to resign, it always means there are some conflicts and different values ​​behind it. You need to look at the specific details.

Looking at the details of OpenAI, I think this company sacrificed open source for security in the first step, and sacrificed security for profit in the second step. This reminds me of a sentence from an American founding father: You cannot sacrifice freedom for security. If you do this, you will find that you will lose both security and freedom. Looking at the behavior of OpenAI, it seems that this happened.

《Periscope》: Sam Altmanand you, who should humans trust more?

Buterin: This, I don’t want to answer. (Laughter) 3. “The combination of biology and silicon is the only super intelligence that humans can participate in” h2: How do you understand Peter Thiel’s (founding partner of Founders Fund) statement: “Crypto is liberalism, and artificial intelligence is communism.” Buterin: I think what he meant is: AI is centralized, and Crypto is decentralized. Where does the power of AI come from? The first is computing power, and the second is data.

If you have more computing power, your AI will be stronger; if you have more data, your AI will also be stronger. AI is a very powerful thing. The best AI is the biggest AI. If you want to make an AI, the easiest way is to put computing power and data in one place.

Now we can see that AI companies are almost all in 3-4 places in the world, Silicon Valley, London, and China (several cities); but Crypto communities and projects are particularly scattered. For the Ethereum Foundation, only 25% of people are in the United States. Where are the others? They are everywhere. There are more in Germany, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and a few developers in China. There are in every country. Why is that? Crypto does something different.

Where is Crypto most useful? It is in some relatively marginal places without a centralized trust center.

《Periscope》: In places without centralized power? This means it is not the protagonist of the world.

Buterin:Crypto's goal is that you can make some applications, in which everyone can see the application rules and contracts. Not everyone can read them themselves, but at least many people can review the code and everyone can participate. Blockchain is a global thing. Therefore, some characteristics of AI and Crypto are really going in different directions.

"Periscope": The underlying values ​​are different.

Buterin: Yes. Moreover, the reasons why people participate in these fields are also different. The common reason is money. What is different is what everyone wants to do with these fields.

People who participate in AI are particularly concerned about the development of human technology, hoping to accelerate the transformation of humans into a cross-planetary civilization, make humans more powerful, and make themselves more powerful. People who participate in blockchain will care about decentralized trust issues, social equity issues, and so on.

"Periscope": Will AIand Cryptobe heading towards two branches, or will they converge? If they converge or go towards two more extreme branches, what will we see on that day?

Buterin: Crypto's role is to make a game, and the game you make may have many goals. Trading can be said to be a game. Another example is the prediction market. This year, Polymarket (a prediction market project) has been more successful.

Crypto can make a game, and use smart contracts to execute the rules of the game more safely. AI can participate in this game. If only people participate, sometimes the efficiency is not high enough. For example, in the prediction market, I played more in Polymarket this year. I found that the quality of their results was not very high four years ago, but this year it is much higher than four years ago. Why? One reason is that liquidity is greater. Last year it might be 1 million or 10 million US dollars, and this year it might be 100 million or 200 million. But I also found that this year, its answers to matters with low liquidity are also better.

So, it is very likely that AI is involved now. AI's reaction speed is very fast. If a person does this, he needs to be on the computer 24 hours a day, watching all the news every minute and every second. But an LLM, you let it run, it can do it by itself.

I think there will be more examples in the future, maybe in the social field, maybe in other fields. Crypto is a security bottom layer. Crypto can be used to make a game and ensure that the rules of the game are fair. The role of AI is to participate.

《Periscope》: So it is not Crypto participatingAI's game, but AI participatingCrypto's game?

Buterin: Yes.

Periscope: One day, if the ultimate power of artificial intelligence or "Big Brother" wants to destroy humanity, will the Kingdom of Crypto that you represent come to save humanity?

Buterin: This question is quite complicated. Crypto's role is to make the rules of the game, not to solve specific problems.

People want to do a lot of things - hope to live longer, live more comfortably, and go to Mars. In order to do these, it is necessary to solve the coordination problem between people. If you are on an island, and there is only you and no one else, Crypto is completely useless. Crypto's only role is to solve problems between people. But if you are the only one on the island, AI is useful. Through this example, you can see that Crypto cannot solve your problems directly, but indirectly. Crypto is making games, but people, robots or other things are still needed to participate in these games.

If you want to see how Crypto saves the world? It can't be just Crypto, but Crypto + something else. Then Crypto + what?

● The first one may be Crypto + Decentralized AI;

● The second one may be Crypto + a technology that can replace AI.

What technology can replace AI? The only answer is that people and computers can do a deeper mutual operation. In the past two years, VR, AR, and the metaverse are quite popular, such as Meta glasses. What are the characteristics of these technologies? The communication between the human brain and the machine can become higher in flow and efficiency.

When you put on Meta glasses, they can directly see where you are looking. Now computers can receive some of your consciousness (conscious); if they can see your eyes and body through glasses, they will communicate directly with your subconscious (subconscious).

An interesting point is that the communication flow between the left and right parts of a person's brain is not very high. If we can make a communication between a person and a machine that is particularly efficient, with high enough flow and fast enough time, the computer will really become a part of you.

Why am I interested in this direction? Because something smarter than humans will definitely appear, maybe in 10 years, 100 years or 1000 years. But is this thing smarter than humans an independent thing that will surpass us, or can we become part of it? I think the second way is particularly interesting. Periscope: We become part of it? Buterin: Yes, or it becomes part of us, which means merging biological and silicon technologies together, and this technology is the only super intelligence that we humans can participate in. If we don't do this, the only possibility is that a single computer is smarter than us, and they will control the world, and humans will have no power to influence the world. If we want to do this, we must use the right way. Now there is Neuralink (a brain-computer interface company founded by Musk), but this technology has a risk, that is, a computer can read your thoughts and read your brain. If it is not open source, but centralized, it sends your information to a server. This means that a large company can read your thoughts, which is very dangerous. So I hope that in both software and hardware, we have open source and security-respecting things. How to participate in Crypto? The first is the business model. Open source technology always has a disadvantage, that it is difficult to make money. If you make something centralized and controlled by yourself, there are many ways to make a lot of money. With open source technology, everyone can download and use it, and they don't need to have anything to do with you after using it. Its technology has advantages, but the disadvantage is that it is difficult to make money. And Crypto has many ways to make money that respect open source.

If we support some open source technologies through Crypto, there may be more open source BCI, more open source artificial intelligence, and more open source everything.

《Periscope》: It sounds like the AI ​​is built on Crypto?

Buterin: The business model can be built on Crypto, or you can use some Crypto technologies to build another architecture.

One thing I haven't mentioned yet is that there are some interesting new crypto technologies recently, including PC (Programmable Cryptography) and FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption). The advantage is that you can make an AI that can do calculations with your private data, but no one else or other computer knows your private data. It uses your data to do calculations, but it doesn't see what the data is. These technologies have been known to be possible since 1982, but this technology has reached a stage where it can be used in more applications.

《Periscope》: Who do you admire and respect the most in the field of artificial intelligence, and who do you dislike the most?

Buterin:Wow, this …There is no obvious example. I respect people who keep their principles for a long time.

In the past 5 years, there have been many external changes, and many people will change their minds. Not necessarily because of their own reasons, most of them are bad reasons-For example, a team I don’t like has an idea, so I need to have an idea to beat (suppress) them.

There are not many people who are willing to keep their minds open for a long time and have principles. If they have, I will respect them.

Fourth, "If issuing a coin and setting up an exchangeis the only thing we do, then this industry is a failure"

《Periscope》: Given the recent popularity of artificial intelligence and its appeal to young talents, what advice would you give to ambitious but hesitant technical experts between blockchain and artificial intelligence career choices?

Buterin:The most important thing is what you are interested in.

《Periscope》: Objectively speaking, will the prosperity of artificial intelligence in the past two years causeCryptoto cool down?

Buterin:Definitely. Some people who used to participate in Crypto have participated in AI because of the good development of AI.

I found three types of people:

● The first type, their goal may be to do something the most important, no matter what it is, just to do something big, influential, and participate in part of human history. Or make more money.

● The second type is for specific reasons of Crypto, such as caring about currency, open source issues, or caring about trust, human freedom issues, etc. They have always been on the blockchain side and will not go to AI.

● The third type is that they want to make money, but the quality of their work will be a little lower.

I have a worry: if particularly smart people don’t do Crypto, those who stay in the Crypto field may not have any interesting ideas, and the only application is the financial application that everyone has been doing for many years. This will become a situation——Issue a coin, make an exchange; issue another coin, make an exchange; issue another coin, this coin has a cute dog——These things are fun, but if they are the only ones in our industry, then this industry has failed.

The challenge facing our industry is to make an application that is meaningful and that many people like to participate in.

I recently discovered that many people want to do this now. 2022 and 2023 are very dangerous times. AI has succeeded, but Crypto has not. Everyone knows that AI's LLM is very powerful, and what can be done with ChatGPT. But Layer2 has not yet come out, or is in a very early stage, and the transaction fees are very high. So in 2022 and 2023, there is the biggest difference in what AI and Crypto can do.

However, this year, the power of Crypto has increased a lot, and many developers have begun to want to make applications that are meaningful and that many users like to participate in. If the field of Crypto continues to succeed, many people will still choose to participate in Crypto.

《Periscope》: I told people in the Chinese venture capital industry around me that I would come to see you today, and many people asked me to ask you the same question: How do you think that the Ethereum ecosystem or the entire Web3 ecosystem still has no practical application products after so many years?

Buterin: My answer is what I just said. Before this year, the transaction fees were too high, some important technologies were not mature, account security issues were not resolved, privacy issues were not resolved, and many other issues were not resolved. Therefore, before this year, our industry did not have enough technology to make applications that ordinary people can participate in. One reason the only successful application is DeFi is because DeFi can make more money.

If there is a chance to increase your money by 10 times, you will do it even if there are technical difficulties. If there is a 30% chance that your account will be stolen, and if you encounter a problem, your money will be gone, but if you win, your money will increase by 10 times, you will most likely still participate.

But if you want to do something more ordinary, the goal is not to increase your money by 10 times, but to protect your money, protect your identity, or participate in some other application. If the technical difficulty and security issues are not solved, you will not participate.

This year, we finally started to solve these problems. This year is the best time to make meaningful applications.

《Periscope》: Is it not what you want to keep speculating and hoarding coins?

Buterin: No.

《Periscope》: What do you want? What do you want to promote in this world?

Buterin: I hope the world will be fairer and more open, and to make some applications that can solve important trust issues. If you want to build a fair and open world, solving the trust problem is a necessary first step. Why are many things not so good? Because people don't know who to trust.

You can look at the application cases of Crypto. In countries facing many financial problems, such as Argentina, they will be particularly interested in Crypto.

● First, this is a reliable financial system. They can put their money in it and the money will not be gone one day.

● Second, they can connect with mainstream finance. Many people use Crypto and work in American or European companies. They can earn American and European level wages and send money to their own countries to themselves or their families to participate in more equitable global affairs.

● Third, there are other applications. For example, everyone likes to talk about words like identity or credit system, but they all hope to solve a problem, which is the trust problem. They hope to know who you can trust. Now there is a topic: knowing who is a person and who is a robot.

If we solve it in a decentralized way, it will be easier for us to make some safe applications that can be used by people all over the world. This can avoid a risk: the division of the world.

《Periscope》: It sounds like Crypto is more suitable for places where trust and fairness are lacking; AI is more suitable for places where people want to pursue greater power - these are two completely different human ideals. Will Crypto ignite countries like Argentina, and AI ignite countries like China and the United States? From a global perspective, the ignition map is different?

Buterin: In the long run, we all need to improve our capabilities. If we have a perfect, fair, and decentralized system, and the people who do things don't improve their capabilities, they will still fall behind after a period of time.

Technologies other than Crypto, including AI and bioscience, need to be involved by the whole world. But there are different ways to do these technologies. If you want to use a decentralized and more open approach, Crypto may be involved in part. In the short term, different countries will have completely different adoptions of Crypto.

For example, Argentina has basic financial problems. For example, the United States, most of the time, does not have these problems. The most useful thing about Crypto for me is that I donate money to some international charities. It is difficult to use a bank machine, but it is easy to use Crypto. In developed countries, the people who use this technology the most are those who want to participate in the international market and society. In smaller countries, there is more adoption of Appchain. I don't know how these things will change in the long run. Periscope: I have a very basic misunderstanding. For ordinary people, what is the difference between a centralized application and a decentralized application? Buterin: I can give you a specific example. We recently have some decentralized SocialFi applications that have been successful on Ethereum. Lens and Farcaster are the two easiest examples to understand. What is the difference between Farcaster and Twitter?

On Twitter, first, its algorithm is completely opaque; second, if you think Twitter is bad, you don't like what it's doing, and want to move to another app, your network will be gone. Anyone who is dissatisfied with Twitter and wants to start a new one needs to start from zero user base, and the network effect problem is particularly difficult to solve.

On Farcaster, the architecture is like this - the first layer is a decentralized network, and the second layer is an interface where users can send messages and see messages from others. One of the most popular clients is called Warpcast. Warpcast is a decentralized App that you can download yourself. It is very easy to use. A user who has never participated in Crypto can use Warpcast. But if you don't like Warpcast and don't like what they do, Farcaster also has many other clients, such as Firefly. If you don't like Warpcast, you can move to Firefly, and you can participate in the Farcaster network through Firefly. The messages you send can be seen in Warpcast, and you can also see the messages sent by Warpcast users.

The decentralized bottom layer ensures that different clients can operate with each other, which can solve the situation where Warpcast becomes a monopoly.

This is an open machine where anyone can be a client. In the Farcaster ecosystem, the open architecture has given some users some important advantages.

《Periscope》: What do you think of speculators in theCryptoindustry? Why are there so many such people in this industry?

Buterin: Speculators exist in many fields, such as the stock market and the sports gambling industry. Many people have this habit.

What should our industry do? First, if some people like to do some more game-like finance, I hope to do alignments, and the result of their participation in these things is useful to their country and society.

Second, we need some ways for them to expand their wealth in the long run. In most societies around the world, people used to do real estate, and everyone bought houses, but the real estate market is very unfair to many people. Everyone doesn't know whether to make money or lose money. If we can make some financial products in the Crypto field that can make money in the long run but are connected to the real economy, it would be great.

Why didn't it succeed before? First, the regulation was not clear enough, but recently, the regulation in many countries has become clearer. Second, the technology must be safe enough.

If you can increase your assets by 10 times, you will be willing to face all kinds of risks. But the real economy is not like this, it may be lower than 3%, 8% or 10%. If your return is reasonable, you need to care about security issues. Now we have solved a little bit. I hope to give everyone some better financial options.

V. "I don't have a nanny, driver or bodyguard"

"Periscope": You became a billionaire at a very young age. What is your life like now?

Buterin: It's not much different from 5 years ago. I will go to different countries and participate in different activities.

More changes are that more people ask me to take photos.

《Periscope》: Do you have a nanny, driver, or bodyguard?

Butlin: None. Maybe when I attend some big events, I have. But most of the time I don’t.

《Periscope》: I saw social media, including Chinese social media, often photographed you taking the subway in Singapore. Why do you always take the subway?

Butlin: Because Singapore’s subway is very good.

《Periscope》: What about other countries?

Butlin: Other countries are different. Some don’t have subways or the subways are annoying, so they will take taxis. If I can walk, I will choose to walk. I like walking.

《Periscope》: Why do you have cats on your bags and watches?

Butlin: Because cats are cute.

Photo taken by the author at the scene, Buterin showing his watch

《Periscope》: Did you buy it in Thailand?

Buterin:No. The watch was given to me by a friend, and the compass was found by myself on Amazon. The cat's bag was given to me by my Thai friend.

《Periscope》: You said in an interview: When I was a child, I always heard such stories that some people were very rich, but they spent their money on private jets, helicopters, luxury sports cars or other stupid things, and finally they had nothing. I remember thinking to myself, this is too stupid. So when you are rich, have you ever had any stupid thoughts? Did you succumb to it, or did you resist it?

Buterin: Emm, I don’t know how to answer this.

The Periscope: In other words, has wealth ever made you lose yourself?

Buterin: I don’t think I would think that way.

The Periscope: Do you often check the amount in your bank account?

Buterin: Not really.

The Periscope: I’m surprised that you can speak Chinese (without having lived in China for a long time). How did you learn and master this language?

Buterin: I started learning in 2013, when I had just dropped out from college and wrote articles for Bitcoin Magazine. I decided to travel and see the Bitcoin world in China, the United States, and Europe. At this time, I saw some articles about China, talking about the Chinese Bitcoin community and projects, which were particularly interesting.

Many people told me that Chinese is the most difficult language to learn. This is a particularly interesting challenge, so I started to learn. At first, I used language software. I came to China for the first time in 2014 and started chatting with many Chinese friends. I continued to learn like this.

《Periscope》: You know many languages, I think 6? Knowing many languages, does it help you doCrypto?

Buterin: My best languages ​​are English, Russian and Chinese. After that, I learned French in a Canadian school, from 2014 to 2019. I learned a little German and Spanish myself. About 6, and I know a little bit of other languages.

Actually, there are. The interesting thing is that European languages ​​are easier to learn, very close to English, coming from Latin. Europeans all speak English, and sometimes they can speak English better on technical topics. But for people who are not in Europe, it is not the case. It is particularly helpful to speak Russian, Chinese, and a little Spanish in South America with other communities.

《Periscope》: What are the three most important things in your mind right now?

Buterin: First, the development of the Ethereum ecosystem, what do we need to do now to make the Ethereum ecosystem, applications, and community develop better.

Second, we talked about some macro-human problems, including AI.

Third, there are many smaller technical matters, such as what I need to do today, what article I will write next, and many small issues.

《Periscope》: What do you think of the US election and the two current candidates? The results are about to come out. (Our conversation took place 1 day before the results of the US election were announced)

Buterin: Who will win today may not have a big impact in 20 or 30 years. There are some trends that will happen no matter what happens today. Even if it doesn't happen today, it may happen in 2028. If it doesn't happen in the United States, it may happen in other countries. So, we mainly look at some long-term and global trends. In 10 years, the world's culture, technology, race, and economy will definitely change a lot.

《Periscope》: As a cosmopolitan or a builder of some kind of utopian community, you always try to break the old order and establish a new order. So what do you think of the human marriage system? Do humans still need marriage?

Buterin: This topic may change a lot in 50 years. Before, everyone's goals were first economic security and second children. But now people, at least in developed countries, do not have urgent economic problems, so they can think more about life and what they like. In addition, many people do not want or are unwilling to (have children).

The Internet has changed our social relationships a lot. If you moved from one city to another 30 years ago, it meant that you lost all your friends, but this is not the case now. If the situation changes, our lives will also change a lot.

《Periscope》: Are you a free person now?

Buterin: Sometimes I am free, sometimes I am not free.

《Periscope》: Not free in what?

Buterin: There are so many people in the Ethereum community. I always wonder what they are thinking and what they want to do.

《Periscope》: Do you have fear?

Buterin: I am afraid of bugs.