Compilation: Kaori, BlockBeats

Editor's note: On January 31st, the YouTube channel "Tech Legislator Ge Ru Jun • Dr. Bao" invited Ethereum founder Vitalik for a full Chinese interview, and the second part was released on February 7th. In the first part, the host and Vitalik discussed the significance of democracy for Ethereum and how Ethereum achieves democracy. In the second part, Vitalik and the host discussed different voting systems and how they help achieve consensus. They also touched on the Zuzalu experiment, Zupass, Quadratic Funding mechanism, and the future of democracy and technology. BlockBeats has compiled noteworthy viewpoints of Vitalik from the program for readers.

Q: As the founder of Ethereum, what is the value of democracy to you? What is the relationship between democracy and blockchain?

Vitalik: Bitcoin was the first blockchain system, and its initial goal was to create a currency payment system + digital gold. However, Satoshi Nakamoto invented two things at the same time: a payment system that created a valuable asset from scratch on the internet, and blockchain technology.

This reminds me of a Swiss Army knife, which contains ten or twenty other functions, but it is still a limited thing. If you want to discover a new function, you need to buy a new knife. But there is a better way, which is to create a blockchain with a universal programming language. I started to delve into this direction, and the Ethereum white paper came out.

The goal of the Ethereum project is not to create a currency, but to explore what can be done with blockchain technology beyond currency. Some co-founders did not start with Bitcoin when entering the blockchain space. So, I think Ethereum is Bitcoin plus a universal technical language, and Ethereum is an open-source document and collective storage capacity.

Another way to understand what blockchain is for is that the concept of open source has existed for forty years, but twenty years ago, this concept was relatively simple—you could run your open-source files on your computer. But most interesting things people want to do, including collaboration between people, have not been connected to the concept of open source because they always face the problem of centralization, who controls whose power is the greatest.

The principle of blockchain is decentralization. We want to do things without a company, a person, or a small group controlling them. If we want to do something more complex than currency, there will be a problem: how does this application upgrade? We have been researching various democratic methods, such as whether the users of this application can control it together.

Many people tend to think that democracy is only related to the state, but in fact, democracy is a concept that is used everywhere, such as the interaction on social media is also a form of voting. There is macro democracy and micro democracy. The democracy needed in the blockchain ecosystem is different from that needed in social media and large-scale politics.

Q: Are there any open-source projects related to Ethereum that have practiced democracy?

Vitalik: I have a blog, and for many years, my articles have been published in two places: one is the traditional website vitalik.ca, and the other is vitalik.eth, using Ethereum's ENS domain name and decentralized storage IPFS system. Last month, I found that vitalik.ca was not accessible, so I investigated what happened and found that my server company had shut down.

The things I created have always relied on another company's existence. When that company is gone, my things are also gone. But ENS is a smart contract, where I can post a hash that represents my homepage link; on the IPFS system, my homepage is also a link. The content of these web pages is all on IPFS, although it is not a blockchain, the technology is very similar. So, one person can ensure that these contents can still be accessed a hundred years later.

In the public goods field, these common things are not stable and need continuous development. For example, the Ethereum protocol has been continuously improved, from POW to POS, and gas consumption has been reduced by at least a thousand times. So, the advantage of improving blockchain protocols is significant, but first, we need to determine who will make the improvements if the protocol needs to be improved. Ethereum has EIP, so who decides which EIP is adopted? The second issue is that research, development, testing, security, and other EIPs require many developers and resources. Currently, we have about a few hundred people doing these things. These people need someone to pay them, so where does this funding come from?

At first, both of these parts were relatively centralized, including a small group of core developers, including me, who determined the test network version. But now, many people are completing these tasks. The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization, initially had 60 million ETH for sale, and you could buy two thousand ETH with one Bitcoin. Then 12 million ETH was given to the foundation and early developers, and the remaining ETH was mined.

The foundation initially received a lot of Bitcoin, but the price of Bitcoin subsequently dropped significantly, so we almost had none after about a year, but fortunately, the price of ETH rose a lot at that time.

So, at first, it was entirely dependent on the foundation, but now there are many other organizations doing this. Currently, there are about five clients implementing the Ethereum protocol rules, some of which are supported by the foundation, and others are completely independent. ConsenSys was initially a larger company doing things on Ethereum, and they are now supporting two clients. A year or two ago, Arbitrum bought a company that made clients.

Now, different people and different funds support different teams. So, if you want to participate in the development and research of the core Ethereum ecosystem, even if the foundation does not like you, I do not like you, you can apply to these other people and companies. This is also a process of gradually democratizing the ecosystem.

There are now many companies on Ethereum doing their own experiments, and there is also a Layer 2 project called Optimism working on an experiment called RetroPGF, which can be described as a sponsorship program, but it is not traditional sponsorship. For example, if I want to do something, I write an application to tell you what I want to do, and then you sponsor me; instead, I have already done something, and I can get some rewards from this program.

Q: Can you talk about Zuzalu?

Vitalik: This is an experiment I did in Montenegro last year. In the past five or ten years, some people have been talking about the concept of creating a new city or a new country, and Balaji's book "Network State" has piqued the curiosity of many people, but I found that many people talk about it but no one is doing it.

So, I decided to conduct an experiment with two hundred people from different fields, some are Ethereum developers and researchers, some are in the field of biological science, and some are enthusiasts in the field of governance. These people lived together for two months in Montenegro, a small Eastern European country, in a Pop-up City, a temporary city. One of our goals was to implement some of the technologies we liked between Pop-up Cities.

One example is Zupass, a zero-knowledge proof of identity, where you can use Zupass to prove that you are a participant in the community without revealing your name. Zupass has two parts: one is to scan a QR code, and the other is an online part that allows logging into some websites. For example, a voting website that allows community members to vote anonymously while ensuring that each person can only vote once. This technology can be used for social media to prevent account suspension and fake account issues.

Zupass was born in Montenegro, but now many other projects are using Zupass, so it has become something that can truly be used. So, I think zero-knowledge proof is a very useful thing for the future of freedom and openness.

Q: What role do you think technology will play in the real world? Some people say that in the future, elections could also use zero-knowledge proofs, but others say that this is too far-fetched. Can you give us a vision or direction?

Vitalik: Actually, I don't think it's necessary to start with the biggest things. It can also start in areas such as universities, non-profit organizations, etc., using the Quadratic Funding mechanism, which "funds public goods by encouraging donations and matching funds, taking into account the number and amount of donations." Let's do something practical, see what the results are, and then gradually expand.

This technology has reached a point where we can start thinking about how to use it. Five years ago, we didn't really have zero-knowledge proofs. It was just an academic concept. For example, Zcash came out in 2016, and it took two minutes to send a transaction on a computer with proof. Now, it can be done in three to five seconds on a mobile phone. In the past five years, the usability for users has improved a lot. The developer experience has also improved a lot. Before 2021, doing a project based on zero-knowledge proofs required you to be a cryptography researcher, but now there are many tools where you can write code yourself and then generate a proof.

Technology is getting better and better, so now we can think about whether there are any areas at the government level where we can use these methods to conduct large-scale experiments. Some are related to public goods, and others are related to identity verification. Once the first step is done well, we can think about the next step. In the long run, I am very optimistic.

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