Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin asks Twitter users if he is contradictory in solving some problems of the nowadays crypto. So he posted his most contradictory thoughts.
Vitalik Buterin is visionary about blockchain future and is kind of the biggest white crow inside the crypto world.
Started as one of the youngest crypto millionaires, but now he still hates market speculations. And he doesn’t treat enrichment as an end in itself for digital assets.
His Ethereum platform doesn’t fully belong to him anymore because of whales’ power and high market volatility.
So Buterin is afraid of Ether to go the wrong way and get a dystopian future.
Recently he posted his most contradictory thoughts on Twitter. Though these thoughts aren’t so contradictory as Vitalik just calls out common sense.
Let’s look through it.
Vitalik Buterin makes confession on Twitter
“Thread: some still open contradictions in my thoughts and my values, that I have been thinking about but still don’t feel like I’ve fully resolved,” Vitalik tweeted.
At the beginning of the tread, Buterin posted 10 of his most contradictory thoughts, as he calls them.
1. Make Ethereum a more Bitcoin-like platform
Ether founder now emphasizes not only long-term stability but also ‘the cultural stability of the community. Buterin thinks that this fact requires quite a lot of active coordinated short-term change.
Remember that Bitcoin and Ether again appeared the most stable tokens during the last crypto crash? So it’s obvious that he wants to make it even more stable.
We hope Vitalin explains soon what did he mean by this ‘short-term’ change.
2. Reduce individual power
Once again: Buterin doesn’t like whales and big investors who can manipulate the market prices.
So he proposes to ‘build fixed systems that can stand the test of time’. Vitalik also notes his appreciation for ‘live players’ and their role in helping the world move forward.
Is it really a contradictory value?
3. Make Ethereum L1
Ether platform is going to switch to the so-called Layer 1 scaling solution sometime soon. This solution should generate more revenue than the network operating cost.
Buterin thinks that this switch would help Ether survive truly extreme circumstances. “Many key apps on Ethereum already rely on far more fragile security assumptions than anything we consider acceptable in Ethereum protocol design,” Vitalik complains.
4. Decentralization
“Between my love for things like decentralization and democracy, and my realization that in practice I agree with intellectual elites more than “the people” on many (though definitely far from all) specific policy issues,” Vitalik Buterin writes on Twitter.
Maybe it’s the first really contradictory claim. But actually, the choice between decentralization and regulation is the problem of the whole community.
5. Regulation
Buterin really wants to see more countries adopting ‘radical policy experiments’. But he also acknowledges that the governments must be centralized and not friendly to diversity internally.
Earlier Vitalik slammed Bitcoin legalization in El Salvador, as he thinks that the forced integration of digital assets is contrary to the ideals of freedom.
“Making it mandatory for businesses to accept a specific cryptocurrency is contrary to the ideals of freedom that are supposed to be so important to the crypto space”, he wrote on Reddit.
6. Mainstream culture
“Maintaining a culture that’s distinct from the mainstream seems to often require some kind of insanity or artificial barrier or similar thing that I ideologically dislike,” Vitalik confesses.
At the same time, he wants to see more ‘diversity in interesting cultures’.
Could we say that crypto is a new culture that is distinct from the mainstream? Probably, yes.
7. Useless blockchains
Buterin knows that tons of modern financial blockchain applications fuel the crypto economy and pay for cool DAO/governance experiments.
But he dislikes it.
In fact, Vitalik Buterin has already mentioned on Twitter that most NFT projects suck.
Well, that’s quite contradictory. But it is fair at least.
8. Crypto beyond finance
“Finance is still by far the most successful category of crypto apps, especially among third-world residents, human rights activists, and vulnerable people generally,” Vitalik Buterin underlines on Twitter.
But his long-term goal is to grow crypto far beyond finances.
Seems like it’s impossible right now as almost everybody accepts crypto primarily for its token economy.
9. Simplifying the L1
That is kind of complicated, but Vitalik’s desire to maximally simplify the L1 contradicts his desire to ‘maximally simplify the whole ecosystem’.
“A simple L1 often “exports” its complexity to higher layers of the stack that users have to adopt anyway,” he explains.
We should hope that future L1 solutions will be as simple as it useful for the ecosystem.
10. Positive-sum and evil fight
As the ideal crypto world should benefit everybody, Vitalik Buterin sees himself as a ‘positive-sum mediator figure that can be everyone’s friend’.
Contradictory, he wants to ‘stand strongly with good against evil those times when true evil is what we face’.
Is it about Russian politics being crypto users or something?
Sources: Twitter
