撰文：Vitalik Buterin

編譯：深潮TechFlow

導(dǎo)讀：

三十而立。

今天是 Vitalik 的 30 歲生日，他也在這個(gè)重要的節(jié)點(diǎn)上，發(fā)表了人生一篇名為《我童年的終結(jié)》的長(zhǎng)文。

縱觀全文，Vitalik對(duì)以太坊的技術(shù)、加密世界的現(xiàn)狀、俄烏戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)、生存與死亡、成長(zhǎng)和經(jīng)驗(yàn)等消防主題表達(dá)了自己的感悟，同時(shí)他也直言：

加密世界里的核心人物，Vitalik過(guò)去的時(shí)間里走遍世界各地作為，以數(shù)字游民的方式踐行著自己的技術(shù)理念，同時(shí)也面對(duì)世界各地的不同文化時(shí)，出現(xiàn)了更多的感悟與責(zé)任心。

這篇長(zhǎng)文可以說(shuō)是 Vitalik 站在 30 歲節(jié)點(diǎn)時(shí)，對(duì)個(gè)人經(jīng)驗(yàn)和整個(gè)加密世界的綜合性回顧與展望，內(nèi)容一次豐富且情感真實(shí)。

深潮TechFlow對(duì)全文進(jìn)行了編譯，分享給各位讀者。

在過(guò)去的兩年里，我印象最深刻的一次是在黑客馬拉松上演講，參觀黑客之家，在黑山做Zuzalu，看到比我年輕整整十歲的人在各個(gè)項(xiàng)目中擔(dān)任領(lǐng)導(dǎo)角色，作為組織者或開(kāi)發(fā)人員：加密審計(jì)，以太坊第2層擴(kuò)展，合成生物學(xué)等等。Zuzalu核心組織團(tuán)隊(duì)的模因（MEME）是21歲的Nicole Sun之一，一年前，她邀請(qǐng)我參觀韓國(guó)的一家黑客之家：大約有30人的聚會(huì)，我記得這是我第一次成為房間里最長(zhǎng)的人。

當(dāng)我和現(xiàn)在的黑客之家居民一樣大的時(shí)候，我記得很多人都稱贊我是像扎克伯格這樣改變世界的、強(qiáng)大的、年輕的神童之一。

022年8月，通往首爾黑客之家的路徑。應(yīng)該是因?yàn)槲覠o(wú)法辨別我進(jìn)入哪所房子，我正在與組織者溝通以獲取這些信息。當(dāng)然，這所房子根本就不是這條路，但在它右邊大約二十米處有一個(gè)更明顯的眼睛的地方

1

延長(zhǎng)壽命的支持者（意思是，進(jìn)行醫(yī)學(xué)研究以確保人類(lèi)可以真正活幾千年或幾百萬(wàn)年），人們經(jīng)常問(wèn)我：生命的意義不是與它是有限的這一事實(shí)密切相關(guān)嗎？ ：你只有一部分，所以你必須享受它？

從歷史上看，我的直覺(jué)是駁斥這個(gè)想法的：雖然從心理學(xué)的角度來(lái)看，如果事物是??有限的或稀缺的，我們往往會(huì)更重視它們，但認(rèn)為長(zhǎng)期存在的恩怨可能如此嚴(yán)重，以致比字面不再存在更糟糕，這簡(jiǎn)直是荒謬的。另外，我有時(shí)會(huì)想，即使永生被證明是那么糟糕，我們總是可以通過(guò)簡(jiǎn)單地選擇來(lái)進(jìn)行更多的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)來(lái)同時(shí)我們的“興奮” ”并降低我們的壽命。今天，我們中間的非反社會(huì)者拒絕這種選擇，這一事實(shí)強(qiáng)烈地向我表明，一旦它成為一種實(shí)際的選擇，我們基因就會(huì)拒絕它，因?yàn)樗谏锼劳鲋泻屯纯喾矫嬉彩侨绱恕?/p>

然而，隨著年齡的增長(zhǎng)，我意識(shí)到我根本不需要討論這些。

無(wú)論我們的生命作為一個(gè)整體是有限的還是無(wú)限的，我們生命中的一切美好事物都是有限的。你以為是永恒的友誼，卻慢慢地消失在時(shí)間的迷霧中。你的性格可以在10年徹底改變。城市可以改變，無(wú)論好壞。你可以完全搬到一個(gè)新的城市，并重新開(kāi)始從頭開(kāi)始熟悉物理環(huán)境的過(guò)程。政治意向是有限的：你可能會(huì)圍繞你對(duì)最高邊緣階級(jí)和公共醫(yī)療保健的觀點(diǎn)建立了完整的身份，十年后，一旦人們似乎完全不再關(guān)心這些話題，轉(zhuǎn)而把所有時(shí)間花在談?wù)摗坝X(jué)醒”、“青銅時(shí)代心態(tài)”和“e/acc”上。 ”上，你就會(huì)感到完全迷失。

（i）我正在尋找的東西是不可能的，（ii）在實(shí)踐中確定存在缺陷的系統(tǒng)成功與否的最重要指標(biāo)（往往是參與者子群體之間的協(xié)調(diào)程度，但也經(jīng)常包括我們將其簡(jiǎn)化為“文化”的其他因素）是我什至未曾建模的指標(biāo)。

以前，數(shù)學(xué)是我身份的主要部分：我在高中時(shí)大量參與數(shù)學(xué)競(jìng)賽，在我進(jìn)入加密貨幣領(lǐng)域后不久，我開(kāi)始在以太坊、比特幣和其他地方做大量的編碼，我對(duì)每一個(gè)新的密碼學(xué)協(xié)議都感到興奮，在我看來(lái)，經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)也是更廣泛的世界觀的一部分：它是理解和弄清楚如何改善社會(huì)世界的數(shù)學(xué)工具。所有部件都已經(jīng)組合在一起。

現(xiàn)在，這些碎片組合在一起的次數(shù)減少了。我仍然使用來(lái)分析社會(huì)機(jī)制，盡管目標(biāo)更多時(shí)候是提出粗略的第一次猜測(cè)，即什么可能有效并減少最壞情況的行為（在現(xiàn)實(shí)世界中）中，這通常是由機(jī)器人而不是人類(lèi)完成的），而不是解釋一般情況下的行為?，F(xiàn)在，我更多的寫(xiě)作和思考，支持即使我十年前支持的那種理想，也經(jīng)常使用非常不同的論點(diǎn)。

現(xiàn)代人工智能讓我著迷的一件事是，它讓我們?cè)跀?shù)學(xué)和哲學(xué)上以不同的方式參與指導(dǎo)人類(lèi)互動(dòng)隱藏的變量：人工智能可以使“聲音”易讀

所有這些死亡、出生和重生，無(wú)論是思想還是人的集合，都是有限的方式。這些死亡和出生將繼續(xù)發(fā)生在我們生活的一個(gè)世紀(jì)、一千年或與主序星生命相同的世界中。如果你覺(jué)得生命沒(méi)有足夠的有限性、死亡和重生，你就有必要引發(fā)戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)來(lái)增加更多：你也可以做出和我一樣的選擇，成為一個(gè)數(shù)字游民。

2

“馬里烏波爾的畢業(yè)生正在倒下”。（譯者注：直譯為火炮在馬里烏波爾城市降下，應(yīng)暗指俄烏戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)）

我仍然記得昨天2022年2月23日晚上7點(diǎn)20分，我在丹佛的酒店房間里焦急地看著電腦屏幕。在過(guò)去的兩個(gè)小時(shí)里，我一直在同步滾動(dòng)Twitter上獲取更新，并反復(fù)聯(lián)系我的父親，他和我都有同樣的想法和恐懼，直到他給我最終做出決定性的回復(fù)。我發(fā)布了一條推文，要求明確表達(dá)了我對(duì)這個(gè)問(wèn)題的表述，我一直專注。那天晚上我熬夜了。

第二天早上，我起床時(shí)看到烏克蘭政府的推特賬戶拼命要求以加密貨幣激活。俄羅斯政府本身，利用每個(gè)人的困惑和絕望來(lái)偷一些錢(qián)。我的“安全心態(tài)”本能引發(fā)了上風(fēng)，我立即開(kāi)始發(fā)推文警告人們要小心，同時(shí)通過(guò)我的網(wǎng)絡(luò)尋找可以或確認(rèn)否認(rèn)ETH地址是否是真實(shí)的人。一個(gè)小時(shí)后，我確信它實(shí)際上是真實(shí)的，我公開(kāi)轉(zhuǎn)達(dá)了我的結(jié)論。大約一個(gè)小時(shí)后，一位家人給我發(fā)了一條信息，指出我已經(jīng)做了什么，為了為了我的安全，我最好不要再回俄羅斯了。

Eight months later, I see the crypto world going through a very different kind of turmoil: the public demise of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. At the time, someone posted a long list of "crypto protagonists" on Twitter, showing which ones had fallen and which ones were still intact. This list has a high casualty rate:

The SBF situation is not unique: it is a mix of MtGox and several previous major upheavals that have engulfed the crypto world. But this was the moment when I realized, all at once, that most of the people I had viewed as guiding lights in the crypto world, that I had felt comfortable following since 2014, were no longer there.

People who look at me from a distance often think of me as a high-motivation person, presumably because that's what you'd expect from a "protagonist" or "project founder" who is a "college dropout." However, in reality, I am anything but. The virtue I valued as a child was not the virtue of being creative when starting a unique new project, or showing courage when it was needed, but rather the virtue of showing up on time, doing homework, and getting a 99% average. The virtues of a good student.

My decision to drop out of school was not a courageous step of faith. It started in early 2013 when I decided to take a paid internship over the summer to work for Ripple. When US visa complications prevented this, I instead spent the summer working with my Bitcoin Magazine boss and friend Mihai Alisie in Spain. At the end of August I decided I needed to spend more time exploring the crypto world, so I extended my vacation to 12 months. It wasn’t until January 2014, when I saw hundreds of people cheering for my talk introducing Ethereum at BTC Miami, that I finally realized I had chosen to leave college for good. Most of my decisions in Ethereum involve responding to pressure and demands from others. When I met Vladimir Putin in 2017, I didn’t try to arrange a meeting; instead, someone else suggested it and I pretty much said “sure.”

Now, five years later, I finally realize that: (i) I had been complicit in legitimizing a genocidal dictator, and (ii) I no longer have the luxury of sitting back and letting those mysterious people in the crypto space The "other" has the luxury of taking charge.

Both incidents, although they differed in the type and scale of their tragedies, burned similar lessons into my mind: I actually have responsibilities in this world, and I need to be intentional about how I Mode of operation. Doing nothing, or living on autopilot and allowing yourself to simply become part of someone else's plan, is not an automatically safe or even blameless course of action.

I am one of the mysterious others who play this role. If I don't and the crypto space either stagnates or is dominated by opportunistic money grabbers, then I have only myself to blame. So I decided to be cautious about accepting other people's plans and be more vocal about the plans I made myself: have less ill-conceived meetings with random powerful people who were only interested in me as a source of legitimacy, and do more Things like Zuzalu.

Zuzalu flag in Montenegro, spring 2023

3

Let’s move on to happier things—or at least challenges that feel more like a math puzzle than falling while running and needing to walk 2 kilometers to seek medical attention with a bleeding knee. The author isn't going to share any more details, noting that the internet is already very good at turning photos of a rolled-up USB cable in his pocket into memes suggesting something entirely different, and he certainly doesn't want to give those people any more "ammunition." .

I've talked before about the changing role of economics, the need to think about motivation (and coordination: we're social animals, so the two are actually closely linked) in a different way, and the idea that the world is turning into a "jungle" : Big government, big business, the big mob, and almost any "big XX" will continue to grow, and the interactions between them will become more frequent and complex. I haven’t talked much about how many of these changes will impact the crypto space itself.

The crypto space was born in late 2008, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The genesis block of the Bitcoin blockchain quotes this famous article from the British Times:

Bitcoin’s early memes were heavily influenced by these themes. Bitcoin is about abolishing banks, which is a good thing because banks are unsustainable monoliths that constantly create financial crises. Bitcoin exists to abolish fiat currency, because the banking system cannot exist without the underlying central banks and the fiat currency they issue—plus, fiat currency makes it possible to print money to fund wars. But in the fifteen years since then, the broader public discourse as a whole appears to have largely moved beyond concerns about money and banks. What is considered important now? Well, we can ask about a copy of Mixtral 8x7b running on my new GPU laptop:

Once again, AI can make resonances legible

There is no mention of currency and bank or government control of currency. Trade and inequality are listed as issues of global concern, but as far as I can tell, the problems and solutions being discussed occur more in the physical world than the digital world. Is the original “story” of cryptocurrency increasingly behind the times?

There are two sensible responses to this conundrum, and I believe our ecosystem will benefit from both:

1. A reminder that money and finance still matter, and serving the world’s underserved in this niche

2. Looking beyond finance to use our technology to build a more comprehensive vision of an alternative tech stack that is freer, more open and democratic, and how to build a better society more broadly, or at least help those who have been excluded Tools for people outside mainstream digital infrastructure.

It's important to note that I think the crypto space is uniquely positioned to provide value there. Cryptocurrency is one of the few tech industries that is truly highly decentralized, with developers spread across the globe:

Source: Electric Capital’s 2023 Cryptocurrency Developer Report

Having visited many new global cryptocurrency hubs over the past year, I can confirm that this is indeed the case. Increasingly, large crypto projects are headquartered all over the world, or nowhere else. Additionally, non-Western developers often have a unique advantage in understanding the specific needs of crypto users in low-income countries and being able to create products that meet those needs. When I talk to a lot of people from San Francisco, I get the distinct impression that they think AI is the only thing that matters, that San Francisco is the capital of AI, so San Francisco is the only place that matters. "So, Vitalik, why haven't you settled down in the Gulf with your O1 visa yet"? Cryptocurrencies don’t need to play this game: it’s a big world and it only takes a visit to Argentina, Turkey or Zambia to remind yourself that many people still have important issues related to access to money and funding, and that there are still opportunities to balance Complex work on user experience and decentralization to truly solve these problems in a sustainable way.

Another vision is the one I outlined in my recent post, “Making Ethereum Cypherpunk Again.” Rather than just focusing on money, or becoming the “Internet of Value,” I think the Ethereum community should broaden its horizons. We should create a complete decentralized technology stack - one that is independent of the traditional Silicon Valley technology stack to the same extent as e.g. China's tech stack is - and competes with centralized tech companies at every level.

Let’s repost this technology stack comparison table again:

After I published that article, some readers reminded me that an important missing piece of the system is the technology of democratic governance: the tools through which people collectively make decisions. This is what centralized technology is really trying to provide, since each company is assumed to be run by a CEO, with oversight provided by...well...a board of directors. Ethereum has benefited from very primitive democratic governance techniques in the past, when a series of controversial decisions, such as the DAO fork and several rounds of issuance reductions, were made in 2016-2017, according to a team from Shanghai. Created a platform called Carbonvote where ETH holders can vote on decisions.

ETH votes on DAO fork

The vote is advisory in nature: there is no hard and fast agreement that the outcome will determine what happens. However, they help core developers have the confidence to actually implement a range of EIPs, knowing that the wider community will support them. Today, we have access to much richer proof of community membership than token holdings: POAP, Gitcoin Passport points, Zu stamps, and more.

Taken together, we can begin to see a second vision of how the crypto space can evolve to better meet the concerns and needs of the 21st century: creating a more comprehensive, trustworthy, democratic, and decentralized technology stack. Zero-knowledge proofs are key to expanding what this stack can offer: we can move beyond the false binary of “anonymous and therefore untrusted” versus “verified and KYC’d” and prove everything about who we are and what we have A more fine-grained statement of which permissions are available. This allows us to simultaneously address concerns about authenticity and manipulation – protecting against “Big Brother outside” – as well as concerns about privacy – protecting against “Big Brother within”. In this way, cryptocurrency becomes more than just a financial story and can be part of a broader story of creating better technology.

4

But how do we achieve this, beyond telling stories? Here we return to some of the issues I raised in my post three years ago: the changing nature of motivation. Often, those who focus too much on a theory of financial motivation – or at least a theory of motivation in which financial motivation can be understood and analyzed, while everything else is treated as a mystery we call “culture” Black Box – Be confused by this space because many actions seem contrary to financial motivations. “Users don’t care about decentralization”, but projects still often strive to be decentralized. “Consensus is built on game theory” However, successful social campaigns that drive people out of dominant mining or staking pools work in Bitcoin and Ethereum.

I recently realized that no one I've seen has attempted to create a basic, functional map of cryptospace that works "as expected" in an attempt to include more actors and motivations. So let me try this quickly now:

The map itself is an intentional mix of 50/50 idealism and "depicting reality." It aims to demonstrate the four main components of an ecosystem, which can support each other and have a symbiotic relationship. In practice, many crypto agencies are a mixture of these four.

Each of these four components provides something critical to the overall machine:

• Token holders and defi users contribute heavily to the financing of the whole thing, which is key to bringing technologies like consensus algorithms and zero-knowledge proofs to production quality.

• Intellectuals provide ideas to ensure that the space is actually doing something meaningful.

• Builder bridges the gap and tries to build applications that serve users and bring ideas to life.

• Pragmatic users are the people we ultimately serve.

Each of the four groups has complex motivations, and these motivations interact with the other groups in a variety of complex ways. There are also “dysfunctional” versions of each group: apps may be exploitative, DeFi users may inadvertently reinforce the network effects of exploitative apps, pragmatist users may deepen their reliance on centralized workflows, intellectuals may Getting too caught up in theory, focusing on trying to solve every problem by blaming people for being "inconsistent", without recognizing that financial incentives (and the disincentives of "user inconvenience") are also important and can and should be addressed.

Often, these groups have a tendency to laugh at each other, and sometimes I do play a part in that. Some blockchain projects are openly trying to move away from what they see as childish, utopian, and distracting idealism and focus directly on applications and usage. Some developers belittle their token holders and their dirty love for making money. There are also developers who belittle pragmatic users and their sordid willingness to use centralized solutions when it's more convenient for them.

But I think there is an opportunity to increase understanding between these four groups, with each party understanding that it is ultimately dependent on the other three groups, working to limit its own excesses, and recognizing that in many cases, their dreams are less than they imagined. So far away. I think this is a form of peace that is actually possible, both within the “crypto space” and between neighboring communities with whom it aligns strongly with its values.

5

The beauty of the global nature of cryptocurrency is that it provides me with a window into a variety of fascinating cultures and subcultures around the world and how they interact with the crypto world.

I still remember my first visit to China in 2014 and seeing all the signs of light and hope: exchanges scaling to hundreds of employees, faster than even the US, massive GPU and later ASIC mining pools , and projects with millions of users. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley and Europe have long been the main engines of idealism in the field, with two distinct flavors. Almost from the beginning, Ethereum’s development was de facto headquartered in Berlin, and it was within Europe’s open source culture that many of the early ideas for how to use Ethereum for non-financial applications emerged.

Diagram of Ethereum and two proposed non-blockchain sister protocols Whisper and Swarm, which Gavin Wood used in many of his early talks

Silicon Valley (and, of course, I mean the entire San Francisco Bay Area) was another hotbed of early cryptocurrency interest, mixed with ideologies as diverse as rationalism, effective altruism, and transhumanism. In the 2010s, these ideas were new, and they felt "crypto-adjacent": many people who were interested in them were also interested in crypto.

Elsewhere, letting ordinary businesses use cryptocurrencies for payments is a hot topic. You can find people accepting Bitcoin in a variety of places around the world, including Japanese waiters taking Bitcoin as tips:

Since then, these communities have gone through a lot of changes. In addition to other broader challenges, China has experienced multiple cryptocurrency crackdowns, resulting in Singapore becoming the new home for many developers. Silicon Valley is divided: Rationalists and artificial intelligence developers were essentially different factions of the same team until 2020, when Scott Alexander was doxxed by the New York Times. Dueling factions on the question of optimism versus pessimism about artificial intelligence’s default paths. Ethereum’s zone makeup has undergone significant changes, especially during the introduction of entirely new teams for proof-of-stake in 2018, although more by adding new teams than by dying off old ones. Death, birth and rebirth.

There are many other communities worth mentioning.

When I made my first of many visits to Taiwan in 2016 and 2017, what struck me most was the combination of self-organizing capabilities and willingness to learn from the people there. Whenever I write a document or blog post, I often find that within a day, a study club will form on its own and start excitedly annotating every paragraph of the post on Google Docs. Recently, members of Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs were equally excited about Glen Weyl’s ideas on digital democracy and “pluralism,” and quickly posted a complete mind map of the field on their Twitter account (This includes many Ethereum applications).

Paul Graham once wrote about how every city sends one message: In New York, "You should make more money." You should really read all these books in Boston. In Silicon Valley, "You should be stronger." When I visited Taipei, the message that came to mind was "You should rediscover your inner high school student."

Glen Weyl and Audrey Tang spoke at a study session at Nowhere Bookstore in Taipei, where I gave a talk on community notes four months ago

When I visited Argentina several times over the past few years, I was struck by the desire and willingness to build and apply the technology and ideas that Ethereum and the wider crypto world have to offer. If places like Silicon Valley are the frontier, full of abstract thoughts about a better future, then places like Argentina are the frontier, full of positive motivation to meet the challenges that need to be addressed today: in Argentina's case, ultra-high inflation and Limited connections to the global financial system. Cryptocurrency adoption there is off the charts: I get recognized on the street in Buenos Aires more often than I do in San Francisco. There are also a number of local builders, with a surprisingly healthy mix of pragmatism and idealism, working on people's challenges, whether it's crypto/fiat conversions or improving the state of Latin American Ethereum nodes.

I was in a coffee shop in Buenos Aires with a friend and we paid with ETH

還有很多其他值得一提的：位于迪拜的世界主義和國(guó)際化的加密社區(qū)，東亞和東南亞各地不斷壯大的ZK社區(qū)，肯尼亞充滿活力和務(wù)實(shí)的建設(shè)者，科羅拉多州以公共產(chǎn)品為導(dǎo)向的太陽(yáng)能朋克社區(qū)，等等。

6

一個(gè)人在成長(zhǎng)過(guò)程中會(huì)學(xué)到很多教訓(xùn)，而不同的人有不同的教訓(xùn)。對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)，有一些是：

每個(gè)人都會(huì)學(xué)習(xí)這些很長(zhǎng)的尾巴，原則上我可以走得更久。但是，只要從閱讀別人的經(jīng)驗(yàn)中實(shí)際可以學(xué)到多少東西也是有限的。隨著世界開(kāi)始以更快的速度變化，從其他人的敘述中獲得的經(jīng)驗(yàn)教訓(xùn)也以更快的速度過(guò)時(shí)了。因此，以高度、簡(jiǎn)單、緩慢的方式做事并獲得個(gè)人經(jīng)驗(yàn)也是無(wú)可替代的。

7

社會(huì)世界中的每一個(gè)美好??事物——一個(gè)社區(qū)、一個(gè)通知、一個(gè)“場(chǎng)景”、一個(gè)國(guó)家，或者一個(gè)非常小的公司、一個(gè)家庭或一種關(guān)系——都是由人創(chuàng)造的。在極少數(shù)情況下，你可以寫(xiě)一個(gè)關(guān)于它自人類(lèi)文明和十八部落誕生以來(lái)如何存在的合理故事，但在某些時(shí)候，必須有人真正過(guò)去寫(xiě)這個(gè)故事。這些東西是有限的——既是事物本身，作為世界的一部分，也是你體驗(yàn)到它的事物，是潛在的現(xiàn)實(shí)相和你自己思考和解釋它的方式的融合。隨著社區(qū)、場(chǎng)所、場(chǎng)景、公司和家庭的消失，必須創(chuàng)造新的社區(qū)來(lái)取代他們。

對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)，2023年是看著許多大型宇宙事物在遙遠(yuǎn)的一年中逐漸消失。世界正在迅速變化，我被迫試圖理解世界的框架正在發(fā)生變化，我在世界方面所扮演的同時(shí)正在發(fā)生變化。有死亡，一種首次的死亡類(lèi)型，即使在人類(lèi)生物衰老和死亡的枯萎從我們的文明中被清除之后，它在染色體上繼續(xù)與我們同在，但也有出生和重生。保持持續(xù)活躍并盡我們所能創(chuàng)造新事物是我們每個(gè)人的任務(wù)。

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