1. What aspects of Vitalik do you disagree with?

I remember I've mentioned similar questions in previous articles.

I do have a reserved attitude or still don't quite understand certain EIPs and Ethereum upgrades.

For example, the following three:

- I still don't quite understand the transition from POW to POS in Ethereum, but I don't have a strong rebuttal either.

I'm not saying POW is perfect. POW is certainly not perfect, with issues like the centralization of mining rigs and the high energy consumption.

But for POS, I'm always concerned about the potential centralization issues. I've read many articles on the pros and cons of POS, and discussed this with some friends, raising questions. My friends have provided explanations, but I still can't find a good rebuttal.

So I think at least until now, my understanding of this issue is not very thorough, and I can only say I'll keep learning and moving forward.

But one thing I'm quite certain about: POS is better than DPOS. DPOS will become centralized, while POS can continuously resist centralization.

- I have a reserved attitude towards the Ethereum reform that burns tokens and causes deflation.

In real life, humanity has suffered from the disasters of hyperinflation, so we hate the reckless issuance of currency and long for the issuance of currency to be constrained. The gold standard, which once prevailed, was a mechanism to constrain currency issuance. The gold-anchored approach has brought stability and prosperity for hundreds of years during the Industrial Revolution and the development of modern capitalism.

But the gold standard was eventually abandoned. The main reason it was abandoned is that the "limited" nature of gold actually greatly constrained the free development of the economy.

Moreover, more and more research and history have proven that moderate inflation is not only harmless but also quite beneficial to human society.

So the monetary system I envision should absolutely not be a currency issuance with a constant total supply, but a currency issuance system controlled by algorithms, which humans cannot arbitrarily change, but with moderate inflation.

Ethereum is not Bitcoin, it cannot aim for "constant issuance" or even "deflation" as a goal, but should aim to catalyze the on-chain economic ecosystem. In this goal, a moderate inflation issuance system is more appropriate in my view.

Forcibly injecting a deflationary mechanism is a bit of obvious human intervention.

- I'm very sorry that Ethereum has given up the sharding plan in the short term.

I think the "main chain sharding + second layer expansion" is the ideal expansion path for Ethereum, but for some reason, this path has been changed to only "second layer expansion".

That's too bad.

2. What are Ethereum's thoughts on applications? You can't just keep singing the "empty city" strategy, can you? If no valuable applications are catalyzed, the value will become lower and lower.

I fully agree that the Ethereum ecosystem cannot always sing the "empty city" strategy, as blockchain technology is destined to catalyze applications that are valuable to human society, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.

Although these applications are not many or still seem unrelated to our lives at the moment, I believe they will definitely emerge in the future.

However, in this round of the market, I haven't found any original on-chain applications in the Ethereum or the entire smart contract blockchain ecosystem.

The meme coins that have been popular in this cycle are not technological innovations, but the spread of emotions. The AI agent track is also not an on-chain innovation, but the application of crypto assets in AI.

The existing on-chain ecosystem (such as DeFi, Non-Fungible Tokens, and chain games) has not seen much innovation in this cycle either.

What will be the future innovation path?

I believe the fields related to artificial intelligence will definitely see some original on-chain innovations. But will those innovations be the AI agents we see today? It's possible, but it's also possible they won't be.

Besides artificial intelligence, are there any other possible original innovations? I believe there will be, and they may even be happening already, but we don't know about them.

So we still need to wait patiently.