Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, recently attended the ETHPrague 2023 Summit and accepted an exclusive interview with CNBC. He praised the popularity of Binance in countries such as Argentina, criticized CBDC, and emphasized that the censorship resistance of proof of equity is much higher than that of proof of work. .
Ethereum’s Next Decade: Building Practical Applications
CNBC pointed out that Vitalik is very concerned about whether he can realize his vision, which is to achieve financial inclusion. The biggest challenge for the Ethereum community and Vitalik at present is to bring actual value to the public.
Vitalik said:
My overall view of the Ethereum ecosystem is that the past ten years have been a decade of Ethereum exploring and trying to develop correctly; now we are facing the next ten years when Ethereum must really build something that people will use. practical application.
Cryptocurrencies provide valuable value to emerging countries
How is it proven that cryptocurrencies are more well-known and adopted in developing countries? Vitalik said:
When I went to Argentina at the end of 2021, many people used cryptocurrencies and many people liked cryptocurrencies. I was indeed recognized more times on the streets of Buenos Aires (the capital of Argentina) than in San Francisco.
Vitalik pointed out that basically things that everyone would find very basic and boring, such as convenient payments and savings, are bringing real value to people in low-income countries through cryptocurrency.
In fact, when these financial infrastructures are lacking, people have no interest in more abstract applications such as decentralized social networking.
Vitalik: Everyone is using Binance
Vitalik emphasized that he even just found a coffee shop in Argentina, and it happened that the coffee shop accepted BTC and ETH payments. There was just a small problem. These stores were using Binance instead of decentralized wallets.
He didn’t blame Binance. On the contrary, Vitalik praised Binance:
Binance provides a smoother user experience to users whose per capita GDP is less than $10,000 and who do not understand blockchain technology, but this needs to become more decentralized. Centralized actors are vulnerable to external pressure and internal corruption.
He told CNBC that the ideal solution is to get rid of centralized entities and significantly optimize it to achieve global adoption.
Vitalik pointed out that Ethereum fees must be less than $0.05. Although this statement is often criticized when Ethereum Gas Fee is too high, Vitalik emphasized this number again.
CBDC = bank front-end
Regarding the CBDC issue, Vitalik said that he was full of hope for CBDC five years ago, but maybe he was too naive.
He pointed out that as time goes by, the development of CBDC is getting closer to the banking system, like another version of the existing banking system, but with more monitoring mechanisms built in.
As privacy protections fade away, so-called CBDCs are no better than existing payment systems and essentially become another front-end system for existing banks.
Proof of Stake (PoS) is censorship resistant
The anti-censorship issues of PoW and PoS are discussed from time to time. Especially at the beginning of the year, Kraken was fined by the SEC for not registering a staking service , and the issue ofthe high proportion of Ethereum nodes in the United States was also magnified.
However, Vitalik insists that PoS is more likely to resist government interference:
Compared with PoW, PoS is easier to remain anonymous and more difficult to shut down. PoW requires a large amount of physical equipment and electricity, which are facilities where anti-drug agencies have extensive detection experience. To perform PoS, you just need a VPN and hide your laptop in a corner. It’s not perfect but it’s definitely easier to hide than a mining rig.
He even imagined the worst case scenario:
Even if the Ethereum Foundation receives a magical freeze order in all countries, and something happens to me, all the independent validators will keep Ethereum running.
