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Ethereum’s Buterin cites examples of idealistic crypto initiatives
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin you think that the cryptocurrency community has not yet abandoned its idealistic initiatives.
In response to a thought-provoking post by Joe Weisenthal, host of Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” podcast, Buterin said the cryptocurrency community has made progress with its vision of the open internet in the world of cryptocurrencies.
“I’m just thinking. It’s pretty crazy how much crypto culture has changed in the last 5-6 years. Back then in Bank there were still some idealistic hippies, talking about things like democracy on the blockchain, or UBI, or open internet. Not I’ll hear more about them now. They’re 100% financial/meme coins,” Weisenthal wrote.
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However, Buterin called Farcaster, an optimism-based protocol that builds a social network with a sufficient level of decentralization, as one of the examples of initiatives. Despite having very few daily users, the blockchain-based social protocol managed to raise $150 million in funding earlier this year. Additionally, Buterin also mentioned Lens Protocol, a decentralized social network where users can actually own their own content.
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The Ethereum co-founder also identified quadratic financing, a democratic way of financing based on quadratic voting. It allows funding to be distributed taking into account the wishes of the broader cryptocurrency community. The Gitcoin Grants Program, a quarterly initiative run by Gitcoin, is one of the examples of initiatives that are based on the mathematically optimal way of financing. Buterin also mentioned the concept of retroactive financing, which allows funding to be allocated to those projects that have already managed to prove their value.
Finally, he called attention to Zupass, a personal cryptocurrency manager that allows users to not reveal their entire identity, privacy-preserving ways of sending Ethereum, such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and voting with zero knowledge.
Despite the meme coin frenzy, it appears that the Ethereum community is still aligned with the original ideals of decentralization and privacy.