Vitalik's Biggest Worries? Crypto Stagnating and AI Risks, Says Ethereum Co-Founder

By Nivesh Rustgi

Ever wondered what Vitalik Buterin’s most worried about for the future of Ethereum?

During a recent AMA on Farcaster, one user asked just that, to which the Ethereum co-founder responded: “The risk that crypto stagnates, things like privacy and open internet infrastructure become lost causes.”

Another user asked something similar, wondering what the 29-year-old Canadian-Russian developer thinks “about most of the time.”

For Vitalik, it’s “AI-related issues,” namely existential risks stemming from its advancement, and “how/if the Ethereum community could productively engage on them.”

This isn’t the first time the crypto mogul has crossed over into the world of AI, specifically addressing how humans can coexist in a world being populated by ever-more human bots.

Shortly after Worldcoin launched this year, a crypto-powered identity protocol founded by none other than AI Wunderkind Sam Altman, Buterin wrote about the need for a “really good proof-of-personhood system so that humans can prove that they actually are humans.”

A bot-laden Internet may also become the driving force behind regulatory policy in tech is the rise of smarter and smarter AIs.

Instead of the decentralized ideals that have inspired crypto, he said he’s concerned that “the big techno-political questions of the 21st century just get decided by whatever happens in AI over the next decade.”

Still, Buterin shared praise for decentralized social media platforms built using Ethereum sign-in options like Farcaster and Lens Protocol.

He replied to an AMA question saying, “I do hope that Farcaster and Lens and co become as big as Meta one day!”

Edited by Liam Kelly.

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