On November 28th, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote on social media that artificial intelligence is fundamentally different from other technologies and deserves special caution. In Ethereum, we intentionally try to ensure that many parts of the stack are decentralized: ensuring that no single codebase controls more than half of the proof-of-stake network, attempting to resist the dominance of large stake pools, improving geographic dispersion, and more. Basically, Ethereum is actually trying to achieve an ancient liberal dream based on the market society. To some extent, this is effective: the dominance of the Prysm client has dropped from over 70% to below 45%. However, this is not an automatic market process: it is the result of human will and coordinated action.

Blockchain enables us to create economic and social structures with shared hard drives without relying on centralizing actors. Cryptocurrencies allow individuals to store funds and conduct financial transactions, just like using cash before the internet, without relying on trusted third parties that may change the rules arbitrarily. They can also serve as backup anti-counterfeiting mechanisms, making attacks and spam expensive for users who do not want to reveal their true identities. Account abstraction, especially social recovery wallets, can protect our cryptographic assets and may also protect other types of assets in the future without relying too much on centralized intermediaries.

Zero-knowledge proofs can be used for privacy protection, allowing users to prove things about themselves without revealing private information. For example, signing a digital passport and packaging it in ZK-SNARK to prove that you are a unique citizen of a country without revealing which specific citizen you are. Similar technologies can allow us to maintain the benefits of privacy and anonymity while still obtaining security guarantees and combating spam and bad actors.