Vitalik Chiang Mai Dialogue: The Explosion of Artificial Intelligence, What Should Crypto Fight For?

Compilation | Wu Says Blockchain

On February 3, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin engaged in a dialogue with P2P Foundation founder Michel Bauwens at the 2026 Ethereum Chiang Mai Future Summit, sharing their new thoughts on Web3, cryptocurrency, and social collaboration. Vitalik reflected on the original intentions of Ethereum and expressed concerns about the current state of the cryptocurrency field, emphasizing that technological development must serve broader social and political issues.

He explored how the crypto space can address the increasingly acute global trust issues beyond technological breakthroughs. Michel proposed the concept of "regenerative accelerationism," advocating that technology should support sustainable development in human society, particularly focusing on how to integrate crypto technology with the productive economy. They discussed decentralized social models, exploring how to achieve global collaboration and resource sharing through technology, while also addressing the challenges of how Web3 can enter deeper levels of production and social transformation.

The views expressed by the guests do not represent Wu Says' perspective and do not constitute any investment advice. Please strictly adhere to local laws and regulations.

Audio transcription was completed by GPT and may contain errors. Please listen to the complete podcast on platforms like Xiaoyuzhou, YT, etc.

Back to the Starting Point: Vitalik's Reconsideration of Ethereum's Original Intent and the Future of Crypto

Michel: A few days ago, you tweeted that you feel Ethereum's original intentions seem to be facing some challenges, and you even feel it's necessary to return to the initial values. Can you explain the background of this idea?

Vitalik: I always find it helpful to look back at the early days of Ethereum, especially recalling what people were focused on and some of the projects they were developing, like various different demo versions, etc.

Especially before 2019, and even before 2017, many particularly interesting things were happening. At that time, many people began experimenting with different financial tools, such as MakerDAO, which later became a pioneer of modern DeFi, and projects like Augur (a decentralized prediction market platform) were also launched at that time. There was also a lot of work on DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), and over time, we became increasingly clear that the so-called "Decentralized Autonomous Organizations" are actually a misunderstanding because these organizations are not fully autonomous.

But the idea at that time was that we could use on-chain logic to try to create new governance methods to organize and manage resource allocation in different ways. Many people were dedicated to creating more decentralized solutions, whether applications like Uber or other industries like insurance. The enthusiasm was about whether we could find more efficient and innovative ways to organize our society and our interactions with the world and resources through these digital tools, cryptography, and blockchain technology.

However, I believe this enthusiasm has been overshadowed by some factors, first with the rise of DeFi, followed by the excessive excitement in the entire market during 2022. While many DeFi projects still exist and have achieved some success, we also saw the collapse of projects like Luna and Terra, and even those digital monkeys that were once worth millions of dollars have now dropped to 10% or even 50% of their value. Many on-chain games that once seemed interesting quickly revealed themselves to be more about speculation rather than being fun in themselves as prices fell and users left.

For me, 2025 was a very difficult year because we saw some iconic events, like Trump launching a meme coin. When Trump launched a meme coin, there couldn't be a bigger meme coin than that. This suggests that perhaps the journey in this field has come to an end. Subsequently, we saw Trump's meme coin plummet by 95%. At this point, we had to consider that this might be the end of all meme coins. The psychological state of the crypto industry seems to be responding to all of this and reflecting deeply: what role does crypto play in today's world?

Ten years ago, this question was relatively easy to answer because there weren't so many other competitors. But now, with projects like AI and Starship making gradual progress, we might soon be able to land on the Moon or Mars. The biotechnology field is also rapidly advancing. If you are pursuing impressive technological fields, the competitive pressure on the crypto industry is evident.

Therefore, what cryptocurrency must do now is not just to exist as a "show-off" technology; it must represent something more concrete and meaningful. I believe that in the future, cryptocurrency should stand up to represent more social and even political issues, such as how we connect with each other in this increasingly distrustful world, especially against the backdrop of escalating distrust between nations, within nations, and among major corporations.

We must consider: is there a future version of technology that neither abandons technology nor means giving up the power of global tech centers like Silicon Valley, London, and Hangzhou? Rather, our field needs to further clarify its position and put it into practice.

From Accelerationism to Regenerative Practice: The Origins of Ethereum Thought and the Next Steps for Crypto Technology

Michel: I want to return to some memories I have of your "origin story." I remember that before you created Ethereum, or shortly after, you spent some time in Spain and participated in the Catalonia Integral Cooperative practice. That was quite a radical left-liberal, somewhat anarchistic social experiment, although it didn't really go very far in terms of results.

On the other hand, you have deeply engaged with and inherited the libertarian, anarcho-capitalist tradition represented by Bitcoin. So, from my perspective, you have always been positioned between these two extremes, and "decentralized accelerationism" seems to be a middle path—like introducing a social democratic compromise into the digital world, trying to find a middle ground between these two extremes.

Recently, Benjamin Life proposed the concept of "regenerative accelerationism." As I understand it, early accelerationism was essentially a rather nihilistic philosophical stance: it believed that capitalism itself is full of contradictions, so it simply sought to accelerate these contradictions further to make the system collapse quickly, thereby freeing up space for some new possibilities. This line of thinking is inherently very nihilistic.

Decentralized accelerationism, to some extent, is the "middle path" you just mentioned—neither denying technological development nor blindly advocating for uncontrolled acceleration, but rather trying to find some balance in technological evolution.

On this point, I actually quite agree with Benjamin's judgment: the current world is indeed rapidly disintegrating, at least the existing world order is disintegrating. We are in a very dangerous but also very critical transitional period. In this context, perhaps we do need to accelerate the advancement of alternative solutions, and "regenerative accelerationism" is trying to respond to this reality.

Based on this, I want to critique Ethereum: so far, much of the work of Ethereum and the entire crypto industry remains at the level of "value representation." The core issue you are addressing is mainly how to allow digital currencies to circulate without state control, which essentially still deals with the representation and transfer of currency and value.

I believe we should perhaps dig deeper. Because in the real world, there are already many people engaged in truly regenerative and productive practices, such as healthier food production, renewable energy systems, localized production networks, etc. But so far, the help of crypto technology to these practices has been very limited.

So what I really want to ask is: what do you think about these issues? In particular, how can crypto technology more deeply embed itself into the productive layer of society? I'm not referring to traditional financial investments, but rather the practical ways that grassroots communities are striving to explore to make life better.

Vitalik: I do believe we should do more in these directions. Conversely, I want to ask you a question: can you give some examples of projects in the crypto space, or on the fringes of crypto, that are closest to the kind of ideas you are talking about?

Michel: I can share a few cases that I am particularly interested in right now. One project is called Gaia OS, which aims to build a complete "public resource tech stack" for a globally shared and managed resource system. It's not just a narrowly defined crypto project; it's more like a digital reconstruction of assets and investment methods.

You can think of it as a system of "fractional ownership": resources are raised through global crowdfunding and lending, and then these resources are localized and governed by local communities according to their own conditions, while also being confirmed through formal legal structures. This team has done a lot of very "dumb" work—they studied the legal systems of about sixty countries to figure out how to set up trusts, foundations, and similar institutions. For me, this is a very solid and important example.

Another example is a project initiated by Indy Johar called "Civilization Options." The core judgment behind this project is that civilizations often do not end due to failure, but because they lose choices. The real problem is that as we gradually approach multiple crises in climate, energy, and thermodynamics, there currently are no simple and effective financial mechanisms to support the long-term existence of these alternative solutions.

For instance, Spain and Portugal are experiencing severe water resource depletion. Some people are returning to medieval water management practices, such as building channels in the mountains to retain water rather than letting it quickly flow into the valleys; others are experimenting with various micro-dam systems. These solutions are ecologically reasonable, but the problem is that they can hardly obtain sustainable investment support.

Without a clear, investable entity, these decentralized solutions struggle to secure funding. This project is trying to address the question of "how to conduct distributed investment." Indy is very sensitive to these systemic risks and is well aware of the challenges they face.

Another case I really like is the Sarafu Network led by Will Ruddick. You may already know about this project. It initially started based on about a thousand local savings communities, which are very common globally and are known as "rotating savings and credit associations." My own wife participates in three such organizations, and this form is also very common in Thailand.

The basic practice of these communities is that people regularly save money together, and then through the collectively formed fund pool, they support members in completing some expenditures that would otherwise be difficult to afford, such as buying motorcycles, refrigerators, etc. Sarafu's approach is to have these communities put about 20% to 25% of their savings into a larger public pool, creating an alternative currency based on this and using an approximately 8x reserve model to map this system onto the blockchain.

As a result, a community savings of one million dollars can support about eight million dollars of economic activity in the system, and all of this is visible and auditable. In addition, they have established a so-called "commitment pool" system and will soon launch what they call "cosmolocal credits." This system allows community members to commit in advance to provide services or goods and to value these commitments, thereby creating credit and liquidity before real production occurs. This model can also be understood as a structure of "multilateral credit."

For me, the commonality of these projects is that they are indeed using technology, but the technology directly serves real communities, real production, and real life. Therefore, I would like to see the entire crypto ecosystem focus more on these directions, rather than primarily being used to accelerate speculation, enhance capital flow speed, or purely pursue privacy—of course, these are important in themselves. But if we truly want to change the logic of production in the world, I believe Ethereum still has a lot of room to continue moving forward.

When Capital Meets Real Practice: The Gap Between Web3 and the Productive Economy

Vitalik: One phenomenon I've observed is that when people try to create different mechanisms, it's hard to persuade them to participate in things they are not familiar with. For example, in Ethereum, we see many people trying various experiments, like some attempting to create hamburger tax NFTs or assets with additional conditions. And the recurring issue is that it's hard to get people to step out of the frameworks they are already familiar with; for instance, people are always more willing to choose ERC20 because it is so familiar.

Even within the ERC20 framework, it's difficult to get people interested in assets that are not dollars. For example, assets like Rye, which are almost equivalent to dollars but may fluctuate a few percentage points each year, still struggle to attract attention.

I suspect that some on-chain ROSCAs (Rotating Savings and Credit Associations) or similar ideas might be more successful in places like Thailand or the Global South because people there are already accustomed to such structures. So I want to ask, perhaps we actually need to develop different structures for different regions, right? Do we need more people in the crypto industry who understand the models that different groups around the world are already operating and provide them with corresponding choices based on those models, rather than simply saying, "We invented something completely new"?

Michel: Perhaps I can add something here because I think you raised a very good point. One of my criticisms is about the way funding is allocated, which is not just a critique of Ethereum but a general critique of NGO funding, etc. When you provide funding, certain conditions are set to compete for that funding. Almost automatically, this attracts some creative individuals.

But I think this phenomenon is even more pronounced in the Web3 space. I've attended some of these meetings where basically some tech people are envisioning how to change the world, and then they receive funding, much like some comments in a funding pool. But I think what you just said is very important because I understand your point to be that we should focus on what people are already doing, and this practice varies across different regions.

So, I would slightly change the interpretation of this phenomenon. I believe that millions of people are already engaged in alternative practices. But due to funding issues, these practices are often marginalized. So, my dream is that if you could use a portion of the five trillion dollars flowing in cryptocurrencies to create this regenerative feedback loop, many things in the world could be very different, but I'm not quite sure how the timing would work.

The Next Phase of Ethereum: Returning to the Web3 Vision, Scaling Implementation, and Rethinking the Application Layer

Michel: You might also agree that we are in a transitional period, with many things accelerating. This may also relate to your idea of "recalibrating Ethereum" that you mentioned a few days ago. So how do you see Ethereum's role in the next five years? I feel the next few years will be very critical.

Vitalik: I hope Ethereum can get closer to the Web3 vision that Gavin Wood described ten years ago: the core is to build high-value, high-security decentralized applications. A key issue that Ethereum needs to address is providing an infrastructure for "shared computation, shared memory," allowing applications to record and verify some shared facts—such as token balances, as well as other states and information related to the community.

This capability can certainly be used to represent currency, but it is also equally applicable to representing various other types of assets, even those that ultimately still require some community to recognize and assign value to them. The goal of this chain of Ethereum is to provide this functionality at a sufficient scale and convenience so that it is reasonable and cost-effective for people to use in real scenarios.

I believe we are moving in this direction. With advancements in scalability, many transaction fees for operations are already below one cent, and I expect they will continue to decrease over the next 1 to 3 years. Ultimately, I hope people can view the Ethereum blockchain as "a layer of infrastructure for a decentralized internet," just like DNS, communication networks, and email systems—these underlying systems provide common capabilities for upper-layer applications and allow different systems to connect and collaborate with each other. I hope Ethereum can gradually become such a platform in the future.

But beyond that, there is another equally important and more challenging question: what exactly should we build on it, and how should we build it? Because the traditional way of application development usually involves setting up a server and pairing it with a database. Often, it’s not even that complicated; it could just be a Google Sheet. It’s certainly useful, but it heavily relies on trust, has limited accountability, and interoperability between systems is challenging.

The blockchain paradigm is entirely different. We have already seen a new way of thinking naturally grow in DeFi: composability. Different DeFi projects can call and assemble each other; there are flash loans and complex paths that "pass through five on-chain AMMs in one transaction." This way of thinking is not designed top-down but grows out of the ecosystem in practice. I think similar thinking should also extend to "more areas beyond money."

We have also taken some detours in the past. For example, I think a typical deviation is that many DAO designs currently do not genuinely optimize efficiency, and may not even truly optimize decentralization; they are more like structural optimizations made to minimize legal risks under specific regulatory environments. Legal safety is certainly important, but it does not equate to the organizational forms we initially wanted to pursue.

Another example: I often hear people say they want to put "loyalty points" on-chain. When I ask why, they say they want to make the points more "interchangeable." But loyalty and interchangeability are logically opposed—pursuing loyalty often means encouraging people to stay within a specific community; whereas pursuing interchangeability and liquidity is more about breaking boundaries, making everything easier to exchange and penetrate. The goals of the two are different, and mixing them together can lead to design confusion.

So I think we need to think more deeply about the details: what exactly do we want? For example, I would use a definition to explain "finance": finance is a type of formalized points system, one of its common characteristics is that it does not attempt to prevent "collusion." I once wrote an article explaining why I define it this way and compared the dollar to voting on Twitter: liking and retweeting are essentially also points systems; when you like something, the other person can see it, and getting more likes makes people happy.

But if we set up a "mutual liking alliance" on Twitter, where you like me and I like you, that would be considered abuse in the logic of voting; whereas in a currency system, if I give you a dollar and you give me a euro, that’s just a foreign exchange transaction, not abuse. In other words, if we want to move beyond "finance," we must clarify: which interoperabilities do we not want to see, and which behaviors should be viewed as destructive rather than normal transactions in your system.

In summary, I hope to see more in-depth thinking at the application layer: not just moving things on-chain, but first clarifying what kind of system we want to build, what goals it should serve, and then choosing the right mechanisms to achieve it.

From Technology to Civilization: P2P as a New Paradigm of Human Self-Organization

Vitalik: I have seen your name associated with the P2P Foundation for almost twenty years. I find P2P to be a very interesting concept because when many people talk about P2P, they are not just discussing opposition to government-level centralization, but also critiquing hierarchical structures within companies.

I remember once hearing a talk at Fudan University where the speaker described the evolution of internet protocols in a very unique way: from SMTP to HTTP to Uber. I found this perspective interesting because it redefined what a protocol is and what P2P is in a completely different way. So I’m curious, how do you understand P2P? Not just at the technical level, but at the economic and social levels. Why do you think this concept has developed to where it is today over the past few decades?

Michel: I have always felt that from the very beginning—like why Satoshi chose to publish that white paper on our website—he may have already realized that there is some inherent connection here.

The key difference is that once P2P is implemented in computer systems, it inevitably extends to P2P between people. Therefore, P2P is not just a technical system. At the P2P Foundation, we have always tried to understand it as a human system.

For me, P2P is essentially a capacity for humans to self-organize globally. It allows us to jointly initiate projects and organize the production and distribution of value without needing to be in the same place. This is almost an ethical transformation: if I decide to do something with someone on the other side of the planet, I neither need to pay them nor obey them. This kind of relationship could only exist in early small tribes, and now, for the first time, it can be realized on a global scale.

Another important aspect of P2P is what I call "stigmatic coordination." This means we no longer primarily rely on market price signals or top-down commands and plans for collaboration; instead, we can voluntarily invest time and labor in common projects based on signals released by others in an open, global ecosystem.

If we look back at the history of human coordination, you will find that the earliest tribal societies were essentially a physical form of P2P, completing collaboration through gifting, reputation, and comments; then humanity entered a complex civilization stage dominated by market pricing and state commands. And I believe we are now moving towards a new stage—where "stigmatic coordination" is beginning to re-emerge as a core mechanism, and P2P and digital collaborative methods are evolving together in this process.

If you ask me what AI is, then in one sentence, AI is "symbolic coordination without humans." Precisely for this reason, I believe we are standing at a critical point of a new civilizational system. If you understand civilization as the relationship between cities and nations, that is a geographically based civilization; now, we are creating a new, non-geographical level, a "new geography" that no longer relies on physical space.

From this perspective, I would view DAOs and the practices you are promoting as people preemptively building institutions for the future—it's a form of "pre-constructive institutional building" aimed at the next stage of human civilization.

Chiang Mai as a Convergence Point: 4seas, Hacker Communities, and the Possibilities of a Generative Economy

Vitalik: What progress do you hope to see from 4seas and the hacker community in Southeast Asia in the next two years?

Michel: Chiang Mai is a very special place; it is first and foremost a real, naturally grown city in Thailand. So, it is not an experimental city built by external forces like Zuzalu—such experiences are certainly good, and I have been there myself. But what makes Chiang Mai unique is that it is both a real local city and provides a vast space for digital nomads and people from all over the world.

A few years ago, I didn't feel that the cultural ecology here was very vibrant, but the situation has clearly changed now. If you look at it from a geographical perspective, you will find that Chiang Mai is in a truly astonishing position: centered around it, with a radius of four thousand kilometers, it covers about two-thirds of the world's population, including countries like China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. This is very rare in the world.

Because of this, I believe Chiang Mai has the potential to become an important node in the global transformation process in the coming years, a truly diverse center—and this diversity is likely to come more from the Eurasian continent and within Asia rather than from the traditional European-centered perspective. I also believe that 4seas provides a very important impetus for the release of this potential.

If I may add one more thing, this is something I personally care about very much: I believe we need to shift from a "extractive economy" to a "generative economy." Currently, most value is generated through the extraction and exploitation of resources: we take a commodity from nature, form a price through supply and demand, and profit from it. If we are lucky, we then use some of that value through taxes or donations for some restorative or regenerative things. But what if we think in reverse?

In fact, the open-source community has already shown us a different possibility: value itself can be directly created through "contribution." The value of Ethereum is not primarily because of its price, but because thousands of people continuously contribute code, ideas, and time to this public pool, this open digital public resource, and it is this contribution that attracts later markets and investments. If we can extend this logic of "creating value through contribution" beyond human society and further recognize that nature itself and the network of life are also continuously creating value, then I believe this is the key to the current transformation.

Vitalik: I think you make a very valid point. This is itself a very interesting question, especially regarding what role Chiang Mai will play in the future world. Every time I come to Chiang Mai, I can clearly feel that it is at the intersection of at least three cultures: Thai indigenous culture, Chiang Mai's own regional culture, and Chinese and Western cultures, even including the deeply rooted culture of digital nomads here.

This makes it very unique and attractive. I am indeed looking forward to seeing how such a convergence point will continue to evolve in the coming decades and what role our community can play in this process.