Vitalik Buterin appears cryptic on Twitter

The tweet is one in which only insiders can grasp the nuances. It would seem to say something obvious, namely that no one has a magic wand to solve all the world’s problems, but there is much more to Vitalik Buterin‘s words considering the current context of Ethereum. 

“Usual reminder for people trying to make things better: It is not your responsibility to solve every problem.”

With these words, one can allude to anything and everything, but one tries to stick to the facts. 

Regular reminder to people trying to make things better:

It is not your responsibility to solve every problem.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 19, 2022

Vitalik Buterin and the cryptocurrency market

The markets, but also the world of cryptocurrencies have undergone and will still undergo for some time (analysts say 6 month/2-year range) a major crisis that is the result of various factors. 

The geopolitical crisis, years of expansive policy by governments to support the real economy that led to hyperinflation, energy crisis, etc. are leading the world, including the United States, into a recession that has already begun and this is holding the markets still in a bearish phase that does not enjoy the enthusiasms typical of a bull market.

Flat calm in short if it were not for the fact that a major revolution is coming, that of the Ethereum Merge, which will take ETH from the mining-based Proof of Work to the Proof of Stake that will improve the environmental impact by 99%.

This green turn of the digital currency makes it more accepted by institutional investors and beyond. The level of transaction security and protection of investors’ sensitive data will be significantly improved, but all that glitters is not gold. In fact, this transformation will expose the currency to real risks.

Proof of Stake is certainly green progress, but since it’s not based on anything concrete some complain that Ethereum will become more centralized and less secure and will indicate the dominance of some entities that hold Ether in staking (Ether deposited on the Beacon Chain), as data firm Messari pointed out. 

This aspect combined with the issue of miners who will be technically ousted from the game and doubts about the MEV boost probably underlie Buterin’s reasons for writing the tweet. 

Past comments on the Ripple project

In the past, 2013 to be precise, the Ethereum co-founder himself had written an article in which he sang the praises of Ripple (XRP):

“The Ripple project is actually older than Bitcoin itself. The original implementation was created by Ryan Fugger in 2004, with the intention of creating a decentralized monetary system and capable of effectively empowering individuals and communities to create the your own money. All the money in Ripple is explicitly represented as debt, with transactions simply consisting of balances transferred over a series of imaginary lines of credit from the payer to the recipient.”

Also in the same article, he wrote how this decentralized token was even better than BTC:

“What the original Ripple project sought to accomplish is effectively the democratization of this idea: everyone can be their own bank, issuing, accepting and acting as a lending channel all at the same time. Ripple introduces a substantial number of features in addition to those that Bitcoin itself already offers, to the point of being an innovation in the digital currency almost as significant as Bitcoin itself.”

In essence, Buterin was singing the praises of decentralized systems in apparent contrast to what he believes today. 

The outburst tweet is simply an attempt to explain that no stakeholder will ever be 100% satisfied with a transformation, even one so beneficial in objective respects, such as energy efficiency and technical chain improvement, despite the noblest intentions put forth.