During the Bankless podcast, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discussed with economist Noah Smith the “effectiveness” of authoritarian regimes after the advent of the Internet and blockchain technologies.

Smith first argued that liberal democracies have historically excelled at aggregating information through markets, elections, and public discourse. However, the Internet's ability to centralize vast amounts of data potentially reduces this advantage.

Moreover, the World Wide Web promotes anarchy by facilitating the spread of misinformation, he believes.

Buterin develops this theme by comparing the information landscape to Thomas Hobbes's concept of a “war of all against all,” in which social balance is achieved only through monopoly control of the public narrative.

Smith and the Ethereum developer then discussed the counterarguments. The first drew a parallel with the printing press, which lowered the cost of information and led to increased liberalism and fragmentation of society rather than authoritarian dominance. He also questioned why the Internet wasn't moving on a similar trajectory.

In his opinion, this situation is associated with “nonlinearity”: while the costs of data transmission have approached zero, the costs of information warfare have grown exponentially.

Buterin examined the differences between the digital world and the real one from the point of view of defense mechanisms.

Cybersecurity systems like encryption and decentralized platforms offer a high degree of protection that has no physical analogues, which suggests a natural resistance to control in the digital sphere, the programmer said.

In addition, Buterin noted the fragmentation of the Internet into smaller and specialized communities that, to a certain extent, protect themselves from disinformation. These segregated spaces often support “a higher quality of discourse compared to large, chaotic platforms” like social network X.

“Twitter is the worst thing you see, and the worst precisely because you can see it from the right angle if you think about private group chats, for example,” the developer added.

Smith raised the question of whether blockchain could “ensure secure communication between citizens of authoritarian states like China and Russia.”

As an example, Buterin recalled the technology of the Kyiv company Rarimo called Freedom tool based on zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), which allows anonymous participation in online voting.

The co-founder of Ethereum admitted that such solutions may not be necessary in liberal countries, but in authoritarian regimes they help maintain the privacy of citizens by providing a safe space for dialogue.

Earlier, Buterin listed ways to use cryptocurrencies in everyday life. In particular, he proposed using ZKP mechanisms to verify “identity, credentials or reputation.”

Let us recall that in May the developer named five architectural solutions of the Ethereum blockchain, which he would like to change if possible. #IntroToCopytrading