Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author: Wenser (@wenser 2010 )
Faced with Ethereum's continued weakness, the usually calm Vitalik has become a little restless recently.
On August 21, he wrote, "Someone told me that I need to do less philosophical thinking and post more content that drives Ethereum up, so I'm posting an Ethereum 'bullpost' here." The picture is a bull with a sign in its mouth that reads "Ethereum is great." Yesterday, he wrote another article listing the important progress Ethereum has made in several key areas, including L2, and said that "Ethereum's fundamentals are actually very strong."
Today, exactly one month after the Ethereum spot ETF was approved, perhaps we finally have time to sort out and analyze the relevant ideas of Vitalik, the "leader of Ethereum", and get a glimpse of the possible future development trends of the cryptocurrency industry.
d/acc: defensive accelerationism or decentralized accelerationism?
If we talk about Vitalik’s core ideas, d/acc is definitely at the top of the list. This is a theory proposed by Vitalik in his long article "My Techno-Optimism" (originally named "My techno-optimism") published in November last year. The full name is decentralized/defence/democoracy/differential acceleration, which can be understood as decentralization, defense, democracy, and differentiated accelerationism.
dacc.eth is born, and decentralized accelerationism enters a critical decision period
On August 18, Vitalik minted the ENS domain name dacc.eth, driving the market value of the meme of the same name up more than 7 times to about 5 million US dollars, and making this concept once again attract a lot of attention. In contrast, e/acc (effective accelerationism) has gained a large number of fans as "a concept highly respected by the Silicon Valley venture capital circle" after the emergence of new-age AI products represented by ChatGPT and the publication of the "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" by a16z founder Marc Andreessen.
Compared to e/acc, which emphasizes efficiency and advocates the benefits of technological progress, d/acc is more concerned with who controls the power of accelerationism, who builds the world created by accelerationism and enjoys the corresponding welfare, and how to deal with non-human forces such as the rapid development of artificial intelligence and possible elite totalitarianism.
Perhaps these issues have indeed reached a critical stage for discussion, and an event that happened recently may become a key turning point in the dispute between d/acc and e/acc.
AI proxy encrypted payment system takes shape, USDC stablecoin issuer Circle has begun to lay out
On August 21, Skyfire, founded by former Ripple executives, announced the completion of a $8.5 million seed round of financing to provide encrypted payment solutions for AI agents. Investors include USDC issuer Circle, Ripple, Gemini, and the venture capital firm of Tim Draper, a well-known Silicon Valley billionaire and Bitcoin advocate.
It is understood that the company has developed an open source payment system that allows autonomous AI agents to conduct various transactions on the Internet, including the purchase of data storage, creative assets, air tickets and daily necessities. Its payment network runs on the USDC stablecoin and is currently deployed on the Polygon network, with plans to expand to other blockchains in the future.
Skyfire co-founder and CEO Amir Sarhangi said that traditional payment systems cannot meet the needs of AI, and cryptocurrencies and blockchains provide 24/7 micro-transactions, low fees and high efficiency solutions. The company has worked with several customers, including parts manufacturers and AI infrastructure providers for Indian automotive service centers, and is negotiating with multiple large language models (LLMs) to adopt USDC-based AI agent payment solutions.
Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire also wrote that USDC will become the preferred stablecoin network for AI agent projects.
Looking back at Vitalik’s original text on d/acc, decentralization may be the key to avoiding a technological totalitarian society
At this moment when fantasy becomes reality, super intelligence such as AI may become an undeniable force in the real world and the cryptocurrency industry in the near future. Even, in extreme terms, the crisis that many people have mentioned that "cryptocurrency becomes a source of wealth that AI agents can take whatever they want" is not impossible. Therefore, Vitalik's d/acc is undoubtedly prescient. As he mentioned in the article:
d/acc is a subspecies of e/acc, only more selective and intentional.
If you are an effective altruist, then d/acc is a repackaging of effective altruistic ideas, albeit with a greater emphasis on liberal and democratic values.
If you are a libertarian, then d/acc is a subspecies of techno-liberalism, albeit more pragmatic, more critical of the “techno-capital machine,” and willing to accept government intervention, at least today (at least, if cultural intervention doesn’t work), to prevent an even worse illiberal future.
If you are a pluralist, as Glenn Weil defines it, then d/acc is a framework that can easily accommodate the better democratic coordination techniques emphasized by pluralism.
If you’re a public health advocate, the ideas of d/acc can provide inspiration for a broader long-term vision and an opportunity for you to find common ground with “techies” with whom you might otherwise disagree.
If you are a blockchain advocate, then d/acc is a more modern, broader narrative than the emphasis on inflation and banks fifteen years ago, placing blockchain in the context of a concrete strategy to move toward a brighter future.
If you are a solarpunk, then d/acc is a subspecies of solarpunk and contains a similar emphasis on consciousness and collective action.
If you are a moonpunk (note: funding public goods that protect privacy), then you will appreciate d/acc's emphasis on information defense by maintaining privacy and freedom.
Regardless of the role, everyone can find their own sense of belonging and commonality in the d/acc concept, which highlights the more valuable point of decentralized accelerationism compared to effective accelerationism: the power of decentralization drives a decentralized world.
Defense accelerationism, which includes macro-physical defense, micro-physical defense (biological defense), cyber defense, and information defense, will undoubtedly be recognized and accepted by more people, even at the expense of the efficiency and results of the accelerationism output. As the results of the relevant polls initiated by Vitalik many times show: "Most people would rather see highly advanced artificial intelligence directly postponed for ten years rather than being monopolized by a single group, whether it is a company, government or multinational organization."
DePIN, DeAI, and DeFi will also play the role of "encryption backbone"
Based on the above information, we can see that the reason why Ethereum ecosystem leaders represented by Vitalik are so persistent and talk a lot about academic research, technological iteration and development concepts is, on the one hand, because strategic thinking is more important than tactical execution in the update and iteration of the ecosystem; on the other hand, according to my personal speculation, it is because technical personnel with a cypherpunk background are always full of distrust and even doubt and suspicion about the direction of "technical power" and those who hold power.
From this perspective, as AI develops rapidly now and in the future, DePIN, DeAI, and DeFi will continue to shine, and it is not ruled out that they will become the "backbone of the cryptocurrency industry" in the future.
After all, after the approval of Bitcoin Spot ETF and Ethereum Spot ETF, the cryptocurrency industry has begun its own "centralized incorporation journey" under the infiltration of the traditional financial industry and related capital forces. The growth of decentralized forces still needs to rely on the development and explosive prosperity of many DePIN, DeAI, and DeFi projects.
Perhaps many people will scoff at the cost and efficiency of decentralized computing networks, perhaps some people will be dismissive of the application of AI products in the DeAI track, and perhaps more people have not truly understood and experienced the true value of DeFi's decentralized finance, but "technological optimism" cannot solve or even to a certain extent avoid key issues such as "who will decide the future development direction" and "who will decide who will enjoy and own the welfare rights of the future world". Under the guidance of the concept of d/acc decentralized (defensive) accelerationism, we can find some different answers and solutions.
At least, AI companies like OpenAI, which have transformed from non-profit organizations to commercial totalitarian companies, cannot deprive themselves of the sole authority in the field of artificial intelligence, which is also the object and behavior criticized by Vitalik in his long article.
Summary: Decentralization is not dead, but accelerationism will always exist
This year, Vitalik has also paid much attention to Community Notes and prediction markets (such as PolyMarket), and has mentioned many times that the two are important ways to monitor and record real events in the real world through the decentralized power of the community or prediction market. This also shows to a certain extent that decentralized power has extremely strong anti-fragility, and thus can provide a kind of "ballast stone" protection for accelerationism in the near future.
Although the monetary system and sovereign individualism that transcend authoritarian organizations and centralized power envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto and Hayek are no longer as new and shiny as before under the erosion of time, the "Construction of Bitcoin City" and "Bitcoin Education for Civil Servants" in El Salvador, the "Network School" project initiated by Balaji, and the backbone of the cryptocurrency industry including Vitalik tell us: decentralization is not dead, and d/acc accelerationism will live forever.
Reference articles:
Vitalik's long article: The intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain under the concept of "d/acc"