Vitalik does not pay excessive attention to the ETH price

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently published two blog posts in succession, sparking speculation about his current thoughts. Despite the continuous decline in ETH prices, even dropping below $1800, Vitalik seems to be paying little attention to this.

The content of his two blog posts is as follows:

The Year Wheel Model of Culture and Politics

Vitalik proposed a "year wheel model" to explain political and cultural changes:

• The mainstream attitude and incentive mechanisms of an era determine how people treat new things.
• The way we deal with old things is mainly influenced by current biases.

Each era forms a new ring on the cultural tree, shaping people's attitudes towards new things. Once these boundaries are fixed, they are difficult to change, while the new rings continue to grow, influencing the next wave of issues.

This model can explain some phenomena:

• In the 1990s, the United States did have a trend of deregulation, which affected the development of fields such as the internet. However, since the 21st century, regulations have tightened.
• The level of taxation is constrained by the budgetary needs set 50 years ago.
• The risk tolerance for modern technological activities is lower than that for traditional hazardous activities.
• Social media matured in the 2010s, being seen as part of the internet but with its own uniqueness.
• AI matured in the 2020s, and the US-China strategy led to the rise of open-source AI.

The model indicates that changing attitudes towards existing things is difficult, while inventing new behavioral patterns is much easier. This is also the charm of the crypto space - it provides an independent technological and cultural foundation to do new things.

Open Source Funding vs Public Goods Funding

Vitalik believes that there should be more discussion on open source funding rather than public goods funding. The reasons are as follows:

1. "Public goods" are often misunderstood as "products produced by the government".
2. People believe that public goods funding lacks rigor and is biased towards insiders.

The term "public goods" is easily misused. Many commercial projects also claim to be "building public goods."

In contrast, "open source" has a clear definition, and digital public goods are usually open source. Open source projects are also assumed to be public goods.

The advantages of "open source":

• Clearly defined
• Scalable to areas beyond software
• The definition can be further expanded in the crypto field.

For public goods in physical space, the most effective way to provide them globally often also involves open source. For example, research on clean air is mostly open source.

Overall, shifting the focus from "public goods" to "open source" seems to be a better choice. Open source does not mean "as long as it is open source, it is equally noble"; it is still necessary to distinguish which projects are more worthy of support.