Who is Vitalik Buterin?

The creator of the blockchain Ethereum. He co-wrote papers with Glen Weyl and others on mechanisms such as Quadratic Funding, contributed an endorsement to the book ⿻ Plurality and took part in editing it. He has also written a long review of the book.

You may have seen this name in news about cryptocurrencies. He also comes up again and again in the story of Plurality: as a co-author who designed mechanisms with Weyl, as the person who introduced Weyl and Tang to each other, and as the writer of a close reading of the book.

In short

Vitalik Buterin is the person who created Ethereum, one of the blockchains (shared records of transactions kept by everyone on the internet) [1]. Together with Glen Weyl and others, he proposed in a paper a way of allocating funds that gives more support to public projects backed by small contributions from many people (Quadratic Funding). This method is also discussed in Plurality [2].

Connection to Plurality

Endorsement and editing. He is listed among the endorsements at the start of the book as "Founder of Ethereum", writing: "In a technologically advanced, politically challenging, and rapidly evolving 21st century, what does a free and open future look like? Glen, Audrey and their coauthors offer a compelling view of a way forward" [1]. In the book's list of contributors, his name comes first in the "Editing" category [3].

How the book treats him. Chapter 3-3, "The Lost Dao", writes: "While many projects in the space have been influenced by Libertarianism and hyper-financialization, the enduring connection to original aspirations of the internet, especially under the leadership of Vitalik Buterin (who founded Ethereum, the largest smart contract platform), has inspired a number of projects" that are central inspirations for ⿻ [4]. (The "space" here is web3, the next-generation internet built on blockchains.) The book's chapters often cite his blog posts in their footnotes [5].

Co-author with Weyl. In 2018 he wrote the paper on Quadratic Funding with Zoë Hitzig and Weyl [2], and in 2022 the paper on "Decentralized Society" (DeSoc) with Puja Ohlhaver and Weyl [6].

The person who introduced the two. In his commentary on the Japanese edition, Ken Suzuki writes that Weyl and Tang met through the Ethereum community, when Tang was introduced via Buterin [7].

His review. In August 2024, Buterin discussed the book at length on his blog. He summed up its content as four pillars, and observed that while Weyl's earlier book Radical Markets tried to remake economics, Plurality is trying to remake liberalism [8].

Main ideas

Quadratic Funding. A method of giving a project an amount equal to the square of the sum of the square roots of its donations. The paper says that by supporting people coming together and acting under neutral, non-authoritarian rules, it answers the old debate between liberalism and communitarianism [2]. The idea it grew from is Quadratic Voting.

Decentralized society and soulbound tokens. Today's web3 is centered on financial assets that can be transferred to others. Yet much of the real economy rests on lasting relationships that cannot be transferred. Starting from this problem, the paper proposed using non-transferable tokens to represent people's relationships and affiliations [6]. The book cites this paper in its chapter on identity and also in its chapters on commerce, voting and social markets [5]. → Soulbound tokens, proof of personhood

d/acc. An idea he set out in "My techno-optimism" (2023): prioritize the advancement of defensive and decentralized technologies. In that piece, Buterin writes that even for a pluralist in Weyl's sense, d/acc is a framework that naturally includes the technologies of democratic cooperation that Plurality values [9]. → d/acc

Analysis of Community Notes. He has a blog post analyzing the note system on X (formerly Twitter), which chapter 5-4 of the book cites in a footnote [5]. → Community Notes

What is debated

Buterin supports the book, but his review also sets out his own reservations [8].

The umbrella is too big. He pointed out that he sometimes feels that fairly separate ideas, with different reasons for accepting them, sit under the single umbrella of the Plurality vibe.
The goals are too modest. He calls the goals the book sets in Part 6 (raising productivity, extending life expectancy by 20 years, and so on) admirable, but writes that what he wants from technology is not a slightly better future than today, but a vastly better one. He then argues that Plurality's tools, such as mechanisms for allocating money to public goods democratically, could be a way to keep rapid technological growth from turning into gaps in power.

Sources

Plurality, endorsements — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/0-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Buterin, Hitzig and Weyl, "A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods" (2018) — https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06421
Plurality, list of contributors (⿻ credits) — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/0-3/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 3-3 "The Lost Dao" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, footnotes in 4-1 "Identity and Personhood", 5-4 "Augmented Deliberation" and other chapters — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-1/eng/ and https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-4/eng/ ［CC0］
Ohlhaver, Weyl and Buterin, "Decentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soul" (2022) — https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4105763
Ken Suzuki, commentary on the Japanese edition of Plurality (in Japanese) — https://note.com/digitaldemocracy/n/nb8b59a6b775d
Vitalik Buterin, "Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell" (2024-08-21) — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/08/21/plurality.html
Vitalik Buterin, "My techno-optimism" (2023-11-27) — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html

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