{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"80,000 Hours Podcast","title":"#63 – Vitalik Buterin on better ways to fund public goods, blockchain's failures, & effective giving","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":11904,"description":"Historically, progress in the field of cryptography has had major consequences. It has changed the course of major wars, made it possible to do business on the internet, and enabled private communication between both law-abiding citizens and dangerous criminals. Could it have similarly significant consequences in future?\r\n\r\nToday's guest — Vitalik Buterin — is world-famous as the lead developer of Ethereum, a successor to the cryptographic-currency Bitcoin, which added the capacity for smart contracts and decentralised organisations. Buterin first proposed Ethereum at the age of 20, and by the age of 23 its success had likely made him a billionaire.\r\n\r\nAt the same time, far from indulging hype about these so-called 'blockchain' technologies, he has been candid about the limited good accomplished by Bitcoin and other currencies developed using cryptographic tools — and the breakthroughs that will be needed before they can have a meaningful social impact. In his own words, *\"blockchains as they currently exist are in many ways a joke, right?\"*\r\n\r\nBut Buterin is not just a realist. He's also an idealist, who has been helping to advance big ideas for new social institutions that might help people better coordinate to pursue their shared goals.\r\n\r\nLinks to learn more, summary and full transcript.\r\n\r\nBy combining theories in economics and mechanism design with advances in cryptography, he has been pioneering the new interdiscriplinary field of 'cryptoeconomics'. Economist Tyler Cowen hasobserved that, \"at 25, Vitalik appears to repeatedly rediscover important economics results from famous papers, without knowing about the papers at all.\" \r\n\r\nAlong with previous guest Glen Weyl, Buterin has helped develop a model for so-called 'quadratic funding', which in principle could transform the provision of 'public goods'. That is, goods that people benefit from whether they help pay for them or not.\r\n\r\nExamples of goods that are fully or partially 'public goods' include sound...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/VO1STE7hN95RRg9QdLo4soV2VhhbR9PF5ZZlRhDYcwE/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzQxNDAyLzE2ODM1/NDQ1NDAtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}