Dialogue with Vitalik: POS, L2, the Integration and Innovation of Ethereum and AI

On April 7, 2025, Yan, the founder of the DappLearning community, interviewed Vitalik at the Pop-X HK Research House event in Hong Kong. The following are the main points of the interview:

01 Views on POS Upgrade

Yan asked Vitalik about his views on the Ethereum POS upgrade. Vitalik said:

• The prices of BTC and ETH are unrelated to POW and POS.
• One problem facing Ethereum is that successful applications may not bring enough value in ETH.
• More applications that support ETH holders and are beneficial for the long-term value of ETH are needed.

02 PBS Architecture and Centralization Concerns

Regarding the PBS( Proposer & Builder Separation ) architecture, Vitalik believes:

• Building blocks and validating blocks can become asymmetric.
• Verification costs can become very low, but construction costs will increase.
• Need to consider how to prevent super nodes from malicious actions.
• The concept of Fossil can separate the roles of selecting transactions and executing transactions.

03 Issues Between Layer 1 and Layer 2

Vitalik's view on the relationship between L1 and L2:

• The progress of L2 in terms of security is not fast enough.
• L2 interoperability needs improvement
• L1 needs to take on more roles to ensure the value of ETH.
• Plans to improve the scalability of L1, including delayed execution, block-level access lists, etc.
• Hope to increase the gas limit of L1 by 10 times.

04 Cryptography and AI

Vitalik's views on cryptographic technologies such as ZK, MPC, and FHE:

• Developers should focus on high-level languages without needing to delve into the underlying ones.
• The prospects for FHE are good but there are security risks.
• AI can bridge the gap between experts and novices.
• The combination of blockchain, AI, cryptography, and other technologies is worth paying attention to.

05 Expectations for the Ethereum Ecosystem

Vitalik's advice to developers:

• There are now more opportunities to develop applications that were previously unattainable.
• Need to develop applications that are both valuable and have a business model.
• Developers have more resources than before, and the chances of success are high.

Vitalik hopes to see more applications with actual value and sustainable development, rather than just idealistic applications for a very small number of users or purely speculative applications. He remains optimistic about the future development of the Ethereum ecosystem.