Top all-time · #192
Vitalik Buterin
Personal blog · vitalik.casecurityphilosophy
Vitalik Buterin's personal blog at vitalik.ca covers security and philosophy. Since 2014, 227 different Hacker News readers have linked it 349 times, most often “Why Proof of Stake?”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 10 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Vitalik Buterin's blog as the standard explainer for Ethereum and crypto design: proof of stake versus proof of work, rollups, social recovery wallets, and legitimacy. Most commenters cite single posts as support for their own arguments.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Commenters call posts a good breakdown and a readable summary, say they inform better than most commenters, and call the explainers approachable.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Why Proof of Stake?22 people · 27 mentions · first linked 2020-11-06
- Why we need wide adoption of social recovery wallets19 people · 27 mentions · first linked 2021-01-11
- An Incomplete Guide to Ethereum Rollups13 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2021-01-05
- The Most Important Scarce Resource Is Legitimacy12 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2021-03-23
- Quadratic Payments: A Primer11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2019-12-08
- /10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2018-08-16
- Blockchain voting is overrated among uninformed but underrated among informed7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-05-25
- Verkle Trees7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-06-18
- Vitalik Buterin on Worldcoin Launch6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-07-24
- The Limits to Blockchain Scalability6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-05-23
What Hacker News says?
This is a good breakdown. Too much web3 thinkpiecing (both pro and anti) comes from people who've never looked under the hood. It's refreshing to see someone try actually try crypto as a developer, not just as a user, and go deep enough to figure out how things work in practice. Moxie's critiques are valid. All of these are well known problems to the researchers at the core of web3 and all are the subject of active…
Comment linking /general/2021/06/18/verkle.html
on “My First Impressions of Web3”Submitted Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later as a story · 486 points
HN discussionVerkle Tree https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/06/18/verkle.html https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/02/verkle-tree-structure/
Comment linking /general/2021/06/18/verkle.html
on “Ask HN: What are some cool but obscure data structures you know about?”Submitted The Limits to Blockchain Scalability as a story · 417 points
HN discussionWell decentralisation is hard, it's particularly hard when it's dealing with real peoples money, it's hard to scale and hard to maintain, Ethereum is getting closer and closer day by day to moving to an alternative system called Proof of Stake, it's a different system from Proof of Work, you may be familiar with Bitcoin and its energy use. You can read more about issues on Vitaliks website for example when Musk trie…
Comment linking /general/2021/05/23/scaling.html
on “My students cheated... a lot”Submitted My 40-liter backpack travel guide as a story · 380 points
HN discussionWhy do you believe a global PoS currency will be controlled by US actors? The US has a 10--20% share of global GDP. Regardless, history has proven that the most legitimate branch of a blockchain wins, irrespective of security model. It will not be the actor with the most hash power or stake. For reference, see the Justin Sun/STEEM drama. Vitalik Buterin has an interesting blog post on legitimacy: https://vitalik.ca/…
Comment linking /general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html
on “Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge”Submitted Verkle Trees as a story · 263 points
HN discussionRead the pros and cons of proof of stake compared to proof of work here (written by Vitalik): https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
Comment linking /general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
on “Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge”Submitted Two thought experiments to evaluate automated stablecoins as a story · 210 points
HN discussionThis is a great solution called zk-rollup (zero knowledge rollup) https://zksync.io/ It is just as secure as the base chain (unlike polygon) and has low fees and has been live for the past few months. This is a perfect solution to simple payments. The difference between optimistic rollups and zero knowledge rollups is that you can’t deploy arbitrary smart contracts to zk rollup, it only supports a limited set of use…
Comment linking /general/2021/01/05/rollup.html
on “Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge”Submitted Prediction Markets: Tales from the Election as a story · 209 points
HN discussionVitalik talked about splits like this, read https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html
Comment linking /general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html
on “Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge”Submitted Proof of solvency and beyond as a story · 198 points
HN discussionHere's a comparison of PoS and PoW by Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum): https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html Obviously he's biased in favor of PoS for various reasons, but I think it's a worthy read.
Comment linking /general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
on “Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge”Submitted Quadratic Payments: A Primer as a story · 194 points
HN discussionVitalik has a FAQ https://vitalik.ca/general/2017/12/31/pos_faq.html
Comment linking /general/2017/12/31/pos_faq.html
on “The Ethereum merge is done”Submitted The bulldozer vs. vetocracy political axis as a story · 184 points
HN discussionReading this will get you more informed than 90% of the commenters on this particular topic: https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
Comment linking /general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
on “The Ethereum merge is done”Submitted A Prehistory of the Ethereum Protocol as a story · 161 points
HN discussion> preferably books and not random blogs The tech in Blockchain/Web3 world is changing and evolving incredibly fast (as is evident from this historic event today) and so by the time books come out, they already become outdated. I would highly recommend reading Vitalik's blog[1]. He talks about various topics and has a knack for explaining things brilliantly. [1] https://vitalik.ca/
Comment linking /
on “The Ethereum merge is done”Submitted In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism as a story · 157 points
HN discussionI wouldn't say Vitalik Buterin is anywhere near as legendary as the names you dropped, but he's the closest to what you described, in terms of being as close as possible to the underlying tech rather than just being associated with the hype train (and scam train) riding on top of it. Vitalik's original Ethereum whitepaper, updated to be relevant in 2022 - https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/ Vitalik's blog - https://…
Comment linking /
on “The Ethereum merge is done”Submitted Trust Models as a story · 150 points
HN discussionIn that case I suggest https://vitalik.ca/ and dip into articles with titles that appeal to you. He covers a range from high level opinion essays to (imho) good technical simplified explanations of the special kinds of low-level cryptography. I've personally found the articles on how SNARKs and STARKs work very helpful. Note that Ethereum and the other "smart contract" blockchains which link general program executio…
Comment linking /
on “The Ethereum merge is done”Submitted Control as Liability as a story · 130 points
HN discussionYou are a bit out of date on your assumptions. You can read further here: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html
Comment linking /general/2021/01/05/rollup.html
on “Robinhood now has a 1-Star rating on the Google Play Store”Submitted Why we need wide adoption of social recovery wallets as a story · 129 points
HN discussionSome of the following applies more to chains with smart contracts, rather than Bitcoin itself, but: > refunds when corporations rip us off? Easily implemented in various ways. One old scheme is a simple 2-of-3 multisig, where the keys are buyer, seller, and arbitrator. If buyer and seller agree, the arb doesn't have to be involved, otherwise the arb decides where the funds go. > what about losing 100% of my funds wh…
Comment linking /general/2021/01/11/recovery.html
on “Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index”Submitted Coordination, Good and Bad as a story · 126 points
HN discussion
