Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sees crypto airdrops as a promising initial use case for blockchain-based identity frameworks.

In an Aug. 28 post on X, Buterin outlined the goals of airdrops as distributing tokens to genuine community members, rewarding project contributions, and ensuring fairness. He suggested that projects could leverage ZK-based identity, credential, and attestation frameworks to achieve these aims.

He emphasized:

“We can actually use all of these identity/credential/attestation solutions that the identity geeks have been working on for the past 5 years in order to…actually [have] good token distributions.”

Buterin added that current identity projects like Worldcoin might need to incorporate proofs of community membership because crypto projects aim to reward aligned community members, not just random individuals.

Buterin’s idea comes at a crucial time as crypto airdrops have faced growing controversy. Many participants attempt to game the system by using multiple wallets to farm airdrops, often with profitable results.

This has pushed projects to tighten their distribution methods to filter out airdrop farmers. However, these measures sometimes impact genuine users.

Discounted sales

Buterin also suggested that the same framework could be used for discounted token sales. He explained that the extent of an individual’s community membership or contributions could determine the number of tokens they can purchase at a reduced price.

He noted that this approach could help distribute the supply more fairly, reward non-financial contributors, and ensure buyers have a stake in the project.

Buterin commented:

“Any technique that works for airdrops also works for discounts. A related concept is to subsidize savings rates for smaller accounts as an alternative to UBI. Singapore’s CPF already does something similar.”

However, the Ethereum co-founder conceded that his idea could face implementation challenges. According to him:

“I don’t think there’s any one solution, I think it’s a multi-factor thing that will have to evolve over time. It’s an inherently hard problem, but it’s a super rewarding one, because if we solve it, that solution could naturally be exported to much better reward all kinds of currently-uncompensated work in our economy across all of humanity.”

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has been criticized by the crypto community for his comments on decentralized finance (DeFi).

In an Aug. 25 post on X, Buterin expressed doubts about DeFi’s potential to drive significant growth in the crypto sector. He stated:

“The ongoing existence of the defi market is downstream of the existence of the ETH market, which means that while defi may be great it’s fundamentally capped and can’t be _the_ thing that brings crypto to another 10-100x adoption burst.”

Community backlash

Buterin’s remarks sparked strong reactions from the DeFi community, with influential figures like DeFiance Capital founder Arthur Cheong openly challenging his views.

Cheong pointed out DeFi’s contribution in helping to drive Ethereum’s value to its current height, stating:

“[Buterin] doesn’t really understand the usecase and sector that drive value to ETH and make it worth $330b.”

Similarly, Sam Kazemian, the founder of Frax Finance, suggested that Buterin was out of touch with the current dynamics of DeFi and stablecoins. He said the Ethereum co-founder arguments relied on outdated assumptions.

Rhett Shipp, founder of Gravita Protocol, also argued that DeFi was pivotal to ETH’s growth. According to him, the sector accounts for the majority of Ethereum’s usage and gas fees and helps to drive ETH’s value because it is heavily used as collateral in DeFi.

Shipp also countered Buterin’s critique of unsustainable high yields in DeFi, noting that early subsidies are a valid strategy to encourage adoption.

Shipp concluded his statement by saying:

“Remove DeFi from ETH and its value would be 80% less.”

Buterin’s views on DeFi

Despite the backlash, Buterin remains a staunch advocate for decentralized crypto applications.

He acknowledged that while many applications, like those from the 2021 liquidity farming boom, were temporary and lacked sustainability, he favors those that are both sustainable and fully decentralized.

Buterin highlighted decentralized exchanges, decentralized stablecoins like RAI, and prediction markets like Polymarkets as examples of applications he supports.

Further, Buterin also called for expanding decentralization beyond finance into other areas of technology. He pointed out that centralization poses a significant threat, affecting encrypted messaging platforms, social media censorship, and centralized identity systems.

He stressed that the intersection of decentralized finance with other decentralized technologies will be crucial for the crypto industry to uphold its core values, including privacy.

Buterin concluded:

“I think intersections between decentralized finance and other decentralized tech are going to be very important.”

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TRON founder Justin Sun has pledged to donate $1 million to any Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) formed to advocate for the release of Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov.

On Aug. 25, Sun tweeted:

“We should show the cryptocurrency industry’s unity by organizing a #FreePavel DAO to help Telegram founder Pavel Durov legally gain freedom. I’ll donate $1 million if it’s created in a decentralized way with enough community support.”

Sun’s statement highlights the widespread support Durov has received since his arrest in France on Aug. 23.

Durov, a French-Russian citizen, was detained by the French Air Transport Gendarmerie (GTA) after his private jet landed at Le Bourget airport. He was listed as a wanted person in France under a warrant that applied only if he was on French soil.

French authorities accuse Durov of complicity in crimes due to Telegram’s alleged failure to moderate content properly. He could face charges related to complicity in drug trafficking, child exploitation, and fraud.

#FreePavel

Over the weekend, prominent figures in the crypto industry—including Elon Musk, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Robert Kennedy Jr., and several others — voiced their support for Durov’s release using the #FreePavel hashtag.

Elon Musk was among the first to express support, tweeting the hashtag “#FreePavel.” True to his style, Musk later added a sarcastic comment referencing the increasing censorship in Europe. He wrote:

“POV: It’s 2030 in Europe, and you’re being executed for liking a meme.”

Similarly, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that the arrest looks “very bad and worrying for the future of software and comms freedom in Europe.”

Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy, who recently exited the US presidential race to back former president Donald Trump, stressed the importance of protecting free speech. He tweeted:

“France just arrested Pavel Durov, founder & CEO of the encrypted, uncensored Telegram platform. The need to protect free speech has never been more urgent.”

In addition, renowned whistleblower Edward Snowden said Durov’s arrest was “an assault on the basic human rights of speech and association.” He added:

“I am surprised and deeply saddened that Macron has descended to the level of taking hostages as a means for gaining access to private communications. It lowers not only France, but the world.”

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has moved 400 ETH, worth about $1.05 million, to Railgun, a well-known crypto mixer, according to on-chain data from the Arkham Intelligence dashboard.

The transaction, which took place on Aug. 19, was corroborated by Web3 analysis platform SpotOnChain, which stated that Buterin had transferred 662 ETH, approximately $1.91 million, to Railgun in the last ten months.

Railgun

Railgun functions like the sanctioned Tornado Cash protocol by helping to obfuscate its users’ transactions. However, it employs the Privacy Pool protocol, a concept from an academic paper by Buterin.

The Privacy Pools allow users to create cryptographic proofs verifying their funds’ legitimate origins while maintaining privacy. So, if honest users generate these proofs, only bad actors such as the North Korea-backed hackers Lazarus Group will lack them, and this differentiation could help law enforcement identify and exclude these illicit participants.

Buterin said:

“Railgun uses the privacy pools protocol which makes it much harder for bad actors to join the pool without compromising users’ privacy.”

Thanks to Buterin’s continued usage, Railgun’s popularity has surged. It now boasts nearly 10,000 unique users on the Ethereum blockchain, and it has processed a total of $1.6 billion in transactions, according to the Dune Analytics dashboard.

Another donation?

The specific reason behind Buterin’s recent transfer remains unclear. However, some community members speculate it could be linked to charitable donations.

Indeed, Buterin has a history of significant crypto donations. In 2021, he contributed over $1 billion in the Shiba Inu memecoin to the Indian Covid-Crypto Relief Fund.

More recently, he donated 200 ETH, valued at over $500,000, to an Animal Welfare Charity fund. Buterin stated that these funds were generated from selling various animal-themed tokens while urging the coin issuers to allocate them to charities directly in the future.

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested ways to help the blockchain improve its transaction confirmation times.

Buterin, in a June 30 blog post, explained that Ethereum’s Gasper consensus mechanism uses a slot-and-epoch architecture that contains certain complexities, like bug interactions and a 12.8-minute confirmation time, that makes it “more and more uncomfortable” for user experiences.

So, he highlighted some of the “practical options” Ethereum has to improve its user experience further.

SSF

Buterin stated that the single-slot finality (SSF) mechanism is similar to the Tendermint consensus, as it allows the finalization of blocks as soon as they are produced.

However, unlike the Tendermint consensus, Ethereum will keep the “inactivity leak” mechanism to allow chains to remain functional even if a third of the validators go offline. Buterin added that the single-slot finality mechanism also has its faults. Notably, all Ethereum stakers must publish two messages every 12 seconds, overloading the chain.

Meanwhile, Buterin furthered that while there are ideas to mitigate this issue, users may still have to wait 5-20 seconds. He wrote:

“There are clever ideas for how to mitigate this, including the very recent Orbit SSF proposal. But even still, while this improves UX significantly by making ‘finality’ come faster, it doesn’t change the fact that users need to wait 5-20 seconds.”

Rollup preconfirmations

Rollup preconfirmations aim to improve Ethereum’s Layer 2 (L2) solutions. These solutions process transactions with the same security as the Ethereum base layer (L1) but on a larger scale.

Rollups confirm transactions much faster than the current 5-20 seconds, targeting latencies of hundreds of milliseconds. This method divides responsibilities — the L1 network remains stable, censorship-resistant, and reliable, while the L2s offer faster transaction times and address user needs directly.

To achieve faster confirmations, L2s create decentralized sequencing networks. These networks have smaller groups of validators who quickly sign off on blocks, often within milliseconds, and commit them to the blockchain.

However, validators must ensure their commitments are consistent and trustworthy. If a validator signs conflicting blocks, they risk losing their deposits.

Based preconfirmations

Based preconfirmations leverage Ethereum proposers’ advanced capabilities, driven by Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) prospects.

The concept involves establishing a standardized protocol where users can pay an extra fee for immediate assurance that their transaction will be included in the upcoming block. This service, known as preconfirmations-as-a-service, would assure users of swift transaction confirmation.

Proposers who fail to fulfill their commitment or breach the agreement face penalties (slashing). Buterin noted that this framework will apply to L1 transactions and extend to L2 solutions. By treating all L2 blocks as L1 transactions, the preconfirmation mechanism ensures accelerated confirmations throughout the Ethereum network.

Buterin noted that Ethereum implementing SSF and rollup or based preconfirmations could significantly reduce transaction confirmation times.

However, he pointed out that this would return to the initial “epoch-and-slot architecture” the blockchain was trying to ditch. He stated:

“There is a deep philosophical reason why epoch-and-slot architectures seem to be so hard to avoid: it inherently takes less time to come to approximate agreement on something, than to come to maximally-hardened ‘economic finality’ agreement on it.”

He suggested that the network developers explore other options that are not as tightly interwoven as Gasper.

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has expressed strong disapproval of the recent trend of celebrities experimenting with crypto by creating memecoins.

In a June 5 social media post, Buterin pointed out that most celebrity-backed memecoins lack practical utility or a specific use case backing their creation.

He added that financialization — or the process of turning something into a tradable asset — is only justified if it serves a purpose that brings value to society, such as improving healthcare, supporting open-source software, and promoting art.

Buterin believes the primary goal of any project should be to provide a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction to participants, even if the project eventually fails or the tokens become worthless. He added:

“The north star should be: to have a project where even if eventually all tokens involved go to zero, the average person who participated is happy to have done so. Regular businesses and charities accomplish this goal all the time! It’s a low bar, but things we build should meet this bar as well.”

Approval criteria

The Ethereum co-founder provided a set of criteria that a celebrity crypto project should meet to earn his respect.

First, these assets must serve a public good beyond merely enriching celebrities and early adopters. He cited the example of Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis’ Stoner Cats NFT collection as being “vastly more honorable” than other memecoins launched by celebrities this year because the project funded an actual show.

Buterin further suggested that celebrity memecoins should feature engaging mechanics like Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) activities, which would promote community participation and help the tokens grow beyond mere trading.

Additionally, he emphasized that these tokens should be designed to last more than ten years and not just trade for a few months and be easily forgotten.

Celebrity memecoin

In recent weeks, celebrity memecoins have become a new fad in the crypto industry, with superstars like Caitlyn Jenner, Iggy Azalea, and Davido launching several tokens via the Solana-based Pump Fun application.

While the results from these experiments have been varied, blockchain data shows that the assets have mostly benefited early traders who accumulated a substantial position in them. For example, blockchain analyst Lookonchain reported that an address associated with Nigerian record producer Davido made a profit of more than $470,000 in just 11 hours.

Meanwhile, Iggy Azalea’s Mother Iggy token continues to generate interest after soaring around 500% over the last seven days, based on CryptoSlate data.

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated 30 ETH, approximately $113,000, to support the legal defense of Tornado Cash developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm.

Etherscan data shows that Buterin donated to the “Free Pertsev and Storm” defense fund on the decentralized fundraising platform Juicebox early today, May 30. The fund had raised 591 ETH worth $2.2 million as of press time.

Buterin’s donation is unsurprising, considering he has been a prominent advocate for crypto privacy tools and a consistent user of such platforms.

Tornado Cash developers’ legal trouble

Over the past year, Pertsev and Storm, the Tornado Cash privacy protocol developers, have faced legal troubles for their association with the crypto mixer.

Earlier this month, a Dutch court sentenced Pertsev to 64 months in prison for laundering approximately $1.2 billion through the Tornado Cash crypto mixer between July 2019 and August 2022. However, the developer has reportedly appealed against the judgment at the s-Hertogenbosch Court of Appeal in the Netherlands.

Similarly, Storm has been detained in the US since 2023, and his trial is scheduled for September.

Meanwhile, Buterin’s donation reflects the growing support the developers continue to enjoy within the crypto community. Last month, three blockchain advocacy groups filed amicus curiae briefs to defend Storm against criminal charges in the US, supporting his efforts to dismiss the charges.

Moreover, US lawmakers Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden have also challenged the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) attempt to expand the definition of a money-transmitting business to include non-custodial crypto asset software services like Tornado Cash. They argued that such broad definitions would stifle innovation and shake confidence in the DOJ’s respect for the rule of law.

Additionally, several crypto projects are considering proposals to support developers. Discussions about potential donations are ongoing on Optimism, Aave, MakerDAO, YearnFi, Alchemix, and Uniswap forums.

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