I spent the past week listening to this Bankless podcast with Vitalik Buterin (the Canadian programmer and co-founder of Ethereum). It took me a week because I was listening to it off and on while I was in the car, headed to and from One Delisle and other meetings. But it's a fascinating episode. I think Vitalik is easily one of the most important minds of our generation.
But let me be honest and say that I wasn't able to follow everything in the podcast. I clearly still have a lot to learn when it comes to cryptography. For this reason, I'm not going to recommend that you all watch/listen to the episode — not unless you're prepared to go in deep. This is also supposed to be a blog for city builders (at least most of the time).
But I did want to share one takeaway that I found interesting.
In the episode, Vitalik describes Ethereum as the world's ledger. This maybe won't mean very much if you're not familiar with crypto, but the goal is a universal, permissionless, and censorship-resistant place for recording and securing basically everything: property title records, financial assets, AI-generated cat videos, and so on. Put another way, Ethereum wants to become a foundational layer of trust for the world.
Then, later in the episode, they somehow get onto the topic of dictators. There was a general acknowledgment that dictatorships do have their benefits, but that they also have obvious downfalls. Ideally, we would have a best-of-both-worlds scenario. We want the efficiencies of dictatorships, with all of the benefits of capitalist democracies.
I spent the past week listening to this Bankless podcast with Vitalik Buterin (the Canadian programmer and co-founder of Ethereum). It took me a week because I was listening to it off and on while I was in the car, headed to and from One Delisle and other meetings. But it's a fascinating episode. I think Vitalik is easily one of the most important minds of our generation.
But let me be honest and say that I wasn't able to follow everything in the podcast. I clearly still have a lot to learn when it comes to cryptography. For this reason, I'm not going to recommend that you all watch/listen to the episode — not unless you're prepared to go in deep. This is also supposed to be a blog for city builders (at least most of the time).
But I did want to share one takeaway that I found interesting.
In the episode, Vitalik describes Ethereum as the world's ledger. This maybe won't mean very much if you're not familiar with crypto, but the goal is a universal, permissionless, and censorship-resistant place for recording and securing basically everything: property title records, financial assets, AI-generated cat videos, and so on. Put another way, Ethereum wants to become a foundational layer of trust for the world.
Then, later in the episode, they somehow get onto the topic of dictators. There was a general acknowledgment that dictatorships do have their benefits, but that they also have obvious downfalls. Ideally, we would have a best-of-both-worlds scenario. We want the efficiencies of dictatorships, with all of the benefits of capitalist democracies.
Vitalik refers to this scenario as "dictators in a box," and he argues that we already have them: they're called entrepreneurs. When you start a company, you get to run within your box, and that is the power of entrepreneurship. But importantly, these boxes exist within a broader framework that includes the rule of law, property rights, freedom of speech, and all the other benefits of capitalist democracies.
This is how Ethereum sees itself — as a foundation on top of which "dictators in a box" can build new ideas, businesses, and opportunities. And because of this layering, it will be Ethereum that provides the backstop against people doing bad things, like stealing someone's crypto or falsely claiming that they hold title to a property when they don't.
I found this analogy fascinating, and I think it offers a glimpse of what's at stake if/when Ethereum becomes what it's aiming to become — the world's ledger.
What I have learned from this recent New York Times article is that if you have a company with "AI" in the name — such as OpenAI, ScaleAI, Adept AI, Hayden AI, or Harvey AI — then you probably need to lease office space in an area of San Francisco (around the Mission District) that is now being called The Arena. Here's a map from the article:
Touring and generally looking at buildings is, in my opinion, an important part of being a developer. Whenever I tour a project, I always learn something new. Because invariably, someone will say something like, "the building inspector made us do X." Immediately after you then email all of your project teams and ask them if they've run into this same problem. And then, hopefully, you're a little bit better than the last project.
This kind of knowledge transfer is a good thing, but I also think it's a reminder of just how opaque and fragmented information is within our industry. There's a lot of information and experience that simply isn't stored anywhere, other than in someone's head or deep on someone's hard drive never to be found ever again.
Sometimes it might be part of a firm's competitive advantage and they don't want to share it with others. That's fair. But in my experience, most people in this industry are more than happy to share what they know and where they've made mistakes. It helps us all get better. But might there be a more effective place to share this knowledge beyond individual conversations, conferences, building tours, and group chats?
There has to be. And my prediction is that it will eventually live on a blockchain.
Vitalik refers to this scenario as "dictators in a box," and he argues that we already have them: they're called entrepreneurs. When you start a company, you get to run within your box, and that is the power of entrepreneurship. But importantly, these boxes exist within a broader framework that includes the rule of law, property rights, freedom of speech, and all the other benefits of capitalist democracies.
This is how Ethereum sees itself — as a foundation on top of which "dictators in a box" can build new ideas, businesses, and opportunities. And because of this layering, it will be Ethereum that provides the backstop against people doing bad things, like stealing someone's crypto or falsely claiming that they hold title to a property when they don't.
I found this analogy fascinating, and I think it offers a glimpse of what's at stake if/when Ethereum becomes what it's aiming to become — the world's ledger.
What I have learned from this recent New York Times article is that if you have a company with "AI" in the name — such as OpenAI, ScaleAI, Adept AI, Hayden AI, or Harvey AI — then you probably need to lease office space in an area of San Francisco (around the Mission District) that is now being called The Arena. Here's a map from the article:
Touring and generally looking at buildings is, in my opinion, an important part of being a developer. Whenever I tour a project, I always learn something new. Because invariably, someone will say something like, "the building inspector made us do X." Immediately after you then email all of your project teams and ask them if they've run into this same problem. And then, hopefully, you're a little bit better than the last project.
This kind of knowledge transfer is a good thing, but I also think it's a reminder of just how opaque and fragmented information is within our industry. There's a lot of information and experience that simply isn't stored anywhere, other than in someone's head or deep on someone's hard drive never to be found ever again.
Sometimes it might be part of a firm's competitive advantage and they don't want to share it with others. That's fair. But in my experience, most people in this industry are more than happy to share what they know and where they've made mistakes. It helps us all get better. But might there be a more effective place to share this knowledge beyond individual conversations, conferences, building tours, and group chats?
There has to be. And my prediction is that it will eventually live on a blockchain.
The struggles of San Francisco's office market have been well publicized. At the beginning of this year, San Francisco had the highest office vacancy in the US at approximately 27.8%. But beneath this headline, AI firms have leased more than 5 million square feet in the city since 2020. And CBRE is forecasting that AI-related companies will lease another 16 million square feet between now and 2030. So here comes the boom following the bust — which is the bipolar way in which San Francisco generally likes to operate.
But what is also interesting is that, even in this brave new world of AI, blockchains, and remote work, agglomeration economies are alive and well. AI companies are choosing to physically cluster in The Arena because there are economic benefits to doing so. There are mountains of research to support the fact that it will make these firms more innovative and more productive due to knowledge spillovers. You don't want to be isolated from your competitors — you want to be cheek by jowl. Physical proximity matters and, therefore, cities matter.
So much so that the New York Times is now asking: What if San Francisco is the new Silicon Valley? In other words, could its center of gravity be right now moving from the suburbs to the city? That makes perfect sense to me.
The struggles of San Francisco's office market have been well publicized. At the beginning of this year, San Francisco had the highest office vacancy in the US at approximately 27.8%. But beneath this headline, AI firms have leased more than 5 million square feet in the city since 2020. And CBRE is forecasting that AI-related companies will lease another 16 million square feet between now and 2030. So here comes the boom following the bust — which is the bipolar way in which San Francisco generally likes to operate.
But what is also interesting is that, even in this brave new world of AI, blockchains, and remote work, agglomeration economies are alive and well. AI companies are choosing to physically cluster in The Arena because there are economic benefits to doing so. There are mountains of research to support the fact that it will make these firms more innovative and more productive due to knowledge spillovers. You don't want to be isolated from your competitors — you want to be cheek by jowl. Physical proximity matters and, therefore, cities matter.
So much so that the New York Times is now asking: What if San Francisco is the new Silicon Valley? In other words, could its center of gravity be right now moving from the suburbs to the city? That makes perfect sense to me.
