Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Insight: Vitalik Buterin announced on May 27 that he would pause long-form blog writing on Farcaster to create a science fiction novel themed around decentralized governance, which has currently completed two chapters.

The novel constructs a fictional nation called "Veridia," where mechanisms like quadratic voting, privacy-preserving audits, and AI-assisted decision-making operate. The timing of this shift is intriguing: by 2026, at least 9 core members of the Ethereum Foundation have left, the ETH price has fallen below $2100, and Vitalik himself just three days ago announced that the foundation will become a "smaller ship."

The founder of Ethereum, Vitalik, is no longer writing technical blogs; he is writing novels...

On May 27, Vitalik Buterin posted a brief statement on Farcaster: “Rather than continuing to write conventional blogs, I decided to try writing some science fiction about decentralized governance,” along with a link to the completed first and second chapters on his personal website.

According to BeInCrypto’s report on May 27, this marks a rare stylistic shift in Buterin's public writing career.

Over the past decade, his long-form articles have largely constituted primary documentation of Ethereum's ideological evolution, covering nearly all core issues from L2 scaling, DAO governance, to quadratic voting. Now he chooses to package these ideas into fictional narratives instead of continuing to write EIP-type technical arguments.

This choice is not surprising in itself. However, the timing begs consideration:

Three days ago, he had written a lengthy article on X defending the turmoil within the foundation, two weeks prior the core leaders of the foundation's protocol team had collectively exited, and the ETH price has dropped over 57% from its nearly $5000 peak in August 2025.

"Veridia" in the novel: Vitalik's ideal governance system

We had AI quickly read the currently finished two chapters to see what Vitalik really wants to express.

The two chapters of the novel take place in a fictional nation named Veridia, where the protagonist, Gladias, is a trainee member of the "Order of Steering." This organization is the core executive body of Veridia's governance system, responsible for maintaining a set of intricate tax and subsidy evaluation standards (rubrics) to replace traditional legal prohibitions.

Veridia's governance logic is clear: it almost directly prohibits nothing, the criminal law is extremely streamlined, and instead, there is a social governance system driven by tax incentives. If a band wants to sing violent songs, no one will arrest them, but they may be classified into a high tax bracket.

The specific operation of this system deserves dissection, as it is almost a fictional presentation of Vitalik's technical blog over the past few years:

The "Order of Steering" is composed of three types of roles. The "Keepers" are responsible for establishing and updating tax evaluation standards; the "Sentinels" are responsible for auditing the classifications of specific enterprises, a group of 9 selected randomly via cryptography, divided into three groups for independent deliberation before voting to determine the median; the "Acolytes" serve as backups for Keepers and Sentinels, responsible for low-priority audits, continuously scoring in the system, only the top 10% can be promoted.

Privacy protection is the underlying logic of the entire system. Members of the Order of Steering wear uniform "privacy robes" to conceal their identities, it is strictly forbidden to leak auditing tasks, and anyone can submit guesses about members' identities via a decentralized cryptographic network — if guessed correctly, the member will have their salary deducted and the informant receives half as a reward. The goal of this mechanism is to prevent bribery and external influence.

In the first chapter of the novel, the protagonist also participates in another form of public governance: public aesthetic scoring. Citizens are assigned to public goods (like advertisements on buses) through random drawing and score them using sliders. Here, quadratic voting, which Vitalik has championed for years, appears: all votes are automatically standardized such that each person's average score is zero and variance is one, extreme votes will compress your influence on other issues. The novel states that this mechanism is mathematically provably optimal — the strength of voting should match the intensity of your true feelings, no more and no less.

The second chapter shifts scenes to an underground educational community named Dzego, where two students traverse the city to attend a physics class. Dzego's survival strategy is summarized in four characters: "rooted without a head" — grounded locally, with no centralized leadership. The classroom location is decrypted and disclosed via cryptographic broadcasting before class, classrooms are covered with signal shielding foil, and the security frequently switches cryptographic proof systems.

What is written in the novel is what cannot be pushed forward in reality

Looking at the novel's content alone, it is simply a cleverly set governance science fiction. But placing it back in the context of Ethereum in 2026 clarifies the correlation.

The "Order of Steering" in the novel is a decentralized, anonymous, cryptographically protected governance organization with no single authority, and members are promoted based on ability rankings. In reality, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) in 2026 has experienced its most severe personnel losses since its establishment.

According to reports from CoinDesk on May 18 and Unchained on May 20, it is summarized that at least 9 senior contributors have left or announced their upcoming departure from the foundation since 2026. Co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak resigned this February, less than a year into his term; operations and writing director Josh Stark left in March after 7 years with the foundation; Protocol Guild founder Trent Van Epps also departed in April.

The impact in May was even more concentrated.

The co-leads of the protocol team, Tim Beiko and Barnabé Monnot, both stepped down simultaneously, and Alex Stokes took an indefinite leave of absence. In the ensuing week, early design contributor for the beacon chain, Carl Beek (who served 7 years), and core author of the anti-censorship mechanism FOCIL (EIP-7805), Julian Ma, announced their resignations.

On May 24, just three days before announcing the novel, Vitalik released a lengthy statement on X addressing this personnel storm. He likened the foundation to "a smaller ship," stating that there will be a focus on the CROPS framework (Censorship-resistant, Resilient to Centralized Pressure, Open, Privacy, Security), admitting that the foundation’s initial technical mission had essentially been completed by 2022 and that it is currently transitioning from an expansion-type organization to a survival-type organization.

He also revealed that 90% of his net worth is still in ETH, and the ETH held by the foundation constitutes only 0.16% of the total supply, valued at about $408 million.

"The foundation chooses to pursue survival rather than breadth with its remaining resources, yes, that means we're selling less ETH," Vitalik wrote. Interim co-executive director Bastian Aue (who replaced Stańczak in February) is executing this transformation.

Compare this statement with the governance system in the novel: the novel features cryptographically guaranteed decentralized auditing, mathematically provably optimal quadratic voting, and an evaluation system that assists but does not replace human judgment with AI.

But in reality, the foundation is unable to retain even its core研发人员, and the focus of governance discussions is on "who is leaving" and "why are they leaving."

Community response: The novel is worth serious reading, but the timing evokes mixed feelings

Regarding Vitalik writing science fiction, the community’s response has been relatively positive. Crypto.news reported on May 27 that Buterin is effectively transferring his thoughts on decentralized governance from a white paper and blog format to a speculative narrative, using a fictional world to test the issues of coordination, incentives, and power distribution he previously discussed in his papers.

BeInCrypto's analysis pointed out that Vitalik had previously advocated for quadratic voting and multiple mechanisms to dilute the influence of large coin holders, and the narrative format of the novel gives him space to dramatize these mechanisms amid fictional cities and crisis scenarios.

His recent description of the foundation as "one of many nodes" also explains why this announcement was made on Farcaster rather than a centralized social platform.

However, sharper voices also exist.

At a time when the foundation has just lost nearly all core members of its protocol team, the founder’s allocation of energy itself is a signal. Vitalik himself had already laid the groundwork for this in his lengthy post on X on May 24 — he clearly stated that his power within the foundation would continue to diminish, "that is exactly what I want," with the transition being executed by Bastian Aue, not himself.

From this perspective, writing science fiction is also a declaration of a shift in identity: he is no longer the core executor of the foundation, but a thought node within the Ethereum ecosystem.

This aligns perfectly with the governance philosophy of Veridia in the novel; everything is as desired.