Written by: Techub News Compilation

Recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin (V God) delivered a keynote address at a Zuzulu community event held in Switzerland. Zuzulu is a global movement dedicated to building offline cryptocurrency communities, with Switzerland being one of its important nodes. In this speech, Vitalik Buterin (V God) did not discuss specific blockchain technical protocols but instead shifted focus to a larger and more challenging real-world issue: how to design a sustainable, equitable, and values-aligned economic and governance model for those who wish to evolve from short-term gatherings to permanent residences and collaborations within cryptocurrency communities. This is not only the core challenge faced by Zuzulu, but also the gap that all projects attempting to materialize the idea of decentralization must cross.

From Temporary Festivities to Permanent Homes: Core Challenges and Objectives

Vitalik Buterin (V God) began by pointing out that cryptocurrency community activities are gradually forming a consensus: to achieve social significance beyond merely hosting parties, it is necessary to transcend short-term project models. Although short-term activities are quick to launch and feel fresh, they involve high setup costs and struggle to cultivate and create long-lasting value.

Economically, there is an essential distinction between short-term events and permanent communities. Short-term activities are self-contained: participants pay fees, events last one or two months, and governance risks are low—if something goes wrong, it only affects the organizers' reputation, and the risk is limited to the short term. However, with permanent locations, the situation is drastically different.

The first challenge is the huge upfront capital issue. Purchasing land and constructing facilities are extremely expensive and capital inefficient. This requires significant initial funding, which many cannot afford. To raise funds, project teams often opt to issue tokens. However, Vitalik Buterin (V God) warns that this can often become a permanent burden on the project years later, damaging its neutrality and consistency with the Ethereum ecosystem. Simply relying on donations is also not feasible, as their scale is limited and insufficient to support large-scale land acquisition.

Therefore, Vitalik Buterin (V God) identified three goals: first, to raise capital; second, to create more "crypto-native," honest wealth accumulation opportunities, rather than "extractive festivities"; third, to establish economic alignment between residents and the location. If there is too stark a divide between asset owners and residents, at best, the residents who are most capable of improving the community lack motivation; at worst, it could invoke accusations of "colonialism," while token holders merely view it as a money-making tool, distanced from the project's other goals.

He summarized the core objective in one sentence: “Create a structure with the advantages of homeownership, but without its drawbacks.”

Beyond Simple City Tokens: Constructing Economic Alignment Mechanisms

Vitalik Buterin (V God) used the simplest "city token" model as a starting point for criticism. If a crypto practitioner were to design an economic structure, they might simply issue an ERC-20 token and distribute it to a select few. However, there are two major problems.

First, the issue of residential stability. Non-homeowners are effectively "negatively aligned" with the place they live: if the community becomes extraordinarily successful and popular (i.e., "gentrified"), long-term residents may be pushed out by high prices. The ideal situation should be that the more successful the community becomes, the more benefits long-term residents who have contributed to it receive. A simple city token cannot naturally achieve this, as there is no enforced alignment pressure between holding tokens and actual residency participation.

Second, the issue of concentrated ownership. In any real-world small-scale token project, the number of people required to achieve 50% ownership is often staggeringly low. Vitalik Buterin (V God) asked the audience, "Who thinks it requires more than 10 people? More than 3 people?" The result pointed to "less than 3 people." He countered, "Would you want to live in a city where 50% ownership is held by three individuals? What if those 50% owners are random whales far away in Saudi Arabia?"

Therefore, an ideal design needs to motivate those who can contribute to actually do so, and if ownership is linked to governance, then distributed ownership is crucial for governance stability.

Next, Vitalik Buterin (V God) proposed an improved "strawman" design model: assuming a city has N identical plots of land. The project issues N * K tokens and stipulates that holding 1.5 * K tokens (with the extra 0.5 for public infrastructure and city operations) grants the right to live on one plot of land. Unclaimed land would then be used for short-term rentals (like hotels), with the income going towards infrastructure development and/or distribution to token holders.

This design, though basic, raises a key question: The alignment incentives between holding tokens and residency rights remain insufficient. To address this, he proposed an enhancement mechanism: imposing a "tax" on the behavior of "holding but not residing." For example, if you hold K tokens and reside, you receive the full residential value; if you hold tokens but let others reside, then rental income might only see two-thirds going to you, with the remaining third being "taxed." This tax rate can be adjusted—higher rates lead to lower market efficiency and stronger avoidance motivations.

To prevent people from bypassing this tax through means such as DeFi (e.g., temporarily lending token use rights), it is essential to explicitly prohibit token leasing and introduce the concept of "soul binding." Through cryptography (like MACI) and community rules, ensure that token holdings are unconditional and non-transferable, thereby tightly binding ownership to holder identity.

Embracing Nomads and Part-Time Residents: Continuous Membership

Vitalik Buterin (V God) emphasized that nomads and part-time residents will be a crucial part of the narrative for such communities. Historically, there has been a default assumption that part-timers are "outsiders" to the community. This "us vs. them" binary mindset is harmful.

While, as Eleanor Ostrom noted in discussions of collective resource governance, clear member boundaries are necessary, this does not mean that boundaries must be binary. Tokens, as a continuous ownership structure, are naturally suited to create memberships that range between 0 and 1. You can hold 0.1 tokens or 10 tokens.

So, how can the mechanism be friendly to part-timers? A natural extension is to allow users to choose to receive revenue shares in a soul-bound form and pay rent directly using these shares in auctions, allowing them to also gain a 1.5x appreciation benefit. This is equivalent to treating tokens as partial ownership.

Why not simply specify "holding K/12 tokens allows you to live for a month"? Because time is non-interchangeable. Demand varies greatly across different seasons and times (for instance, demand in Montenegro in July starkly contrasts with March). An auction-based mechanism can efficiently match supply and demand rather than rigidly dictating when certain times hold value.

Additionally, Vitalik Buterin (V God) discussed the issues of land heterogenization and community expansion (creating new plots). He proposed a linear interpolation model in which part of the value created from new plots goes to the city (for development) and part to existing holders (to prevent excessive dilution), thereby balancing growth incentives with existing ownership rights.

Tricameral Governance: Balancing Residents, Owners, and Mission

The economic model needs to be closely integrated with the governance model. Vitalik Buterin (V God) believes that designing governance must first clarify objectives. For such communities, he sees three reasonable objectives: 1) the quality of life for residents; 2) economic value for token holders; 3) broader public goods or mission objectives (for example, the Swiss community may focus on decentralized, censorship-resistant free software and hardware).

A "strawman" governance proposal is to establish a governing council for each target group:

• Token Holder Council: Represents economic value.
• Soul-Bound Resident Council: Represents the quality of life of current residents.
• Mission Council: Represents the long-term public goals of the community. The design of this council could be bolder, for example, selecting 20 people who do not know each other but strongly resonate with the mission and allowing them to anonymously transfer their seats to others, thereby forming a governance structure that is de-correlated and resistant to capture.

At the same time, there should be mechanisms for feedback and interaction between the three councils, such as residents being able to regularly elect new governors, who could influence part of the token distribution, allowing power to dynamically check and balance each other.

Vitalik Buterin (V God) also proposed a grander vision: to promote cooperative governance between different Zuzulu nodes. Drawing inspiration from Japan's "Keiretsu" model, allow the governance councils of different communities to hold small amounts of governance power in one another or sign time-bound treaties. This way, when funding needs to be secured for digital public goods that benefit all nodes or standards set, each node will have a stronger cooperative incentive rather than free-riding, thereby transparently facilitating cross-community collaboration through mechanisms.

Q&A Highlights: Resistance to Capture, Inclusivity, and Future Experiments

During the Q&A session following the speech, Vitalik Buterin (V God) further elaborated on key issues.

Regarding how to avoid communities becoming authoritarian or cult-like: Vitalik Buterin (V God) distinguished between "unpopular bad kings" and "internally popular cults." For the former, it is essential to maintain the power to remove organizers through democratic governance layers (such as resident and holder councils). For the latter, it relies on the aforementioned "mission council" as well as checks and balances across community governance nodes. Granting governance rights to other relevant but moderately distanced Zuzulu villages can provide a buffer when one node goes "crazy."

Regarding how to include low-income, high-value groups like students and artists: First, the economic model allows for rentals and provides a path for tenants to gradually transition smoothly into owners, with risks being continuous rather than abrupt. Second, the community should design residential options at different cost levels and adjust token weights through market mechanisms. Finally, each governance council should have the authority to offer targeted subsidies to high-potential contributors, using profits from high-end options to support a diverse community membership.

Regarding experiments hoped for in the future: Vitalik Buterin (V God) believes we ultimately need to "flip the switch" to truly launch an economic model and establish permanent locations. Many in-depth experiments in housing, infrastructure, technology, food, etc., are only truly feasible once the community gains permanence.

Regarding whether current centralized technology power structures can be resisted: Vitalik Buterin (V God) is optimistic. He pointed out that the two superpowers globally tend to be closed and controlling, but many other nations, ethnicities, and cultural groups are motivated to support an open alternative. The advantage of the crypto community lies in its ability to compete in areas typically dominated by network effects of tens of millions through highly selective and specialized networks of 200 people. In addition, there are immense collaborative opportunities in areas such as immigration: if a proof-of-identity system based not on national passports but on contribution potential could be created, allowing holders to gain visa facilitation, it would be highly valuable for many countries and individuals. The Zuzulu community should promptly start issuing its own "passports" and seek government recognition for its documents as basis for visa facilitation.

The entire speech showcased how a leading thinker applies principles of crypto-economics in a detailed manner to construct a complex challenge of building a tangible and sustainable decentralized society, providing builders of communities with a roadmap that combines idealism with practicality.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。