Devansh Mehta

NEW POD @vitalikbuterin on the @greenpillnet podcast for a year-end deep dive into public goods funding in the @Ethereum ecosystem. Thx @devanshmehta for co-hosting. We discuss how the landscape has shifted from “vibes-based” funding to verifiable, dependency-driven mechanisms, and why this is the best moment to reform PGF using new tools like programmable cryptography, AI-assisted evaluation, and deep funding models. Vitalik shares how he thinks about dependencies, credible neutrality, open-source licensing, pluralism, accountability, ethereum localism, and what builders should prioritize in the coming year. 00:00 – Welcome to the Greenpill Podcast 01:50 – Vitalik joins: why public goods funding matters 02:19 – Why PGF is essential for decentralization 04:18 – The crypto spirit: censorship resistance, institutional design & funding 06:42 – The shift from vibes-era PGF to verifiable mechanisms 08:25 – Why 2026 is the best moment to reform PGF 10:19 – Where does PGF money actually come from? 12:45 – Open-source licensing, taxes & funding dependencies 17:34 – “Fund your dependencies” as a stable mechanism 19:35 – Why general-purpose QF doesn’t work in a chaotic world 21:59 – Bottom-up vs top-down: polycentric PGF 25:29 – How to create accountability loops in public goods 27:22 – Funding open-source as an Ethereum priority 29:31 – Privacy as a public good & why it’s upstream of PGF 31:54 – What OSS developers really think about crypto 33:52 – Mixing social outreach with financial support 35:56 – What should PGF builders focus on in 2026? 38:13 – Work with new projects, not legacy ones 39:44 – Ecosystem cycles & “layers of sediment” 41:39 – Yield-based funding (Octant) & treasury strategies 43:40 – Accountability: from vibes to rigorous mechanisms 47:35 – Motivation, feedback & the psychology of public goods 50:43 – Profit sharing licenses & sustainable PGF pools 53:46 – Security, issuance & public goods 56:12 – Technology, democracy & long-term risks 58:31 – How PGF relates to DIAC (Defensive/Decentralized Acceleration) 01:00:05 – Solving the free-rider problem without coercion 01:02:12 – Mechanisms vs coercion: credible neutrality 01:04:16 – Institutions, power & capture risks 01:06:16 – Individuals vs institutions in PGF 01:08:41 – Why PGF is more error-tolerant than governance 01:11:01 – Pluralism: many funders, many mechanisms 01:13:14 – Why diversity of funders is healthy 01:15:17 – What Vitalik wants built next 01:17:12 – Ethereum localism & real-world experiments 01:19:28 – What success in PGF looks like by end of 2026 01:24:28 – Closing thoughts

@litocoen Fluid is BUSL-licensed. The EF has not been consistent about this being a hard line before, but it is a hard line now.

0/ The Ethereum Foundation continues to explore DeFi as part of its treasury strategy. In Oct 2025, EF deployed 2,400 ETH + ~$6M in stablecoins into @Morpho Vaults V1. x.com/ethereumfndn/s… Today: another 3,400 ETH into Morpho, where 1,000 ETH in Morpho Vaults V2. Why Morpho? 👇

I was a fashion photographer for over a decade before crypto. I worked for magazines like @ELLEmagazine @marieclaire @Cosmopolitan and brands like @LouisVuitton @gucci and more. The Vanity Fair article was a setup to mock crypto and those it depicted.

🏆 $20,000 prize pool from Ethereum Foundation! AI as the engine. Humans as the steering wheel. What if AI helped determine how Ethereum’s open-source ecosystem gets weighted based on Github repo data? We're partnering with @ethereumfndn’s Unblocking Pilots Team and @clesaege on a new Deep Funding contest. Your challenge: Build ML models that assign contribution weights across • 98 core Ethereum repos • 3,677 of their dependencies You’ll produce 3 outputs: 1️⃣ Relative importance of 98 repos to Ethereum (sum = 1) 2️⃣ Originality score per repo (self vs dependencies) 3️⃣ Relative importance between dependencies of the 98 repos Your model will be evaluated against human jury spot checks. This is mechanism design × graph ML × open-source economics. Does your model best align with human judgment? Participate in the competition and submit your model below:

"The Ethereum Foundation Mandate" generated a lot of fuss and critique. I really don't understand why. The @ethereumfndn is a non-profit. Remember this. It makes sense for it to focus on vision, values and stewardship. I think its goals (censorship resistant, open source, private, and secure--CROPS) make sense. While other blockchain's seek to differentiate with cheap and efficient throughput/transactions per second, etc...for Ethereum, its robustness, censorship resistance, neutrality and decentralization that serve as its moat. These are not easy to replicate, and in my mind, are a primary source of value in the network and the token. There is no "Ethereum Labs". This makes sense, too. Instead, there are plenty of public and private companies (@Consensys, @Etherealize_io, @BitMNR, @Sharplink, @TheEtherMachine, etc) that seek to drive commercial outcomes across the ecosystem for its users. So, let the non-profit be a non-profit. And let the builders build.

You've doubtless read the numerous headlines these past few days on how Xi Jinping called for the Yuan to "become a global reserve currency." That's true, he actually said that. But, as is often the case, Western media are missing the forest for the trees. This is extracted from a speech in which Xi laid out a much grander vision of what a “modern financial system with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色现代金融体系) would look like, essentially China's answer to Wall Street. Fascinatingly, and in stark contrast to the actual Wall Street, Xi's main argument is that what matter most aren't the institutions or status that China is seeking to build up - such as having the Yuan as a global reserve currency. Those are secondary. Xi argues that what truly will make or break the system is its moral culture. As he describes it, the Western financial system is nihilistic, counterproductive and ultimately politically destabilizing. Nihilistic in the sense that finance without moral purpose becomes self-referential - it stops serving anything beyond itself. He calls it "脱实向虚" ("drifting from the real economy into the virtual"): when finance detaches from the real economy, it loses its reason for existing. It’s not creating wealth, it’s just moving numbers around. Counterproductive in the sense that it actually destroys the thing it depends on. As Xi explains "if [finance] becomes obsessed with self-circulation and self-expansion, it becomes water without a source, a tree without roots" (无源之水、无本之木). In other words, finance detached from the real economy - like a tree that has severed its own roots - ultimately kills the economy. Lastly, politically destabilizing in the sense that financial elites captured by greed become ungovernable - they corrupt regulators, buy politicians, evade accountability. The Qiushi commentary on Xi's speech is extremely blunt about this (qstheory.cn/20260131/f4889…): they say Xi seeks to "avoid the Western predicament of financial oligarchs hijacking public policy and deepening social division." “Financial oligarchs hijacking public policy” (“金融寡头绑架公共政策”) is remarkably blunt language. It's essentially saying that the West allowed oligarchs to capture the state (not wrong!). To avoid all of this, Xi lays out a vision for - in many ways - an anti-Wall Street: a 金融强国 ("financial powerhouse") that puts serving the real economy at its core. A system that - Xi argues - will ultimately make the Yuan a global reserve currency precisely because, ultimately, a global reserve currency is backed by trust. That's the forest: how you build trust is what matters. In my latest article I break down the full speech, how exactly Xi proposes to build this anti-Wall Street and what it reveals about a question we in the West have stopped asking: what is our financial system actually for? Full article here: open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…

Iran is considering allowing a limited number of oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, provided that the oil cargo is traded in Chinese yuan, a senior Iranian official tells CNN. @CNN @cnni cnn.com/world/live-new…

1/ The Mandate clearly states what must be protected: EF will, above all else, remain focused on an Ethereum that is censorship resistant, open source, private, and secure (CROPS), in the service of user self-sovereignty, resistant to extraction and with seamless UX. These are conditions that make Ethereum worth building, using, and defending. Read the full blog here: blog.ethereum.org/2026/03/13/ef-…