This is a conversation with Vitalik Buterin and Karl Floersch. Vitalik is the creator of Ethereum, and Karl is a long-time Ethereum researcher who is working on Optimism (the Layer 2 optimistic rollup). We begin the conversation with a focus on retroactive public goods funding - a compelling idea that Vitalik and Karl shared earlier this year. We then move onto topics like decoupling value creation and value capture, the sustainability of public goods, Ether's Phoenix (a play on Roko's Basilisk, the thought experiment which originated in the LessWrong community), and governance models as lying somewhere on the continuum from being exclusionary to being conformist. Towards the end of the conversation, we talk about personal tokens and new social network designs.Check out our website for other episodes: intothebytecode.xyzSubscribe to our newsletter for updates: bytecode.substack.comTwitter: twitter.com/sinahab