There’s something we need to address — openly.
@EffectvAltruism, your work has undeniably contributed to reducing suffering:
Pushing for cage-free systems for chickens,
Reducing extreme confinement in factory farms,
Improving conditions that make slaughter less painful for pigs.
These are real, measurable changes.
But there is another side to this story.
288 ETH was donated by the AWF community — a community that formed because of @VitalikButerin’s vision.
The funds were sent.
The trust was given.
And since then?
Silence.
No clear explanation of where the funds are.
No transparent update on the process.
No meaningful communication with the community.
Meanwhile, on-chain activity continues.
Just 4 days ago, another 8.9 ETH was withdrawn from the donation address.
Transactions are visible.
Movement is visible.
But communication is not.
This creates a contradiction that’s becoming impossible to ignore:
Efforts are made to reduce the suffering of animals —
yet the people who supported that mission are left in uncertainty.
Uncertainty becomes doubt.
And doubt spreads.
@VitalikButerin — this donation used the address associated with you. That connection is exactly why people believed in this process in the first place.
No one is asking for anything excessive.
Just transparency.
Just accountability.
Just a response.
Because right now, the only thing growing isn’t impact —
it’s doubt.
And the longer it lasts, the harder it becomes to rebuild trust. @Lewis_Bollard@ethereumJoseph@MarioNawfal@elonmusk@cz_binance@AWF_ETHCTO@EffectvAltruism
What if blockchains are remembered not because they moved money...
but because they enabled new forms of human coordination?
That would be a much bigger story.
And we're only at the beginning. 🐾
A thought:
Markets are excellent at discovering prices.
Communities are excellent at discovering meaning.
Sometimes the most interesting things happen when the two intersect.
Ethereum gives us a place to experiment with both. 🐾
The most important thing a community owns isn't capital.
It's belief.
Capital can disappear overnight.
Belief is what keeps people building.
Every meaningful movement in history started there. 🐾
Dear @VitalikButerin,
The AWF community came together because of your vision of using crypto for good.
We collectively donated 288 ETH to EA through the dedicated address provided to you. This was not a small act — it was trust placed in your credibility and in the system around you.
But today, there is still no clear update, no transparency, and no communication from EA. The silence is beginning to shake the community.
We are not accusing — we are asking for clarity.
Since this donation was made via an address associated with you, we sincerely hope you can help verify what’s happening or help establish communication with EA.
Where did the 288 ETH go?
How is it being used?
When will the community receive an update?
Even a single acknowledgment from you could restore confidence for thousands who acted in good faith.
We still believe in doing good.
We just need answers.
AWF Community
@Lewis_Bollard@AWF_ETHCTO@EffectvAltruism
Incredible work, @VitalikButerin. 👏
Ethereum continues to prove that innovation can be used to build a better future.
The AWF community shares that same vision. We’re using Ethereum not only to advance technology, but to create real-world impact for animal welfare through transparency, compassion, and community-driven action.
We believe the future of crypto isn’t just about scalability or efficiency—it’s also about improving lives.
Thank you for inspiring builders to create projects with purpose. 🐾💚
#AWF #Ethereum #AnimalWelfare
An interesting thought:
@VitalikButerin donated 64 ETH to the Animal Welfare Fund.
The Ethereum community later contributed more than 200 additional ETH through $AWF
Together, that's well over half a million dollars directed toward animal welfare
Vitalik, the combination of obfuscation and blockchain is truly a masterstroke. Transparency and privacy, coexisting in the same system, without requiring trust in any intermediary, I would say that's a cryptographic milestone. A program that can be publicly verified but whose internals remain hidden. A program with no owner, yet it keeps running forever. This is almost the ultimate form of trustlessness.
But it leaves me with an uneasy thought. Can a technology designed to protect the good also become the perfect shelter for the bad?
Scammers could embed malicious code into contracts, all under the banner of "it's obfuscated, but you can verify it's correct." But the average person can't verify it at all. Money launderers could obfuscate the entire flow of illicit funds, turning it into a black box that no one can shut down and no one can trace. Worse, once such a program is deployed on Ethereum, it has no owner, no off switch, no backdoor. It will keep running forever. And victims won't even be able to prove they were deceived, because even the scammer can claim, "the code is obfuscated, I don't understand what happened either."
This isn't a problem unique to obfuscation. But obfuscation makes it more hidden, and more irreversible.
My community and I, through #AWF, stand on the side of radical transparency. Not because we built it, but because the contract we inherited was already open-source and simple by design. As a CTO project, what we can do is limited: we can't redesign the mechanism, we can't add complexity. But what we can do is champion the transparency that already exists. The contract is there, on-chain, for anyone to read and verify. No obfuscation. No hidden logic. Just a 2% tax flowing to animal welfare, with ownership renounced and the donation path fixed forever. That openness is something we protect, not something we built.
Obfuscation seems like the answer to many of the problems we face. It could protect more sophisticated mechanisms, prevent exploitation, and keep things private where privacy matters. But it would also strip away something more primal: the ability of an ordinary person to look at a contract, read it, and decide for themselves whether it's trustworthy.
So here's my confusion: when a technology can empower both the good and the malicious, how do we strike the balance? Is the future of obfuscation destined to split into two worlds — a "trusted obfuscation" guarded by cryptographers and formal verification, and an "untrusted obfuscation" exploited by scammers and hackers? And caught between these two worlds, how are ordinary people supposed to tell the difference?
Public goods have always faced the same problem:
Everyone benefits.
Nobody feels responsible.
Ethereum communities are starting to test a different model.
What if responsibility could emerge naturally from shared participation?
Interesting things happen when incentives and purpose align. 🐾
@VitalikButerin Can‘t you see it, or did you do it together with EA? Please explain the purpose of these 300 Ethereum, or please repay us the Ethereum! @EffectvAltruism@Lewis_Bollard
@VitalikButerin Ethereum has shown that communities can coordinate around meaningful causes. Inspired by your example, the #AWF community has already donated over **300 ETH** to animal welfare funds.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on initiatives like this. Do you believe it's a safe and effective model for communities to direct donations to established animal welfare funds without managing the funds themselves? It's similar to the "infinite donation" mechanism you once described—where communities continuously contribute while trusted organizations handle the impact.
Your perspective would mean a lot, not only for our community but for encouraging more people to use Ethereum for public good. 🐾💙
The internet is full of communities.
Most disappear.
A few create culture.
Very few create impact.
$500.000 routed toward animal welfare makes me wonder:
What separates a community that talks from a community that acts?
Maybe coordination is the answer. 🐾
@VitalikButerin@ethereum@ethereumfndn@ethereumJoseph
Anyone who follows the AWF community community and chart knows that all those who are determined to charity are sticking to it, and no one is selling anymore. For animals, there is nothing more worth looking forward to than this.
@VitalikButerin@Lewis_Bollard
Network effects usually increase value.
This network effect increased generosity.
One person inspired ten.
Ten inspired hundreds.
Hundreds inspired thousands.
281 ETH is just the visible part.
The coordination is the compounding effect. 🐾
Dear builders,
Sometimes you won't know whether your idea matters.
Build it anyway.
Sometimes the internet surprises you.
Sometimes strangers become a community.
Sometimes a simple mechanism ends up helping real animals.
The best experiments rarely look obvious at the beginning. 🐾
Most people will remember the number:
281 ETH.
I think history will remember something else.
The invisible infrastructure that allowed strangers across the world to trust each other enough to act together.
That's harder to measure.
But probably far more valuable. 🐾
https://t.co/q1xswEfvDO