Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Endorses Community Notes

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has offered an endorsement of X’s “Community Notes” feature, highlighting its relevance and association with “crypto values” in a lengthy blog post.

The social media platform’s last two years have been filled with dramatic events, especially after Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition last year and his crackdown on reporters and free speech.

Despite these changes, Community Notes emerged as a widely respected feature, aiming to tackle misinformation by attaching context and facts to tweets.

Initially introduced as “Birdwatch” in January 2021, Community Notes has seen steady growth, with a significant expansion phase overlapping with Musk’s acquisition. The feature offers context on tweets that garner substantial attention, especially those covering contentious topics. These notes are not determined by a centralized team but are contributed and voted upon by the platform’s users. An open-source algorithm dictates which notes are showcased, promoting transparency by enabling users to verify the algorithm’s output against what is presented on the platform.

Buterin’s interest in Community Notes stems from its embodiment of values often associated with cryptocurrency. Although not a typical “crypto project,” the system upholds principles like decentralization, transparency and community governance. Buterin argues that the transparency offered by Community Notes aligns closely with crypto values.

He believes this approach provides significant value by deterring centralized manipulation and granting due credit to platforms that uphold ethical standards.