Bullish on Google sign-in, bearish on duels to the death

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently raised some eyebrows on social media after offering his soft support for Google’s automatic sign-in feature. But his post on dueling to the death received a lot more attention.

Buterin’s platform of choice appears to be Farcaster, where he interacts with other users on a variety of topics. In mid-August, the popular developer hosted what he referred to as an impromptu “AMA” (ask me anything), during which the topic of third-party authentication services, such as Google Sign-in, was brought up.

Google Sign-in

At the time, Buterin expressed concern over the implications of “normalizing” the idea of using services such as “sign in with Google” in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries. “I think that’s really bad,” he wrote. However, he followed up by describing a scenario where sign-in services could serve as bridges to secure systems via under-the-hood account abstraction.

Later, on Sept. 4, in response to skepticism over his Google-to-crypto bridge concept, Buterin acknowledged there were disadvantages to the scheme. But he stood by his assertion that it might be worth the risk positing that such a bridge could still serve as a net positive for adoption.

Dueling to the death

While Buterin’s also spent some of his recent time on social media coming up with ways to tokenize cities as a means of giving more power to the people (and less to the landowners), one of his more popular posts of late has to do with the trending topic of dueling to the death.

On the X social media app, a user by the handle @thinkingwest posted a long thread discussing the history of duels — specifically focusing on dueling with pistols.

Buterin commented on the discussion in a post on Farcaster, stating:

“Why don’t people who casually say things like this on the other app realize that prediction markets exist? You can have words backed by genuine risk of meaningful personal consequences there, and it’s much more peaceful.”

Meanwhile, back on X, the company’s owner had a more enthusiastic response to the discussion on dueling: “I have a small collection of dueling pistols.”