Reflections on Reading Vitalik's Novel: Ethereum's Utopia, the Philosophy of Water and Ice

On September 27, Vitalik Buterin published his first full-length science fiction novel, Snowmoon, on his personal website. Spanning 32 chapters and 103,000 English words (with the Chinese translation exceeding 170,000 characters), every plot point was hand-written. AI was only utilized for spell-checking and formatting, and the work is open-sourced under the GPL v3 license.

This sounds like a weekend hobby project for a programmer.

But after reading the first and final chapters, you will discover that Ethereum’s co-founder is undertaking something far bolder than writing blog posts: he has crammed a decade of his reflections on decentralized governance, privacy, mechanism design, and pluralism into a vivid, fictional world, then subjected those ideas to stress tests amid wars, political conspiracies, and family dinners.

An Everyday World Sustained by Cryptography

The story unfolds in an alternate future where neither Bitcoin nor Ethereum ever existed, yet the operational logic of this world nearly serves as a complete realization of the Ethereum vision.

The protagonist, Gladias, is a citizen of Veridia, a highly advanced society of decentralized governance.

In the novel’s opening act, he walks down the streets of the capital, Meldan, as a drone passes overhead. Before he even registers what is happening, a zero-knowledge authentication protocol on his smartwatch completes its verification, confirming the drone is a toy whose navigation algorithm contains safety limits preventing it from approaching humans within five decimeters without authorization. His watch knows the drone poses no threat, but leaks absolutely nothing else.

This opening encapsulates Vitalik’s entire methodology for writing the novel: transforming an abstract concept he repeatedly discusses in his papers (the everyday application of zero-knowledge proofs) into a heartwarming scene of a father walking down the street watching children chase a drone. Technical explanations are embedded within the narrative, rather than the narrative serving technical explanations.

Veridia’s social system is the most meticulously constructed element of the novel.

Almost nothing is explicitly “forbidden” here, but a precise tax and subsidy system guides behavior. Buildings pay an “aesthetic tax,” evaluated through quadratic voting by citizens selected via cryptographic random draw.

If you construct a skyscraper that everyone finds ugly, it will not be demolished, but you will pay higher taxes. Musical performances are taxed across five tiers based on “social impact,” ranging from “strongly promotes individual development and civic responsibility” (0% tax rate) to “vehemently glorifies violence and hatred” (40% tax rate).

All of this is overseen by a decentralized organization called the Order of Steering.

“Keepers” establish tax standards, “Sentinels” audit specific enterprises, and Gladias is a trainee “Acolyte.” If his prediction score falls below 90, his promotion will be delayed by another year.

Gladias has two biological children and co-parents another couple’s two children on a six-month rotation schedule—this is Veridia’s “shared parenting family” system. During dinner, the family orders meals from an autonomous delivery vehicle called the “Dzego Food Truck” using handheld devices, paying with “zipcoins.” Every transaction defaults to privacy, with only Gladias and the restaurant aware of a single 10.5 zipcoin order.

Two Narrative Threads, The Collision of Two Civilizations

The novel’s second thread begins in chapter two.

The young Zei resides in a country militarily occupied by the “Arctic Empire” for a century. On the surface of Dzgo lies a corrupt puppet government, but underground operates a secret educational and governance network coordinated through cryptography.

Zei attends classes at a “Decentralized University” (DU). The classroom location is only decrypted and broadcasted minutes before class begins. The learning space is lined with anti-signal transmission foil, and students habitually scan rooms with handheld devices to detect unknown electronic equipment.

Dzego’s survival strategy is condensed into a motto from a fictional language: “Gie fe kiu kai ci bin hu,” meaning “Root yourself, do not show your head.” It substitutes centralized heavy industry with distributed manufacturing, and replaces capturable leaders with cryptographically anonymous coordination.

The climax of chapter two is a bombing. An Arctic Empire bomb collapses the floor beneath Zei’s classroom; had the room not been switched on the spot, everyone would have perished. Zei’s arm is fractured by falling debris. In this moment, cryptography ceases to be an abstract classroom concept—it becomes the infrastructure that keeps Zei alive.

The two threads gradually converge throughout the novel. Gladias departs from Veridia, travels to Dzgo, and becomes an advisor to Dzgo’s resistance group, the “Kungaupei.” The latter half revolves around a broader geopolitical conflict: Veridia and Dzgo join forces against the Arctic Empire, attempting to liberate the occupied province of Northglade.

The Ending: The Philosophy of Water and Ice

The final chapter returns to Meldan.

The war has paused; Northglade has been liberated, though the Arctic Empire retains its core territories. On the streets, people dismantle surveillance cameras installed during the war; in shops, wartime emergency rations are replaced by red flowers celebrating liberation.

Gladias, Seila, and Zei meet with Veridian politician Verdow in the parliamentary building. Their conversation forms the true core of the novel—a debate on “what constitutes a good society.”

Zei points out that Veridia’s system lacks a crucial capability: predicting the future. All voting and auditing measure current public opinion, yet no role requires individuals to state “if X happens, Y will occur” and face consequences based on predictive accuracy. He proposes introducing AI, but as a “participant, not the game itself,” allowing different people to select different AIs to assist decision-making while taking responsibility for the outcomes.

Verdow counters: Should a society have goals? The Arctic Empire excels at executing goals more than anyone else. Build a perfect goal-executing machine, and you get the Arctic Empire.

Seila responds with a metaphor, comparing society to lake water. Every water molecule acts independently, with no master plan, only trillions of molecules dreaming trillions of dreams. Yet the lake’s surface remains balanced because gravity draws water to fill any temporary dip. In summer it flows like water, in winter it freezes into ice to resist invasion—this is the ideal society.

“Resist the Arctic Empire, but do not become the Arctic Empire.”

The novel concludes with a shot of Gladias standing on the rooftop of the parliamentary building, holding tea and rice, overlooking Meldan. He gazes at tree-covered neighborhoods where medieval-style towers peek through the canopy. The airplane-shaped corporate headquarters still juts out glaringly, cleverly hidden by the large trees lining the streets only when viewed from ground level.

“Meldan is home.”

When Vitalik Stops Writing Papers

Reading Snowmoon creates a peculiar sense of dislocation.

On one hand, it is clearly a novel written by a programmer.

The emotional dimensions of the characters are relatively thin; Gladias acts more like a tour guide leading readers through Veridia’s institutional designs than a literary character growing through internal struggles. Dialogue sometimes reads like proposal discussions on governance forums. The information density in certain chapters is so high that it makes one wonder if Vitalik accidentally pasted a paper draft into the novel.

On the other hand, Snowmoon achieves what none of Vitalik’s blog posts ever could: it brings those governance mechanisms to life.

When you read Gladias standing at a concert hall, listening to violent lyrics, debating how to score the band’s social impact while worrying about his acolyte points, you suddenly understand what the combination of “quadratic voting + tiered taxation + reputation systems” actually means. It is no longer a mathematical formula, but a person making an imperfect decision under imperfect information, carrying emotions and biases, within a limited timeframe.

When you read Zei explaining the second law of thermodynamics using information theory in physics class, right before the classroom is bombed and collapses, you suddenly grasp why cryptography and decentralization matter. In Veridia, they are tools to enhance governance efficiency; in Dzgo, they are necessities for survival under oppression. The same technology carries entirely different meanings of existence within different power structures.

This is likely why Vitalik chose to write a novel. In a paper, you can prove that quadratic voting offers optimal preference aggregation under Nash equilibrium. In a novel, you can show how someone awards a neutral rating to a brutal metal band due to “primal intuition,” then feels proud of their own courage. One is mathematical optimality; the other is human authenticity. A good governance system must accommodate both.

The most profound aspect of Snowmoon is the closing debate on “whether a society should have goals.” Verdow argues the Arctic Empire is a perfect goal-executing machine. Seila claims an ideal society resembles water, not ice. Zei states AI should be a participant, not a judge.

These dialogues read less like science fiction and more like Vitalik’s preemptive response to current AI governance debates. While Sam Altman speaks of “AGI helping humanity achieve shared goals,” the characters in Vitalik’s work ask a more fundamental question: Do we truly know what we want? If we code our desires and push them to their extreme, wouldn’t the result simply be the Arctic Empire?

Vitalik open-sourced the novel under GPL v3. In the copyright notice, he writes: You may adapt it into a film or animation, but you must open-source your production workflow. This “open-source everything” stance naturally extends the novel’s theme: knowledge and creativity should flow freely like Veridia’s lake water.

In the final line of his AI usage disclaimer, he writes a sentence unlike anything a programmer would typically pen:

"Snowmoon was written with love."

"Love," used in a disclaimer.

100,000 words, 32 chapters, 4 months, handwritten by one person, telling a story of safeguarding freedom through cryptography. The prose may not be polished, and character development has plenty of room to grow. But this might be the only work so far that seriously uses an entire book’s length to answer this question: What would daily life look like if the Ethereum vision were truly realized?

The answer is surprisingly warm. There is no cyberpunk-esque cold digital wasteland, only a place with tall trees, family dinners, and children chasing drones. A place where ugly buildings are not demolished but require higher taxes. A place where you can wear a purple privacy robe to a brutal metal concert and then go home to eat Dzgo takeout.

A place worthy of the word “home.”

Join the official Coincamps community:

X: https://x.com/coincamps

Telegram: https://t.me/coin_camps