Vitalik's first open-source sci-fi novel "Snowmoon" (雪月) full version

In May of this year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted that he would no longer write regular blog posts and had decided to try his hand at science fiction on the theme of decentralized governance.

With the plot 100% hand-crafted and AI involved only in polishing and proofreading, his first original novel, Snowmoon—32 chapters in total and over 170,000 Chinese characters in translation—was officially released last night.

This long-form open-source science fiction work combines his years of thinking on Ethereum, mechanism design, privacy technology, pluralistic governance, and other fields, embedding them in a narrative framework for exploration.

Plot summary in one sentence: In a future world highly dependent on cryptography and decentralized governance, two social forms—Veridia and the Arctic Empire—engage in ideological confrontation over digital sovereignty.

Highlights also include the story introducing mechanisms from his papers, the novel being open-sourced under GPL v3, an AI usage statement written into the main text, and a casual redefinition of "open source."

Odaily has attached the complete translated version of the original work to a cloud drive for readers to enjoy. (Download link)