When Web3 meets d/acc: In the era of technological acceleration, what can Crypto do?

Author: imToken

Reprinted: White55, Mars Finance

If you have been following the recent Devconnect conference held in Argentina, you may have noticed an intriguing signal:

Among the numerous technical agendas regarding Rollup, EIP, and account abstraction, perhaps the most striking is not a specific protocol upgrade, but rather the topic specifically set aside as an independent day—d/acc day.

d/acc, which looks like an abbreviation for code symbols, is actually a new concept highly advocated by Vitalik Buterin as early as 2023. This article will also take you deep into the context of d/acc thinking, and how Ethereum is accelerating the reshaping of underlying narratives based on this.

1. Starting from e/acc, what is d/acc?

To understand d/acc, we must first understand the historical context it reflects: the frenzy of e/acc (effective accelerationism).

If you have been following the trends in the Silicon Valley tech scene, you may have heard of e/acc, and perhaps you have a deep impression of the overwhelming wave of “e/acc” suffixes in 2023:

At that time, a group of tech entrepreneurs and investment giants, including a16z founder Marc Andreessen and YC incubator CEO Garry Tan, all used this as the suffix for their social media accounts.

As an abbreviation for “Effective Accelerationism” (, by standard definition, e/acc is a philosophical thought that integrates biological, physical, economic, and social theories, emphasizing adaptability, evolution, intelligence, and acceleration as universal principles in the universe.

In plain language, “e/acc” actually emphasizes technological supremacy, advocating extreme admiration for the role of technological innovation in driving and transforming society. It can even be seen as a creed of a group of tech enthusiasts—arguing that technological development should be accelerated at all costs, believing that the market and technology itself will solve all problems.

It was once regarded as a technocratic utopian vision until the wave of AI ignited by ChatGPT at the end of 2022 gave many in the e/acc community tangible hope, which is why the concept has generated such a significant dissemination effect in 2023.

However, this one-way rush towards technological supremacy still makes many people feel uneasy, especially as AI gradually approaches the singularity, the risks of biotechnology increase, and centralized power continues to expand.

It is also against this background that Vitalik proposed a path that leans towards “reformism” in a sense: d/acc, which advocates for a defense-first approach to technological development.

On November 27, 2023, he specifically published an article titled “My techno-optimism,” presenting a cautious reflection on technological acceleration.

The “d” here not only represents Defense but also Decentralization and Democracy. It is not about hitting the brakes, but rather about changing direction to accelerate—accelerating the technologies that can make us safer, more autonomous, and better able to withstand systemic risks.

Interestingly, one year after publishing this article, in January 2025, he published another piece titled “d/acc: one year later,” further deepening his thoughts on d/acc and proposing a core worldview model: Defense-Dominant vs Offense-Dominant.

Its core logic lies in the idea that “the darkest moments in human history often occur during periods when the offensive advantage significantly outweighs the defensive advantage”:

When creating viruses is easier than developing vaccines;

When launching network attacks is cheaper than patching vulnerabilities;

When centralized AI can easily generate massive amounts of Deepfake that ordinary people cannot distinguish between true and false.

At these moments, human society is in a state of systemic fragility.

Currently, the technology tree is precisely leaning towards “offensive advantages” — large tech giants monopolize AI computing power, and centralized institutions hold data hegemony. Therefore, from the perspective of d/acc thinking logic, if we continue to accelerate blindly, we may create an extremely efficient but extremely fragile, even extremely centralized dystopian world.

Therefore, the core assertion of d/acc is that we must consciously intervene through technology to reverse this situation, allowing the “defensive” attributes of technological development to once again outweigh the “offensive” attributes.

2. Why does d/acc appear in Web3?

It can be said without hesitation that while e/acc (effective accelerationism) is highly regarded in Silicon Valley, it is essentially a form of alienation of technological capitalism, characterized by an extremely strong elitist tint: because it does not care who gets left behind in the process, only the overall improvement of efficiency.

In Vitalik's view, although the global technology narrative over the past decade has largely revolved around “acceleration,” in the context of AI, cryptocurrency, energy, and national competition all reaching a peak simultaneously, simple “accelerationism” can no longer answer a fundamental question:

Where are we really accelerating towards? For whom are we accelerating? What is the cost?

The emergence of d/acc provides a calibration in one direction, shifting the perspective from elitism to a broader sense of “democracy”—it focuses on inclusiveness and pursues selective acceleration, especially concerning explosive innovations related to risk stacking, power concentration, and the amplification of regulatory gaps, which should not be blindly accelerated.

This also makes d/acc naturally deeply bound to the future of Web3. After all, the core value of Web3 has never been as simple as “a faster global computer,” but rather the gradual extraction of power, wealth, identity, and control from centralized systems back into the hands of users.

In fact, taking several major development lines of Ethereum as an example, we can clearly glimpse its deep resonance with d/acc:

Decentralization needs to accelerate: ensure the number of nodes and anti-censorship for L1/L2.

User sovereignty needs to accelerate: promote account abstraction (AA), allowing the popularization of defensive functions such as social recovery and Gas payment.

System resilience needs to be accelerated: deploy technologies like ZK-SNARKs to defend against privacy leaks and surveillance;

This is also why d/acc will become the core narrative of the Ethereum community, as blockchain technology is essentially one of the most powerful defensive technologies invented by humanity.

In simple terms, a technology-driven future is not about simply being fast, but about continuously accelerating on the right and safe track: accelerating decentralization, accelerating individual defense, accelerating system resilience—this is also the new mission that d/acc gives to Web3 and the crypto world.

3. AI and Web3: Building the Defense Accelerationism of Future Civilization

The author has always believed that AI and Web3/Crypto are a set of mirror reflections of “productive forces and production relations” in the new era.

If AI is seen as a powerful “spear” (enhancing productivity but also potentially used for evil), then Crypto is a solid “shield,” and from the perspective of d/acc, this shield primarily defends against three dimensions of threats.

First of all, it is to defend against “abuse of power.”

In the Web2 world, your digital identity and assets do not belong to you, but are “rented” from tech giants. Platforms can ban your account at any time, and banks can freeze your funds. Blockchain builds a mathematical defense wall through cryptography; with your private key in hand, no centralized power can deprive you of your assets.

This is an ultimate defense mechanism that protects individuals' right to exist in the digital age.

Secondly, defending against “truth being altered”.

With the explosion of AIGC, the internet is filled with misinformation. In the future, we may not be able to distinguish whether there is a person or AI on the other side of the screen, or whether a video is a real recording or algorithmically synthesized.

From this perspective, based on on-chain community verification and public key signature systems, a “trust anchor” is provided for information. We can completely verify the source of information through cryptographic signatures and defend against the flood of false information through decentralized consensus.

Finally, defend against “privacy invasion.”

After all, in the era of big data, since the data itself needs to be validated before it can be used, we are forced to run naked, while the ZK-SNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Proofs) highly advocated by d/acc are the pinnacle of defensive technology.

It allows us to prove facts without disclosing privacy (for example: proving that I have enough money to pay, but without revealing the balance), which not only protects privacy but also mathematically eliminates the necessity of the existence of “Big Brother”.

Ultimately, d/acc is not a form of passive conservatism; on the contrary, it requires a high intensity of technological innovation:

We need a faster public chain service network to support a global-level defensive financial network.

We need more user-friendly account abstraction so that defensive tools are no longer limited to geeks.

We need stronger post-quantum cryptography to defend against brute-force attacks from future computing power.

So, like the d/acc day at this Devconnect, it is not just a technical discussion, but it can remind us that technology itself is neither good nor evil, but the direction of technological development is.

In this era full of uncertainty and rapid acceleration, “safer” is, in itself, the highest level of “more advanced.”