Vitalik Buterin’s philanthropic fund donates 15M USDC to UC San Diego

March 8, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Buterin

The Airborne Institute will use the generous grant to study the transmission of airborne diseases such as COVID-19.

According to a Mar. 7 announcement from the University of California San Diego (UCSD), the post-secondary institution has received a 15 million USD Coin (USDC) donation from the Balvi Filantropic Fund. The foundation is currently directed by Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin and "is a scientific investment and direct gifting fund for deploying quickly to high-value COVID projects that traditional institutional or commercial funding sources tend to overlook." As told by UCSD, the donation is the largest gift of its kind to a U.S. university and will be used to establish the Meta-Institute for Airborne Disease in a Changing Climate, "The Airborne Institute."

UCSD stated that the newly established institution would focus on the study of airborne diseases like influenza, tuberculosis, and COVID-19. Its ultimate aim is to develop new treatments, vaccines, and diagnostics for these diseases while improving understanding of how they are spread. Buterin said with regard to the development:

"I am pleased to support the creation of this new institute at UC San Diego, which will work to grow our scientific knowledge about airborne disease and share it freely, enabling changes to infrastructure and policy that benefit people around the globe."

Meanwhile, atmospheric chemist and professor at UCSD, commented:

"Working together with health care experts, [...] we will be developing state-of-the-art measurements and computational tools to study these problems. A major goal is to develop a better understanding of the production and sources of airborne bioparticles and how long they remain infectious."

The institute will be housed in the UC San Diego School of Biological Sciences. Further research conducted by The Airborne Institute will be published in open-access journals, along with other data. Intellectual property developed by The Airborne Institute will also be published in the public domain.

Researchers associated with the institute recently published a study showing that nearly three-quarters of the aerosols near Imperial Beach contained bacteria associated with the raw sewage in the Tijuana Estuary (UCSD)

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Facebook’s metaverse will ‘misfire,’ says Vitalik Buterin

August 1, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Buterin

Vitalik Buterin claims Meta is jumping the gun with metaverse innovation because “it is far too early to know what people want.”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin doesn’t believe that any of the existing attempts by corporations to create a Metaverse are “going anywhere,” pointing to Meta as being one he believes will “misfire.”

Responding to a tweet from Dialectic co-founder Dean Eigenmann, who believes venture capitalists may be wrong about what constitutes an ideal metaverse, Buterin said that while he believes “The metaverse is going to happen,” he doesn’t think any of the current attempts from corporates such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta are “going anywhere.”

The "metaverse" is going to happen but I don't think any of the existing corporate attempts to intentionally create the metaverse are going anywhere. https://t.co/tVUfq4CWmP
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 30, 2022

The Metaverse is generally described as a highly-interactive 3D online world focused on social connection, with some looking to eventually be powered by augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

Buterin’s comments come despite a number of successful metaverse projects recently being launched on blockchain technology like Decentraland (MANA) and The Sandbox (SAND). However, Buterin stated that its use cases are still not clear, adding that he didn’t think Meta’s attempt at creating a metaverse will be successful in its current form.

“We don't really know the definition of ‘the metaverse’ yet, it's far too early to know what people actually want. So anything Facebook creates now will misfire.”

Meta has built a number of AR and VR applications, such as the Meta Horizons Workroom, a VR room for colleagues to connect and collaborate on ideas. Meta has also built first-generational smart glasses that allow users to connect to the metaverse by recording audio and video and being surrounded by virtual worlds.

My critique is deeper than "Metaverse Wikipedia will beat Metaverse Encyclopedia Britannica". It's that we don't really know the definition of "the metaverse" yet, it's far too early to know what people actually want. So anything Facebook creates now will misfire.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 31, 2022

Other critics are of the view that centralized metaverses such as those proposed by Meta and Microsoft may affect the decentralization of ownership of goods and services within those metaverses.

On the other hand, metaverse developers like Decentraland and Sandbox have come together with several Web3 projects to launch the Open Metaverse Alliance (OMA3), which focuses on building more transparent, inclusive, decentralized and democratized metaverses.

The Metaverse Standards Forum (MSF) also strives to build on these values and establish standards for a more open and interoperable metaverse. Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alibaba, Unity and Sony are among the 35 tech companies that became members of the MSF.

This reflects well Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to stakeholders in October last year, where he said that the Metaverse is the next chapter for the internet, adding, "We’re seen as a social media company, but in our DNA, we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier.”

Buterin