In this latest lengthy personal blog post, Vitalik offers a rare, systematic account of his rigorous self-experiment in "Digital Minimalism" over the past few months. The most striking aspect is his deliberate disconnection from cellular mobile data on his smartphone, maintaining full functionality for travel and high-intensity work life—entirely reliant on fixed-location WiFi—for a full 100 days.

This blog post not only documents Vitalik’s departure from algorithmic information silos, his use of the Firefly aggregator client, and his exploration of offline maps and local small-scale models, but also delves deeply into the philosophy and cognitive science behind how modern individuals can reclaim sovereignty over their attention from the endless scroll addiction. DeepTide TechFlow has fully translated this sincere, comprehensive article section by section, offering every person navigating information overload anxiety a profoundly inspiring guide to mental de-cluttering.

Full text below:

For a long time, I have been a staunch advocate of physical minimalism: minimizing the number of tangible physical possessions and striving to achieve more with fewer resources. Four years ago, I wrote a detailed blog post describing exactly what was packed into my 40-liter backpack—a single carry-on that accompanied me around the world.

However, the concept of physical minimalism emerged and matured between the early 20th century and the 2010s, responding to the challenges and opportunities of that era.

I still believe in the value of physical minimalism, though I also acknowledge opposing viewpoints—such as how possessing certain “appropriate” physical items may actually enhance your sense of control over your life. Yet in today’s context, we need a new form of minimalism: Digital Minimalism.

The core of digital minimalism lies in consciously and intentionally governing how you engage with digital technologies—ensuring each interaction is a deliberate, mindful choice rather than an unconscious plunge into default modes of passive consumption.

In this article, I will share a series of real self-experiments I’ve conducted along this path.

Social Media Minimalism: Escaping Algorithmic Curation, Reclaiming Attention Sovereignty

Twitter (now known as X) has always carried a certain toxic aura, and this trend has intensified in recent years. While undeniably highly engaging, the platform often falls far short of being informative—and its methods of engagement rarely leave users feeling emotionally fulfilled.

For me, this negative experience peaked between late 2024 and early 2025. During that period, many events unfolded, but if you spent significant time on X, you might recall one particularly absurd phenomenon: suddenly, it seemed everyone on the platform had become fans of Adolf Hitler.

This doesn’t even include the time when Grok itself briefly went rogue and briefly transformed into a “MechaHitler”—a truly surreal incident.

At roughly the same time, the “crypto Twitter” community fell into a widespread collective mood described as “Financial Nihilism.”

This ideology can be roughly summarized as: the inevitable end state of blockchain is pure gambling—and that’s okay. If you object to this and hope for higher aspirations from blockchain, then you’re just a pretentious elitist out of touch with reality.

Naturally, I’ve intellectually rejected both of these ideologies in the past and continue to do so now. But more importantly, I began reflecting seriously on a crucial fact: despite the platform’s compelling discourse, it offered neither intellectual stimulation nor emotional comfort.

Thus, for much of this year, I conducted a self-experiment: distancing myself moderately from this chaos. I didn’t quit X entirely—but I abandoned its official client interface. Instead, I posted most of my tweets through Firefly:

Firefly is a multi-client aggregator that integrates X, Bluesky, Farcaster, and Lens (the latter two being decentralized social media platforms partially built on Ethereum). You can view feeds from all four platforms within a single interface and publish one tweet that automatically syncs across all four.

My primary motivation was to support decentralized social media while continuing to participate in X interactions, thereby diversifying network effects instead of reinforcing ecosystem lock-in.

But during the months using Firefly, I discovered an unexpected side effect: my mental state felt significantly better.

I suspect the core reason lies in this: although Firefly allows posting and viewing tweets, it lacks the soul of the official X interface—the Recommendation Algorithm™.

Specifically, I suspect I once fell into a meticulously designed vicious cycle while using the official X interface:

First, you see someone post an extreme tweet supporting Hitler. Out of morbid curiosity—like staring at a car crash—you click through to read the quoted tweets and comments.

At this point, “the algorithm” thinks: “This user shows strong interest in Hitler—let’s tag this as part of their personal profile.”

Then, you see ten more tweets supporting Hitler. Again, driven by morbid curiosity, you click through—just like someone first witnessing ten cars crashing and burning simultaneously can’t help but stop and stare.

The algorithm thinks: You don’t need me to spell it out. Soon after, you’ll see hundreds of pro-Hitler tweets in your feed.

Honestly, giving fair credit to X, Elon, and their dedicated team, the extreme fanbase on the platform has indeed significantly diminished over the past year and a half.

I believe part of this decline stems from the fact that once such extremist ideologies are exposed for their immorality and absurdity, they inevitably exhaust themselves. But another key factor is undoubtedly that the recommendation algorithm’s mechanics have genuinely improved.

Yet even so, whenever I occasionally had to reopen the official X interface, I’d quickly log out again and retreat back into the serene world of Firefly.

Meanwhile, I noticed a profound shift in my mindset: I increasingly lost interest in the intense, daily feuds among so-called “thought leaders” on the platform.

Recently, I logged back in and found that the most popular cultural debate of the day was a heated argument about whether a historical figure was evil or not. Seeing this, my internal reaction felt like an adult encountering a childhood obsession—some candy, TV show, or game—only to realize with detachment that it no longer holds any appeal. I smiled faintly, exited the app, and resumed enjoying my own fulfilling day.

My conclusion and recommendation: I recommend more people try this approach. Explore ways to drastically reduce or strictly limit your social media usage—such as using decentralized frontends like Firefly, or setting rules like using X only on Tuesdays—find a rhythm that suits you.

Extract genuine value from platforms, but never let yourself get sucked into the vortex of algorithmic recommendations, because these algorithms subtly manipulate your emotions and cognition through powerful subconscious mechanisms you may not even notice.

Mobile Cellular Data Minimalism: A 100-Day Pure WiFi Survival Experiment

For a full 100 days, I conducted a second self-experiment: keeping my phone in airplane mode at all times. During this period, I remained connected via WiFi but completely severed all cellular network connections.

I undertook this experiment primarily for two reasons:

First, privacy. A smartphone constantly connected to cellular base stations essentially functions as a 24/7 personal location tracker. Telecom operators’ dismal record in protecting user data is well-known—even sometimes selling location data externally.

As a result, your actual movement patterns could eventually end up in the hands of intelligence agencies, defense contractors, ad tech companies, and other parties. Purchasing anonymous SIM cards isn’t sufficient: first, your device can always be linked via its unique IMEI number throughout its lifecycle; second, fine-grained mobility patterns combined with online behavior easily leak identity, and modern AI can efficiently reconstruct and infer the real individual behind them.

Therefore, the most effective solution for location privacy is simply not connecting to any cellular network (in addition, I’ve been using GrapheneOS—a privacy-focused OS—and strictly limiting app access to location permissions).

Second, mental health. Being completely disconnected from the internet over extended periods—especially while outdoors—provides an excellent way to retrain the habit of surviving offline, bringing greater inner peace and creating mental space for healthier, more productive thoughts.

Overall, I consider this experiment a complete success. I broke the literal rule of “no cellular network” only once—yet spiritually, I did not violate it: I briefly turned on connectivity to receive a confirmation SMS necessary to maintain my phone plan.

A second instance involved a spiritual breach but not a literal one: during a hiking trip to a remote and slightly hazardous area, friends strongly insisted I carry their prepared emergency communication device and check in every few hours.

Throughout the experiment, the biggest inconvenience occurred during a stay in Singapore. Unable to receive SMS verification codes, I couldn’t log into the local ride-hailing app Grab (similar to Southeast Asia’s Uber).

As a result, my dining options were severely limited, and even when public transit was inconvenient, I could only take the subway—not a taxi.

After completing the 100-day formal experiment, although I occasionally turn on cellular data, to this day I still maintain the habit of keeping my phone in airplane mode by default.

For outdoor navigation, I use CoMaps—an offline map application built on a local-first architecture. It pre-downloads OpenStreetMap data and renders maps entirely locally on the device, planning routes without requiring constant internet access.

My overall assessment: CoMaps performs less well than Google Maps when exploring human-built commercial infrastructure (e.g., restaurants, shops, operating hours); however, when navigating natural landscapes and outdoor trails, it surpasses Google Maps, as it includes countless hiking paths unknown to Google Maps.

That said, it occasionally fails—marking non-existent wilderness trails on the map. Once, this led me to crawl through hundreds of meters of dense shrubbery before barely escaping back to civilization.

During this time, I developed deep interest in the concept of “local offline knowledge repositories.” In principle, the total volume of valuable global data is far smaller than one might imagine.

Compressed full-text English Wikipedia (excluding multimedia images) is only 27 GB. The global OpenStreetMap dataset (planet.osm) is about 2.2 TB—but by removing redundant information and compressing it down to 1%–10% of its original size, you can capture nearly everything you’d need for offline use.

This month, Statuette launched a developer bounty competition (I contributed as a sponsor) to incentivize developers to build mobile applications that run entirely offline on smartphones, enabling users to access practical knowledge instantly and conveniently.

Below are two standout entries from the competition:

My overall impression: We are at a pivotal turning point where these offline tools are finally becoming genuinely useful.

Most competitors attempted to directly invoke on-device large language models, requiring lengthy inference computations before delivering answers. But I find this approach too slow—answering a simple question can take 1 minute or even up to 22 minutes.

In contrast, the top-performing apps cleverly combine semantic search technology: first retrieving precise results instantly from a local offline database, then immediately invoking a lightweight, tiny language model to generate structured textual responses. This hybrid approach delivers high-quality answers within extremely reasonable response times.

Finally, when traveling—especially with scheduled meetings—you may occasionally need to connect to the network en route.

Upon arriving at a destination, you often need to contact your meeting partner to confirm exact location or ask them to open the door. After a meeting ends, you frequently need to verify details of your next appointment. Without cellular data, public WiFi becomes your lifeline—and critically, this public hotspot must allow direct access without requiring SMS verification.

Public network environments vary dramatically in friendliness worldwide. Based on my travels during a period of focused evaluation of public WiFi availability, I’ve compiled a quick tier ranking:

First Tier: Taiwan (at least in Taipei). Taipei boasts an incredibly dense public WiFi hotspot network. While walking streets or sitting in an Uber, at any moment, the probability of successfully detecting and connecting to a hotspot exceeded 25%. These hotspots are typically provided by municipal networks or ubiquitous chain convenience stores.

Second Tier: Ukraine, United States, Canada, Singapore. Ukraine surprised me most: in numerous urban areas, a remarkable number of zones feature fully open, free hotspots—many requiring no web redirect verification at all.

The US, Canada, and Singapore follow similar patterns: theoretically vast numbers of public hotspots exist, but a significant portion require SMS verification or forced login. Nevertheless, the number of truly open, usable hotspots remains substantial.

Additionally, while searching for WiFi in Toronto, I accidentally stumbled upon a fraternity (or sorority) apparently named after SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried):

Third Tier: Austria, Hungary. These former Habsburg territories exhibit similar conditions: decent hotspot numbers, but most public networks require mandatory SMS verification. Although some fully open hotspots exist, I had to try multiple networks and wander the streets several times before finding one.

Last Tier: Switzerland. Despite Switzerland’s stellar reputation for privacy, I rank it lowest for public WiFi friendliness. Almost all public hotspots require SMS verification. During my initial 1.5 km journey through downtown, I found only two exceptions: a random shoe store I passed by, and Starbucks (which allows 10 minutes of free connection—if you want to extend, you must enter a verification code sent via email).

Web Application Minimalism: Exiting Frontend Black Boxes, Embracing Unix Philosophy & Local Tools

Lately, I’ve begun experimenting with eliminating reliance on web-based user interfaces for an increasing number of tasks.

When updating the IPFS hash for my ENS domain recently, I used a command-line tool generated by AI to execute the update directly. For many of my blockchain transactions conducted via privacy protocols, I’ve now fully transitioned to using the kohaku-cli command-line tool:

The above image shows the transaction process via kohaku-cli. The tool has since become significantly simpler and more user-friendly—users no longer need to specify values twice, nor understand concepts like tail calls.

In my view, traditional websites and web applications (especially those handling cryptocurrency interactions) harbor several fundamental risks:

First, repeated trust and hijacking vulnerabilities. Every time you access a web application, your browser downloads the entire application code from the server thousands of times—meaning each page load requires full trust in the server. If the server is compromised even once during your thousands of visits, your assets could be irreversibly breached. In contrast, traditional native installers are safer: you only need to trust the server at the precise moment of download and installation.

Second, default privacy violations. Web applications inherently lack user privacy by default. When you visit a webpage, it can easily detect your browser engine and version, operating system, screen resolution; once you start interacting, hundreds of fine-grained data points—including mouse trajectories, button click frequencies—are rapidly collected, effortlessly constructing your digital fingerprint. Moreover, web pages typically default to distributing this data and metadata to countless third-party services—from CDN scripts to analytics firms.

Third, dark pattern design driven by commercial interests. As seen in social media, web applications crafted by third parties with monetization goals often prioritize profit over user well-being. Many subtle UI interactions are deliberately engineered as “dark patterns” to harvest attention, whereas users truly desire “bright patterns”—interfaces designed to enlighten cognition, provide education, and protect personal rights.

What alternatives exist? The core idea: revive the classic Unix philosophy and empower it with local AI to create tools that are more accessible and user-friendly for ordinary people—allowing you to issue natural language commands to computers, rather than being forced to write obscure Bash scripts.

The essence of Unix philosophy is remarkably simple: build small, modular tools, each doing one thing well, communicating and collaborating via the most universal standard interface—plain text.

As a user, you gain granular control, freely combining and assembling different tools. Contrast this with modern web interfaces, which typically bundle countless complex features into a single, closed black box controlled by one development team. This trend evolves into “super-apps”—platforms concentrating immense power in the hands of developers, with opaque, intricate internal mechanisms that exponentially increase systemic security risks.

Now, empowered by large language models, we can finally rediscover the elegance of Unix philosophy: returning fine-grained decision-making power to everyday users while eliminating the steep barrier that once required everyone to become a professional programmer.

Conclusion: From Physical to Digital Minimalism—Reclaiming Your Focus and Freedom

The physical minimalism that flourished between the 2000s and 2010s became possible thanks to the proliferation of computing and internet technologies. A slim laptop could replace dozens of physical tools. The result: you could live a life of high freedom and extreme simplicity with just a notebook computer, a few sets of clothes, and basic hygiene supplies.

Before the internet, physical minimalism was feasible but usually entailed major lifestyle compromises and high costs. The internet’s emergence drastically lowered the barrier to living a physically minimalist life.

With the significant advancements in software development quality over the past decade and the explosive growth of modern AI, I believe we are now at the threshold of a new technological foundation capable of catalyzing the next wave of minimalism: Digital Minimalism.

We no longer depend heavily on social media—we can directly query local AI agents for high-value information (and for interpersonal emotional connection, the most timeless and pure solution remains: step outside, meet real people face-to-face in the real world).

We no longer need constant internet connectivity—so much can be achieved in pure local, offline environments.

We no longer have to be at the mercy of web interface designs—using command-line tools or customized interfaces, you can perform tasks more efficiently, with AI ready to assist you in leveraging or customizing these tools.

These technological conditions have matured precisely at the moment when the flaws of the previous digital paradigm (and the secondary harms caused by misusing AI) have reached their peak—making the practice of digital minimalism more urgent and necessary than ever.

The path to digital minimalism varies by individual, as everyone has different needs and rhythms.

But I sincerely urge everyone to at least attempt clearing digital clutter and mental residue in one important dimension. If you enjoy the clarity and calm brought by this change, keep going—resolutely.

Author: Vitalik Buterin, Translation: DeepTide TechFlow, Images: Screenshots recorded by Vitalik showing algorithmic extremism and Grok’s anomalous output on X, Image: Vitalik’s multi-client aggregation tool Firefly interface, Image: FieldAtlas offline map app interface, Image: Commonplace local offline personal knowledge base app interface, Image: Vitalik’s accidental discovery of a network identifier named after SBF in Toronto, Image: Terminal demonstration of sending private transactions via kohaku-cli under low bandwidth and offline conditions