Ethereum must stop sacrificing values for adoption: Buterin
The Ethereum ecosystem's core values of decentralization, privacy and autonomy have been sacrificed and this trend must stop now, said Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
“2026 is the year we will regain lost ground in terms of self-sovereignty and distrust,” Buterin posted on X on Friday:
In the year In 2026, no more. The compromise of values that Ethereum has made up to this point – whenever you think about it, it's worth exhausting ourselves in the name of mainstream adoption – we're making that compromise no longer.
To reverse that trend, Buterin wants to see improved private payments, lower the barrier to entry for users to run full nodes and decentralized applications that don't run on centralized servers.
It also wants users to easily manage their onchain data and see improved social recovery wallets that protect funds when lineages are lost or withdrawn by an attacker.
“In most of these areas, we've seen a serious pullback in Ethereum over the last ten years,” Buterin said. “Nodes went from easy to run to heavy duty. Dapps went from static pages to complex behemoths pouring all your data into dozens of servers.”
Buterin said upcoming updates, including the Kohaku release and the Glamsterdam fork, are expected to address some of these issues.
“It will be a long road […] But that makes Ethereum not only its place in the universe right now, but the ecosystem it deserves the most.
Buterin wants Ethereum to be self-sustaining
Buterin said earlier this week that Ethereum must pass the “walk test,” which means that Ethereum will be able to sustain itself for decades without a developer's influence.
“Being able to say, ‘The Ethereum protocol, as it stands today, is cryptographically secure for hundreds of years,' is something we should strive to achieve as soon as possible,” he said.
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Quantum resistance features, a more scalable architecture and a better block-building model that resists centralized pressure are among the key improvements that Buterin says should allow Ethereum to stand the test of time.
Buterin also wants to create a decentralized Stista coin
Buterin called for a better decentralized stablecoin on Ethereum to give people true independence from governments and the traditional financial system.
Instead of relying on just one like the US dollar, he suggested a stable currency backed by a range of assets and currencies, so its stability is not dependent on a single country.
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