Vitalik Buterin Pushes Ethereum to Prioritize Long-Term Goals Over Trend Chasing in 2026
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has urged the Ether blockchain group to give attention to foundational targets relatively than chasing fleeting tendencies in a New Year address posted January 1.
“Ethereum wants to do extra to meet its personal said targets. Not the search of ‘successful the subsequent meta’ no matter whether or not it’s tokenized {dollars} or political memecoins,” he wrote, arguing the community should resist short-term wins and dedicate efforts towards its unique imaginative and prescient of constructing a very decentralized world laptop.
He added that Ethereum’s layer-1 blockchain doesn’t arbitrarily want to persuade individuals to assist it refill blockspace to make ETH ultrasound once more.
Ethereum’s Vision Beyond Hype and Third-party Dependence
Buterin acknowledged Ethereum’s 2025 achievements, together with elevated fuel limits, expanded blob counts, and improved node software program high quality.
“zkEVMs blasted by way of their efficiency milestones, and with zkEVMs and PeerDAS, Ethereum made its largest step towards being a essentially new and extra highly effective sort of blockchain,” he mentioned.
Vitalik additionally insisted that these technical good points should now translate into purposes that function with out fraud, censorship, or third-party interference.
The Ethereum founder emphasised that as a substitute of chasing the subsequent crypto meta in 2026, the Ethereum group wants to keep on the long-term imaginative and prescient.
“To construct the world laptop that serves as a central infrastructure piece of a freer and open web.”
According to him, the Ethereum crew is constructing decentralized purposes that run with out fraud, censorship, or third-party interference.
Applications that cross the walkaway take a look at: they maintain operating even when the unique builders disappear.
Applications the place in case you’re a person, you don’t even discover “if Cloudflare goes down – or even when all of Cloudflare will get hacked by North Korea,” he defined, portray an image of platforms whose stability transcends firms, ideologies, and political events.
An Ethereum developer from zCloak Network challenged this imaginative and prescient, questioning how the community can get rid of Cloudflare reliance whereas nonetheless relying on centralized RPC companies for normal customers.
Buterin countered that Ethereum represents a insurrection in opposition to centralized management, noting that the shift towards dependence has been current.
“A era in the past, any pockets, kitchen equipment, guide, or automotive would fulfill each single one in every of them.”
Today, all the above are by default changing into subscription companies, “consigning you to everlasting dependence on some centralized overlord,” he said, emphasizing how Ethereum goals to restore the autonomy as soon as customary in on a regular basis know-how.
Vitalik Addressed Ethereum Scalability Issues and Layer-2 Strategy
When a Solana NFT collector asked why Ethereum depends closely on Layer-2 options as a substitute of optimizing a single high-performance base layer, Buterin defended the present method.
He defined Ethereum is engaged on optimizing its base layer whereas making certain the blockchain wants to be “usable, and usable at scale, and (ii) really decentralized,” including that “this wants to occur at each (a) the blockchain layer, together with the software program we use to run and speak to the blockchain, and (b) the applying layer.”
Buterin conceded all parts require additional enchancment, however expressed confidence in the trail ahead.
“Fortunately, we have now highly effective instruments on our facet – however we want to apply them, and we’ll,” the Ethereum co-founder concluded, displaying dedication to execute the long-term imaginative and prescient.
A Metalex developer praised Buterin’s continued dedication, writing, “I’m so grateful for you and Ethereum, Vitalik. It’s what introduced me into crypto and what retains me right here.”
The developer famous Buterin may have cashed out years in the past, however stays devoted to cypherpunk values.
This New Year message follows Buterin’s current December essay warning about concentrated power throughout governments and firms, the place he proposed obligatory technological diffusion as a counterbalance.
Earlier final yr, on December 8, Buterin had suggested making a trustless on-chain futures marketplace for fuel charges to convey predictability to Ethereum transaction prices because the community scales.
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