Vitalik: Crypto Needs Financial Tools That Grow Wealth, Not Reckless Leverage Bets
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has known as on crypto builders to refocus on constructing instruments that improve particular person sovereignty reasonably than encourage extraction and reckless monetary conduct.
In a Farcaster post responding to Monad KOL Tom Kruise, Buterin distinguished between “the open internet” and “the sovereign internet,” crediting Bitcoin maximalists for understanding this separation years forward of the broader business.
Buterin argued that Bitcoin proponents resisted ICOs, different tokens, and arbitrary monetary purposes exactly to protect sovereignty over what he calls “corposlop”, a time period describing platforms optimized for company revenue at customers’ expense.
He urged the business to construct privacy-preserving purposes, wealth-building instruments with out harmful leverage, and AI techniques that improve reasonably than exchange human productiveness.
From Government Control to Corporate Extraction
Buterin traced the evolution of sovereignty from its early 2000s concentrate on avoiding authorities overreach to in the present day’s broader problem of resisting company manipulation.
He defined that trendy sovereignty requires securing digital privateness by way of cryptography whereas defending in opposition to what he termed “company thoughts warfare” designed to extract consideration and {dollars}.
The Ethereum founder emphasised that sovereignty additionally means pursuing initiatives primarily based on real perception rather than chasing “the meta”, the homogenizing forces that strip away individuality and function.
He known as for privacy-preserving local-first purposes that decrease information leaks to 3rd events and crypto apps that assist customers develop wealth with out pushing 50x leverage, sports activities betting, or loans for on a regular basis purchases like burritos.
Buterin prolonged his critique to AI improvement, advocating for maximally open, privacy-friendly instruments that merge human and machine capabilities reasonably than encouraging passive reliance on automation.
He challenged DAOs to assist organizations pursuing distinctive targets as a substitute of falling captive to the identical influential teams, suggesting privacy-preserving and non-tokenholder-driven voting may assist preserve independence.
The Corposlop Problem Threatening Crypto’s Soul
Buterin outlined corposlop because the poisonous mixture of company optimization energy, modern branding creating an aura of respectability, and conduct that contradicts that respectability in pursuit of most revenue.
He recognized social media platforms as prime examples, criticizing their dopamine-maximizing algorithms that prioritize short-term engagement over long-term worth and success.
The critique prolonged to mass information assortment practices adopted by careless administration or outright promoting to 3rd events.
Buterin described corposlop as “soulless trend-following homogeneity that’s each evil and lame,” encompassing merchandise that seem to serve customers whereas truly disempowering them.
He singled out walled gardens like Apple’s ecosystem for stopping cross-platform linking, although he acknowledged the corporate’s privateness emphasis and opinionated long-term imaginative and prescient.
“I’ve many qualms with Apple, however except for their monopolistic practices, they really have many non-corposlop traits,” Buterin wrote, praising their resistance to trend-following whereas urging them to finish monopolistic conduct and embrace open supply methods.
Building Toward True Digital Independence
Buterin known as on builders and buyers to channel vitality into social media platforms, giving customers management over content material curation whereas interesting to long-term objectives reasonably than short-term impulses.
“Be sovereign. Reject corposlop and imagine in somETHing,” he declared, framing the problem as each technical and philosophical.
The sovereignty put up follows current writings the place Buterin argued Ethereum should prioritize bandwidth scaling over latency discount as a consequence of bodily and decentralization constraints.
That problem got here as Ethereum achieved technical breakthroughs addressing the blockchain trilemma by way of zero-knowledge EVMs and PeerDAS know-how, driving 110% progress in new addresses since December’s Fusaka improve.
Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum solved blockchain’s trilemma with ZKEVMs and PeerDAS know-how now working on mainnet after decade-long improvement.#Ethereum #Buterinhttps://t.co/cUzlhhO6Xr
— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) January 4, 2026
Buterin additionally just lately defended Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm, who faces as much as 5 years in jail after prosecutors framed software program improvement as felony conduct.
Storm, co-founder of the privateness protocol, renewed requires public assist this week, with Buterin’s intervention highlighting the stakes in preserving crypto’s foundational ideas in opposition to regulatory stress.
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