Vitalik: Ethereum's Core Value Lies in a Global Shared "Bulletin Board," Smart Contracts and Payments Are Just Additional Features

Odaily News Vitalik Buterin stated in a post on X that the fundamental value of Ethereum is not smart contracts or payment functions, but rather its role as a publicly writable and readable "bulletin board" that provides data availability support for cryptographic protocols. He pointed out that many cryptographic protocols—including secure online voting, software version control, certificate revocation, and more—require a public data space. Ethereum's upgraded PeerDAS mechanism can increase data availability by 2.3 times and has the potential to further improve it by 10 to 100 times. Buterin also emphasized that ETH's role in payments, resistance to Sybil attacks, and as security deposits for smart contracts makes it a core component of a decentralized, private, and secure open-source technology stack. He believes Ethereum can be viewed as "global shared memory," and that improvements in low fees and scalability will further drive its application, including DeFi and more potential use cases.