Beyond Self-Criticism, What Else Is Vitalik Pondering?
- Core Viewpoint: The central focus of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin's recent intensive contemplation is to drive Ethereum back to and steadfastly uphold its original decentralized vision, to transcend financial speculation, and to establish it as a truly neutral, open global digital public infrastructure. This aims to defend individual freedom and sovereignty in an era of expanding centralized power.
- Key Elements:
- Narrative Shift: Vitalik emphasizes that Ethereum should transition from being a "world computer" to becoming an "internet-level public infrastructure" akin to TCP/IP. Its value lies in carrying value and supporting applications, not in pursuing user growth or profit.
- Addressing Institutionalization: While welcoming Wall Street institutions, he warns of the risks they bring, such as community alienation and technical choices (e.g., excessive centralization). He advocates for L1 to maintain absolute decentralization, with L2 handling compliant applications.
- L2 Strategy Revision: He criticizes most current L2 solutions as being essentially "centralized databases." He believes their future value lies in specialized functionalities and innovations (e.g., privacy, AI, application-specific chains), not merely in scaling.
- Privacy Priority: He elevates privacy to a "first-class priority," viewing it as a safeguard for decentralization. He identifies "selective disclosure" achieved through technologies like ZK-SNARKs as a key technical path.
- Guiding AI Development: He argues that the crypto community should proactively use decentralized systems (e.g., protocols like ERC-8004 for establishing on-chain identity and reputation for AI) to set boundaries for AI, preventing it from becoming a tool of centralized power.
- Rebuilding Decentralized Social: He critiques the past SocialFi model reliant on token speculation. He proposes using non-tokenized curation DAOs to filter quality content and advocates for client applications (like Firefly) based on shared data layers to break platform monopolies.
In the Crypto space, which is almost no longer defined as a tech sector, Ethereum founder Vitalik is a rare figure still concerned with the direction of blockchain technological progress.
Starting from the second half of 2025, he has been posting lengthy articles intensively on Twitter, with a frequency, length, and breadth of topics rarely seen in his public discourse over the past decade. This does not resemble a successful founder preaching, but more like an anxious thinker trying to rekindle something from the ruins.
We have reviewed all his public tweets from 2025 to the present and found his interests to be extremely broad: from underlying consensus mechanisms to upper-layer social governance, from cryptography to AI ethics, from geopolitics to social media, all bear traces of his deep contemplation.
Amidst these diverse topics, we attempt to distill the keywords he mentions most frequently and the core propositions he cares about most. These thoughts not only concern the future of Ethereum but also seem to be answers to where the entire crypto industry should go.
The Shift in the Underlying Narrative
In 2025, Vitalik repeatedly emphasized that Ethereum's underlying narrative must change. It is no longer the "world computer" trying to run everything, but must become an "internet-level public infrastructure" like Linux or BitTorrent, or, "TCP/IP for finance."
TCP/IP is the underlying communication protocol of the internet. It does not belong to any company, yet it supports the operation of the entire network. By relinquishing control over upper-layer applications, it achieves absolute neutrality and robustness for itself.
This is precisely the new direction Vitalik has found for Ethereum. A more mature, more pragmatic decentralization: a neutral foundational layer that cannot be controlled by a single entity, a cornerstone that allows all financial activities to run permissionlessly.
"Ethereum should operate like Linux or BitTorrent: open, decentralized infrastructure, owned by no one, yet powerful and trustworthy enough for the world to build upon."
This means Ethereum's valuation logic is also changing. Its core value cannot be measured by the price-to-earnings ratio or user growth of a commercial company. Its value lies not in how many users it has or how much profit it generates, like Facebook or Amazon, but in how much value it can settle and how many applications it can support as infrastructure.
This shift in narrative means Ethereum must face a harsh reality: when "tokenization" itself can no longer provide emotional premiums, it must return to value creation. Wall Street and traditional finance's acceptance of Ethereum is both recognition of its value and a challenge it brings.
Wall Street Has Arrived
Following Bitcoin spot ETFs, giants like BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Fidelity began intensively deploying into Ethereum in 2025. They are no longer satisfied with simple asset allocation but are delving into the infrastructure layer. BlackRock launched an Ethereum-based tokenized fund, and JPMorgan's Onyx platform processes tens of billions of dollars in transactions on-chain daily.
The influx of institutions is a double-edged sword. On one side is the endorsement of legitimacy; on the other, it directly questions the decentralized soul of Ethereum. As BlackRock and Bitmine control more and more Ethereum, will the founder's influence diminish? How should Ethereum balance institutional demands with the spirit of decentralization?
Vitalik's attitude is: welcome, but do not pander.
In a post on Farcaster, he described the relationship between institutions and cypherpunks as a complex one that needs to be correctly understood. He believes "institutions (whether governments or companies) are neither necessarily friends nor necessarily enemies."
But he believes that unconstrained institutionalization brings two major risks, both directly targeting the foundation of decentralization.
First is the alienation of the core community. Vitalik stated bluntly in an interview: "It easily drives others away. If Ethereum only pursues commercial utility and ignores its technical and social attributes, then you get that Wall Street 'greed is good' mentality, which is exactly what many of us came here to escape."
This is essentially a decentralization crisis at the community level: if the original builders leave, Ethereum will lose the source of its ideas and vitality.
Second is the wrong technical choices. Institutional pressure may lead Ethereum to make decisions that undermine its accessibility.
For example, shortening block times to 150 milliseconds to meet high-frequency trading demands. This means only institutions with professional data centers and low-latency networks can run nodes, completely excluding ordinary users. This could further lead to node operations concentrating in financial centers like New York, damaging geographical decentralization.
Facing these risks, Vitalik's initial solution was a clear division of responsibilities: the L1 base layer maintains absolute decentralization, focusing on global, censorship-resistant traits that Wall Street cannot replicate.
"The Layer 1 base layer should remain strong, open, and directly accessible. It should allow individuals, companies, and governments to build on it without relying on any centralized institution." Institutions can then build their own "compliant" applications on L2.
But this "L1 for censorship resistance, L2 for compliance" scheme encountered new challenges in practice.
The New Positioning of L2
On February 3, 2026, Vitalik posted a lengthy article on X, making important revisions to Ethereum's L2 strategy.
Ethereum's initial scaling roadmap positioned L2s as "branded shards of Ethereum." They were supposed to inherit Ethereum's security and decentralization attributes, becoming extensions of the mainnet.
But reality has been disappointing. Vitalik directly criticized that most L2s still rely on centralized sequencers, essentially being more like "centralized databases dressed up as blockchains."
These L2s raised hundreds of millions of dollars, with valuations often in the tens of billions, yet they refuse to decentralize for commercial interests (MEV revenue, regulatory compliance, rapid iteration). After their tokens launch with high valuations and low circulation, the prices plummet and never recover.
These general-purpose L2s actually fit well with a term Vitalik often uses to criticize centralized giant products—"corposlop."
The term "corposlop" coined by Vitalik can be understood as: corporate garbage dressed in glamorous packaging. Companies and their products with strong commercial capabilities and sophisticated branding, but which engage in unethical behavior in pursuit of profit.
Vitalik's comments on such L2s are merciless:
"That might be right for your customers. But it's pretty clear that if you do that, you're not 'scaling Ethereum.'"
While L2 decentralization progresses slowly, L1's own scaling progress has been unexpectedly rapid. Fees are already low, and the gas limit is expected to increase significantly in 2026. The core value of L2s as "scaling tools" is being diluted.
Therefore, Vitalik pointed out a new path for L2s:
"We should stop thinking of L2s as 'branded shards' of Ethereum. L2s can no longer just settle for being 'a bit faster than L1'; they must find their own unique value."
He believes the future value of L2s lies in specialized functions and innovation. For example, innovation around non-financial areas like privacy, AI, and social; efficiency optimization for specific applications (appchains); or providing ultra-low-latency transaction sequencing.
He even suggested that L2s could explore some "non-computationally verifiable" functions—those where results cannot be proven solely by on-chain computation but require external world information (like oracles) or social consensus (like decentralized courts) to adjudicate.
This pushes Ethereum's scaling blueprint into a new stage: a more powerful L1 as the cornerstone of security and trust, complemented by a more diverse, functionally varied, and more imaginative L2 ecosystem.
Privacy as the Top Priority
If we count the concept Vitalik mentioned most frequently in 2025, "privacy" is definitely at the top. His emphasis on privacy also points to a core centralization problem in today's society—information control.
In October 2025, Vitalik elevated privacy to Ethereum's "first-class priority." He admitted that the early neglect of privacy was a necessity due to immature technology. But now, with the maturity of zero-knowledge proof technologies like ZK-SNARKs, privacy can no longer be sidelined.
"Privacy is an important safeguard for decentralization: whoever has information has power, so we need to avoid centralized control of information."
A blockchain without privacy exposes every transaction and every vote to everyone. When power can exert pressure by tracking on-chain data, blockchain's "permissionlessness" becomes an empty promise.
This struggle for information control is particularly prominent in the stablecoin sector. Stablecoins are the largest intersection between the crypto world and traditional finance, with hundreds of billions of dollars flowing on-chain daily. Whoever controls the peg, issuance, and circulation of stablecoins essentially controls the lifeblood of the crypto economy.
In this regard, Vitalik pointed out that the core struggle in the crypto industry is no longer "innovation vs. regulation," but "control vs. independence," with stablecoins being the main battlefield of this struggle.
On the technical path, Vitalik pointed the direction for privacy: through ZK-SNARKs and Privacy Pools, achieving "selective disclosure": users can prove the legitimacy of fund sources to regulators without exposing all information while protecting transaction details.
From this perspective, privacy is a necessary condition for Ethereum to become a true "global digital public infrastructure." It ensures that Ethereum is not just a transparent financial ledger, but a digital society that protects individual freedom, resists censorship, and allows users to safely "stand together."
Only when users have privacy protection can they safely participate in collective action, express dissent, and support sensitive causes without fear of being tracked and retaliated against. This is the foundation necessary for true decentralization.
Building Trust for AI
The reason privacy is given such high priority is also closely related to the rise of AI. The rapid development of AI has greatly enhanced tech giants' ability to collect and analyze data, exponentially increasing the risk of "surveillance capitalism."
Vitalik's concerns are not unfounded. Palantir provides large-scale data surveillance services for the US government and intelligence agencies, Worldcoin collects iris data from hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and Meta uses user chat records to train models.
AI controlled by a few giants, opaque, and with unguided values is becoming the most powerful centralization tool in human history.
As early as November 2024, Vitalik used OpenAI as an example to warn of the risks of centralized AI:
"OpenAI has now become CloseAI. First, they sacrificed openness for safety; then this year, they sacrificed safety for profit."
But Vitalik believes that the Crypto community cannot turn a blind eye to AI; it must actively engage, using decentralized power to guide the direction of AI development.
"AI must be used carefully: we must never let a large language model run a DAO... Instead, AI must be placed within a larger, human-driven system and function as a component within it."
This is precisely the初衷 of the Ethereum Foundation establishing the dAI (decentralized AI) group and launching the ERC-8004 protocol. ERC-8004 provides on-chain "identity" and "credit profiles" for AI agents, making AI behavior traceable and auditable.
The core problem it aims to solve is: when AI Agents increasingly perform tasks on behalf of humans, how can they trust each other?
In a centralized model, this problem is solved by the platform. You trust OpenAI, so you trust its AI. But this means all trust converges into the hands of a few giants.
ERC-8004 offers a decentralized path: through on-chain identity and behavior records, AI agents can establish verifiable reputations without relying on centralized platform endorsements. This allows the AI ecosystem to potentially operate on a decentralized basis, like DeFi, rather than being monopolized by a few giants.
Vitalik's思路 is clear: Since AI is an unstoppable trend, instead of passively accepting a powerful tool controlled by a few giants, proactively use Ethereum's decentralized systems (identity, payments, privacy, security) to set boundaries for it, ensuring it serves an open, free society rather than becoming a new era nuclear weapon for centralized power.
Decentralized Social
After constructing decentralized checks and balances for the two major centers of power—finance and AI—Vitalik turned his gaze to the core arena of human digital life: social networks.
He believes that current centralized social platforms have fundamental problems. Their algorithms, in pursuit of short-term engagement rates and advertising revenue, sacrifice the true value of content, ultimately leading to information cocoons, declining content quality, and absolute platform control over users.
In January 2026, the decentralized social赛道 experienced a series of "earthquakes." Platform X banned APIs to打击 "volume-boosting" projects, Farcaster was acquired, and Lens Protocol handed over主导权 to Mask Network. This series of turmoil highlights the fragility of existing models.
It was against this backdrop that on January 21, Vitalik posted a long article announcing his "full return to decentralized social" and offering profound criticism of the SocialFi model of the past decade.
"Crypto social projects often go down the wrong path. We in crypto too often think that if you insert a speculative token into something, that's called 'innovation.'"
He pointed out incisively that the crypto industry's past ineffectiveness in content incentives stems from a lack of effective "quality filtering mechanisms," not insufficient incentives. Token value reflects popularity and hype, not content quality. The爆火 of Friend.tech in 2023 is a典型案例, with its token price plummeting 99% and the platform nearly abandoned.
Vitalik appreciates Substack's model because it proves that building a healthy economic system around high-quality content is entirely possible. Its core is "subscribing to creators," pushing quality content, not "creating price bubbles for them."
Based on this, he proposed a novel solution: establishing a non-tokenized, small-scale curation DAO.
This DAO uses member voting to筛选优质创作者 and uses部分收益 to回购其代币. This way, the speculator's role shifts from "hyping prices" to "predicting the DAO's choices," thereby directing market forces toward discovering quality content.
But in Vitalik's view, the key to solving the problem is not creating more complex speculative tools, but returning to technology itself, using decentralization to break platform monopolies.
"There are no simple tricks to solve these problems. But there is an important starting point: more competition. Decentralization is the way to achieve this: a shared data layer that anyone can build their own client on."
To this end, he leads by example. Vitalik claims that since early 2026, all his social activities have been conducted through Firefly. Firefly is a client that aggregates multiple platforms like X, Lens, and Farcaster. It does not rely on any single platform's API but, through the concept of a "shared data layer," allows users to seamlessly move towards a more open and free decentralized social experience while retaining their existing habits.
Embers in the Ruins
After梳理完 Vitalik's thoughts on various fields over the past year, a主线逐渐清晰: what he cares about most and wants to坚守 is returning to the初心 of decentralization and坚持 beyond financial speculation.
Whether it's confronting Wall Street, establishing identity profiles for AI, defending privacy, or rebuilding decentralized social, every topic points to the same内核: in an era of膨胀 centralized power, how to use technology to safeguard individual freedom and sovereignty.
In 1993, Eric Hughes wrote in "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto":
"We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak... If we desire privacy, we must take action to secure it for ourselves."
Thirty years later, we understand the weight of these words more than ever. Tech giants forge information weapons with data and AI; geopolitical conflicts mean any centralized system can become a tool of博弈. In the current world格局, the value of a truly neutral, open digital public infrastructure has never been more prominent.
While the entire crypto industry is still searching for the next 100x coin, in these days of凋零 industry innovation, at least someone is still guarding the embers in the ruins.
