Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has issued a rallying cry for the network’s future, declaring 2026 the year Ethereum will “take back lost ground” on its core values of self-sovereignty and trustlessness.
In a detailed post on X (formerly Twitter) late Friday, Buterin argued that the ecosystem had “backslid” over the last decade, often sacrificing decentralization for the sake of mainstream adoption. He emphasized that the era of compromise is over.
The Roadmap to Reclaiming Trust
Buterin outlined a technical path to reverse this trend, focusing on removing reliance on centralized infrastructure:
- Node Accessibility: Reducing the barriers to running full nodes using ZK-EVM (Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine) and BAL technologies.
- Data Verification: Urging a shift away from blind trust in Remote Procedure Call (RPC) providers. Buterin highlighted Helios, a light client that allows users to verify data authenticity independently.
- Privacy & Security: Promoting the Kohaku wallet framework and “privacy UX” that makes private payments as seamless as public ones. He also reiterated the need for social recovery wallets and timelocks to eliminate “single point of failure” risks like lost seed phrases.
Ethereum transaction volume hit a record 2.6 million daily transactions earlier this week, underscoring the urgency of scaling trustlessly.
Data Source:https://www.theblock.co/data/on-chain-metrics/ethereum/transactions-on-the-ethereum-network-daily