Vitalik Buterin Urges End to Ethereum's Compromises in 2026

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has announced that 2026 will be the year Ethereum restores its commitment to self-sovereignty and trustlessness. He is calling for an end to the compromises the network has made during its pursuit of mainstream acceptance.

Key Takeaways

Vitalik Buterin emphasizes the need for Ethereum to refocus on self-sovereignty and trustlessness in 2026.
Technical changes include easier full node operation and enhanced privacy measures.
Social recovery wallets will protect users from losing funds due to misplaced seed phrases or hacking attacks.
Application interfaces will transition to on-chain hosting using IPFS to enhance security.
Ethereum has recently seen rapid growth in activity and user engagement.

In an insightful post on X last Friday, Buterin described significant technical and philosophical changes aimed at reversing a decade of gradual centralization affecting nodes, wallets, applications, and block construction.

Buterin declared, "2026 is the year that we reclaim lost ground in terms of self-sovereignty and trustlessness." This manifesto represents Ethereum's boldest shift away from convenience-focused decisions that weakened its core ideals, marking a crucial moment for the network's long-term credibility and its expanded role in global infrastructure.

A Focus on Node Accessibility and Privacy

Buterin's plan centers on reviving the practicality of operating full nodes using zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (ZK-EVM) and Block Access Limits. These changes aim to reverse the trend of increasing hardware requirements that have pushed verification away from personal computers.

He stated, "Full nodes: thanks to ZK-EVM and BAL, it will once again become easier to locally run a node and verify the Ethereum chain on your own computer."

The roadmap also highlights Helios, which will allow users to "verify the data you're receiving from RPCs instead of trusting them blindly." Additionally, technologies like oblivious RAM and private information retrieval protocols will enable users to request data from RPCs without exposing their queries, enhancing privacy while engaging with decentralized applications (dapps).

Innovations will include social recovery wallets with timelocks, ensuring that users do not lose their funds if they misplace their seed phrases or if an attacker extracts them. This approach also prevents unauthorized access by corporations.

Privacy features are set to be integrated into wallet interfaces, enabling private payments without sacrificing user experience. Furthermore, application interfaces are expected to transition to on-chain hosting via IPFS, minimizing reliance on centralized servers that could jeopardize asset recovery or security.

Buterin highlighted that there has been significant backsliding in Ethereum over the past decade, with nodes becoming harder to operate and dapps evolving into complex systems that compromise user data privacy.

Embracing a Long-Term Vision

Buterin acknowledged that these transformations will take time but emphasized their importance. He stated, "Every compromise of values that Ethereum has made up to this point – every moment where you might have been thinking, is it really worth diluting ourselves so much in the name of mainstream adoption – we are making that compromise no longer."

He added, "The road to improvement will be long. We will not achieve everything we desire in the next Kohaku release or the following hard fork. However, these changes will elevate Ethereum to a position that deserves not only its present standing but a far greater one."

Buterin concluded with a vision of a decentralized world: "In the world computer, there is no centralized overlord. There is no single point of failure. There is only love."

This manifesto arrives as Ethereum makes significant strides in addressing the blockchain trilemma through ZK-EVMs and PeerDAS technology. Recently, the network activated its second Blob Parameter-Only hard fork, increasing the blob limit from 15 to 21, which enhances data capacity for rollup scaling while keeping base-layer fees low.

Moreover, the network has experienced a substantial uptick in growth, with the number of active addresses rising from just over 4 million to approximately 8 million in the past month and daily transactions reaching a record high of 2.8 million—an increase of about 125% from the previous year. According to Glassnode data, the retention of new user activity has nearly doubled, indicating that fresh participants remain engaged rather than dropping off after initial interactions.