Vitalik Buterin, one of Ethereum’s founders, believes that Ethereum needs to rekindle the original “cypherpunk” vision that characterized the blockchain in its early stages. In a blog post on December 28, Buterin emphasized that Ethereum was initially conceived as a “public decentralized shared hard drive,” integrating peer-to-peer messaging and decentralized file storage. However, this vision started to wane in 2017 with the shift towards financialization on Ethereum.
Buterin desires a return to “cypherpunk” values, including decentralization, open participation, censorship resistance, and credible neutrality in Ethereum’s future. Despite the prevailing financial focus, he remains optimistic that non-financial applications can thrive on the blockchain. Notably, Buterin pointed out that mainstream adoption of technologies like rollups, zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction, and second-generation privacy solutions could help uphold these cypherpunk values.
The term “cypherpunk” refers to individuals who use encryption for privacy when accessing computer networks, especially to protect against government authorities. Buterin encourages activities such as participating in polls without compromising privacy and implementing mechanisms like quadratic voting and cross-tribal consensus finding to facilitate self-governance in organizations.
While acknowledging the challenges of resisting centralization pressures, Buterin warned against the risk of losing the unique value of the crypto ecosystem if these pressures are not resisted. He cited examples such as building highly centralized layers secured by multisignature without plans for change and nonfungible token ecosystems storing NFTs on centralized websites instead of decentralized file storage platforms like IPFS.
Despite these challenges, Buterin expressed admiration for solutions addressing significant industry problems. He cited decentralized exchanges as a response to hacks on centralized exchanges, and initiatives like Cowswap, Flashbots Protect, and MEV Blocker, which help mitigate the severity of sandwich attacks on Ethereum users by exploiters maximizing extractable value.
On December 28, Buterin also proposed making the Ethereum proof-of-stake chain lighter and simpler by reducing the number of signatures required from validators to maintain the network.
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