Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin urges the crypto industry to mature swiftly, highlighting its current “inflection point.”
During a keynote at the Ethereum Community Conference in Cannes, France, Buterin provided crucial insights: he emphasized the necessity for decentralization to transition from a mere buzzword to tangible user guarantees or risk becoming yet another empty promise.
As mainstream adoption has surged, with backing from major corporations and political figures, Buterin insists that developers must reconnect with the ecosystem’s essential principles of decentralization and focus on user needs.
In his typical jeans and t-shirt attire, Buterin outlined several “tests” he believes every crypto project should pass: 1) the walk-away test—ensuring users retain their assets if the company ceases to exist; 2) the insider attack test—assessing vulnerability to rogue insiders or compromised interfaces; and 3) determining its trusted computing base—evaluating how many lines of code need to be trusted to safeguard users’ assets.
He cautioned that numerous layer-2 networks, DeFi projects, and so-called “decentralized” front-ends depend on concealed backdoors and insecure interfaces that can be manipulated or hacked.
Even identity and privacy mechanisms faced his scrutiny. He noted that while zero-knowledge proofs are beneficial, they can fail if users inadvertently expose their entire transaction history to centralized entities. Privacy should transition from an optional accessory to a default feature that enhances data security.
This month marks a decade since the launch of the Ethereum blockchain, and Buterin has been urged by the community to address vital protocol challenges to maintain its competitive edge.
For Buterin, the next chapter in Ethereum’s evolution is about establishing systems that pass the walk-away test, reduce the trusted codebase, and resist insider threats. He aims for a balance between engineering complexities and straightforward, effective solutions.
“If we lose that,” he warned, “Ethereum will become just another passing trend, fading like many others have before.”
Read more: Vitalik Buterin Proposes Replacing Ethereum’s EVM With RISC-V
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