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Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has proclaimed that 2026 will be the year Ethereum regains its footing regarding self-sovereignty and trustlessness, advocating for the cessation of all compromises the network has made in its quest for mainstream acceptance.
In an extensive post on X on Friday, Buterin delineated significant technical and philosophical changes aimed at reversing a decade-long trend of centralization among nodes, wallets, applications, and block construction.
“2026 is the year that we reclaim lost ground in self-sovereignty and trustlessness,” Buterin stated.
The manifesto suggests Ethereum’s most pronounced shift away from convenience-oriented design decisions that have diluted its foundational values, positioning this moment as critical for the network’s enduring legitimacy and its expanded function in global infrastructure.
2026 is the year that we reclaim lost ground in terms of self-sovereignty and trustlessness.
Some of what this practically means:
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.…— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 16, 2026
Technical Roadmap Focuses on Node Accessibility and Privacy Infrastructure
Buterin’s strategy revolves around making full node operation feasible again through zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines and Block Access Limits, countering years of escalating hardware requirements that have shifted verification away from personal computers.
“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,” he affirmed.
The roadmap also emphasizes Helios to “actually verify the data you’re receiving from RPCs instead of blindly trusting it,” along with oblivious RAM and private data retrieval protocols that allow users to “request data from RPCs without disclosing which data you’re seeking, enabling access to dapps without your access patterns being sold to numerous third parties globally.”
Social recovery wallets with timelocks will offer “wallets that prevent you from losing all your funds if you misplace your seed phrase or if an online or offline attacker extracts it, and also ensure your money isn’t backdoored by Google.”
Privacy features will be directly integrated into wallet interfaces to “facilitate private payments from your wallet, providing the same user experience as public payments.”
Application interfaces will transition to on-chain hosting via IPFS to avoid “dependence on trusted servers that could lock you out of practical recovery of your assets if they go offline, and might present a compromised UI that steals your funds if hacked for even a moment.”
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Buterin cautioned that “over the last decade, we have witnessed significant regression in Ethereum,” with nodes evolving “from easy to run to difficult to operate” and dapps transitioning “from static pages to complex entities that leak your data to numerous servers.”
Long-Term Vision Beyond Immediate Protocol Enhancements
Buterin recognized that this transformation will not happen overnight but underscored its importance.
“Every compromise of values that Ethereum has made until now – every instance where you might have wondered if it was truly worth sacrificing ourselves for mainstream adoption – we are no longer making that compromise,” he asserted.
“It will be a lengthy journey. We will not achieve everything we desire in the next Kohaku release, or the subsequent hard fork, or the one after that. However, it will evolve Ethereum into an ecosystem that not only deserves its current position in the universe, but an even more significant one,” Buterin stated.
He concluded that “In the world computer, there is no centralized ruler. There is no single point of failure. There is only love.”
Vitalik Buterin asserts Ethereum has resolved blockchain’s trilemma with ZKEVMs and PeerDAS technology now operational on mainnet after a decade of development. #Ethereum #Buterin https://t.co/cUzlhhO6Xr
— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) January 4, 2026
The manifesto emerges as Ethereum makes advancements on the blockchain trilemma through ZKEVMs and PeerDAS technology.
The network has initiated its second Blob Parameter-Only hard fork, increasing the blob limit from 15 to 21 and enhancing data capacity to facilitate rollup scaling while keeping base-layer fees low.
Network expansion has also surged significantly, with new active addresses rising from just over 4 million to about 8 million in the past month and daily transactions reaching a record 2.8 million, approximately 125% higher than the same period last year.
Glassnode data indicates that month-over-month activity retention has nearly doubled in the newest user cohort, suggesting that newcomers are remaining engaged rather than churning after their initial experiences.
The post “No Longer”: Vitalik Buterin Demands End to Ethereum’s Value Compromises appeared first on Cryptonews.
