Summary
- Vitalik Buterin said he aims to fully restore Ethereum’s self-sovereignty and trustlessness by 2026.
- He said he sees the rising difficulty of operating nodes and the concentration of block production and transaction inclusion among a small number of entities as key issues on Ethereum.
- Buterin said he will introduce technology to make full nodes lighter to run and reduce personal-data exposure in wallets, easing concerns about user surveillance and tracking.
Ethereum (ETH) founder Vitalik Buterin said he aims to fully restore self-sovereignty and trustlessness by 2026.
On the 17th (Korea time), Buterin wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that “2026 will be the year we reclaim the values we have lost,” making the remarks.
Buterin assessed that over the past decade-plus, Ethereum’s core values have been eroded in the pursuit of convenience and mass adoption. “Nodes have become increasingly difficult to operate, and dapps and wallets have shifted to structures that expose user data to multiple centralized servers,” he said, adding that block production and transaction inclusion are also becoming concentrated among a small number of entities.
He also laid out specific ways the change would be pursued.
First is improving usability on the validator side. Buterin said, “We will restore an environment where ordinary users can directly verify the Ethereum network on their own computers,” explaining that while “full nodes” that validate Ethereum’s entire transaction history have become hard for individuals to run due to hardware and cost burdens, new technology will make it possible to run nodes more lightly and easily.
Changes were also flagged in the wallet domain. “At present, many wallets and applications expose users’ access logs and transaction information to multiple intermediary servers,” Buterin said, adding, “Going forward, we will introduce technology that ensures even what information you looked up is not revealed externally.” The goal is to enable users to access decentralized services without concerns about surveillance or tracking.
