On Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin proposes to revive “cypherpunk” ideas

Vitalik Buterin calls for the revival of the “cypherpunk” revolution in the Ethereum network, which was conceived from the very beginning of the existence of this cryptocurrency.

According to him, Ethereum was originally intended to be a “public decentralized shared hard drive” that could use peer-to-peer messaging and file storage. However, this vision began to fade in 2017 with the turn towards the “financialization” of the protocol.

Decentralization, open participation, resistance to censorship, and trustworthy neutrality are among the “cypherpunk” ideals Buterin wants to see in the future of Ethereum.

He emphasized that rollups , zero-knowledge proofs , account abstraction, and second-generation privacy solutions have become more common and may support some of these values.

“It is quite possible to create things within the crypto ecosystem that do not meet these goals ,” Buterin admitted, hinting at some projects.

For example, creating a highly centralized layer protected by multisigs with no plans to change, or an NFT where tokens are stored on a centralized website rather than a decentralized data platform such as IPFS .

“Resisting this pressure is difficult, but if we don’t, we risk losing the unique value of the crypto ecosystem and recreating a clone of the existing Web 2.0 ecosystem with additional inefficiencies and inconveniences ,” the developer emphasized.

Buterin also said he was impressed by some of the developments created to solve the industry's biggest problems. Thus, DEX provided improved tools for protection after hacking of centralized exchanges, and Cowswap, Flashbots Protect and MEV Blocker helped limit “sandwich attacks” on Ethereum users.

Earlier, Buterin noted the “undoubted” development of rollups, highlighting the transition of the Arbitrum to the “first stage.” Amid the announcement, ARB and OP tokens rose by more than 15%.

Let us recall that at the end of November, the co-founder of Ethereum released an essay “My Techno-Optimism,” in which he shared his opinion on the impact of new developments, in particular blockchain and artificial intelligence, on the development of human civilization.