Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has issued a powerful rebuke against the perceived trend of compromising the network’s fundamental philosophical values in the pursuit of rapid mainstream adoption. Buterin argues that while scalability and utility are crucial, they must be achieved through robust, decentralized architectural choices, not through expedient sacrifices that jeopardize the platform’s integrity.
The core of Buterin’s concern lies in the danger of ceding ground on decentralization and censorship resistance merely to appease large corporate entities or accelerate short-term speculative growth. He warns that proposals aimed at achieving quick scalability, often via forms of increased centralization or the introduction of regulatory ‘choke points’ at the protocol level, betray the network’s mission as a trust-minimized, global public good.
Buterin emphasizes that the unique value proposition of Ethereum is its status as a highly secure, neutral infrastructure. If the network becomes too focused on pleasing enterprise requirements—which often demand KYC/AML compliance baked into the foundational layers or simplified consensus mechanisms that rely on fewer parties—it risks morphing into just another permissioned system, negating the entire purpose of blockchain technology.
Instead, Buterin advocates for a commitment to long-term technological solutions, particularly decentralized Layer 2 scaling technologies (such as rollups), which allow for massive scaling while preserving the uncompromising security and decentralization of the base layer. For Buterin, maintaining the platform’s philosophical integrity is paramount, asserting that failure to uphold these core values risks making the entire crypto ecosystem philosophically meaningless.
Source: Sacrificing Ethereum’s values for mainstream adoption must stop now: Buterin
コメント