Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin has called for a 2026 realignment that puts self-sovereignty and trustlessness back at the center of the network’s priorities. In a January 16 post on X, Buterin said Ethereum has “fallen behind considerably” over the past ten years, pointing to growing dependence on centralized infrastructure.
The shift comes after Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade in May 2025 and ahead of two planned 2026 upgrades, Glamsterdam and Hegota. However, Buterin’s message focused less on headline features and more on restoring default user paths that rely on verification, not trust.
Buterin said operating Ethereum nodes has become too difficult for many users. He also said decentralized applications changed from static pages into complex structures that transmit user data to many servers.
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) providers such as Infura and Alchemy now process most wallet requests, according to his comments. That model improves convenience, yet it can centralize where users read balances, state, and transaction status.
On January 18, Buterin intensified the warning. He said Ethereum is becoming “too dense for independent verification.” He also argued the protocol must pass a “walkaway test,” meaning the network should keep running even if founders and core developers permanently leave.
Buterin framed the issue as a conflict between scalability goals and decentralized operation. He said Ethereum’s push for scale contributed to reliance on centralized services that sit between users and the chain.
Vitalik Buterin outlined technical directions he said can help reverse the drift. One priority is simpler verification through Helios and Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (ZK-EVMs), which aim to reduce the cost of checking data on consumer hardware.
Helios, a light client, aims to turn untrusted RPC responses into locally verifiable results. The goal is to make verification a default wallet experience, not a niche configuration.
Buterin also emphasized privacy tools, including Oblivious RAM (ORAM) and Private Information Retrieval (PIR). These approaches aim to let wallets query data without exposing access patterns, which would limit what RPC providers can infer about user activity.
User-facing security also sits on the agenda. Buterin highlighted social recovery wallets and timelocks designed to reduce catastrophic loss if users lose seed phrases or attackers extract them. He also pointed to hardened interfaces using decentralized storage tools like the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to reduce risks from hijacked frontends.
Alongside decentralization goals, Buterin argued for code reduction and a tighter scope. He warned that adding features for narrow needs can bloat the protocol and raise the barrier to participation.
He proposed a “garbage collection function” in the development process. The approach would create a mandate to delete outdated code and dependencies instead of layering new complexity indefinitely.
Glamsterdam, expected in Q2 or Q3 2026, is positioned to bring full Verkle Trees for stateless clients and lower hardware requirements. Hegota, planned for the second half of 2026, focuses on state and history expiry, which targets the growing cost of storing Ethereum data indefinitely.
Buterin also referenced Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL), which aim to enforce censorship resistance at the consensus level. He cited Block Access Lists as another effort intended to improve node performance and reduce costs tied to how nodes read and validate state.
Buterin also pointed to the Kohaku Wallet effort as a way to push research into defaults. The roadmap described Kohaku integrating verified RPC and native Account Abstraction, with mid-2026 milestones referenced in the materials.
Looking ahead, Buterin positioned 2026 as a consolidation year after feature-heavy upgrades in 2025, including Pectra and Fusaka. He also highlighted needs beyond upgrades, including decentralized stablecoin innovation and quantum-resistant cryptography, which he tied to Ethereum being secure for “a hundred years.”