Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin used a New Year’s message on X to both celebrate a year of technical progress and refocus attention on the network’s founding mission: becoming a resilient, global “world computer,” not just chasing whatever crypto trend is next.
What changed in 2025
Buterin said Ethereum made meaningful gains last year — it got faster, more reliable and better at scaling without giving up decentralization. Upgrades reduced bottlenecks, increased throughput, and lowered the barriers to running the node software that keeps the network honest. Together, he argued, these improvements push Ethereum beyond “just another blockchain” toward a shared computing platform that can host essential services.
But technical wins aren’t the finish line
Buterin warned that engineering milestones shouldn’t be mistaken for the ultimate goal. He urged the community to avoid “trying to win the next meta” — short-lived frenzies around tokenized dollars, political memecoins, or artificial traffic spikes aimed at economic signaling — and instead return to Ethereum’s core promise.
The world-computer test
At the center of that promise is a simple but demanding vision: a neutral platform where applications keep working without fraud, censorship or third-party control — even if their creators disappear. He pointed to the “walkaway test” as a key benchmark: systems should continue running regardless of who maintains them. Resilience matters too — users shouldn’t notice if large infrastructure providers go offline or are compromised.
Two simultaneous requirements
Buterin distilled Ethereum’s challenge into two simultaneous must-haves:
- Global usability: the network and its client software must be easy enough and efficient enough for worldwide use.
- Genuine decentralization: the protocol and apps built on it must not rely on centralized services in practice.
He noted this applies not only to the base protocol and node software but also to decentralized applications that still depend on centralized backends.
Why this matters now
Buterin acknowledged that meaningful tools and progress already exist to push toward these goals. His New Year’s note wasn’t a roadmap for a particular upgrade; it was a reminder of why recent technical work matters: to make Ethereum durable infrastructure for finance, identity, governance and other foundational internet services.
The real test ahead
The critical phase, he said, is coming: moving from upgrades to sustained real-world use. That shift will show whether Ethereum’s ideals hold up under scale — and whether it can truly become the world computer it set out to be.
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