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Buterin Sets 2026 Priority: Ethereum Must Be Usable at Scale and Truly Decentralized

His New Year message shifts focus from engineering wins to proving real-world resilience.

Overview

  • He set two non-negotiables for Ethereum’s mission: global usability and genuine decentralization across both the base-layer software and the application layer.
  • He highlighted 2025 advances including higher gas limits, increased blob counts, improved node clients, and major zkEVM milestones, with zkEVMs plus PeerDAS called the biggest step toward a more capable chain.
  • He advanced a “walkaway test” for apps, insisting they continue operating without their developers, resist fraud and censorship, and remain usable even if major providers like Cloudflare go down or are hacked.
  • He cautioned against chasing the “next meta,” citing tokenized dollars, political memecoins, and artificial blockspace filling as distractions from building durable decentralized infrastructure.
  • He urged a shift from upgrade milestones to real-world scale testing and faster application of existing tools, noting no new specific upgrade or policy change was announced.