Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, in his New Year message, evaluated the network’s technical progress, placing emphasis on staying true to its founding mission. In his assessment shared on his X account on Thursday, he noted that the largest altcoin achieved significant advancements in speed, reliability, and scalability throughout 2025. He cautioned against the network’s transformation into a platform solely chasing popular narratives. Buterin clearly articulated that the goal is to realize the vision of a “world computer.”
Ethereum’s Vision of a “World Computer”
According to Buterin’s evaluation, Ethereum was strengthened in 2025 with improvements that increased its capacity to handle more transactions, reduced bottlenecks, and made running nodes easier. These advancements aimed to boost its growth capacity without compromising decentralization. The co-founder expressed that becoming a shared and neutral computation layer for the network is not limited to technical achievements alone.
This approach aims to transform Ethereum from a typical blockchain into an infrastructure accessible to everyone. Buterin stressed that for sustainable applications to develop in areas such as finance, identity, and governance, the platform should operate without relying on trusted intermediaries. He criticized the pursuit of temporary usage spikes driven by popular narratives, indicating that tokenized dollars, political memecoins, or artificial economic signals do not contribute to the long-term mission.
Two Fundamental Conditions: Scale and Decentralization
The first condition highlighted by Buterin is global usability. Ethereum’s capacity to serve millions of users necessitates the applications to operate seamlessly in everyday life. The second condition is to remain truly decentralized. Preserving the network’s distributed structure at all layers, not just the core protocol level but also including wallets and infrastructure services, is essential.
The co-founder also pointed to the principle known as the “walkaway test.” According to this principle, applications should continue functioning even if their developers disappear. Similarly, the user experience should remain unaffected if major infrastructure providers cease to operate. Buterin recalled that, in the past, everyday software possessed similar attributes, which weakened with the rise of subscription-based centralized services.
