Vitalik Thinks 2026 Is When Ethereum Gets Back to What It Was Supposed to Be

Vitalik Buterin is not really talking about price right now. That alone makes his latest message stand out.

While much of the crypto market remains fixated on ETFs, flows, and whether this cycle has one more leg left, Ethereum’s co-founder is pointing somewhere else entirely. In his view, 2026 should be the year Ethereum starts actively reversing what he sees as a slow drift away from self-sovereignty and trustlessness.

It is not framed as a dramatic pivot or some shiny new roadmap. It is more like a reminder. Ethereum, according to Buterin, has spent years getting bigger, faster, and easier to use, and in the process it has quietly accepted compromises that would have felt uncomfortable in its earlier days.

Now he wants to unwind some of that.

Ethereum Got Easier, and That Was Not Free

There is no denying Ethereum’s growth. Rollups work. DeFi runs real money. Institutions are here. The network feels permanent in a way it did not a few years ago.

But ease comes with dependencies. Many users do not run nodes. Many apps rely on the same handful of infrastructure providers. Wallets often default to custodial or semi-custodial setups because it is simpler and users are afraid of losing seed phrases.

None of this is accidental. It happened because it worked. It brought users in. It made Ethereum usable.

But Buterin’s argument is that convenience has slowly started to crowd out something more important. If Ethereum depends too much on trusted intermediaries, even friendly ones, then it starts to look less like a trustless system and more like a decentralized brand layered on top of familiar structures.

That, in his view, is a problem worth addressing head-on.

Self-Sovereignty Is Not Just a Slogan

When Buterin talks about self-sovereignty, he is not being abstract. He is talking about very practical things, like how people actually control their assets.

Seed phrases remain one of crypto’s most unforgiving design choices. Lose it and your funds are gone. For many users, that risk pushes them straight into custodial solutions, which defeats the point.

Ethereum’s push around account abstraction and social recovery wallets is meant to change that dynamic. The idea is not to make users memorize better passwords. It is to give them safer ways to stay in control without handing the keys to someone else.

This is where Buterin tends to sound almost stubborn. He does not accept that usability and self-custody have to be opposites. He sees bad wallet UX as a solvable design problem, not a reason to abandon the principle.

Running a Node Should Not Feel Like a Hobby Project

Another issue that keeps coming up is verification. Ethereum is designed so anyone can independently verify the network’s state. In practice, most people do not.

Instead, users and apps lean on centralized RPC providers, cloud services, and hosted endpoints. It works. Until it does not.

Buterin has been blunt about this. If Ethereum becomes a network where only a small group of actors can realistically verify what is happening, then decentralization starts to thin out where it matters most.

This is why there is so much emphasis on lighter nodes, better data availability, and zero-knowledge tech. The goal is not academic elegance. It is making verification cheap and accessible enough that it becomes normal again.

In other words, Ethereum should be something you can check for yourself, not something you take on faith.

Privacy Is Still Missing From the Default Experience

Despite years of progress, privacy on Ethereum remains optional and often awkward. Many transactions leak more information than users realize, simply because they rely on centralized relayers or analytics-heavy infrastructure.

Buterin has been pushing the idea that privacy should feel boring. Not exotic. Not advanced. Just there.

If private transactions require special effort or deep technical knowledge, most users will skip them. That creates a network where surveillance becomes the default state, which cuts directly against the idea of permissionless participation.

The renewed focus here is about making privacy part of the base layer experience, not something bolted on later for power users.

Thinking Past the Current Cycle

One of the more interesting parts of Buterin’s recent comments is how long-term they are. He talks openly about quantum resistance and cryptographic upgrades that may not matter for years.

That is not the kind of thing that drives usage next quarter. It is the kind of thing you worry about if you think Ethereum should still be around in 20 or 30 years.

The same mindset shows up in his thoughts on stablecoins and financial infrastructure. Relying entirely on centralized issuers and traditional banking rails might be convenient now, but it introduces fragility over time.

The message is subtle but consistent. Ethereum should not optimize only for what works today. It should optimize for what survives stress.

Less Hype, More Backbone

There is also something missing from this conversation, and it feels intentional. Buterin is not talking about memecoins, viral apps, or chasing narratives to pump activity.

Instead, he keeps circling back to resilience. Can Ethereum keep working if major providers go offline. Can users still transact if key companies disappear. Can the system hold up under pressure.

That focus might feel boring to parts of the market. It is also probably why it matters.

Why This Year Matters

Ethereum is no longer trying to prove that it works. It already does. The question now is what kind of system it wants to be as it becomes harder to change.

By framing 2026 as a year of recommitment, Buterin is effectively asking the ecosystem to slow down just enough to check its foundations. Not to undo progress, but to make sure that progress did not quietly hollow out the original mission.

Whether developers and users fully follow that lead is an open question. Ethereum is too big to move in one direction all at once.

Still, when its most influential voice says the next phase is about trustlessness, self-sovereignty, and resilience, it is worth paying attention. Not because it promises a price move, but because it says something about where Ethereum thinks its long-term value really comes from.

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