Ethereum must evolve to remain useful according to Vitalik Buterin

The co-founder of Ethereum had never expressed things with such frankness before. In a message that immediately sparked a reaction from the crypto community, Vitalik Buterin publicly acknowledges the limitations of his own creation. Behind this unexpected mea culpa lies a vision much more strategic than it seems.

Ethereum cannot save the world, and Buterin says it himself

A message posted on X by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, was enough to ignite the crypto community. The tone is direct, almost brutal: Ethereum would be the “ill-suited tool” to face the two great anxieties of our time, the drift of global politics and the risks of uncontrolled artificial intelligence.

Buterin’s logic is relentless. At a certain level of ambition, “fixing the world” no longer looks like decentralized tech. It looks like politics. It requires power, projection, constraint. Yet, this is precisely the opposite of what Ethereum was designed to be.

He goes even further. “The harsh reality is that Ethereum seems absent from any attempt to concretely improve people’s lives.” When the founder of a protocol valued at several hundred billion dollars makes such a statement, it does not go unnoticed. Such public lucidity about his own creation is, in the crypto world, almost unprecedented.

Reading these words as an admission of powerlessness would, however, be a mistake. Buterin is not giving up, he is reframing. He invites the community to embrace another identity: that of an ecosystem of “sanctuary technologies.” Open tools, uncensorable, accessible to all. Building blocks that any individual or small group can grasp to improve their own situation without asking anyone’s permission.

DeFi, AI and Anthropic, Vitalik outlines the contours of a more targeted protocol

This message does not come out of nowhere. A few days earlier, Vitalik had already set the scene: DeFi remains the area where Ethereum excels, provided it never betrays its fundamentals, open source, permissionless, resistant to any censorship attempt. A demanding ideal, which he himself acknowledges is still far from being fully achieved.

On AI, his thinking goes even further. For several months, he has been outlining an Ethereum that would serve as an economic layer for autonomous agents, capable of securing exchanges between algorithms thanks to zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and trusted execution environments. 

A blockchain not just as a simple financial ledger, but as a bulwark against the concentration of power in the age of artificial intelligence.

This coherent vision naturally led him to look at Anthropic in a different light. When the company stood firm against the Pentagon’s demands, categorically refusing to cross its two red lines: “no fully autonomous weapons” and “no mass surveillance,” Buterin publicly praised this stance. 

Washington’s response was swift. Donald Trump excluded the company from federal circuits, while Pete Hegseth cut all official ties.

Irony of the story: this blacklisting propelled Anthropic to the status of a symbol of technological resistance.

At the beginning of 2026, its assistant Claude was stuck at 42nd place on the US App Store. A few weeks later, at the end of February, it took the top spot, dethroning ChatGPT in the process.

Ethereum no longer claims to want to solve everything. And perhaps this is its greatest strength. By assuming its limits, Buterin draws a more credible, more targeted protocol, not a savior of the world, but a freedom tool for those who need it most.