Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin called for “bold and open-minded” experimentation in Ethereum’s application layer while keeping the core principles intact.
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The Strong Way of Ethereum
In a long post on the X social network on March 5, Vitalik Buterin doubled down on rethinking the future of Ethereum. After his warning that Ethereum should not lose to the memecoin-chasing and harvest-farming casino, he now asks that developers have a “brave and open mind to many things” referring this time especially to “the application layer and the way we see ourselves in the world”.
Open Mindset
Before delving into his deeper details, Buterin clarifies that this open-mindedness should not leave people insecure about network security protocols. The founder of Ethereum returns to his previous concerns about the role of Ethereum outside of DeFi, reminding users again what the ethos of the project is about: technical and financial tools to give people more freedom.
We must not compromise on important properties: audit resistance, open source, privacy, security (CROPS). We shouldn’t have the kind of “open mind” that leaves people unsure of what security features L1 will have one year from now.
“Technical Approach News”
Buterin begins to address what he calls the “technical direction” of the project. He believes that, regarding the application layer and the interface of Ethereum in the world, “we must be willing to rethink from different perspectives and go outside our comfort zone”.
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The first aspect to revisit should be the application stack, “because the entire stack so far has not been built around privacy”, he says. Ethereum’s base layer is finally becoming a robust, efficient problem-solving engine, but the layers above, such as L2, wallets, DeFi, oracles and future AI agents, often refocus the risks Ethereum was built to eliminate. Buterin calls for creating new AI-native applications, the first to be private, but to do so in a way that cannot bypass the cryptographic guarantees of the chain.
“Cultural Integration”
Then, he moves to another criticism of the temporary casino culture that seems to be taking over Ethereum. Referring to Milady NFT’s, he calls attention to a very clear crypto vibe: hyper-online, irony-poisoned, degenerate, meme-driven thinking.
For Buterin, Milady represents a place where attention, beauty and in-group memes are more important than building tools that help people under financial control, censorship, or real economic pressure. By asking Milady, you ask: will we continue to develop Ethereum in this kind of selfish, inappropriate entertainment, or will we finally send a “sanctuary technology” that a person in trouble can really rely on?. You say:
Yep, stupid meme. Yes, I find the political leanings of some milady partisans to be weak and sometimes even seem bootlickerish (although some milady partisans are very different). But the underlying subtext, the message behind the message, is: rip off the suit and buckle up. If you are wearing your suit and tie, be willing to grab the nearest glass of wine and spill it over your suit and tie, so you have no choice but to rip it off and regain your full body flexibility and freedom.
“How Ethereum Can Grow So Strong”
At the end of his meditation, Vitalik Buterin made it very clear. Realizing the “strong position” the project now has, and all the “amazing” things Ethereum has achieved, its goal should no longer be to seek “the next step to make one step better”, but to ask “what are the most important things to build, knowing what we know now?”.
Ethereum can become powerful again, says Buterin, if developers treat its base layer as untouchable public infrastructure and suppress all uncontrolled testing in AI-first, privacy-first and L2 applications that still inherit full trustworthiness guarantees.
ETH's price trends to the downside on the daily chart. Source: ETHUSD on Tradingview
Cover image from ChatGPT, ETHUSD chart from Tradingview
