The co-founder of Ethereum had never before expressed things with such frankness. In a message that immediately caused the crypto community to react, Vitalik Buterin publicly acknowledges the limits of his own creation. Behind this unexpected mea culpa, however, hides a much more strategic vision than it seems.
In brief
- Vitalik Buterin argues that Ethereum is structurally unsuitable for solving the world's big problems.
- According to him, “fixing the world” requires centralized power, the opposite of Ethereum’s decentralized DNA.
- He calls on the community to reposition itself around a key concept: “sanctuary technologies”.
Ethereum Can't Save the World, and Buterin Says So Himself
A message published 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 confront the two great anxieties of our time, the drift of global policies and the risks of artificial intelligence out of control.
Buterin's logic is implacable. At a certain level of ambition, “fixing the world” no longer looks like decentralized tech. It looks like politics. It requires power, projection, constraint. However, 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 gives this kind of speech, it does not go unnoticed. Such public lucidity about one's own creation is, in the crypto world, almost unprecedented.
Reading these words as an admission of powerlessness would, however, be a mistake. Buterin does not capitulateit reframes. It invites the community to embrace another identity: that of an ecosystem of “sanctuary technologies”. Open, uncensorable tools, accessible to all. Bricks that any individual or small group can grasp to improve their own situation, without asking anyone's permission.
DeFi, AI and Anthropic, Vitalik outlines 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 attempt at censorship. A demanding ideal, which he himself recognizes is still far from being fully achieved.
On AI, his thinking goes even further. For several months, he has been designing an Ethereum that would serve as an economic layer for autonomous agents, capable of securing exchanges between algorithms thanks to zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs and trusted execution environments.
A blockchain not 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 with another eye. When the company stood firm in the face of the Pentagon's demands, categorically refusing to cross its two red lines: “no fully autonomous weapons” and “no mass surveillance”, Buterin publicly welcomed this posture.
Washington's response was not long in coming. Donald Trump removed the company from federal circuits, while Pete Hegseth severed all official ties.
Irony of history: this blacklisting has propelled Anthropic to the rank of symbol of technological resistance.
At the start of 2026, his assistant Claude stagnated in 42nd place in the American App Store. A few weeks later, at the end of February, it seized the first position, dethroning ChatGPT in the process.
Ethereum no longer claims to want to solve everything. And that is perhaps its greatest strength. By accepting its limits, Buterin designs a more credible, more targeted protocol, not a savior of the world, but a tool of freedom for those who need it most.
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