Vitalik Buterin Pushes Ethereum to Prioritize Long-Term Goals Over Trend Chasing in 2026

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has urged the Ether blockchain community to focus on foundational goals rather than chasing fleeting trends in a New Year address posted January 1.

“Ethereum needs to do more to meet its own stated goals. Not the quest of ‘winning the next meta’ regardless of whether it’s tokenized dollars or political memecoins,” he wrote, arguing the network must resist short-term wins and dedicate efforts toward its original vision of building a truly decentralized world computer.

Welcome to 2026! Milady is back.

Ethereum did a lot in 2025: gas limits increased, blob count increased, node software quality improved, zkEVMs blasted through their performance milestones, and with zkEVMs and PeerDAS ethereum made its largest step toward being a fundamentally…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 1, 2026

He added that Ethereum’s layer-1 blockchain does not arbitrarily need to convince people to help it fill up blockspace to make ETH ultrasound again.

Ethereum’s Vision Beyond Hype and Third-party Dependence

Buterin acknowledged Ethereum’s 2025 achievements, including increased gas limits, expanded blob counts, and improved node software quality.

“zkEVMs blasted through their performance milestones, and with zkEVMs and PeerDAS, Ethereum made its largest step toward being a fundamentally new and more powerful kind of blockchain,” he said.

Vitalik also insisted that these technical gains must now translate into applications that operate without fraud, censorship, or third-party interference.

The Ethereum founder emphasized that instead of chasing the next crypto meta in 2026, the Ethereum community needs to stay on the long-term vision.

“To build the world computer that serves as a central infrastructure piece of a freer and open internet.”

According to him, the Ethereum team is building decentralized applications that run without fraud, censorship, or third-party interference.

Applications that pass the walkaway test: they keep running even if the original developers disappear.

Applications where if you’re a user, you don’t even notice “if Cloudflare goes down – or even if all of Cloudflare gets hacked by North Korea,” he explained, painting a picture of platforms whose stability transcends companies, ideologies, and political parties.

An Ethereum developer from zCloak Network challenged this vision, questioning how the network can eliminate Cloudflare reliance while still depending on centralized RPC services for regular users.

I don't think you can get rid of Cloudflare as long as Ethereum still needs centralized RPC service for regular users.

— 0xFrancis (@xiao_zcloak) January 1, 2026

Buterin countered that Ethereum represents a rebellion against centralized control, noting that the shift toward dependence has been recent.

“A generation ago, any wallet, kitchen appliance, book, or car would fulfill every single one of them.”

Today, all of the above are by default becoming subscription services, “consigning you to permanent dependence on some centralized overlord,” he stated, emphasizing how Ethereum aims to restore the autonomy once standard in everyday technology.

Vitalik Addressed Ethereum Scalability Issues and Layer-2 Strategy

When a Solana NFT collector asked why Ethereum relies heavily on Layer-2 solutions instead of optimizing a single high-performance base layer, Buterin defended the current approach.

He explained Ethereum is working on optimizing its base layer while ensuring the blockchain needs to be “usable, and usable at scale, and (ii) actually decentralized,” adding that “this needs to happen at both (a) the blockchain layer, including the software we use to run and talk to the blockchain, and (b) the application layer.”

Buterin conceded all components require further improvement, but expressed confidence in the path forward.

“Fortunately, we have powerful tools on our side – but we need to apply them, and we will,” the Ethereum co-founder concluded, showing determination to execute the long-term vision.

A Metalex developer praised Buterin’s continued commitment, writing, “I’m so grateful for you and Ethereum, Vitalik. It’s what brought me into crypto and what keeps me here.”

I'm so grateful for you and Ethereum, Vitalik. It's what brought me into crypto and what keeps me here. You could've cashed out and disappeared a long time ago but you are still fighting for cypherpunk values.

— _gabrielShapir0 (@lex_node) January 1, 2026

The developer noted Buterin could have cashed out years ago, but remains dedicated to cypherpunk values.

This New Year message follows Buterin’s recent December essay warning about concentrated power across governments and corporations, where he proposed mandatory technological diffusion as a counterbalance.

Earlier last year, on December 8, Buterin had suggested creating a trustless on-chain futures market for gas fees to bring predictability to Ethereum transaction costs as the network scales.