Vitalik Buterin is calling for a “decentralization renaissance,” urging Ethereum to revive its core values through stronger DAOs, self-sovereign users and a leaner, more trustless base protocol by 2026. He has framed the next two years as a deadline for reversing centralization trends in node operation, governance and application design.
Vitalik Calls for DAO-led Governance
Vitalik wants DAOs to reclaim a central role in Ethereum’s governance and ecosystem coordination, arguing that too many critical decisions have drifted toward informal off-chain groups and corporate-style entities. He emphasizes that decentralized organizations should control key infrastructure, treasury allocations and protocol-aligned projects, passing what he calls the “walkaway test” so systems can function even if founders disappear.
He also highlights the need for more resilient DAO structures that combine on-chain voting with credible neutrality and robust checks on concentrated token power. In this vision, DAOs become civilizational infrastructure capable of sustaining Ethereum’s rules and culture over decades without depending on charismatic leaders or centralized foundations.
Restoring Ethereum’s Core Protocol
Alongside governance, Vitalik lays out a technical roadmap to “take back lost ground” in self-sovereignty and trustlessness by making it easier to run nodes and harder to track or censor users. Proposed measures include ZK-EVMs and block access limits to reduce hardware requirements so individuals can validate the chain on consumer devices instead of relying on centralized providers.
On the privacy front, he promotes tools such as Helios to verify data from RPC endpoints and advanced techniques like oblivious RAM and private information retrieval to limit what dapps and infrastructure operators learn about user activity. Upcoming protocol milestones, including upgrades described as the Kohaku release and Glamsterdam fork, aim to embed these changes at the base layer rather than leaving them to optional add-ons.
Vision for a Decentralization Renaissance
Vitalik links this “DAO renaissance” and core revival for to a broader push for decentralized stablecoins and applications that do not depend on any single government, operator or platform. He argues that Ethereum should host systems that can run for a century under cryptographic guarantees, with communities able to fund, govern and maintain them independently of any company.
He warns that recent years’ focus on scalability and user acquisition has allowed subtle but dangerous centralization to creep into infrastructure and governance. By setting 2026 as a clear turning point, he challenges developers, DAO treasuries and users to prioritize decentralization, privacy and protocol resilience as Ethereum’s defining benchmarks.
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