Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, advocates for a revival of the blockchain’s “cypherpunk” vision, which he believes was overshadowed by the over-financialization of cryptocurrencies in 2017. In a blog post on December 28, Buterin expressed the need for Ethereum to rekindle its original vision as a “public decentralized shared hard drive” that leverages peer-to-peer messaging and decentralized file storage.
During Ethereum’s early days, the cypherpunk values of decentralization, open participation, censorship resistance, and credible neutrality were prominent. However, these ideals began to wane in 2017 as financialization took center stage on the Ethereum network.
Buterin emphasizes the importance of bringing back cypherpunk values to Ethereum’s future, expressing hope that non-financial applications can thrive on the blockchain. He acknowledges the increasing mainstream adoption of technologies like rollups, zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction, and second-generation privacy solutions, which align with cypherpunk principles.
The term “cypherpunk” refers to individuals who use encryption to ensure privacy when accessing computer networks, particularly to protect against government authorities.
In addition to technological aspects, Buterin envisions cypherpunk-like activities on Ethereum, such as participating in polls without revealing privacy and implementing mechanisms like quadratic voting and cross-tribal consensus finding for organizational governance.
However, Buterin acknowledges the challenges of resisting pressures to deviate from these values within the crypto ecosystem. He warns against building highly centralized layers or nonfungible token ecosystems stored on centralized websites rather than decentralized file storage platforms like IPFS.
While acknowledging the difficulties, Buterin emphasizes the importance of resisting such pressures to maintain the unique value of the crypto ecosystem and avoid recreating a version of the existing web2 ecosystem with added inefficiencies.
Despite these challenges, Buterin highlights impressive solutions that have emerged within the industry, including decentralized exchanges addressing security issues on centralized exchanges and innovations like Cowswap, Flashbots Protect, and MEV Blocker mitigating attacks on Ethereum users.
In a recent proposal on December 28, Buterin suggested making the Ethereum proof-of-stake chain lighter and simpler by reducing the number of signatures required from validators to sustain the network.