Vitalik Buterin Calls for a Simpler Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin believes Ethereum has a problem that rarely appears in price charts or roadmaps. The protocol works, it scales, it secures billions in value. Yet it is becoming increasingly difficult for anyone outside a narrow technical circle to understand how it actually functions.
Complexity as a Hidden Trust Assumption
Ethereum is formally decentralized. Transactions are executed by validators, the code is open, and anyone can inspect the protocol. In practice, however, the internal structure has grown so intricate that only a small group of specialists can reason about it end to end.This creates a quiet contradiction. Users are told they do not need to trust anyone, yet most are forced to trust developers because they cannot realistically verify the system themselves.
Why Simplicity Matters for Decentralization
Buterin argues that true trust minimization requires more than open-source code. It requires a protocol simple enough that a much larger group of people can understand it completely. The fewer people who can audit the system holistically, the closer the network drifts toward soft centralization.Not Just a UX Problem
The issue is often framed as poor user experience, but Buterin’s point goes deeper. This is not about wallets or interfaces. It is about the cognitive accessibility of the base protocol itself. If understanding Ethereum requires years of specialization, decentralization becomes theoretical rather than practical.Echoes Across the Ecosystem
The broader community largely agreed with this assessment. Developers from the Layer-2 project INTMAX noted that the same logic applies to privacy infrastructure. If only a handful of experts truly understand a confidentiality protocol, trust has not been eliminated - it has merely shifted to a different group.A Difficult Trade-Off
Simplifying Ethereum is not trivial. The network has accumulated features to support scalability, security and flexibility. Rolling back complexity risks breaking assumptions that applications now depend on. Yet ignoring the issue may slowly erode the very decentralization Ethereum was designed to protect.Conclusion
Buterin’s call is not a rejection of innovation. It is a reminder that decentralization is a social property as much as a technical one. A protocol that only a few can fully understand may still function flawlessly, but it quietly reintroduces trust through the back door. Ethereum’s next challenge may not be scaling further, but becoming understandable again.Editorial Team - CoinBotLab
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