Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says the chain’s long-term credibility depends on a standard normally reserved for dapps: it must remain meaningfully usable even if its stewards “walk away.” In a Jan. 12 post on X, Buterin framed what he calls the “walkaway test” as a requirement for any settlement layer that aims to host “trustless and trust-minimized applications” across finance, governance and beyond. His core point: Ethereum’s promise unravels if the base protocol itself needs constant, human-driven upgrades to remain safe and competitive. “But building such applications is not possible on a base layer which itself depends on ongoing updates from a vendor in order to continue being usable — even if that ‘vendor’ is the all core devs process,” he wrote. “Ethereum the blockchain must have the traits that we strive for in Ethereum’s applications. Hence, Ethereum itself must pass the walkaway test.” A balance between evolution and stability Buterin’s argument doesn’t demand an immediate freeze of development. Instead, he wants Ethereum to reach a state where it could “ossify” without losing its value proposition. That means the protocol can keep improving, but those improvements shouldn’t be required for Ethereum to remain a credible, durable platform for user-owned systems. “This means that Ethereum must get to a place where we can ossify if we want to,” he said. “We do not have to stop making changes to the protocol, but we must get to a place where Ethereum’s value proposition does not strictly depend on any features that are not in the protocol already.” Technical and economic prerequisites Buterin then outlined the technical and economic building blocks he sees as necessary to pass the walkaway test: - Cryptography and quantum resistance: Don’t postpone “full quantum-resistance” as a distant upgrade. The protocol should be able to claim long-lived cryptographic safety — ideally being able to say Ethereum “as it stands today, is cryptographically safe for a hundred years.” - Scalability as architecture, not endless forks: He highlighted ZK-EVM validation and data sampling via PeerDAS as key pieces, and suggested an end-state where most future changes are “parameter only” (adjustable through validator voting, similar to the gas limit) rather than structural redesigns. - State growth and durability: A “state architecture that can last decades” is required — including partial statelessness, state expiry, and future-proofed storage structures so that thousands of TPS over long periods don’t make node syncing or hardware requirements untenable. - Account model and DoS resilience: Move toward full account abstraction, and harden the gas schedule against denial-of-service risks in execution and ZK proving. - Proof-of-stake economics: Strengthen PoS dynamics so the system “can last and remain decentralized for decades,” preserving ETH’s utility as “trustless collateral.” - Block building and censorship resistance: Create a block-building model that resists centralization pressure and guarantees censorship resistance even under unknown future conditions. A posture for governance and engineering Buterin’s closing point is as much about posture as technology: do the heavy engineering and governance work now so future progress can be dominated by client optimization and parameter tweaks instead of perpetual redesigns. Why it matters If Ethereum can meet these criteria, it would offer stronger assurances to developers, users and institutions that rely on the chain for long-lived, trust-minimized systems — and reduce the risk that future human-management becomes a single point of failure. At press time, ETH traded at $3,132. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

#ETH