Buterin: Don’t Sacrifice Ethereum’s Values for Mainstream Adoption
On Jan. 16, 2026, Vitalik Buterin publicly urged developers and the community to stop compromising Ethereum’s foundational principles in pursuit of mainstream adoption. He called specifically for better privacy in everyday payments, easier ways for users to run full nodes, decentralized dApps that don’t rely on centralized infrastructure, and expanded privacy features built directly on-chain.
Buterin’s warning underscores a growing trade-off: convenience and regulatory acceptance can push projects toward custodial wallets, centralized rollups, and other shortcuts that weaken censorship resistance and user sovereignty. The message matters for developers, exchanges, and policymakers — prioritizing privacy and node accessibility could reshape tooling, client development, and governance debates across ETH and layer-2 ecosystems, even if it makes onboarding more complex in the short term.