Vitalik: Ethereum itself must pass the test of being "easily withdrawn from".

PANews reported on January 12th that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated in an article on the X platform that Ethereum itself must pass the test of being "easily disconnectable." Ethereum is positioned as an ideal habitat for various trustless or minimally trust applications, whether in finance, governance, or other industries. It must support applications that are more like "tools," rather than "services" that become completely unusable once the provider stops maintaining them. Even if some applications do rely on certain functionalities of a provider, Ethereum should minimize this dependence and protect users to the greatest extent possible in the event of dependency failure. However, if the underlying protocol itself also relies on continuous updates from a "provider" (even if this "provider" is a collaborative process involving all core developers) to remain usable, then building the aforementioned ideal applications becomes impossible. The Ethereum blockchain itself must possess the characteristics we expect its applications to have. Therefore, Ethereum itself must pass the test of being "easily disconnectable."

This means Ethereum needs to reach a stage where we can "solidify it when needed." We don't need to stop modifying the protocol, but we must ensure that Ethereum's value proposition no longer heavily relies on any functionality not yet incorporated into the protocol. This specifically includes: full quantum resistance, a scalable architecture for high performance, a state architecture that can last for decades, a generalized account model, a reliable gas pricing mechanism resistant to denial-of-service attacks, a long-term empirical proof-of-stake economic model, and a block-building model that resists centralized pressure and censorship. Ideally, we should work hard over the next few years to reach a stage where almost all future innovations can be implemented through client-side optimizations and reflected in the protocol through parameter changes. Each year, we should accomplish at least one of these goals, ideally several. Doing things right the first time (rather than taking temporary, compromise solutions) based on a deep understanding of what's right will maximize Ethereum's technical and social robustness in the long run.