Vitalik calls Ethereum 'wrong-shaped tool' to fix the world's problems

Vitalik Buterin turned heads in his latest post, where he claimed Ethereum is the “wrong-shaped tool” to directly ease the world’s concerns. 

Buterin, who has been very vocal in recent months about Ethereum’s ideals, or at least, what he perceives them to be, is on X again, discussing the two most prominent worries from the past year. 

Vitalik’s on the two things worrying people the most 

In his post, the two worries he highlighted were: 

• The negative aspects of current world politics and concerns regarding AI risks.
• The “brute reality that Ethereum seems to be absent from meaningfully improving the lives of people.” 

While “financial freedom and security” is critical, and would fix some things, Buterin claims it would leave the bulk of their deep worries about the world unaddressed. 

“It’s okay for individuals to laser-focus on finance, but we need to be part of some greater whole that has things to say about the other problems too,” he wrote before going on to discuss how the network is apparently a wrong-shaped tool. 

Buterin says Ethereum can’t save the world

In his post, Buterin admits that Ethereum is the “wrong-shaped tool” for saving the world because beyond a certain point, “fixing the world implies a form of power projection that is more like a centralized political entity than like a decentralized technology community.” 

He suggested that the Ethereum community conceptualize itself as being part of an ecosystem building “sanctuary technologies.” 

“The goal is not to remake the world in Ethereum’s image,” Buterin wrote. “The goal is the opposite: it’s de-totalization.” 

He believes that Ethereum is built around properties that make it a poor fit for saving the world interventions. But according to him, that does not mean Ethereans do nothing either, because Ethereum has qualities that make it great for some things. 

Good examples of such things include creating open, unstoppable building blocks that individuals and small groups can use creatively to improve their own situations or create alternatives without needing a single person or entity to wield massive centralized power. 

The famous founder ended his post with a rousing call to action. “Ultimately, tech is worthless without users. But look for users, both individual and institutional, for whom sanctuary tech is exactly the thing they need,” he wrote.

Buterin and Ethereum Foundation go all in on DeFi 

Buterin’s comments come days after he discussed DeFi being a central part of the services Ethereum provides. In that equally lengthy post, the popular founder also clarified that finance is not the only thing Ethereum is good for, even though it excels in that aspect. 

He pointed out that there is a specific vision of what he and the Ethereum Foundation want to see out of DeFi: that it is permissionless, open-source, and can pass the walkaway test. However, he also admitted that making that vision a reality will inevitably take a lot of work. 

Anthropic may have passed Buterin’s test

Buterin has a long-running interest in ethical AI governance and alignment and has often spoken about the risks of dangerous AI in a world where privacy is no longer a luxury. 

In his recent post, he shared his two cents on the drama between Anthropic and the Department of Defense (DOD), pointing out how Anthropic had been maintaining the two red lines of “no fully autonomous weapons” and “no mass surveillance of Americans.” 

He seemed willing to reevaluate his opinions regarding Anthropic, but he said that for that to happen, the company would have to stand its ground against the US government demanding unfettered access to Claude for any military purposes. 

“IMO fully autonomous weapons and mass privacy violation are two things we all want less of, so in my ideal world anyone working on those things gets access to the same open-weights LLMs as everyone else, and exactly nothing on top of that,” Buterin wrote about the drama. 

Anthropic did hold its ground and has suffered for it. Trump has ordered federal agencies to stop using their tech, and Hegseth had them blacklisted as a supply-chain risk while the Pentagon cut ties. 

Despite the very public show by the US officials, Anthropic’s tech was apparently used in the Iran strikes over the weekend, according to reports.

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