Ethereum’s ‘World Computer’ Moment Hinges on Two Goals, Says Vitalik

• Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum must achieve global scale usability and remain genuinely decentralized to meet its “world computer” mission.
• He criticized Ethereum dApps that went offline following the Cloudflare outage and called for more decentralized alternatives.

Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum made technical progress in 2025, yet still falls short of its stated mission to become a “world computer.” In a New Year message posted on X, Buterin said the next phase must focus on making Ethereum usable at scale while keeping it decentralized. 

Vitalik noted that recent development has made the network faster, more reliable and improved its ability to handle growth without centralization.

The Ethereum founder listed several 2025 improvements aimed at capacity and reliability. He said gas limits increased, the blob count rose, and node software quality improved, which reduced bottlenecks and made it easier to run the software that keeps the network operating. 

The co-founder also pointed to performance milestones reached by zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine systems, whose deployment started mid-year, as we reported. Combined with PeerDAS, these zkEVMs moved Ethereum closer to a more powerful blockchain design for handling growth.

Buterin said technical milestones are not the end goal. He described Ethereum as long-term infrastructure for applications that can operate without fraud, censorship, or third-party control. He referenced the “walkaway test,” which calls for systems that keep running even if original developers disappear and no company remains to maintain them.

Additionally, Buterin wrote that users should not notice if major infrastructure providers go offline or are compromised. He said applications should keep working even if Cloudflare goes down, or if a large provider is hacked, including by a state-backed actor. In 2025, Cloudflare was hit by multiple outages, taking down hundreds of blockchain apps and highlighting the dependence on centralized systems, as CNF documented.

Vitalik Buterin’s comments come just days after CNF reported on his “Balance of Power” essay, where he warned that excessive power concentration can trigger societal crises. The co-founder urged projects to use decentralization to keep governments, businesses, and large public mobs from gaining unchecked control.

The Two Goals that Define Ethereum’s “World Computer” Test

Buterin criticized attempts to “win the next meta” and named tokenized dollars, political memecoins, and campaigns to fill blockspace as examples of short-term narratives. He said Ethereum’s mission is to serve as a shared, neutral platform for finance, identity, governance, and other foundational internet services that do not depend on a central gatekeeper.

He added that Ethereum must be usable at a global scale without sacrificing its decentralization. That standard applies at the blockchain layer, including the clients and tools used to run nodes and interact with the network. It also applies at the application layer, where many decentralized applications still rely on centralized services for hosting, data access, or user interfaces, even when the underlying protocol is decentralized.

Buterin said continued progress is already underway and that developers have stronger tools to push further on both usability and decentralization. 

In December of last year, CNF reported that the co-founder highlighted Ethereum’s P2P progress after stating that the Ethereum Foundation had stopped taking networking for granted. He said PeerDAS’s performance showed stronger resilience, improved work on privacy at the network layer, and enabled faster propagation. 

At the time of reporting, ETH price reclaimed the $3,000 level and traded near $3,020, up about 1% over 24 hours.