Complex code with thousands of lines and exotic cryptography fails “lack of trust”, “leak test” and “self-sovereignty”.
You can have millions of nodes checking everything, but if only experts understand the courage, everyday users still depend on developers. Self-sovereignty means that anyone can truly own and manage their node without blind faith.
Why Complexity Kills the Promise of Crypto
Buterin fears that Ethereum will bloat due to feature creep. Short-term gains, like niche crypto, quickly add functionality, but erode long-term resilience. The lack of trust disappears when users rely on the “high priests” to decode doctoral-level mathematics. Exit testing fails if new teams cannot keep abandoned code. Self-sovereignty eludes non-experts incapable of verifying protocols.
He proposes three simplification measures. First, shrink the code to fit a few pages; Less code means fewer bugs. Second, ditch complex dependencies: stick to basic hashes on networks or isogenies (advanced math is little understood). Third, lock in the invariants, the fundamental rules like gas limits that make customers’ work easier. Ethereum’s EIP-6780 killed self-destruct, limiting storage changes per block.
An important, and perpetually underestimated, aspect of “lack of trust,” “passing the exit test,” and “self-sovereignty” is the simplicity of the protocol.
Even if a protocol is super decentralized with hundreds of thousands of nodes, and it has a Byzantine fault tolerance of 49%, and fully… pic.twitter.com/kvzkg11M3c
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 18, 2026
Collecting trash fights bloating. Piecemeal adjustments have rationalized gas costs in Glamsterdam, linking charges to actual resources. The big sweeps replaced proof of work with proof of stake. The future “Lean consensus” could eliminate errors altogether. Rosetta-style compatibility demotes old features in favor of smart contracts, freeing up new customers. Replace EVM with RISC-V? The old code works like contracts.
Buterin views Ethereum’s first 15 years as an adolescence, a wild experiment producing gems and trash. The protocols must slow down evolution, by eliminating the dead weight of a “century-old hyperstructure” which would survive empires. Complexity invites exploits; simplicity endures.
Learn more about Vitalik Buterin
Vitalik Buterin urges building better DAOs to overcome current flaws in crypto governance. Ethereum saw DAOs as superior, code-based alternatives to businesses and governments, but today’s tokenized treasuries are proving inefficient, prone to whale capture, and politically weak. Nonetheless, DAOs remain essential for better oracles (fixing stablecoin vulnerabilities), on-chain litigation, trustlists, rapid projects, and long-term maintenance. He contrasts “concave” problems requiring consensus against attacks to “convex” problems favoring decisive leaders under control.
We need more DAOs – but different and better DAOs.
The initial drive to build Ethereum was heavily inspired by decentralized autonomous organizations: systems of code and rules that lived on decentralized networks that could manage resources and direct activity, more so…
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 19, 2026
The solutions lie in ZK privacy, AI to combat decision fatigue (user-controlled, no takeover), and advanced forums like Pol.is. Examples like MakerDAO’s whale problems highlight the needs; trends show $15 billion DAO hoards but low participation. New designs must prioritize oracles and communication equally. This ensures that Ethereum’s robust base layer extends upward, creating sustainable decentralization.
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