Ethereum co-founder warns that convenience-driven centralization threatens crypto’s core principles
A Call to Preserve the Heart of Crypto
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, alongside Ethereum Foundation researchers Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner, has released a document titled the “Trustless Manifesto.” The statement, published Wednesday, serves as a rallying cry for developers to prioritize decentralization and censorship resistance over convenience and rapid adoption.
The manifesto argues that each centralized shortcut — from hosted nodes to custodial relayers — weakens the foundation of crypto’s trustless design. “Trustlessness is not a feature to add after the fact. It is the thing itself,” the authors wrote. “Without it, everything else — efficiency, UX, scalability — is decoration on a fragile core.”
The Message: Decentralization Above All Else
In the Trustless Manifesto, Buterin and his co-authors stress that even small compromises can create systemic risks over time. “When complexity tempts us to centralize, we must remember: every line of convenience code can become a choke point,” they warned.
The manifesto doesn’t single out any specific projects, but it arrives amid growing debate over Ethereum Layer-2 networks that rely heavily on centralized sequencers and infrastructure. These models, while improving transaction speed and scalability, risk introducing single points of failure — something the Ethereum founders consider contrary to the network’s founding principles.
“We measure success not by transactions per second, but by trust reduced per transaction,” the manifesto declares, highlighting a shift away from performance metrics toward true permissionless participation.
Centralization Risks Highlighted by Real Events
The document’s release comes shortly after the Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage last month, which revealed vulnerabilities in crypto systems relying on centralized hosting. Coinbase’s Base chain saw a 25% drop in throughput when its AWS-hosted sequencer went offline, while Arbitrum and Optimism remained stable due to multi-cloud decentralization setups.
This incident reinforced the message behind the manifesto: infrastructure centralization can undermine network resilience, no matter how advanced the technology.
Buterin’s Broader Vision: A Return to Cypherpunk Values
This isn’t Buterin’s first call to re-center Ethereum around its original ideals. In December 2023, he urged the community to make “Ethereum cypherpunk again” — advocating for zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction, and privacy-preserving cryptography as the next phase of trustless innovation.
Despite increasing institutional adoption, including the launch of spot Ether ETFs and rising corporate interest in ETH holdings, Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation remain focused on ensuring Ethereum remains self-sovereign, permissionless, and censorship-resistant.
The Trustless Manifesto reasserts the importance of decentralization as crypto’s non-negotiable principle. As Ethereum grows amid Wall Street attention and mainstream integration, Buterin’s message is clear: the pursuit of scale must never come at the expense of sovereignty.
Disclaimer
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves risk and may result in financial loss.