Vitalik: Ethereum must pass the "able to walk away at any time" test to achieve long-term stability

ChainCatcher
Jan 12, 2026
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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on X, stating that Ethereum itself must pass the "always be able to walk away" test. Ethereum's positioning is to become an ideal habitat for various trustless and minimized-trust applications, whether in the financial, governance, or other fields.
It must support applications that are more like "tools" rather than "services" that completely fail once the vendor stops maintaining them. Even if some applications do rely on certain functions of the vendor, Ethereum should minimize this reliance as much as possible and maximize user protection when the reliance fails. But if the underlying protocol itself relies on the continuous updates of a certain "vendor" (even if this "vendor" is the collaborative process of all core developers) to maintain availability, then building the above-mentioned ideal application is out of the question. The Ethereum blockchain itself must have the characteristics that we expect its applications to have.

Therefore, Ethereum itself must pass the "can be withdrawn at any time" test. This means that Ethereum must reach a stage where we can "solidify it when needed." We don't have to stop modifying the protocol, but we need to ensure that Ethereum's value proposition no longer strictly depends on any features that have not yet been incorporated into the protocol.

Specifically, it covers the following aspects: complete resistance to quantum computing capabilities, an architecture that can be scaled to high performance, a state architecture that can be continued for decades, a generalized account model, a reliable Gas pricing mechanism that resists denial-of-service attacks, a proof-of-stake economic model based on long-term experience, and a block building model that resists centralization pressure and guarantees censorship resistance. Ideally, in the next few years, we should work hard to reach a stage where almost all future innovations can be achieved through client optimization and reflected in the protocol through parameter changes.

Each year, we should complete at least one of the above goals, and preferably multiple. Based on a deep understanding of what is right, doing things right once (rather than taking compromise temporary solutions) will maximize Ethereum's technical and social robustness in the long run.
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