The simplicity of the protocol has been seriously underestimated — a look at Ethereum's future from Vitalik's concerns

【Crypto World】Ethereum founder recently discussed an interesting topic: why the simplicity of protocols has been underestimated in the long run.

His core point is this—even if a blockchain protocol is sufficiently decentralized, supported by hundreds of thousands of nodes, resistant to 49% Byzantine attacks, and each node uses quantum-safe verification technology, if the protocol itself is a massive chaotic entity composed of hundreds of thousands of lines of code and five top-tier cryptographic techniques, then the protocol will ultimately fail. Why? Because no one can truly understand it, and therefore cannot fully trust it. Users’ autonomy will also be limited, which ironically reduces security.

He expressed some concern about the current development state of Ethereum—always rushing to add new features to meet various needs, resulting in an increasingly bloated protocol. Sometimes, to support a new feature, a whole new interaction mechanism or complex cryptographic technology must be introduced. This may look cool in the short term, but in the long run, it damages the protocol’s autonomy significantly.

Where is the root of the problem? Because the standard for measuring a protocol update is “how big the change is,” and to ensure backward compatibility, the number of added features definitely exceeds the number of deletions. As a result, the protocol becomes increasingly sluggish like an old computer, burdened with more and more baggage.

What is the solution? He suggests that Ethereum needs to establish a clear “simplification” mechanism, which simply means having a process to clean up junk code. Client developers don’t need to support all old versions forever; those old versions can be run separately in Docker containers. From a longer-term perspective, he hopes Ethereum’s iteration speed can gradually slow down.

His reasoning is that the first fifteen years were actually an exploration phase—trying out many ideas, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Now, the focus should be on preventing those ineffective elements from becoming permanent burdens for Ethereum. In plain terms, it’s time to shift from rapid expansion to refined operational management.