The increasing complexity of the Ethereum protocol is becoming a long-term hidden risk that needs attention. As the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin recently pointed out, the continuously growing protocol complexity could pose a serious threat to ecosystem health.

This accumulation of complexity stems from multiple aspects: firstly, the ongoing expansion of functionality—each upgrade attempts to introduce new capabilities; secondly, the security model becomes increasingly difficult to verify; thirdly, developers face higher audit costs and risk management pressures.

Simple and straightforward protocol design should be the advantage of blockchain, but now this simplicity is gradually being sacrificed. While functional expansion can attract more applications, excessive complexity makes the system more vulnerable to bugs and also makes it harder for new participants to understand and contribute. This reminds the entire ecosystem that while pursuing innovation, it must also be vigilant about the accumulation of technical debt—sometimes, deleting code is more important than adding code.