Vitalik Urges Ethereum Developers to Break Incremental Thinking, Reimagine Application Layer

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has published a lengthy article calling on developers across the ecosystem to break free from the mindset of incremental improvements and rethink the construction of the application layer with a more open and radical perspective. He explicitly outlines the non-negotiable core principles—CROPS: Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, and Security. These fundamental attributes are the cornerstone of blockchain value, and no innovation should come at the cost of weakening them. He emphasizes that even the most basic functions, such as whether light clients must trustlessly verify chain state, should not be variables for discussion.

What truly deserves re-examination is all application layer design above these core principles. Buterin proposes a thought experiment: if you were to write the Ethereum whitepaper from scratch today, without any historical path dependence, how would you design the application ecosystem? This question directly points to the inertial thinking of current developers—always making minor adjustments to the existing architecture, rather than daring to reconstruct it. He points out, for example, that AI technology may make browsers and mobile wallet plugins obsolete within a year; decentralized finance (DeFi News) may be replaced by a unified futures market, and its underlying support may be a SNARK-based oracle based on multiple small language models and incorporating trusted news sources. These are not specific product roadmaps, but a profound questioning of the rationality of the existing architecture.

He specifically uses privacy protection as an example to illustrate the feasibility of complete reconstruction. In the past, privacy was an add-on feature; today, the community is rebuilding the technology stack around the "privacy-first" principle, rather than patching old systems. This attitude of accepting the full meaning of new principles without compromise is the mindset he hopes to promote throughout the ecosystem. It is worth noting that Buterin mentioned at the end of the article that Solana has become the world's largest stablecoin trading network, implying that the ecological competition landscape is changing. This reflects the developers' re-evaluation of efficiency, scalability, and user experience. He is not denying incremental development, but reminding that when the underlying technology undergoes qualitative changes, only by daring to reconstruct from scratch can the potential of the blockchain be truly unleashed.