Ethereum Visionaries Drop ‘Trustless Manifesto’—A Crypto Decentralization Game-Changer

Ethereum's heavyweights just drew a line in the sand. Their 'Trustless Manifesto' isn't another whitepaper—it's a Molotov cocktail tossed at centralized gatekeepers.

Decentralization under fire

With regulators eyeing crypto like hungry vultures, Ethereum's brain trust is flipping the script. No more begging for permission—just open-source code and unstoppable smart contracts.

The irony? Wall Street firms now scrambling to 'adopt blockchain' still can't comprehend why their permissioned ledgers get laughed out of Devcon. Meanwhile, DeFi's hitting new ATHs while banks play catch-up with 1990s tech.

Final thought: When the suits finally understand this manifesto, it'll be too late—the future's already running on Ethereum.

Manifesto Sets Six Core Requirements for Decentralized Systems

The document establishes strict criteria for trustless design:

• Self-sovereignty, where users authorize their own actions
• Verifiability through public data
• Censorship resistance within reasonable timeframes
• Operator replaceability without approval
• Practical accessibility beyond technical experts
• Transparent incentive structures.

Removing any requirement causes systems to “drift from protocol to platform—from neutral ground to private property,” according to the text.

The manifesto applies three laws prohibiting critical secrets held by single actors, indispensable intermediaries that users cannot realistically replace, and unverifiable outcomes lacking public reproducibility.

“,” the authors acknowledge. “They limit what we can build easily—but they are the only guarantee that what we build belongs to everyone.“

Beyond theoretical frameworks, the document warns that centralization already permeates Ethereum’s infrastructure through hosted RPCs serving as defaults, AWS-GCP-Cloudflare dependency creating single points of failure, and centralized sequencing in many rollups.

“Decentralization erodes not through capture, but through convenience,” the manifesto states, comparing the trajectory to email’s evolution, where spam filters and blocklists made self-hosted servers practically impossible despite remaining theoretically open.

Former Developer Exposes ‘Elite Control’ Contradicting Decentralization Claims

The manifesto’s release follows bombshell revelations from former Geth lead developer Péter Szilágyi, who published a May 2024 letter exposing how five to ten people around Buterin maintain “” over Ethereum’s direction through attention allocation, donations, investments, and researcher assignments.

Projects no longer conduct public offerings but instead secure backing from the same insiders, creating what Szilágyi called a “” where success requires convincing “the correct 5-10 people around Vitalik—or even him—to commit.“

Separately, Szilágyi revealed he earned just $625,000 over six years managing Ethereum’s primary execution client with zero benefits or raises, describing Foundation employment as “” that created “a perfect breeding ground for perverse incentives, conflicts of interests, and eventual protocol capture.“

Ex-Geth lead Szilágyi exposes 5-10 people controlling ethereum via Vitalik's "indirect control" as Foundation underpays core devs enabling "protocol capture."#Ethereum #Developerhttps://t.co/YMKQ7Herru

He warned the Foundation “set the protocol up for capture” by underpaying contributors who cared about principles, forcing them to seek compensation elsewhere, while those remaining felt like “” watching big players reshape the protocol.

Sentiments at the time summarize the dynamic as “we’re happy you built an empire for us, now MOVE aside and let the people who can make us money take the lead,” according to Szilágyi.

Paradigm’s Growing Influence Over Ethereum

Separate warnings also emerged during the same time when Ethereum core developer “Fede’s intern” cautioned that venture capital firm Paradigm’s influence “within Ethereum could become a relevant tail risk for the ecosystem.”

Paradigm manages $12.7 billion and has positioned itself across multiple fronts, including hiring top researchers, funding critical open-source libraries like Reth, and launching Tempo.

Tempo is a competing layer-1 blockchain that has raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation from traditional finance firms, including Greenoaks, Thrive, Stripe, and Sequoia.

I’ve been saying for the past two years that the influence of @paradigm within Ethereum could become a relevant tail risk for the ecosystem. I believe this will become increasingly clear to everyone in the months ahead.

Some people think I have a personal issue with them. I… https://t.co/LH99Cvmbqo

The concerns intensified following the departure of longtime Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist to Tempo, where Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang serves as CEO while retaining his role at the venture firm.

“When corporations gain too much legibility and influence over open source projects, priorities start to drift away from the community’s long term vision and toward corporate incentives,” the developer warned, noting Paradigm’s failed FTX investment led them to “remove most references to crypto and pivot heavily toward AI.”