Vitalik Buterin Demands Crypto Industry Adopt ‘Copyleft’ Licensing—Or Risk Losing Its Open-Source Soul

Ethereum's co-founder fires a warning shot: The crypto ecosystem is drifting from its decentralized roots. Can copyleft licensing save Web3 from becoming Wall Street 2.0?

The open-source crisis no one's talking about

Buterin's call to arms exposes a dirty secret—while crypto preaches decentralization, its code increasingly gets locked behind corporate firewalls. Remember when 'permissionless' meant something?

How copyleft could rewrite crypto's future

Unlike MIT or Apache licenses, copyleft forces derivative works to stay open. Think of it as a vaccine against the 'proprietary creep' that turned big tech into data oligarchs. (Yes, we see you, VC-backed 'crypto' projects with your NDAs.)

The irony Wall Street won't admit

Bankers now pushing tokenized assets would've sued Satoshi for IP theft in 2009. Today, they're patenting DeFi forks—while paying lobbyists to kill actual decentralization. Classy.

One thing's clear: If crypto won't enforce openness at the license level, prepare for more 'innovations' like... checks notes... Citigroup's private blockchain with KYC baked in.

Copyleft vs. Permissive: Why Crypto Needs Code-Sharing Rules

The key distinction lies in enforcement. Permissive licenses expect goodwill, while copyleft compels contributors to open their code if they build on someone else’s work.

“The crypto space in particular has become more competitive and mercenary,” Buterin wrote. “We are less able than before to count on people open-sourcing their work purely out of niceness.”

Buterin sees copyleft as a practical solution to a problem of incentives. With crypto becoming more commercialized, voluntary sharing no longer scales.

Requiring reciprocity ensures that public contributions benefit the wider ecosystem, rather than enriching closed-source operators.

He acknowledged potential pitfalls, such as scenarios where code must be shared even if it hasn’t been broadly distributed.

However, overall, he argued, the advantages outweigh the downsides, especially now that open source has gone mainstream.

“Copyleft can be viewed as a very broad-based and neutral way of incentivizing more diffusion,” Buterin noted, adding that the model helps grow a collective codebase accessible only to those who contribute back.

Crypto venture capitalist Adam Cochran voiced support for Buterin’s position, commenting that while there are “edge cases where copyleft is problematic,” the underlying philosophy is sound.

The renewed push for copyleft licensing arrives at a moment when the crypto industry is wrestling with increasing centralization, proprietary platforms, and siloed innovation.

By advocating for a stronger open-source framework, Buterin hopes to realign the sector with its early principles of collaboration and transparency.

Ethereum Staking Surges Despite Market Slump

As reported, ethereum staking has reached a new milestone, with more than 35 million ETH, over 28.3% of the total supply, now locked into the network’s proof-of-stake system.

Over 500,000 ETH was staked in just the first half of June. The trend signals a shift in investor behavior, with many opting to earn yield rather than sell at current prices.

Currently, more than 25% of all staked ETH is handled by liquid staking giant Lido, while Binance and Coinbase account for 7.5% and 7.4%, respectively.

Coinbase has also emerged as Ethereum’s largest node operator, controlling over 11.4% of staked ETH via its validators.

Notably, Ethereum is witnessing its most intense whale accumulation in seven years, with large wallets adding over 871,000 ETH in a single day on June 12.

This marks the highest daily inflow in 2025 and has pushed total holdings in 1,000 to 10,000 ETH wallets past 14.3 million ETH, according to Glassnode.