Vitalik Buterin Declares: Ethereum Has Finally Achieved Its Original Web3 Vision

Ethereum's co-founder drops a bombshell: the network's original promise is now reality. No more roadmaps—just results.

The Vision, Materialized

Forget the speculative hype cycles and the endless 'coming soon' narratives. The core architectural goal—a decentralized web infrastructure that operates without centralized gatekeepers—isn't just a white paper fantasy anymore. It's live code, running across a global network of nodes.

Beyond the Price Charts

This isn't about hitting a new all-time high (though traders will inevitably try to spin it that way). It's about foundational protocol layers achieving functional maturity. Smart contracts execute without intermediaries. Decentralized applications run with a level of censorship resistance that traditional finance can't comprehend—or replicate.

The Finance Jab

Let's be real: Wall Street still thinks a blockchain is something you use to secure a bicycle. They'll spend millions on 'innovation labs' to build a slower, permissioned version of what's already running in the open. A classic case of finance chasing the tech train after it's left the station.

The build-out continues, but the proof-of-concept phase is conclusively over. The next decade isn't about selling the dream—it's about scaling what works.

Side projects fulfill Ethereum’s initial vision

Buterin warned that the initial vision has been obscured by hype, aiming to extract value from Ethereum-based narratives. 

Most of the evolution of Ethereum has still been fulfilled by side projects and third-party ecosystem developers, rather than Core Ethereum changes. Ethereum’s main role was to switch to a cheaper proof-of-stake. 

The L2 expansion and ZK-EVM projects served to scale ETH, fulfilling the plan to use sharding for faster transactions. 

The Waku project has been singled out by Buterin for becoming the de facto ‘whisper’ LAYER for off-chain computation. 

IFPS serves as a decentralized storage facility, though it has not fully solved the storage and archiving problem. Buterin still believes the current tech stack can support the original Web3 vision: 

“All of the prerequisites for the original web3 vision are here, in full force, and are continuing to get stronger over the next few years,” Buterin wrote.

With all added features, Ethereum remains pseudonymous and not tied to a Web2 identity or logins. The chain has also grown a privacy layer through the Railgun mixer, which has a growing, though not exhaustive list of blacklisted wallets. 

At the same time, Buterin recently called for achieving an “ossified” Ethereum version, which can continue in the long run without major upgrades, as Cryptopolitan recently reported. Some of the Ethereum upgrades during the latest hard forks were targeting L2 chains, offering cheaper and faster processing. 

Ethereum retains near-peak activity

Ethereum still carries around 890K daily active wallets, NEAR a one-month peak. The ecosystem is also highly liquid, with a growing number of long-term holders and validators. 

Ethereum remains the main layer for financial operations, stablecoin activity, on-chain lending, and trading. L2 chains are still solving the problem of fragmented liquidity, which is also the main indicator of success for DeFi protocols. 

As ETH traded above $3,328.08, DeFi activity and lending may expand with greater confidence.

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