Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proclaimed 2026 as the year the network will actively reverse what he describes as a decade of “backsliding” in self-sovereignty, decentralization, and privacy.
Buterin made the declaration in a social media post on X (formerly Twitter), stating that the Ethereum community will focus on reclaiming user autonomy and trustlessness that have eroded over time due to design trade-offs in pursuit of mainstream adoption.
“2026 is the year that we take back lost ground in terms of self-sovereignty and trustlessness,” Buterin wrote, signaling a renewed emphasis on empowering users over third-party intermediaries.
He added that the transformation will take time to materialize fully, noting that not all goals will be achieved in the next Kohaku release or even in subsequent hard forks. Nevertheless, he argued that the gradual progress will ultimately shape Ethereum into an ecosystem worthy not only of its current standing, but of a far greater role in the broader blockchain landscape.
Focus on User Empowerment: Social Recovery Wallets and Timelocks
Over recent years, Ethereum’s developers have quietly put the pieces in place for the needed enhancements. For starters, earlier this year, the Ethereum founder had noted that the ZK-EVM had progressed to alpha status, achieved production-level benchmarks, and shifted its focus to security. In his latest post, he explained that the network will now prioritize a setup that allows users to run nodes locally and independently verify the chain using ZK-EVM and BAL.
He also asserted that users on the network can move away from trusting RPCs by default and toward actively verifying the data they deliver.
Additionally, he shared that their plan to improve the user experience includes introducing social recovery wallets and timelocks — wallets that prevent losing everything if a seed phrase is lost.
Buterin has backed social recovery wallets since at least 2021, and that vision began taking shape last year with the launch of EIP-7702 in Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade. In the last few months, he has also been increasingly vocal about the importance of privacy at both the user and protocol level. In a Friday post, he said privacy-focused design should let users send private payments as easily as standard transactions. So far, even the Foundation has stepped up its privacy agenda, refocusing internal teams and initiating development of the Kohaku wallet framework. It also introduced ERC-4337 and FOCIL, which could enhance the system’s resistance to censorship.
Buterin also emphasized that users should be able to access dapps without relying on servers that might become unavailable or compromised.
Prioritizing Long-Term Security: Quantum-Resistant Cryptography
On Monday, the Ethereum founder also stressed the urgent need to implement quantum-resistant cryptography for long-term security. In his earlier post, Buterin expressed his concerns about delaying quantum resistance for the sake of efficiency.
He stressed that Ethereum should be able to pass the walkaway test, underlining its purpose as a home for trust-minimized apps. He also outlined the network’s main goals: ensuring complete quantum security quickly; building a scalable system for ZK-EVM and PeerDAS; maintaining a sustainable state model; implementing full account abstraction; designing a DoS-resistant gas pricing system; creating a durable decentralized PoS model; and developing a censorship-resistant block-building method. He argued that completing these infrastructure enhancements over the coming years would be essential for Ethereum’s enduring technological and community strength.
He further noted, “Being able to say ‘Ethereum’s protocol, as it stands today, is cryptographically safe for a hundred years’ is something we should strive to get to as soon as possible.”
Before, the crypto mogul had also insisted that the network should focus more on decentralization and resilience over efficiency and convenience.