V God Calls for a Return to Decentralized Values: Ethereum Should Change the World, Not Become Apple or Google

Vitalik Buterin Calls for Ethereum to Shift Toward Sanctuary Technologies, Strengthening Decentralization and Privacy Infrastructure to Counter Surveillance and Power Concentration.

From Financial Tools to Sanctuary Technologies: A Vision

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recently been posting lengthy essays on social platform X, reflecting deeply on Ethereum’s role and mission amid global turmoil. He explicitly urges the Ethereum development community to move beyond purely financial applications and focus on what he terms “Sanctuary Technologies.”

These technologies aim to build open, resilient decentralized infrastructure that protects users from excessive government or corporate surveillance. In the face of geopolitical instability and the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), these tools provide essential privacy and freedom safeguards. While financial sovereignty has always been a core value of Ethereum, focusing solely on currency applications or market speculation fails to address the deeper concerns faced by users worldwide.

Ethereum should strive to create a shared digital environment where individuals and organizations can collaborate, hold assets, and govern collectively without reliance on centralized authorities. This environment includes payment networks, decision-making frameworks, and cross-organizational collaboration platforms, providing a more stable foundation for digital life.

Practicing De-Totalization and Rejecting Power Projection

When discussing how to improve the world, Vitalik Buterin offers a thought-provoking perspective: Ethereum, in essence, is a tool for solving global problems with a “misformed shape.” He analyzes that directly fixing global issues often requires strong power projection capabilities, a mode of operation closer to centralized political entities, which contradicts the decentralized ethos of the tech community.

Therefore, Ethereum’s goal is not to reshape the world in its own image but to promote “De-totalization.” This concept aims to limit any single government, corporation, or dominant actor from gaining absolute control over digital life, thereby reducing the stakes of “Heavenly War,” preventing winners from gaining total dominance, and avoiding complete destruction of losers.

Ethereum’s role is to create a digital space for diverse entities to cooperate and interact. Developers should strengthen blockchain’s role as a defender of fundamental human rights, rather than trying to turn cryptocurrencies into tech giants like Apple or Google that prioritize efficiency and flashy packaging.

Cross-Industry Tech Stacks and Ethical AI Safeguards

To realize the vision of Sanctuary Technologies, Vitalik Buterin recommends developers build a comprehensive infrastructure stack, extending from user wallets and applications down to operating systems, hardware, and underlying security mechanisms. Currently available “liberating infrastructure” tools include Starlink satellite networks, localized open-source AI models, encrypted messaging app Signal, and crowd-sourced verification systems like Community Notes.

Buterin also expresses high concern about risks in the AI industry, highlighting disputes such as between AI company Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and supports Anthropic’s stance on maintaining red lines like banning fully autonomous weapons and avoiding mass surveillance of Americans. In an ideal world, any military-related AI tools should only have access to open-source models available to the public, not privileged access. Ethereum should work alongside other open technologies to provide stability and self-determination in a fragmented world, ensuring that technological development does not become a tool of oppression.

Further Reading
National Security vs. Ethics: Anthropic Refuses to Remove Claude Safety Guardrails, Clashes with U.S. Department of Defense

Preventing Centralization and Malicious Arbitrage in Blockchain Construction

At the foundational level of technology execution, Vitalik Buterin is actively promoting proposals to ensure fairness and neutrality in Ethereum infrastructure. He is concerned about the increasing centralization trend in block construction, especially regarding who has the power to decide which transactions are included in blocks.

Although the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade will introduce the proposer-builder separation (PBS) mechanism, he warns that market competition alone cannot solve all issues, as dominant builders may still censor transactions or exploit users. To address this, he proposes FOCIL, a counter-censorship mechanism where randomly selected participants are required to include specific transactions in the next block, thereby weakening any single builder’s control.

Additionally, to combat malicious MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) caused by transaction transparency, he suggests implementing transaction encryption techniques to hide content until final confirmation, preventing frontrunners from executing sandwich attacks or front-running. Through these technical improvements, Ethereum aims to shift the challenge of decentralization from validators to every link in the decision-making chain, ensuring this global computer remains transparent and tamper-proof.