Ethereum co-founder Vitalik recently spoke out, announcing that Ethereum will refocus on the two core pillars of sovereignty and trustlessness in 2026, no longer sacrificing fundamental principles in the fight for mainstream users.

He admitted that over the past decade, the Ethereum ecosystem has faced several thorny issues. First, the barriers to running nodes are becoming increasingly high, making it nearly impossible for ordinary users to independently verify on-chain data. Second, data leakage problems in the DApp ecosystem are becoming more severe, with a large amount of user privacy controlled by third parties. Even more seriously, wallets are gradually falling from local RPC to third-party service dependence, exposing user data completely. At the underlying level, the trend toward centralization in block construction is also intensifying, with a few builders controlling transaction ordering rights, affecting the inclusiveness and fairness for ordinary users.

This series of phenomena reflects a reality: in the pursuit of large-scale adoption, Ethereum has gradually deviated from its original promises of decentralization and resistance to censorship. Vitalik’s statement marks the Ethereum community’s readiness to adjust its direction, using 2026 as a key timeframe to start rebuilding a more resilient and decentralized ecosystem.