On January 8th, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a lengthy article sharing his views on the future direction of Ethereum. The article used two interesting analogies—BitTorrent and Linux.

He said that BitTorrent represents true decentralization, capable of file sharing without relying on centralized servers, with extremely strong resistance to censorship. But the problem is that such systems often have mediocre user experience and lack rich features. In contrast, Linux maintains the purity of open-source technology while building a complete ecosystem, with numerous developers and widespread commercial applications. That is true large-scale adoption.

His view is that Ethereum should combine these two advantages. On one hand, it must uphold decentralization and resistance to censorship—these are its fundamental differences from traditional finance. On the other hand, it should support large-scale, high-value applications like Linux does. Global payment systems, complex DeFi protocols, socially impactful public goods—these should run smoothly on Ethereum.

But the real challenge lies in balancing. To achieve large-scale applications, it may need to rely on major infrastructure providers, which introduces some centralization risks. Conversely, overemphasizing technical purity might make it difficult for mainstream users to use. Vitalik mentioned in the article that the community needs to find an appropriate balance between these two aspects. This issue may seem simple, but actually implementing it is not easy.