Vitalik's New Year Address: Ethereum will continue to uphold its core mission as "the core infrastructure of the open internet" and build decentralize...
TL;DR
Vitalik Buterin highlighted Ethereum's 2025 progress in scalability and decentralization, emphasizing its core mission to build a world computer for a free, open internet. He stressed the need for scalable availability and true decentralization to support applications that resist fraud and censorship.
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On January 1st, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin delivered his New Year's address on social media, stating:
Ethereum had a fruitful year in 2025: increased gas limits, increased Blob count, improved node software quality, and a performance breakthrough for zkEVM. With the advancement of zkEVM and PeerDAS, Ethereum took its biggest step toward becoming a new and more powerful form of blockchain.
But Ethereum still faces challenges: it needs to put in more effort to achieve its established goals. This is not about chasing the next narrative wave—whether it's tokenizing the dollar or creating political memes, nor is it about forcibly persuading people to help fill up the block space to reshape ETH's deflationary properties, but about fulfilling its core mission—building a world computer as the core infrastructure of a free and open internet.
Vitalik emphasized that Ethereum is building decentralized applications (DAPIs). These applications can operate without fraud, censorship, or third-party interference. They undergo "off-site testing": the system continues to function even if the original developers disappear. As users, they won't even notice if Cloudflare goes down; their stability transcends corporate rise and fall, ideological shifts, and changes in political parties. Simultaneously, they protect user privacy. All of this will underpin the financial system and extend to identity verification, governance mechanisms, and other infrastructure needed for human civilization.
To realize this vision, two major conditions must be met: (i) scalable availability; and (ii) true decentralization. This requires simultaneous progress on two levels: the underlying blockchain—including the software that runs and accesses the blockchain; and the application layer, all of which urgently need improvement—they are already being improved, but must evolve at an accelerated pace.
Fortunately, Ethereum developers have powerful tools at their disposal; all they need to do now is fully utilize them, and that will surely be achieved.