Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on X today (17) declaring that 2026 will be the year to “regain self-sovereignty and trustlessness,” highlighting concerns over increasing centralization of infrastructure over the past decade.
(Background summary: Ethereum staking hits a new high with “nearly 30% of supply” locked, Bitmine stakes another 150,000 ETH)
(Additional context: The Bank of Italy’s simulation: What happens if Ethereum goes to zero?)

Table of Contents

• From Full Nodes to RPC Privacy: Reducing Blind Trust in Intermediaries
• Wallet Design and Privacy UX
• The “Regression” of the Past Decade
• No More Compromises: Making Ethereum Deserve Its Position

Today (17), Vitalik Buterin posted on X stating that 2026 will be the year Ethereum “regains self-sovereignty and trustlessness”, pointing out that from full nodes, privacy mechanisms to wallet design and user interfaces, the Ethereum ecosystem has made too many compromises toward convenience and centralization over the past ten years, and that it is time to start reversing this trend.

2026 is the year that we take back lost ground in terms of self-sovereignty and trustlessness.

Some of what this practically means:

Full nodes: thanks to ZK-EVM and BAL, it will once again become easier to locally run a node and verify the Ethereum chain on your own computer.…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 16, 2026

From Full Nodes to RPC Privacy: Reducing Blind Trust in Intermediaries

Vitalik specifically lists several key technological directions as practical paths to “regain self-sovereignty.” He first mentions full nodes (full nodes), believing that with the development of ZK-EVM and BAL, verifying Ethereum data locally on personal computers and “running your own node” again will become easier, reducing reliance on external services.

Secondly, he uses Helios as an example, emphasizing that users should no longer “blindly trust” data provided by remote RPC endpoints, but instead be able to verify blockchain data they receive. Furthermore, he mentions ORAM and PIR technologies that allow users to request data from RPC without exposing which specific data they query, lowering the risk of behavioral tracking and data resale when accessing decentralized applications.

Wallet Design and Privacy UX

Regarding account security, Vitalik mentions social recovery wallets and timelocks (timelocks), aiming to prevent users from losing all assets immediately if they lose their seed phrase or if their seed phrase is attacked online or offline. This also avoids asset “backdoors” through over-reliance on large tech companies. Such designs seek a new balance between “full responsibility” and “full delegation.”

He also introduces the concept of “Privacy UX,” believing users should be able to perform private payments with the same ease as public payments, rather than turning privacy features into high-threshold, niche options.

On transaction broadcasting, he mentions mechanisms like ERC-4337’s independent mempool, native account abstraction (AA), and FOCIL, which enable privacy transactions to maintain censorship resistance without relying on existing public broadcast ecosystems.

The “Regression” of the Past Decade

Vitalik openly states that over the past ten years, Ethereum has experienced clear setbacks in several key areas. He points out that running nodes was relatively easy in the past, but has become more difficult now; the interfaces for decentralized applications have evolved from static pages to complex websites that rely on multiple servers and may send user data to third parties.

In wallet security, he criticizes how users used to freely choose RPC nodes or run their own nodes, but now many wallets default to routing traffic through a few service providers, concentrating on-chain activity and identity information on a small number of servers.

Additionally, the centralization of block construction processes has increasingly concentrated the power to include transactions into blocks in the hands of a few block proposers.

No More Compromises: Making Ethereum Deserve Its Position

Regarding future directions, Vitalik states that starting in 2026, the Ethereum community should gradually stop making the value compromises made for mainstream adoption in the past. He admits this transition won’t be completed overnight; whether in the next Kohaku upgrade or subsequent hard forks, it won’t happen all at once. However, he believes this path will ultimately allow Ethereum not just to maintain its current status but to “deserve a greater role.”

He concludes with a symbolic note emphasizing that in the vision of the “world computer,” there should be no central controllers or single points of failure, but rather a return to the original pursuit of freedom and openness in decentralized networks. This speech is both a declaration of technical direction and a public reflection on the centralization trends of recent years.