Vitalik Buterin Unveils "Trustless Manifesto" to Champion Ethereum Decentralization

Vitalik Buterin Launches "Trustless Manifesto"

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has introduced the new “Trustless Manifesto,” aimed at reinforcing core values of decentralization and censorship resistance. The manifesto encourages developers to avoid introducing intermediaries and checkpoints in pursuit of faster adoption.

The Trustless Manifesto, co-authored by Ethereum Foundation researchers Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner, argues that crypto platforms compromise trustlessness from the moment they integrate hosted nodes or centralized relayers. It explains that while initially appearing harmless, this practice becomes habitual, gradually diminishing the protocol's permissionless nature with each added checkpoint.

“Trustlessness is not a feature to add after the fact. It is the thing itself,” the Ethereum Foundation members stated in the manifesto published on Wednesday. “Without it, everything else — efficiency, UX, scalability — is decoration on a fragile core.”

“When complexity tempts us to centralize, we must remember: every line of convenience code can become a choke point.”

Subtle Critique of Layer-2 Scaling Solutions

While the manifesto doesn't explicitly target any specific entity, some Ethereum Layer-2 solutions have faced criticism for prioritizing scalability over decentralization to expedite adoption.

“We measure success not by transactions per second, but by trust reduced per transaction,” Buterin, Posner, and Weiss emphasized.

The reliance on intermediaries was highlighted by the Amazon Web Services outage last month. Coinbase's Base chain experienced a roughly 25% throughput reduction when its AWS-hosted sequencer went offline, while Arbitrum and Optimism demonstrated greater resilience, maintaining full functionality with multi-cloud setups.

Several other contributors to the Ethereum ecosystem have endorsed the manifesto, including Ethereum Foundation member Tom Teman and pseudonymous crypto researcher hitas.base.eth.

Buterin Aims to Re-Embrace Cypherpunk Principles

The Trustless Manifesto is not Buterin's first foray into promoting foundational principles. In December 2023, he advocated for making “Ethereum cypherpunk again” by pushing for zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction, and other privacy-enhancing encryption solutions.

This initiative comes as Ethereum experiences increased institutional adoption, starting with spot Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds in July 2023 and a growing trend of public companies purchasing the cryptocurrency to bolster their balance sheets.

Nevertheless, the Ethereum Foundation and core developers remain committed to delivering on Ethereum's technical roadmap, aiming to make the network as decentralized, self-sovereign, and censorship-resistant as possible.