Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum fulfilled its original Web3 goal

Vitalik Buterin outlined Ethereum’s path to completing its initial vision in the current Web3 stack. The chain moved onto proof-of-stake, and added scaling solutions, explained Buterin in an X post.

Ethereum’s founder, Vitalik Buterin, outlined the chain’s path to its current state. He believes Ethereum has finally completed its initial vision after moving to proof-of-stake and adding side projects for additional scaling. 

“In 2014, there was a vision: you can have permissionless, decentralized applications that could support finance, social media, ride sharing, governing organizations, crowdfunding, potentially create an entire alternative web, all on the backs of a suite of technologies,” wrote Buterin in an X post. 

Over the years, Ethereum has been used for on-chain activity directly on the L1, causing congestion, high prices, and storage bloat. Buterin mentioned the initial vision included a L1 settlement layer, a “Whisper” data layer that is too expensive for on-chain computation, and an additional “Swarm” storage layer. 

Side projects fulfill Ethereum’s initial vision

Buterin warned that the initial vision has been obscured by hype, aiming to extract value from Ethereum-based narratives. 

Most of the evolution of Ethereum has still been fulfilled by side projects and third-party ecosystem developers, rather than core Ethereum changes. Ethereum’s main role was to switch to a cheaper proof-of-stake. 

The L2 expansion and ZK-EVM projects served to scale ETH, fulfilling the plan to use sharding for faster transactions. 

The Waku project has been singled out by Buterin for becoming the de facto ‘whisper’ layer for off-chain computation. 

IFPS serves as a decentralized storage facility, though it has not fully solved the storage and archiving problem. Buterin still believes the current tech stack can support the original Web3 vision: 

“All of the prerequisites for the original web3 vision are here, in full force, and are continuing to get stronger over the next few years,” Buterin wrote.

With all added features, Ethereum remains pseudonymous and not tied to a Web2 identity or logins. The chain has also grown a privacy layer through the Railgun mixer, which has a growing, though not exhaustive list of blacklisted wallets. 

At the same time, Buterin recently called for achieving an “ossified” Ethereum version, which can continue in the long run without major upgrades, as Cryptopolitan recently reported. Some of the Ethereum upgrades during the latest hard forks were targeting L2 chains, offering cheaper and faster processing. 

Ethereum retains near-peak activity

Ethereum still carries around 890K daily active wallets, near a one-month peak. The ecosystem is also highly liquid, with a growing number of long-term holders and validators. 

Ethereum remains the main layer for financial operations, stablecoin activity, on-chain lending, and trading. L2 chains are still solving the problem of fragmented liquidity, which is also the main indicator of success for DeFi protocols. 

As ETH traded above $3,328.08, DeFi activity and lending may expand with greater confidence.

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