Vitalik's Ethereum Simplification Plan: From "Functionalism" to "Minimalism"

In 2025, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, proposed a surprising long-term plan to simplify the core protocol of Ethereum to a level close to Bitcoin's. This plan, spanning five years, aims to enhance resilience and decentralization by reducing protocol complexity, diverging from the current path of endless additions and expansions.

The core of this plan is to return to the essence of "minimalism" and ruthlessly eliminate anything that deviates from this principle. This includes streamlining the core protocol, reducing the scope of protocol developers, and focusing on building decentralized applications (DApps) on the upper layer.

This plan is a response to the three major crises that Ethereum's ecosystem has encountered in the past year.

1. Game of Thrones: Where is the promised decentralization?

The core controllers of the top Layer2 (like Arbitrum) are still in the hands of the development team, and users are worried about the "restoration of centralization."

2. External strong enemies siege

Solana attracts users with "second-level transactions," while TON grows wildly with Telegram's 900 million users. Ethereum's Layer2s are caught in homogeneous competition: issuing points and airdrops, but their functions are similar.

3. Developers complain

“Now making DApp is like opening a chain store - every Layer2 has to be renovated, the cost is too high!”

After the SEC approved Ethereum ETF in May, it officially began trading in July, quickly attracting $9 billion in the first week.

However, institutional funds may prefer to flow into Layer 2 tokens and AI projects (like the rendering network RNDR), further exacerbating market differentiation.

Moreover, due to regulations, ETFs cannot be pledged, which is equivalent to buying gold but not being able to deposit it in a bank to earn interest, diminishing its long-term appeal.

Switching to the RISC-V architecture will require rewriting smart contracts. Old developers bluntly said: "What's the difference between this and learning a new language?"

There is also a risk of community division. Some people believe that the existing ZK-Rollup technology is sufficient and there is no need to tamper with it.

The user growth rate cannot keep up with the decline in gas fees, and the money earned by the DA layer (data storage) cannot support the ecosystem.

The envisioned "modular application explosion" has yet to be seen. Do you think Vitalik's five-year gamble will pay off?