Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has called on the crypto industry to expand Ethereum’s role beyond financial applications, arguing that the network should support privacy tools, decentralized coordination systems, and other open technologies that are resilient to government or corporate control.
“The goal is not to remake the world in Ethereum’s image,” Buterin wrote, referring to visions where finance, governance, and welfare systems all run entirely on blockchain rails. Instead, he argues the aim is to reduce the risk of any single actor gaining total control over digital life.
This opens the possibility of creating “digital islands of stability in a chaotic era,” where Ethereum could help enable “interdependence that cannot be weaponized,” he added.
Buterin also prompted Ethereum developers to “actively build toward a full-stack ecosystem,” spanning wallets and applications as well as deeper layers such as operating systems, hardware, and security infrastructure.
The ideas put forward fit “squarely” with what the Ethereum foundation and Buterin “have been trying to live by for years,” Trantor, head of Linea-based decentralized exchange Etherex, told Decrypt.
“While it is good to publish thought pieces, manifestos, and other public good statements, there is a very real danger of Ethereum forgetting what it already does and losing focus,” Trantor said.
Strengthening privacy is essential to that vision, Trantor explained.
“When privacy and financial freedoms are guaranteed, the market will develop those applications to meet user and community demand. It does not need to be directed or prioritized from on high,” he said.
Instead, he argued Buterin should remain focused on what he called the core use case of digital assets: building “trusted systems” for decentralized finance. The growth of DeFi, he said, offers a path away from state-controlled financial infrastructure.
While the direction could work, it “must face a harsh reality,” Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, told Decrypt.
“I can’t name even one blockchain service outside finance that has truly scaled,” he said, warning that focusing "more on the tech itself than the actual utility" risks repeating past failures.
Other observers see the opposite.
“Ethereum was never designed purely as a financial network,” Pichapen Prateepavanich, policy strategist and founder of infrastructure firm Gather Beyond, told Decrypt. “Finance became the dominant use case because markets move fastest and capital is the most immediate incentive layer.”
With digital systems becoming more “centralized and surveillance-driven,” Prateepavanich said there is “growing demand for infrastructure that preserves privacy, autonomy, and resilience” against corporate and government overreach. “Blockchains were originally conceived as part of that toolkit,” she added.
“The next wave of applications will succeed if they solve real problems while remaining simple enough for non-crypto users,” she said.
Others still see it as a return to its older roots.
Buterin’s ideas “isn’t really a pivot for Ethereum, it’s a return to its original purpose,” Dan Dadybayo, strategy lead at crypto infrastructure developer Horizontal Systems, told Decrypt.
“The broader goal has always been open systems for identity, communication, and coordination,” he said, adding that privacy-preserving identity, decentralized social protocols, and governance tools could gain traction if Ethereum aims to expand beyond finance.
Such an effort would require a full-stack approach spanning wallets, devices, and operating systems to serve users who need digital infrastructure that remains functional even when institutions or platforms fail, Badybayo said.
