Vitalik Buterin champions decentralization in ‘Trustless Manifesto’

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has authored and signed the new “Trustless Manifesto,” which aims to reinforce the core principles of decentralization and censorship resistance. The manifesto urges developers to avoid incorporating intermediaries and checkpoints merely for the sake of adoption, emphasizing the importance of trustlessness in the blockchain ecosystem.

Co-authored by Ethereum Foundation researchers Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner, the manifesto criticizes crypto platforms that compromise trustlessness through actions like integrating hosted nodes or centralized relayers. According to the manifesto, such compromises may seem minor at first but gradually erode permissionlessness, making the protocol fragile over time.

“Trustlessness is not a feature to add after the fact. It is the thing itself,” the authors wrote, underscoring that other priorities such as efficiency, UX, and scalability are only secondary to the principle of trustlessness.

The manifesto warns developers about the perils of centralization: “When complexity tempts us to centralize, we must remember: every line of convenience code can become a choke point.” This philosophy aligns with Ethereum’s broader mission to reduce reliance on intermediaries and maintain a permissionless, decentralized network.

While the manifesto didn’t single out specific companies, some Ethereum Layer 2 solutions faced scrutiny for trading off decentralization in pursuit of scalability. Buterin, Posner, and Weiss remarked on this issue, stating: “We measure success not by transactions per second, but by trust reduced per transaction.”

The authors also highlighted reliance on intermediaries as evident during the Amazon Web Services (AWS) crash last month. Coinbase’s Base chain experienced around 25% throughput loss when its AWS-hosted sequencer failed. In contrast, Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism demonstrated greater resilience by operating through multi-cloud setups.

The manifesto has gained the support of several contributors in the Ethereum ecosystem. These include Ethereum Foundation member Tom Teman and pseudonymous crypto researcher hitas.base.eth, who have also signed the document. This underscores a collective commitment within the Ethereum community to uphold trustlessness as a fundamental principle.

Vitalik Buterin has long been an advocate of maintaining Ethereum's cypherpunk ethos. In December 2023, he pushed for making Ethereum cypherpunk again, promoting technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and account abstraction that strengthen user privacy and encryption.

Recently, Ethereum has witnessed significant institutional interest. Major developments include the launch of spot Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds in July 2023 and an emerging trend of public companies acquiring ETH to bolster their balance sheets. Despite this surge in institutional adoption, the Ethereum Foundation and its core developers continue to prioritize delivering on Ethereum's technical roadmap, ensuring the network remains decentralized, self-sovereign, and censorship-resistant.