Vitalik: If decentralization is just a slogan, Ethereum will face risks

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated at the EthCC conference in France that if decentralization remains merely a slogan, Ethereum will face a survival crisis. He proposed three core testing criteria:

1. Exit Test (whether user assets are safe after the project disappears);

2. Internal Attack Test (the system's ability to withstand internal malice);

3. Trusted Computing Base Test (the amount of code that requires trust to protect user assets).

Vitalik pointed out that most current Layer2 networks and DeFi projects rely on tamperable backdoors or centralized front ends, and privacy solutions often expose user transaction histories due to reliance on third-party logins. He emphasized the need to make privacy a default feature and to streamline the code's trust base. On the tenth anniversary of Ethereum's mainnet launch, he warned that if true decentralization guarantees cannot be achieved, Ethereum may repeat the fate of other technologies that were fleeting.