Vitalik Buterin Calls for a Return to Ethereum's Cypherpunk Roots

According to CryptoPotato, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has called for a return to the cryptocurrency's cypherpunk roots in a Dec. 28 blog post. He reminisced about the early days of Ethereum and Bitcoin, when the vision was to create a more open, decentralized, and censorship-resistant internet and economy. However, he noted that this idealism has faded as transaction fees increased and applications focused on payments and speculation became more dominant. Buterin observed signs of a cultural revival in 2023, with rollups reducing fees, advances in privacy technology like zk-proofs, and a desire to move beyond over-financialization. He suggested that Ethereum could serve as a testbed for open and decentralized security innovations such as social recovery wallets, prediction markets, and quadratic voting. These innovations could potentially influence the broader internet. Buterin also outlined an ideal future Web3 tech stack, which would include decentralized equivalents to DNS, email, payments, identities, publishing, and governance that interoperate without central points of control. In other Ethereum news, the cryptocurrency's price has doubled in 2023, reaching a high of $2,430 on Dec. 28. Despite trailing behind Bitcoin and competing blockchain tokens like Solana and Avalanche in recent months, Ethereum remains the world's second-largest crypto asset and the industry standard for smart contracts. Some analysts predict that ETH prices could surge to $15,000 in the next bull market, based on gains from previous cycles.