Vitalik's In-Depth Reflection: Ethereum Protocol Redundancy Crisis, Simplicity Is the Long-Term Lifeline

Ethereum founder Vitalik recently raised a question that everyone should pay attention to—protocol simplicity has been seriously underestimated.

Why seemingly perfect systems are still fragile

No matter how decentralized a protocol is, it’s useless. Vitalik gave an example: even with top-tier configurations such as hundreds of thousands of nodes, 49% Byzantine fault tolerance, quantum-safe verification, and more, if the underlying code is a chaotic pile of hundreds of thousands of lines, mixed with five types of doctoral-level cryptographic techniques as critical dependencies, then this system will ultimately fail in three key aspects: it cannot truly be trustless, cannot guarantee autonomy, and instead increases security risks.

In simple terms: no matter how secure the firewall, it can’t block vulnerabilities in your own code.

Mistakes Ethereum is making

Vitalik openly expressed his concerns—that Ethereum development might be caught in a vicious cycle: to quickly meet various needs, continuously adding new features to the protocol, even if these features make the system bloated or introduce entirely new interaction modules and complex cryptographic dependencies.

In the short term, having full features seems attractive, but in the long run, this approach erodes the protocol’s autonomy. The reason is quite painful: adding features far exceeds removing features. To maintain backward compatibility, old code can never be fully cleaned up, and the protocol inevitably becomes heavier and heavier.

Solution: Establish a “garbage collection” mechanism

Vitalik proposed a key concept—the development process of Ethereum urgently needs to introduce a clear simplification and cleanup mechanism. Specifically, it means no longer requiring client developers to maintain all historical versions of the protocol. Those old versions can run independently in Docker containers, keeping the core protocol lean.

From growth phase to stability phase

Vitalik believes that Ethereum’s past fifteen years have been a period of exploration—constantly trialing and verifying which ideas are useful and which are not. But now we’ve reached a critical point—we must actively slow down the pace of change to prevent failed experiments from permanently accumulating in the protocol as burdens.

This reflects a deep development philosophy: true protocol simplicity is the last line of defense for Ethereum’s long-term sustainable development and maintaining its decentralization spirit.