When Vitalik Buterin speaks, the blockchain world listens. This time, he didn’t unveil a new protocol nor announce a technological revolution. No, what he raised at ETHCC 2025 was an existential doubt. A red alert. Web3, meant to free us from the chains of centralized institutions, seems to be replicating their flaws. And Ethereum, the flagship of the crypto world, could well become an empty shell if its founding principles are forgotten.

Ethereum and the Illusion of Freedom: Three Tests to Tell the Real from the Fake

In a packed room at the Ethereum Community Conference in Cannes, Vitalik Buterin, true to his stripped-down style, set a stark scene: Web3 is at a tipping point. It is no longer enough to wave the word “decentralization” as a banner to claim it. Resilience must be proven.

Here are the three tests every crypto project should pass:

• The withdrawal test: if the team disappears, does the application still work?
• The insider attack test: what can a malicious collaborator do?
• The trust base: how many lines of code can we really take at face value?

These criteria are not theoretical. They aim to uncover flaws in L2s that can be updated with a click, or in app interfaces that give users an illusion of control while keeping the keys to the house.

If we lose this, Ethereum will just become a generational phenomenon, disappearing like many others.

Vitalik Buterin

Crypto Goes Mainstream… at the Risk of Losing Its Way?

Vitalik Buterin didn’t stop at a technical audit. He also offered a historical interpretation of the moment. For him, the crypto world has left the artisanal era. Gone are the “geeks in a garage.” The giants and heads of state have taken the stage.

He even cites Donald Trump, who recently converted to the crypto cause. For Vitalik, this is a sign that the underground is dead. And if the crypto space becomes a marketplace driven by the same logics as traditional finance, what remains of the original dream?

He warns: Android democratized Linux, but at the cost of an ecosystem riddled with spyware.

The default Android phone is full of spyware… a very mixed ecosystem.

Vitalik Buterin

Should we accept that the blockchain becomes an exact copy of this model, without the promise of emancipation?

Governance, Privacy, and Numbers: Vitalik Wants a Useful and Trustworthy Ethereum

But not all is bleak. For Buterin, solutions exist. He advocates for native privacy: no more “privacy” as an option, every leak is a bug. Front-ends must be static, hosted via IPFS, resistant to attacks.

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He also criticizes DAOs with buyable votes, these false democracies disguised as decentralized governance. And asks this simple question: “Does what you build make your users freer?“

Some figures and realities:

• 60% of L2s use upgrade keys activatable without the user;
• Over 70% of dApp interfaces are vulnerable to front-end attacks;
• RPCs (Remote Procedure Calls) often leak data to centralized servers;
• In 1 out of 3 DAOs, a handful of addresses hold more than 80% of voting rights;
• 9 out of 10 projects implementing ZK Proof fail to fully mask transaction history.

That is why Vitalik advocates a shift in technical and ethical direction.

Ethereum moves forward, driven by challenges of privacy, lowering gas fees, and fairer governance. On all fronts, the 31-year-old genius plays both engineer and philosopher. But meanwhile, across the river, Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson isn’t holding back: he calls Ethereum a dictatorship controlled by Vitalik Buterin, denouncing hypocrisy over decentralization. The battle of visions is just beginning.