When you add trust, you lose freedom — and that’s never the Ethereum way. Together with researchers Yoav Weiss and Marissa Posner of the Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has introduced a new “Trustless Manifesto”.
The paper exhorts blockchain developers to uphold the fundamental principles of censorship resistance, transparency, and decentralisation.
The Trustless Manifesto cautions that the addition of intermediaries or centralised checkpoints weakens the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
According to the manifesto, “every line of convenience code can become a choke point when complexity tempts us to centralise.”
It refers to Layer 2 networks that compromise decentralisation for scalability without mentioning any particular initiatives.
Buterin and his group remind the community that “trust reduced per transaction”—rather than “transactions per second”—should be used to gauge success.
In view of recent events such as the Amazon Web Services (AWS) failure that affected Coinbase’s Base chain, the warning emphasises the risks associated with centralised infrastructure. However, other Ethereum-based systems like Optimism and Arbitrum kept up their regular operations.
Buterin has previously advocated for purity. He started the “Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again” movement in 2023.
The objective is to use account abstraction and zero-knowledge proofs to promote privacy and self-determination. Does Ethereum lose its soul if trustlessness diminishes?
As Ethereum acquires institutional traction through ETFs and corporate investments, Buterin’s manifesto serves as a timely reminder that trustlessness is the basic strength of blockchain.
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