Vitalik Buterin Proposes Self-Sustaining Ethereum Concept

Vitalik Buterin outlines Ethereum's path to self-sustainability.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined a set of technical requirements aimed at enabling the blockchain to maintain long-term sustainability without continuous developer involvement.

Ethereum itself must pass the walkaway test.

Ethereum is meant to be a home for trustless and trust-minimized applications, whether in finance, governance or elsewhere. It must support applications that are more like tools — the hammer that once you buy it’s yours — than like…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 12, 2026

According to him, the network aims to support applications that do not depend on their providers, who may lose interest. To meet these criteria as a foundational layer, the blockchain itself must pass the “walkaway test.”

“This means Ethereum must reach a state where we can ‘ossify’ if we want to. We don’t need to stop making protocol changes, but we should reach a situation where the blockchain’s value proposition does not strictly depend on any features that are not yet present,” Buterin emphasized.

He highlighted the following seven conditions necessary to achieve this goal:

• full quantum resistance of the blockchain, which must be pursued without delay;
• a scalable architecture — primarily through the implementation of zkEVM validation and data sampling via PeerDAS;
• a network state structure that allows comfortable operation with “thousands of TPS over decades,” without disrupting synchronization;
• complete account abstraction and abandonment of standard ECDSA signatures;
• a gas model resistant to DoS attacks both in regular execution and with ZK-proofs;
• a mature staking economy that remains decentralized over time;
• a block-building mechanism resistant to centralization.

“Ideally, we should do a lot of work over the next few years so that in the future almost all possible innovations occur through client-side optimization and are reflected in the protocol by changing parameters,” Buterin noted.

In this scenario, regular hard forks would be unnecessary — upgrades would suffice with validator voting, similar to gas limit adjustments, he added.

According to Buterin’s plan, at least one of these tasks should be implemented annually. A fundamental approach is necessary, rather than short-term compromises, to maximize Ethereum’s technological and social resilience, he stressed.

Earlier in January, Buterin stated that the protocol is successfully overcoming the blockchain trilemma thanks to the development of zkEVM and the launch of PeerDAS. These solutions were key elements of the Fusaka hard fork, which the Ethereum team implemented on the mainnet in December.