Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, in an episode of The Network State podcast, explained why he chose not to create the blockchain platform anonymously, unlike Satoshi Nakamoto. He attributed this decision to the circumstances of the time.
Buterin was 19 years old when he began working on Ethereum in 2013. He admitted that anonymity was not a consideration—partly due to inexperience and enthusiasm.
“I was just an enthusiastic guy with an idea and didn’t think about hiding my identity,” he explained.
However, the main reason was his desire to make the platform open to everyone: from developers to investors.
“Being public helped. It was easier for me: I could speak at conferences, convey the essence of Ethereum, and build trust. Anonymity could have hindered community building in the early stages,” Buterin noted.
He also highlighted the difference in context. When Satoshi launched Bitcoin in 2008, cryptocurrencies were a new and risky tool, and the authorities’ reaction was unclear.
By 2013, blockchain had become more understood, said the Ethereum founder. Thus, he was able to create the platform without worrying about potential risks.
How to Improve Ethereum Further?
During the conversation, Buterin emphasized that the project’s two main goals remain scalability and utility. According to him, a clear technical roadmap will help achieve these.
“Ethereum, broadly speaking, has two guiding stars. The first is to be a widely used and scalable platform. The second is to remain truly valuable, meaning significantly more secure, decentralized, and so on compared to systems people would use instead,” he said.
According to the programmer, if the platform cannot handle millions of transactions or becomes similar to traditional finance, it will lose its value.
For scalability, Ethereum is developing L1 and L2 solutions. At the first level, developers are implementing block pre-confirmation, access lists, and decentralized data storage. At the second level, they are increasing the number of BLOB objects, using PeerDAS and technologies like ZK-SNARKs and STARKs for transaction proofs. These allow millions of transactions per second while maintaining network security.
Buterin noted the limitations of early Bitcoin ideas that Nakamoto did not consider:
“The main thing that, in my opinion, Satoshi didn’t fully realize is the asymmetry between creation and verification.”
In the network of the first cryptocurrency, block creation and verification require equal effort. However, technologies like ZK-SNARKs and data sampling allow builder nodes to do the heavy lifting, simplifying verification for others. This reduces the load and makes the network accessible to more users.
An example of failure is the use of custodial wallets in the Lightning Network in El Salvador, which reduced decentralization. Buterin proposed a hub model:
“The solution lies in a hub model, where a small number of powerful nodes concentrate the work of generating proofs, while verification remains widely distributed.”
L2 rollups perform computations off the main blockchain but prove them on L1, providing the same guarantees. Data sampling allows the chain to be verified by downloading only part of the information, enhancing scalability without losing decentralization.
“We intend to keep moving forward, making Ethereum better, more accessible, safer, and more useful for everyone,” Buterin concluded.
On May 7, the second-largest cryptocurrency network by market capitalization activated the major Pectra upgrade. In July, it was announced that the next hard fork, Fusaka, would be deployed in November.