Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum cofounder and one of the key visionaries of the crypto industry, shared a post today on social network X titled with a general line about why $ETH is needed for anything. Notably, Buterin calls for a change in perspective, arguing that the community should move away from fanaticism and marketing noise, and outlining three fundamental roles for Ethereum.
From 2020 high fees to data revolution
The first is a global bulletin board. As Buterin explains, many cryptographic protocols need a place where data can be written in a way that everyone can see it and no one can delete it. In the past, this was expensive, but with the PeerDAS upgrade, Ethereum can begin to store huge volumes of such data very cheaply. In this context, the blockchain is not needed for computation but simply as a guarantee of data availability.
Second, Buterin explains that in fully free, permissionless systems, it is impossible to simply ban registrations. To prevent systems from being overwhelmed with spam, for example through Sybil attacks, every action must cost a tiny but real amount of money.
Ether, in his view, serves as a universal tool for paying for APIs, protecting against spam and creating security deposits that are burned when rules are violated.
I was recently at Real World Crypto (that’s crypto as in cryptography) and the associated side events, and one thing that struck me was that it was a clarifying experience in terms of understanding *what blockchains are for*.
We blockchain people (myself included) often have a…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 12, 2026
Finally, the third element of Buterin’s updated vision is smart contracts as a matter of convenience. He argues that everything can be computed on the user’s own computer, with only the result sent to the blockchain through zero-knowledge proofs. However, smart contracts on $ETH function as a standard that allows different programs to easily communicate with each other and manage digital objects within a single environment.
As a conclusion, Buterin described Ethereum as the “global shared memory of the world.” Ether, he says, is no longer just a platform for speculation but a foundation for a future technology stack that protects privacy and resists censorship in the modern world.
