Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, called for the platform to move beyond its financial roots and take on a broader mission of building open systems that safeguard privacy, freedom, and coordination in an increasingly volatile digital landscape.
In a post published on X, Buterin described these efforts as “sanctuary technologies”, decentralized infrastructure meant to shield users from government and corporate surveillance, geopolitical instability and the expanding reach of artificial intelligence.
The Ethereum co-founder acknowledged that the network has played a limited role in tackling these challenges directly, even as internal discussions have shifted toward how the platform might contribute to wider social and technological resilience.
Financial autonomy remains a core value, Buterin said, but a narrow emphasis on monetary applications would fail to address the deeper concerns now confronting users across the globe.
He pointed to existing tools that already function as what he termed liberating infrastructure: satellite-based internet services like Starlink, locally operated open-source AI models, the encrypted messaging service Signal, and crowd-sourced verification systems such as Community Notes.
Ethereum, he argued, should help establish shared digital environments where individuals and organizations can coordinate, hold assets, and govern collective systems without depending on centralized authorities.
Such spaces might encompass payment networks, decision-making frameworks and collaborative platforms designed to outlast any single participant or institution.
Buterin stressed that the network should not seek to remake global systems entirely, an ambition that would demand the kind of concentrated power antithetical to its decentralized design. Instead, Ethereum should operate alongside other open technologies to provide stability and self-determination in a fragmented world.
Developers, he wrote, should work toward a comprehensive infrastructure stack, extending upward into wallets and user-facing applications while reaching downward into operating systems, hardware, and security layers.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
