Vitalik Buterin argues that Ethereum cannot beat Silicon Valley giants through performance optimization or convenience, but needs to take a different path: resilience to maintain operations and digital sovereignty in the face of major shocks.
He argued that the current optimization is merely a minor improvement in an already monopolized game. Ethereum should focus on building a decentralized, permissionless, and resilient blockchain space before discussing scaling.
- Ethereum needs to prioritize resilience over competing with Big Tech in terms of performance.
- Resilience means keeping the network running during blackouts, developer outages, cloud failures, or cyberwars; the target is 2,000ms latency.
- Ethereum needs to become a decentralized, permissionless, and resilient blockchain space before it can scale.
Resilience is the way for Ethereum to compete.
Vitalik Buterin emphasized that Ethereum should prioritize resilience because optimizing performance and convenience only offers a minor advantage, while Silicon Valley corporations have already monopolized this market.
According to him, resilience is not about pursuing higher profits, but about avoiding devastating blows. For example, when faced with a ban, a developer disappears, a cloud service fails, or a cyberwar occurs, the system can still operate with a latency of around 2,000ms.
A resilient network also means that anyone in the world who connects to the network can become an equal participant, as an equally sovereign entity within the system.
Digital sovereignty: autonomy for computers and users worldwide.
Vitalik describes resilience as digital sovereignty, not the symbolic kind of sovereignty like a seat at the United Nations or a handshake in Davos.
He argued that digital sovereignty stems from eliminating arbitrary dependence on external forces, thereby empowering computers worldwide and their users with autonomy. The goal is to create equal interdependence, rather than becoming vassals of multinational corporations.
Vitalik stated that Web2 is unrelated to resilience, while the resilience of traditional finance only serves certain specific risks. While the blockchain space is abundant, blockchain space that is both decentralized, permissionless, and resilient is scarce; Ethereum needs to become such a space before achieving scalability.
