Ethereum – the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin – has just witnessed a new debate coming from its co-founder Vitalik Buterin. In a post published on Sunday, Buterin called on the Ethereum community to focus more on low-risk decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, instead of chasing short-term speculative memecoins that are prone to volatility.
He compares secure DeFi protocols, such as payments, savings, fully collateralized lending, and well-understood financial applications, to Google’s advertising model. By 2024, advertising will account for over 75% of Google’s revenue, which in turn will nurture many other products that are less profitable but have great social value. Vitalik argues that Ethereum can follow this path: a sustainable ecosystem based on a solid foundation, allowing other experimental and groundbreaking applications to thrive without revenue pressure.
Buterin has previously been skeptical of DeFi, arguing that the risks are too high, especially when much of the market is dominated by speculative asset trading and risky “yield farming.” He cited the example of Yuga Labs’ 2022 Otherdeed sale, which caused the Ethereum network to become clogged and transaction fees to skyrocket due to poorly optimized smart contracts. However, the situation has changed: major vulnerabilities and hacks are increasingly being pushed to the margins, concentrating on risk-taking users, while the core of the ecosystem is much safer.
Vitalik Buterin emphasized that Ethereum’s main source of revenue doesn’t have to be the most revolutionary or dramatic application. It’s important that it’s ethical, not offensive or ridiculous. He bluntly criticized: “You can’t seriously say you’re excited about the Ethereum ecosystem because it’s changing the world in a positive way if the biggest application is political memecoins.”
Buterin believes that secure DeFi not only supports the Ethereum economy today, but also opens the door to future models, such as credit-based lending instead of collateral, the integration of prediction markets, or even stable assets that replace the USD like “flatcoins”. This could be the key to the Ethereum ecosystem being both sustainable and innovative.
Notably, this article comes amid a major change for the Ethereum Foundation, which in 2025, under the leadership of co-CEOs Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz K. Stańczak, has launched major initiatives such as “Trillion Dollar Security,” a comprehensive privacy roadmap, and a revamped grant program to reduce waste.
