Buterin unveils 2026 roadmap to restore Ethereum decentralization

Beincrypto reported that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on January 16, 2026 unveiled a technical roadmap aimed at reclaiming the network's cypherpunk origins and reversing a decade of what he described as 'backsliding' on decentralization. Buterin said the push for mainstream scalability weakened Ethereum's promise of self-sovereignty by leaving users reliant on trusted servers, Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs) and third-party data providers rather than local verification.

The 2026 plan prioritizes Helios and Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (ZK-EVMs) plus Bridges and Local Verification (BAL) to make it easier for standard consumer hardware to run full nodes and verify the chain locally, according to him. The roadmap also proposes privacy UX features such as Oblivious RAM (ORAM) and Private Information Retrieval (PIR) to let wallets request data without revealing access patterns and to blind RPC providers to user activity.

On security, Buterin said the network will standardize on social recovery wallets and time locks and harden interfaces using decentralized storage like IPFS to reduce reliance on custodians and cloud backups that could be 'backdoored by Google' or other tech giants.

Key Topics

Crypto, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum, Zk-evm, Helios, Oram