Ethereum's Next Decade | Vitalik Buterin

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Technology, News, Tech News

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 119 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ethereum just turned 10, and Vitalik Buterin returns to reflect on the last decade—and where it’s headed next. In this conversation, Vitalik shares what surprised him most about Ethereum’s growth, the hard lessons from challenges like The DAO and NFTs, and what he’d do differently if starting again. We explore Ethereum’s evolving cultural identity, privacy as a core value, the tradeoffs between L1 and L2, and how Vitalik envisions Ethereum surviving an AI-dominated future. ------ 🎬 DEBRIEF | RYAN & DAVID UNPACKING THE EPISODE https://www.bankless.com/podcast/debrief-ethereums-next-decade-vitalik-buterin ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 0:52 Ethereum’s First 2 Years 2:25 Ethereum’s Top Contributions 4:18 Biggest Surprises 7:37 What Took Longer than Expected 9:05 Overcoming Challenges 11:03 Lesson for Younger Vitalik 15:53 Bitcoin vs Ethereum 18:49 Ethereum’s Cultural Evolution 32:11 Privacy on Ethereum 37:42 Nation State Resistant Privacy 43:03 Cypherpunk vs Mainstream 56:05 World Ledger 59:09 Ethereum in 2024 1:02:23 Changes in the Ethereum Foundation 1:10:10 Economic Alignment 1:16:38 Scaling the L1 1:31:21 Ethereum’s Barbell Strategy 1:39:28 Ethereum Nationalism 1:48:28 ETH Treasuries 1:55:19 The Next 10 Years for Ethereum 1:59:35 The Next 10 Years for Vitalik 2:01:25 The Next 10 Years for Bankless 2:02:52 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Vitalik Buterin https://x.com/VitalikButerin 2021 Endgame https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/12/06/endgame.html Convex and Concave Dispositions https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2020/11/08/concave.html ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	So what are your hopes and dreams and goals for Ethereum to accomplish over the next 10 years?
0:05.4	A future of computing.
0:07.7	We are a trustless vision of security that is based on cryptography and verification of code.
0:16.9	The era of trust me for security starts looking as archaic as the era of trust me for security starts looking as archaic
0:22.6	as the era
0:24.5	of not cleaning our water
0:26.8	looks to us today.
0:28.5	We've already gotten there with HCTPS.
0:31.2	I think we need to get there with it
0:32.4	with everything else.
0:34.3	And I think Ethereum can be a huge
0:36.7	part of making that happen.
0:41.5	Ethereum just turned 10 years old. And we have back on the podcast, Vitalik Buterion. Fatalik,
0:46.6	welcome back to Bankless. Thank you so much, David and Ryan. It's great to be back.
0:51.6	So first, happy birthday Ethereum. The Ethereum white paper was published all the way back in 2013,
0:57.2	and then the Ethereum Mainnet launched in July 2015.
1:01.0	So 10 years later, Vitalik, how has Ethereum turned out compared to what you envisioned?
1:06.9	I mean, definitely is far bigger than I was expecting.
1:10.0	I think that's the most important thing. Also,
1:13.0	you know, it's definitely taken longer than I expected. It's definitely turned out to be more than I
1:17.6	expected. I think when I wrote the November white paper, my plan was still that this would be a
1:23.2	side project that I would quickly get done over a couple of months and then go back to university.
	...

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