Ethereum’s New “Trustless Manifesto” Is Here… And It’s Shading Centralization

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So, Vitalik Buterin, you know, the guy who’s basically the Elon Musk of Ethereum, just dropped something called the “Trustless Manifesto.” Is it a revolutionary breakthrough? Well, not really. It’s more of a subtle flex, but you get it-it’s all about decentralization, self-custody, and making sure everything on Ethereum is 100% verifiable, because trust is overrated (obviously). 😎

This manifesto wasn’t just Vitalik’s midnight ramblings-no, it was co-authored by Ethereum Foundation researchers Yoav Weiss and Marissa (I mean, the squad’s clearly got their work cut out for them, right?). The whole thing is a rallying cry for Ethereum’s original purpose: not making finance “efficient,” but for people to coordinate without relying on some middleman to screw everything up. Genius, right?

Centralization? More Like ‘Centralized-But-Don’t-Tell-Anyone’

The manifesto drops some truth bombs: if you start using centralized stuff-like hosted nodes or controlled relayers-it’s like inviting the evil villain to your superhero movie. A small, totally not important decision that slowly destroys the essence of what makes Ethereum, well, Ethereum. It’s like cheating on your diet with just one cookie. Before you know it, you’re eating an entire cake. 🍰

“The manifesto is a statement of those values: credible neutrality, self-custody, verifiability, and resistance to ‘convenient’ centralization,” the team said on X. And honestly, they’re not wrong.

The team goes on to define “trustless” as basically what we all want: anyone can join, verify, and participate in the system, with zero gatekeepers or the fear of some random dude lurking in the background pulling the strings. And don’t forget-every move you make needs to be fully transparent and visible, like being in a relationship where you’re both cool with sharing your Netflix password. 🔍

The EF guys also remind us that simplicity built on convenience is, like, the fast food of decentralization. You think it’s a good idea now, but it’s a slippery slope. Once you rely on some central authority, it’s game over. No, thank you.

And don’t even get them started on centralized infrastructure. Major cloud providers hosting blockchain nodes? Totally giving off “I’ll be your sugar daddy” vibes. Remember that one time AWS went down? Yeah, things got ugly. Coinbase’s Base chain went down by 25% when their AWS server threw a tantrum, while Arbitrum and Optimism were chill because, guess what? They don’t put all their eggs in one cloud basket. 🥚

Decentralize or Bust!

Now’s a perfect time to drop this manifesto, with Layer 2 networks trying to be all “scalable” but cutting corners on decentralization. Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, they’re all getting a bit of side-eye for trying to speed things up but not decentralizing enough. They’re like that person who runs a marathon and then brags about how fast they were while secretly using a scooter. 🚴

The authors of the manifesto have a new metric for measuring blockchain success: it’s not how many transactions you process, but how much you reduce trust with every single transaction. A little bit of decentralization goes a long way, people. ✌️

If you’re down with the cause, all you gotta do is connect your wallet, read the manifesto (it’s not that long, promise), click “Sign the Trustless Manifesto Pledge,” and boom-you’re officially part of the movement. Ethereum community peeps like Tom Teman and some crypto mystery figure (hitas.base.eth, whoever that is) are already on board.

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2025-11-16 01:22