Vitalik Buterin sold almost 3,000 ETH worth $6.6 million through a series of swaps days after saying withdrawals from his holdings were coming. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sold about 2,961 Ether worth $6.6 million over a three-day period, after previously announcing plans to withdraw some of his holdings. Blockchain tracker Lookonchain said in a Thursday X post that the transactions were executed at an average price of about $2,228 per Ether (ETH). Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency traded at around $2,130 at the time of writing, down by more than 5% over the past day, according to CoinMarketCap. Arkham Intelligence data shows that the ETH sales were routed through CoW Protocol, with multiple small swaps rather than a single block trade. Such transactions are commonly used to reduce market impact. Read more
The move comes as the Ethereum Foundation enters a period of “mild austerity” while sticking to its core technical roadmap, Buterin said. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he has earmarked 16,384 Ether, worth about $45 million, to support privacy-preserving technologies, open hardware and secure, verifiable software systems. In a post on X, Buterin said the funds were withdrawn from his personal holdings and will be deployed over the next few years. He framed the move as part of a broader shift as the Ethereum Foundation enters what he called a period of “mild austerity,” while continuing to pursue an aggressive technical roadmap. Buterin said he is also taking on responsibilities that might otherwise have been handled as special projects of the foundation. “Specifically, we are seeking the existence of an open-source, secure and verifiable full stack of software and hardware that can protect both our personal lives and our public environments,” he wrote. Read more
The Ethereum co-founder urged broader adoption of open social platforms, saying decentralized social media can improve online communication by restoring competition. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he plans to fully recommit to decentralized social media in 2026, arguing that only platforms built on shared, decentralized data layers can foster real competition and support mass communication systems aligned with users’ interests rather than engagement metrics. In a Wednesday post on X, Buterin said he has shifted his activity toward decentralized social platforms this year, noting that every post he has written or read in 2026 has been accessed through Firefly, a multi-client interface that supports X, Lens, Farcaster and Bluesky. “If we want a better society, we need better mass communication tools,” Buterin said, arguing that decentralization enables competition by allowing multiple clients to operate on a shared social data layer. Read more
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says DAOs must move beyond simple token-voting treasuries and be redesigned to power core infrastructure like oracles and onchain courts. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has called for new decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) designs, arguing that the sector needs more than token-voting treasuries if it wants to improve on traditional corporate and political structures. In a Monday X post, Buterin said that current DAOs often amount to “a treasury controlled by token holder voting.” That model is widely copied but it is “inefficient, vulnerable to capture and fails utterly at the goal of mitigating the weaknesses of human politics,” he said. Read more
The Ethereum co-founder made the case that Ethereum occupies a role similar to the Linux operating system, but for shifting value and risk on the internet. The Ethereum network, a decentralized layer-1 blockchain that executes smart contracts, is analogous to the open-source operating system Linux, according to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Linux and Ethereum are both open source and feature custom-tailored implementations. Linux achieves this through developers building custom modifications of software, while Ethereum does it through its layer-2 (L2) scaling networks, Buterin said. Linux has provided value to “billions” of individuals, enterprises and state governments “without compromising” on its open source ethos or decentralization, Buterin said, adding: Read more
Ethereum's co-founder says PeerDAS and zkEVMs have solved crypto's scalability vs. security vs. decentralization trade-off. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin claims Ethereum has “solved” one of the biggest challenges in crypto: the blockchain trilemma. In a X post on Saturday, Buterin emphasized the potential of peer data availability sampling (PeerDAS) and Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVMs), noting that these two upgrades are making Ethereum “a fundamentally new and more powerful kind of decentralized network.” “Now, Ethereum with PeerDAS (2025) and ZK-EVMs (expect small portions of the network using it in 2026), we get: decentralized, consensus and high bandwidth,” he said, adding: Read more
Vitalik Buterin downplayed Ethereum’s recent brush with finality loss, saying temporary delays are fine if the wrong block is not finalized, and experts mostly agree. Ethereum can afford to lose finality from time to time without putting the network at serious risk, according to co-founder Vitalik Buterin, even after a recent client bug came close to disrupting the blockchain’s confirmation mechanism. Following a recent bug in the Prysm Ethereum client, Buterin said in an X post that there is “nothing wrong with losing finalization once in a while.” He added that finalization indicates the network is “really sure” a block will not be reverted. Buterin argued that if finality is occasionally delayed for hours due to a major bug, “that’s fine,” and the blockchain keeps working while that happens. The real issue would be something else, he said: “The thing to avoid is finalizing the wrong thing.” Read more