Ethereum (ETH) creator Vitalik Buterin laid out a stark choice Monday: the network will put decentralization and resilience first, even if that means sacrificing speed and convenience. It's a strategic positioning that acknowledges Ethereum can't beat traditional tech companies at their own game.
Why Ethereum Can't Win the Efficiency Race
In a lengthy post on X, Buterin made his case with unusual clarity. When you optimize for efficiency and convenience, you're playing the "average case" game. And in that game, centralized Silicon Valley giants will always crush you. They have the resources, the infrastructure, and the freedom to cut corners that decentralized networks can't.
"So, the primary underlying game that Ethereum plays must be a different game. What is the game? Resilience," Buterin wrote.
He's talking about building systems that function when everything goes wrong—when users get deplatformed, developers abandon ship, infrastructure collapses, or the internet descends into full-scale cyberwar. These are the extreme scenarios where centralized systems fail spectacularly.
"This is the game that Ethereum is suited to win, and it delivers a type of value that, in our increasingly unstable world, a lot of people are going to need," he added. "Ethereum must first and foremost be decentralized, permissionless and resilient block space."
Not Everyone's Buying It
The replies to Buterin's post revealed plenty of skepticism about this binary choice.
William Mougayar, author of "The Business Blockchain," questioned the entire premise. Why can't Ethereum have both decentralization and efficiency?
"Strict adherence to a cypherpunk ethos doesn't protect Ethereum; it isolates it. To win the game of resilience, we must also win the game of relevance," he argued.
Another user pushed back on practical grounds: without convenience, even the most resilient system can't onboard billions of users. "If it's not accessible to everyone on earth, it's useless," they wrote.
The Real-World Trade-Off
The numbers tell Buterin's story pretty well. Ethereum's Layer-1 network hasn't gone offline since launching in 2015—that's effectively 100% uptime for nearly a decade. Some Layer-2 networks like Base have experienced outages, but the core chain just keeps chugging along.
But that resilience comes at a cost. Ethereum processes just over 20 transactions per second, according to Chainspect. Compare that to Solana (SOL) or Tron (TRX), which leave Ethereum in the dust on raw speed.
It's the classic engineering trade-off. You can have fast, cheap, and decentralized—pick two. Buterin's making clear which two Ethereum is choosing.
Price Action: At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $3,212.08, up 1.78% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.