Vitalik: The relationship between "institutions" and "cypherpunks" needs to be properly understood, and we should remain open to mutually beneficial cooperation.

Foresight News reported that Vitalik explained the complex relationship between "institutions" and "cypherpunks" in a post on Farcaster. He stated that institutions (including governments and enterprises) are neither friends nor enemies. For example, Vitalik pointed out that while the European Union actively supports open-source software, it is also pushing for chat control (mandatory encryption backdoors); the US government enacted the Patriot Act, but at the same time also uses Signal.

Vitalik believes that the optimal game-theoretic strategy for institutions is to maintain control over their own domains while resisting external interference. He predicts that in the next era, institutions will be more proactive in reducing reliance on external trust. In the stablecoin sector, this means asset issuers will want chain governance not to be overly concentrated in a single country, while governments will push for more KYC processes, but privacy tools will also continue to improve. Vitalik emphasized that Ethereum is a censorship-resistant world computer, and cypherpunks do not need to treat institutions as complete adversaries. Instead, they should "remain open to mutually beneficial cooperation while actively defending their own interests." The core interest is to build financial, social, and identity layers that protect people's autonomy and freedom.