Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin: build 'sanctuary tech,' forget emulating Apple or Google

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin doesn't envision the network he helped create fixing the world's problems, but there is a chance the technology could reshape what's at stake amid growing concerns about government and corporate overreach. 

Buterin argues that seeing crypto as more than an industry, and Ethereum as more than a business venture, could play a key role in reducing the risk that any single actor someday gains total control over digital life.

"Ethereum's role is to create 'digital space' where different entities can cooperate and interact," he said in a post to X on Tuesday. "I think now is the time to double down, with greater clarity. Do not try to be Apple or Google, seeing crypto as a tech sector that enables efficiency or shininess."

The Ethereum founder's statement is his latest rallying call to organize crypto developers around a set of shared values, including privacy and autonomy as human rights. Over the past year, the once semi-reticent coder has become increasingly vocal about Ethereum's core strengths and key principles.

Beyond worries about issues tied to surveillance capitalism, armed conflict, and "social media becoming a memetic warzone," Buterin also said he's heard plenty from people expressing concern that Ethereum is not doing enough to improve society.

"The brute reality that Ethereum seems to be absent from meaningfully improving the lives of people subject to these things, even on the dimensions we deeply care about (eg. freedom, privacy, security of digital life, community self-organization)," Buterin said.

"Ethereum should conceptualize ourselves as being part of an ecosystem building 'sanctuary technologies': free open-source technologies that let people live, work, talk to each other, manage risk and build wealth, and collaborate on shared goals, in a way that optimizes for robustness to outside pressures," he said.

Buterin said achieving the above could bring forth “de-totalization” — limiting the likelihood that any government, corporation, or dominant actor achieves total control, while ensuring opponents are not entirely shut out.

“It’s to reduce the stakes of the war in heaven,” said Buterin, “by preventing the winner from having total victory … and preventing the loser from suffering total defeat.”

Buterin’s comments from Tuesday echo the sentiments of the 1990s cypherpunk movement and early crypto pioneers, who warned against centralized control and mass surveillance.