Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin slammed the rise of copy-paste EVM Chains with minimal innovation, which stifles progress.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recently criticized the lack of originality across the Layer-2 and blockchain scaling ecosystem. In his latest blog post, Buterin argued that the space has become overly reliant on launching near-identical, EVM-based networks. He stressed the need for meaningful innovation in new and upcoming chains.
Vitalik Buterin Says No to Copy-Paste EVM Chains
Vitalik Buterin shared the state of new EVM chains coming to the market. The industry needs to look beyond launching yet another EVM-based chain with an optimistic bridge to Ethereum. Buterin’s comments come just as he has been constantly selling ETH recently.
He compared the current developments to the early DeFi governance era. Back then, repeated forks of protocols, such as Compound, limited genuine innovation. According to Buterin, this approach has “sapped imagination” and pushed infrastructure development into a dead end.
He was particularly critical of EVM chains that operate without a meaningful connection to Ethereum. Buterin stressed that the ecosystem does not need additional standalone Layer-1 networks.
He added that Ethereum’s base layer is already scaling and will continue to deliver significantly more EVM-compatible blockspace. While not unlimited, he said, Ethereum will be able to support a broad range of applications.
Ethereum Co-Founder Stresses the Need for Innovation
The Ethereum co-founder said that developers should put greater focus on systems that deliver genuinely new capabilities. He also pointed out specific areas such as privacy-preserving architectures, ultra-low-latency execution, and application-specific performance optimizations.
Vitalik Buterin criticized projects that market themselves as closely tied to Ethereum while maintaining only limited or superficial connections to the network. Buterin noted that teams should not use the Ethereum connection only for marketing purposes, but should be transparent about their association with the project.
On the other hand, Buterin has raised concerns about decision-making within the Ethereum ecosystem. Previously, he called for a shift away from informal, sentiment-driven governance toward more structured and accountable processes.
In the latest announcement, Buterin has been working with early Ethereum contributors, aka “OGs,” towards a new security initiative. Theinitiative consists of a $220 million in funds that have remained locked since the 2016 TheDAO hack. The goal behind this project is to repurpose the idle assets into a dedicated security fund.
next