Vitalik Buterin asked the Ethereum community to collectively define the properties it wants to protect for users and the red lines it refuses to cross

Event date

April 30, 2025

Quotes that support claims

Vitalik Buterin emphasized the importance of reaching a clear, shared understanding within the community on these decentralization-related questions. He noted that such clarity is essential for determining safe limits for Layer 1 gas usage and for identifying which Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) are most important to prioritize to maximize the gaslimit/decentralization tradeoff curve.

However, if we start going in this direction, we need to be very clear about what our underlying goals in terms of decentralization are: what properties are we trying to give to users, and what red lines are we not willing to cross?

If we want to set limits, we can start asking the question: what is the goal of those limits? Some possible answers are: Fixed costs should be low enough to ensure a highly competitive market Energy requirements should be low enough to run from a home (ie. max ~15 kW), so that Ethereum is strongly protected from dependency on data centers, which are easy censorship choke points

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Week 18 of 2025