{"id":66018,"date":"2026-01-02T07:16:34","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T07:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=66018"},"modified":"2026-01-02T07:16:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T07:16:34","slug":"ethereum-buterin-revives-milady-for-a-world-computer-push","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=66018","title":{"rendered":"Ethereum: Buterin Revives \u2018Milady\u2019 For A World Computer Push"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin rang in 2026 by switching his X profile image back to a Milady-style avatar and pairing it with a manifesto-like post that re-centers Ethereum\u2019s identity around a single, old-school ambition: becoming \u201cthe world computer\u201d for an open internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome to 2026! Milady is back,\u201d Buterin wrote<\/a>, before ticking through what he framed as Ethereum\u2019s 2025 progress: higher gas limits, a larger blob count, better node software quality, and zkEVMs<\/a> hitting major performance milestones. He also argued that \u201cwith zkEVMs and PeerDAS ethereum made its largest step toward being a fundamentally new and more powerful kind of blockchain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ethereum Must Deliver The World Computer<\/h2>\n

But the post\u2019s center of gravity wasn\u2019t a victory lap. It was a warning that the network is still falling short of its own stated goals and that chasing whatever narrative is currently printing attention is not the point.<\/p>\n

Buterin drew a bright line between Ethereum\u2019s long-term mission and trend-driven incentives that often dominate crypto cycles. \u201cEthereum needs to do more to meet its own stated goals,\u201d he wrote. \u201cNot the quest of \u2018winning the next meta\u2019 regardless of whether it\u2019s tokenized dollars or political memecoins, not arbitrarily convincing people to help us fill up blockspace to make ETH ultrasound again<\/a>, but the mission: To build the world computer that serves as a central infrastructure piece of a more free and open internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, he offered a description of what \u201cworld computer\u201d should mean in practice: decentralized applications that can\u2019t be quietly altered or shut off, and that remain usable even when the companies and infrastructure most users take for granted fail.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re building decentralized applications. Applications that run without fraud, censorship or third-party interference,\u201d he wrote. \u201cApplications that pass the walkaway test: they keep running even if the original developers disappear. Applications where if you\u2019re a user, you don\u2019t even notice if Cloudflare goes down \u2014 or even if all of Cloudflare gets hacked by North Korea<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buterin extended that same set of expectations beyond finance, explicitly name-checking identity, governance, and \u201cwhatever other civilizational infrastructure people want to build,\u201d and he emphasized privacy as a core property rather than a nice-to-have.<\/p>\n

A notable thread in the post is that Buterin refuses to treat usability-at-scale and decentralization as a trade-off Ethereum can punt on. \u201cTo achieve this, it needs to be (i) usable, and usable at scale, and (ii) actually decentralized,\u201d he wrote, arguing those requirements apply both to the base layer\u2014\u201cincluding the software we use to run and talk to the blockchain\u201d and to the application layer.<\/p>\n

That framing implicitly puts pressure on multiple constituencies at once: core protocol work, client diversity and quality, infrastructure that doesn\u2019t centralize around a few providers, and dapp architectures that can survive developer abandonment while still meeting user expectations.<\/p>\n

Buterin closed on a note of resolve rather than specifics, saying Ethereum has \u201cpowerful tools\u201d but needs to apply them more aggressively. \u201cAll of these pieces must be improved \u2014 they are already being improved, but they must be improved more,\u201d he wrote. \u201cFortunately, we have powerful tools on our side \u2014 but we need to apply them, and we will.\u201d<\/p>\n

At press time, ETH traded at $3,030.<\/p>\n

\"Ethereum<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin rang in 2026 by switching his X profile image back to a Milady-style avatar and pairing it with a manifesto-like post that re-centers Ethereum\u2019s identity around a single, old-school ambition: becoming \u201cthe world computer\u201d for an open internet. \u201cWelcome to 2026! Milady is back,\u201d Buterin wrote, before ticking through what he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-66018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}