Resilience is sovereignty: What is Ethereum's true mission

【Crypto World】Why was Ethereum born? This question seems simple, but the answer is much more complex than most people think.

According to Vitalik Buterin’s latest perspective, Ethereum’s original purpose was not to make finance more efficient or applications more convenient, but to empower users—allowing people to truly control their assets and data. Efficiency and usability are certainly important, but they are not the key differences that set Ethereum apart from other platforms.

Ethereum’s true core competitiveness lies in resilience. Resilience here does not mean pursuing higher returns, but rather ensuring that in the worst-case scenarios—developers disappearing, platforms being banned, or even network wars—the network can still operate normally. In other words, minimizing the risk of completely losing user assets.

Vitalik emphasizes a key concept: resilience equals sovereignty. Only when a system has genuine resilience can users shift from being dependent on enterprises to becoming equal participants. This independence comes from reducing reliance on external entities and building an ecosystem that is not easily toppled by single points of failure.

Can Web2 technologies help build such a resilient system? The answer is no. The fundamental nature of the traditional internet is inherently centralized, and while the financial industry has the concept of resilience, its resilience is often one-sided, mainly focusing on capital flow and risk management, rather than the network’s own antifragility.

Returning to Ethereum’s mission: first, to provide a decentralized, permissionless, and resilient blockchain space; then, on this foundation, consider how to achieve greater capacity. The order is crucial. Efficient systems without resilience are fragile, and decentralization without convenience loses its meaning.