Vitalik proposes a “walkaway test” at any time, signaling that Ethereum is moving toward a blockchain that can operate autonomously without oversight.
(Background recap: Ethereum staking market explosion! 1.66 million ETH queued for entry and exit, almost clearing the queue, is ETH about to surge?)
(Additional context: Ethereum Blob limit raised to 21 “cheaper transactions,” with the Glamsterdam parallel upgrade still scheduled for mid-2026)

Table of Contents

• Vitalik’s “Walkaway Test” at any time
• The final three puzzle pieces for protocol ossification
• New positioning for investment and development communities

Currently, the Ethereum community shows two clear signals: on-chain validators are exiting the queue to zero, while “entering the queue” has persisted for over 30 days, indicating that new staking demand remains strong.

At this moment, Vitalik Buterin posted on X today (12) about the “Walkaway Test (”, questioning whether Ethereum can continue to operate normally for a hundred years if the core team collectively withdraws tomorrow.

Below is the full translation of Vitalik’s message:

Ethereum itself must pass the “walkaway test.”

The mission of Ethereum is to become a home for trustless, minimally trusted applications, whether in finance, governance, or other fields. It must support applications that are more like tools—like a hammer that, once purchased, belongs to you—rather than services that, if the provider loses interest in maintenance (or worse, gets hacked or begins value extraction), lose all functionality. Even if some functions of applications depend on providers, Ethereum should minimize these dependencies and protect users as much as possible when dependencies fail.

But if the underlying layer itself requires continuous reliance on “providers” for updates to remain usable—even if these “providers” are all core developers—then it’s impossible to build the aforementioned type of application.

As a blockchain, Ethereum must embody the qualities we seek in Ethereum applications. Therefore, Ethereum itself must pass the “walkaway test.”

This means Ethereum must reach a state where we can “ossify” the protocol—fix it in place. We do not need to stop making protocol changes, but we must ensure that Ethereum’s value proposition no longer strictly depends on any features not yet embedded in the protocol.

This includes the following points:

• Fully quantum-resistant. Avoid falling into the trap of “delaying quantum resistance for a bit more efficiency.” Individual users can have that choice, but the protocol should not. We should aim to achieve and proudly declare:
  “Ethereum protocol, in its current state, possesses cryptographic security at a hundred-year level.”
• Architected for sufficient scalability. The protocol needs to be capable of gradually scaling to thousands of TPS, primarily through ZK-EVM verification and PeerDAS data sampling. Ideally, future scaling can be achieved through “parameter adjustments” alone, and preferably these adjustments are not BPO-style forks but are executed via the same validator voting mechanism used for adjusting gas limits.
• A state architecture that can endure for decades. This means deciding and implementing some form of “partial statelessness” and “state expiration,” allowing Ethereum to run at thousands of TPS for decades without disrupting synchronization or causing imbalances in storage or I/O. It also involves forward-looking design of trees and storage types to operate well in such a long-term environment.
• A universal account model (i.e., “full account abstraction”: no longer relying on ECDSA as a built-in signature verification).
• Confidence in a gas pricing model that avoids DoS vulnerabilities in both execution and ZK proof verification.
• A PoS economic model that, after learning from the past half-century (Ethereum PoS five years, crypto industry ten years), can be sustained and decentralized for decades, supporting ETH as a trustless collateral (e.g., governance minimization, ETH-backed stablecoins).
• Confidence in resisting centralization pressures and ensuring censorship resistance in unknown future environments.

Ideally, over the next few years, we complete the difficult work so that most future innovations can occur through client-side optimizations and reflected into the protocol via parameter changes. Each year, we should at least accomplish one of these goals, preferably multiple.

Doing the right things once and for all, based on what we truly know to be correct, rather than half-measures or compromises, to maximize Ethereum’s long-term resilience both technically and socially.

Ethereum, get tough.

This is the gwei.

) Vitalik’s “Walkaway Test”

In his latest article, Vitalik describes Ethereum as not needing to be a cloud service maintained year-round, but rather like a hammer that, once forged, can be passed down.

We must make Ethereum’s value proposition

no longer strictly dependent on any features not yet in the protocol

Ethereum is transitioning from a “high-growth tech product” to “public infrastructure.”

Only by abandoning reliance on individual geniuses can the chain’s order withstand state-level censorship and quantum threats.

The final three puzzle pieces for protocol ossification

Vitalik lists three ultimate tasks in the roadmap, after which the underlying protocol will enter the “ossified” stage.

• Quantum resistance. Public key algorithms need to be upgraded in advance to prevent future quantum computers from easily cracking existing signatures.
• Making ZK-EVM the standard. With PeerDAS now stable on mainnet, data availability and throughput bottlenecks are significantly reduced. The next step is to ensure zero-knowledge proofs are adopted across all Layer 2s, thoroughly alleviating the “blockchain trilemma.”
• Redesigning economic and security parameters, including a unified account model and DoS-resistant gas mechanisms, to ensure the network can defend itself against malicious attacks even without active maintenance.

New positioning for investment and development communities

As the protocol gradually freezes, innovation in development will shift toward higher-layer application stacks, similar to how the internet is built on decades-old TCP/IP protocols. For developers, this means the underlying rules will be stable long-term, greatly reducing development risks.

For capital markets, ETH’s direction has shifted from “high-growth theme” to “certainty asset,” with returns no longer coming from feature updates but from security and predictability.