From "Global Computer/Settlement Layer" to "Bulletin Board": What Do Ethereum and Vitalik Want to Do?

In many people’s traditional understanding, Ethereum’s core positioning has always been as a “world computer” or “global settlement layer.”

Over the past decade, it has indeed been responsible for executing smart contracts, supporting DeFi, and hosting NFTs, essentially becoming a programmable layer for financial and application execution.

But on March 12, Vitalik Buterin proposed a rather refreshing perspective — the crypto industry may have overcomplicated the actual use cases of blockchain. Ethereum’s most fundamental value might not be the smart contract functionality we have emphasized, but rather an extremely simple primitive:

A cryptographically secure, globally shared “public bulletin board.”

Many users might wonder: from “computer” to “bulletin board,” is this a degradation of functionality, or is there another perspective to consider?

1. The “Global Shared Memory” Behind the “Bulletin Board”

A “public bulletin board,” as the name suggests, centers on data availability.

It’s easy to understand: imagine a giant notice board posted in a city square, accessible to anyone, unremovable, unreviewed, and here, it simply refers to a global meaning of a bulletin board: all users worldwide can verify that data truly exists, even the most powerful governments cannot erase it, and there are no administrators to block compliant content.

Ultimately, many current digital systems—such as secure online voting, software version control—don’t require complex financial transactions but need a censorship-resistant, publicly verifiable data publishing space. This is precisely the “bulletin board” long sought after in cryptography:

• Secure voting systems. Traditional electronic voting relies on centralized databases, which are vulnerable to tampering. Publishing voting records on Ethereum allows anyone to verify results, with voter privacy protected by cryptography;
• Certificate revocation systems. Revocation lists for HTTPS certificates and software signing certificates need a publicly accessible, tamper-proof data source. Blockchain naturally fits this role;
• Multi-party coordination and governance. Open-source projects, decentralized governance, community funds—these scenarios require multiple parties to collaborate without mutual trust, with Ethereum serving as a neutral layer to publish data and verify actions;

These scenarios share a common feature: they don’t require Ethereum to “run” anything, only to “remember” something. Vitalik thus provided a more precise ultimate definition: Ethereum is global shared memory.

Anyone can write, anyone can read, no one can unilaterally erase—neither a company, nor a government, nor Vitalik himself.

This positioning also aligns with a clear technical path. The 2024 EIP-4844 (Blob data) is the first expansion of this bulletin board, and the full implementation of PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) in 2026 will expand its “area” a hundredfold. Ethereum is no longer obsessed with mainnet TPS but is dedicated to becoming the largest, most secure storage and verification hub—a foundational layer providing global shared data availability.

2. AI Is Coming, Making the Public Bulletin Board Even More Necessary

Understanding the essence of the “bulletin board,” when considering the arrival of AI, you’ll find these are not two separate things but two sides of the same coin.

Objectively, the idea of a “bulletin board” is closely related to the current impact of AI on Web3. Because nowadays, the number of daily interactions with AI exceeds those with any individual person. But current AI services tie everything—what you ask, when you ask, how often you ask—to your real identity.

For example, using ChatGPT requires an email and credit card; calling the Claude API leaves clear billing records, with each prompt creating a digital trace pointing back to you.

Therefore, Vitalik and Davide Crapis, head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation, jointly proposed in February 2026 a plan called ZK API Usage Credits, aiming to enable anonymous calls to large AI models via zero-knowledge proofs. The plan’s logic is straightforward:

Users deposit funds into a smart contract (e.g., 100 USDC), which records this deposit in an encrypted on-chain list. Afterwards, each time the user calls an AI API, they don’t need to reveal their identity—just generate a zero-knowledge proof demonstrating “I have the right to use this quota,” and the call is completed.

What does this require? A public bulletin board—a transparent, tamper-proof data layer to record “who has how much quota,” without recording “who is who.”

Meanwhile, the proliferation of AI Agents introduces another new issue: how do these automated programs coordinate economically with each other? When one AI Agent needs to invoke another’s service, it must pay, build reputation, and handle disputes. But it has no bank account, no legal identity, and no trusted “real-name” information from centralized platforms.

Ethereum, as an economic coordination layer for AI Agents, offers a natural solution: Agents can initiate transactions, stake collateral, and establish verifiable reputation records—all built on the transparent data layer provided by the “bulletin board.”

In a broader sense, this relationship between Ethereum and AI is even becoming integrated— as AI capabilities grow stronger, the needs for privacy, verifiability, and decentralization become more rigid.

Thus, Ethereum is not competing with AI but aims to be the most essential infrastructure in the AI era—a public data layer anyone can write to and trust, which no one can shut down.

3. Is the “Smart Contract” Narrative No Longer Enough?

Perhaps in Vitalik Buterin’s vision, future Ethereum users might mostly be AI Agents rather than “people.”

So, this shift from “world computer” to “bulletin board” might be misunderstood as lowering expectations, but in fact, it’s the opposite.

“World computer” is a narrative from an internal perspective, asking “what can our technology do,” while “bulletin board” is from an external demand perspective, asking “what does the world truly need.”

This may also be thanks to Vitalik meeting those cryptography researchers, voting system developers, certificate protocol designers, and privacy tool creators—people who have little interest in blockchain or Ethereum but need what Ethereum can provide.

Therefore, I believe Ethereum is gradually becoming more pragmatic because this is the attitude of mature technology: no longer trying to define application scenarios but refining itself into a reliable foundational infrastructure, waiting for the right scenarios to naturally emerge.

Just like TCP/IP doesn’t explain what the internet can do, but without TCP/IP, the internet can’t do anything.

From this perspective, perhaps this is Ethereum’s “self-reflection in times of difficulty.”

After all, the most core and irreplaceable value of blockchain has always been that unalterable truth—truth that is independent of anyone’s will. That means, no matter how fast AI evolves or how blurred the line between reality and virtuality becomes, as long as this “bulletin board” remains, humanity has a place to store “truth.”

This may be Ethereum’s most honest self-positioning.