Vitalik Buterin outlines 3 factors shaping Ethereum's future

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum and one of the most influential figures in the crypto industry, recently posted on social media platform X to explain why ETH remains an essential component in many technological systems.

According to Buterin, the community should change its perspective: instead of trying to find ways to “force Ethereum into every application”, view Ethereum as a technical tool within the decentralized technology ecosystem. From this approach, he highlights three core roles of Ethereum.

Ethereum as a Global Data Bulletin Board

The first role is as a “public bulletin board” on a global scale.

Buterin states that many cryptographic protocols — such as secure online voting systems, software version management, or certificate revocation — require a place where data can be publicly posted, visible to everyone but unchangeable by anyone.

Previously, storing such data on the blockchain was quite costly. However, after the PeerDAS upgrade, Ethereum can now provide larger data capacity at significantly lower costs, with plans to increase capacity by 10 to 100 times in the future.

In this case, the blockchain doesn’t need to perform complex calculations but mainly serves to ensure data availability.

ETH as a Payment Tool and Spam Prevention

The second role relates to payments and spam prevention.

According to Buterin, in open and permissionless systems, banning user registration is nearly impossible. To prevent system abuse — such as Sybil attacks — each action must carry a small but real cost.

ETH thus functions as a universal payment tool for various services, especially permissionless APIs. Additionally, ETH helps create effective spam prevention mechanisms and provides a staking method for security.

Smart Contracts as a Digital Memory

The third role involves smart contracts.

Buterin explains that one of the key applications of smart contracts is the “security deposit” mechanism — where users lock ETH into contracts, and the funds are burned if there’s evidence of protocol rule violations.

Furthermore, smart contracts enable advanced payment systems like zero-knowledge payment channels, and create “digital objects” representing real-world entities or social systems.

Ethereum as the Internet’s Shared Memory

Buterin believes that, from a fundamental principle, Ethereum can be viewed as a kind of “global shared memory” for the Internet.

He also notes that one of the major barriers today is that many still think of Ethereum as it was during 2020–2022, when transaction fees were very high. Meanwhile, fees have significantly decreased, and scalability expansion plans are ongoing.

According to Buterin, by combining these three elements — blockchain data, ETH as a payment medium, and smart contracts as a universal programming layer — Ethereum can fully become the infrastructure platform for open-source, decentralized, private, and secure software systems in the future.