Vitalik Retracts 2017 “Mountain Man” Take, Citing ZK-SNARKs as Ethereum’s Security Internet

Key Takeaways:

Vitalik Buterin publicly walked again a 2017 comment dismissing full person self-verificationAdvances in ZK-SNARKs now enable blockchain state verification with out replaying all historical pastButerin identifies self-verification as a backup to make Ethereum immune to failures and censorship

One of many positions mentioned by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 2017 and since amended marks a sign of how a lot Blockchain expertise and his personal thought when it comes to relevance has modified. In a current put up on X, Buterin defined why he not agrees along with his earlier criticism of full person self-verification, usually mocked as a “Mountain Man” strategy.

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Revisiting a 2017 Blockchain Debate

A remark posted by Butterin got here on account of an argument with researcher in blockchain Ian Grigg. Grigg on the time proposed blockchains to seize the order of transactions, however to not make any dedication to the state, together with account balances or storing sensible contracts. The idea was that, state can be recreated on-demand, as a substitute of being saved on-chain.

Buterin strongly opposed this design. He argued that with out committing state to the blockchain, customers would face two dangerous selections: run a full node that processes each transaction from genesis or belief a third-party RPC supplier. Ethereum’s strategy, which commits state roots to dam headers, allowed customers to confirm particular values utilizing Merkle proofs below an trustworthy majority assumption.

In 2017, Buterin thought-about the total self-verification to be off form with most customers because of the excessive computational price. His stance was oriented to the technological constraints of that point and tradeoffs builders needed to make to make sure that blockchains had been sensible.

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I not agree with this earlier tweet of mine – since 2017, I’ve develop into a way more keen connoisseur of mountains. It’s value explaining why.https://t.co/SRvRtuFKQu

First, the unique context. That tweet was in a debate with Ian Grigg, who argued that blockchains…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 26, 2026

ZK-SNARKs Change the Price Equation

Essentially the most vital one, as Buterin claims, is the maturation of zero-knowledge proof methods, notably, ZK-SNARKs. Customers can use such instruments to verify whether or not the blockchain state is correct with out having to re-run all of the transactions within the historical past.

Buterin described this breakthrough as delivering “the advantages with out the prices.” Customers not must determine between belief and big computation, however can use cryptographic proofs to make sure that they’re appropriate at an environment friendly charge. This, in his phrases, basically reverses the tradeoffs which might be acceptable.

Verification With out Replaying the Chain

ZK-SNARKs allow it to confirm that the chain is legitimate with out sacrificing the computational price which as soon as made self-verification impractical. Within the case of Ethereum it opens the trail to extra sturdy ensures associated to decentralization with no usability or scaling trade-off.

Buterin holds that the ecosystem must have greater expectations and re-evaluate tradeoffs that had been current in earlier levels of blockchain improvement with higher instruments at hand.

Actual-World Failures Form Ethereum’s Philosophy

Along with cryptography, Buterin burdened on what he discovered when issues did go fallacious in the true world. Peer-to-peer networks could crash, latency could soar and long-established third-party service may vanish. Throughout such instances, it’s a weak spot that the customers depend on the builders or centralized infrastructure.

Different dangers recognized by him embrace validator focus, believable 51% assaults, and middleman censorship and refers to incidents resembling Twister Money restrictions as a reminder that direct chain entry could develop into a necessity.