Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and prominent developers have published the “Trustless Manifesto“, a sweeping declaration demanding that blockchain systems prioritize mathematical verification over intermediary trust.
The document arrives amid mounting criticism that Ethereum’s ecosystem has drifted toward centralization, despite public commitments to decentralization.
Just last month, former core developers revealed that a small group of insiders effectively controls project success and protocol direction.
The manifesto asserts that trustlessness, where system correctness relies solely on mathematics and consensus rather than the goodwill of intermediaries.
“Ethereum was not created to make finance efficient or apps convenient,” the authors write. “It was created to set people free.“
Manifesto Sets Six Core Requirements for Decentralized Systems
The document establishes strict criteria for trustless design:
Self-sovereignty, where users authorize their own actions Verifiability through public data Censorship resistance within reasonable timeframes Operator replaceability without approval Practical accessibility beyond technical experts Transparent incentive structures.Removing any requirement causes systems to “drift from protocol to platform—from neutral ground to private property,” according to the text.
The manifesto applies three laws prohibiting critical secrets held by single actors, indispensable intermediaries that users cannot realistically replace, and unverifiable outcomes lacking public reproducibility.
“These laws are harsh,” the authors acknowledge. “They limit what we can build easily—but they are the only guarantee that what we build belongs to everyone.“
Beyond theoretical frameworks, the document warns that centralization already permeates Ethereum’s infrastructure through hosted RPCs serving as defaults, AWS-GCP-Cloudflare dependency creating single points of failure, and centralized sequencing in many rollups.
“Decentralization erodes not through capture, but through convenience,” the manifesto states, comparing the trajectory to email’s evolution, where spam filters and blocklists made self-hosted servers practically impossible despite remaining theoretically open.
Former Developer Exposes ‘Elite Control’ Contradicting Decentralization Claims
The manifesto’s release follows bombshell revelations from former Geth lead developer Péter Szilágyi, who published a May 2024 letter exposing how five to ten people around Buterin maintain “complete indirect control” over Ethereum’s direction through attention allocation, donations, investments, and researcher assignments.
Projects no longer conduct public offerings but instead secure backing from the same insiders, creating what Szilágyi called a “ruling elite” where success requires convincing “the correct 5-10 people around Vitalik—or even him—to commit.“
Separately, Szilágyi revealed he earned just $625,000 over six years managing Ethereum’s primary execution client with zero benefits or raises, describing Foundation employment as “a bad financial decision” that created “a perfect breeding ground for perverse incentives, conflicts of interests, and eventual protocol capture.“
He warned the Foundation “set the protocol up for capture” by underpaying contributors who cared about principles, forcing them to seek compensation elsewhere, while those remaining felt like “useful fools” watching big players reshape the protocol.
Sentiments at the time summarize the dynamic as “we’re happy you built an empire for us, now move aside and let the people who can make us money take the lead,” according to Szilágyi.
Paradigm’s Growing Influence Over Ethereum
Separate warnings also emerged during the same time when Ethereum core developer “Fede’s intern” cautioned that venture capital firm Paradigm’s influence “within Ethereum could become a relevant tail risk for the ecosystem.”
Paradigm manages $12.7 billion and has positioned itself across multiple fronts, including hiring top researchers, funding critical open-source libraries like Reth, and launching Tempo.
Tempo is a competing layer-1 blockchain that has raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation from traditional finance firms, including Greenoaks, Thrive, Stripe, and Sequoia.
The concerns intensified following the departure of longtime Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist to Tempo, where Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang serves as CEO while retaining his role at the venture firm.
“When corporations gain too much legibility and influence over open source projects, priorities start to drift away from the community’s long term vision and toward corporate incentives,” the developer warned, noting Paradigm’s failed FTX investment led them to “remove most references to crypto and pivot heavily toward AI.”
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