Users do not need to share their political views, product opinions or cultural preferences to freely use the decentralized network, says Vitalik Buterin.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said users don’t have to agree with his views on applications, trust assumptions, politics, decentralized finance, decentralized social platforms, privacy-protecting payments, artificial intelligence or even cultural preferences to use Ethereum.
He believes that disagreement with him on one issue does not require agreement or disagreement on another issue.
“Corposlop” is not censorship
In a long post on X, Buterin declared that he does not claim to represent the entire Ethereum ecosystem. He described Ethereum as a decentralized protocol built around permissionlessness and resistance to censorship, allowing anyone to use the network in any way they choose, without regard to their opinions, the views of the Ethereum Foundation, or those of Ethereum client developers.
He said that labeling applications he doesn’t like as “corposlop” is not censorship. According to Buterin, freedom of expression means that individuals cannot prevent others from doing their work, but that they remain free to criticize, just as they can receive criticism in return.
Buterin said such criticism is necessary and rejected the concept of “pretending neutrality,” in which individuals present themselves as equally open to all perspectives while avoiding clearly stated positions. He wrote that neutrality should apply to protocols, such as HTTP, Bitcoin, and Ethereum, and within a limited scope to certain institutions, but not to individuals, who should instead clearly state their principles, including by identifying and criticizing things they believe are incompatible with those principles, and working with others who share common goals to build a metaverse that treats those principles as a foundation.
He asserted that principles cannot be limited solely to the design of protocols, while arguing that any principle naturally leads to conclusions not only about how to build a protocol, but also about what to build on top of it, and that such principles inevitably extend beyond technology and broader social issues, which he believes should not be avoided.
Hollow applications of ‘freedom’ in technology
Buterin added that valuing concepts like freedom while treating them as only relevant to technical choices and disconnected from other aspects of life is not pragmatic, but hollow. He further stated that a decentralized protocol should not be seen as belonging to only one metaverse and that the boundaries of a metaverse are inherently vague, making it common for people to align on some axes while disagreeing on others.
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The Ethereum co-founder’s latest comments came a month after he backed Bitcoin maximalists’ view that concerns around digital sovereignty were well-founded. Buterin had then argued that today’s Internet has shifted to corporate-controlled systems that erode user power. He described sovereignty as protecting the privacy, attention and autonomy of profit-oriented platforms, not just resisting governments.
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